One-pot diastereoselective synthesis of α-aminonitriles from aldehydes, chiral amines, and trimethylsilyl cyanide under solvent-free conditions

Treatment of aliphatic and aromatic aldehydes with chiral amines and trimethylsilyl cyanide in the absence or in the presence of Lewis acids (including lithium perchlorate) under solvent-free conditions afforded the corresponding α-aminonitriles in good yields and with a diastereoselectivity of 68 to 86%. Published in Russian in Zhurnal Organicheskoi Khimii, 2006, Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 56–59. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

The role of readily hydrolyzable polysaccharides of larch wood in manufacture of board materials

Role of readily hydrolyzable polysaccharides of larch wood in production of board materials is studied.     

Identification of a dissipation coefficient by a variational method

A generalized inverse problem for the identification of the absorption coefficient for a hyperbolic system is considered. The well-posedness of the problem is examined. It is proved that the regular part of the solution is an L ₂ function, which reduces the inverse problem to minimizing the error functional. The gradient of the functional is determined in explicit form from the adjoint problem, and approximate formulas for its calculation are derived. A regularization algorithm for the solution of the inverse problem is considered. Numerical results obtained for various excitation sources are displayed.     

Properties of Josephson junctions in the inhomogeneous magnetic field of a system of ferromagnetic particles

The effect of an array of ferromagnetic nanoparticles on the field-dependent critical current of the short overlap Josephson junction is experimentally studied. Large reversible variations of the maximum critical current are observed depending on the magnetic state of the particles. The pronounced commensurability effects are detected which are proved by the additional peaks of magnetic field induced diffraction pattern.     

On the torsion of Jacobians of principal modular curves of level 3<Superscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis></Superscript>

We demonstrate that the 3-power torsion points of the Jacobians of the principal modular curves X(3ⁿ) are fixed by the kernel of the canonical outer Galois representation of the pro-3 fundamental group of the projective line minus three points. The proof proceeds by demonstrating the curves in question satisfy a two-part criterion given by Anderson and Ihara. Two proofs of the second part of the criterion are provided; the first relies on a theorem of Shimura, while the second uses the moduli interpretation. Received: 30 September 2005     

Local algebras in the representation of MV-algebras

In this paper we present several results about local MV-algebras, extending existing results given for MV-chains. The role of local MV-algebras in sheaf representation and weak boolean product is stressed and the relationship of local MV-algebras with varieties of MV-algebras is analyzed. Presented by S. Pulmannova. Received November 11, 2005; accepted in final form December 20, 2005.     

A Note on the Kissing Numbers of Superballs

The lower bounds for the translative kissing numbers of superballs are studied in this note. We improve the bound given by Larman and Zong. Furthermore, we give a constructive bound based on algebraic-geometry codes that also improves the bound by Larman and Zong in almost all cases.     

A web-based workforce management system for Sainsburys Supermarkets Ltd

Labour scheduling plays an important and critical role in Sainsburys day to day operations and profitability. The integrated workforce management solution for Sainsburys is an intelligent solution for the operational deployment of human resources, integrated business forecasting, generation and calculation of workload and staff scheduling. The workforce management technology has provided Sainsburys with a fully web-based and centralised system that produces optimised schedules for all employees satisfying the forecasted demand of work with granularity of fifteen minutes. The system is configured to respect all operational and business requirements as well as employee contractual constraints. This paper introduces the workforce management solution system designed, developed and implemented for Sainsburys. We concentrate on two modelling structures, namely the work pattern model and optimisation model, and briefly discuss the optimisation process.