Thermal and mechanical coupling between successive pulses in KrF-excimer-laser ablation of polyimide

Multiple-shot effects in laser processing and ablation of polyimide are examined and are found to be the dominant phenomena for processes involving several hundreds or thousands of pulses. For fluences less than 260 mJ/cm², it was found that it is impossible to cut through 75 m polyimide foils for an arbitrarily large number of excimer pulses even though this fluence is more than ten times the single-shot ablation threshold. The halt in etching is due to the formation, over a number of shots, of a robust carbon matrix with a deep surface roughness which is also responsible for laser-induced electrical conductivity. The effect of thermal coupling between successive shots is shown to be a dominant factor in determining the electrical properties of the carbon layer. Differences in electrical conductivity of up to 12 orders of magnitude were found for only small differences in repetition rate. Transmission electron microscopy revealed the changes in microstructure responsible for the dramatic differences in electrical properties.     

Distinguished extensions of a lattice-ordered group

Any lattice-ordered group (l-group for short) is essentially extended by its lexicographic product with a totally ordered group. That is, anl-homomorphism (i.e., a group and lattice homomorphism) on the extension which is injective on thel-group must be injective on the extension as well. Thus nol-group has a maximal essential extension in the categoryIGp ofl-groups withl-homomorphisms. However, anl-group is a distributive lattice, and so has a maximal essential extension in the categoryD of distributive lattices with lattice homomorphisms. Adistinguished extension of onel-group by another is one which is essential inD. We characterize such extensions, and show that everyl-groupG has a maximal distinguished extensionE(G) which is unique up to anl-isomorphism overG.E(G) contains most other known completions in whichG is order dense, and has mostl-group completeness properties as a result. Finally, we show that ifG is projectable then E(G) is the -completion of the projectable hull ofG.Presented by M. Henriksen.     

Chemistry and Biology of Cylindrols: Novel Inhibitors of Ras Farnesyl-Protein Transferase from Cylindrocarpon lucidum

Farnesyl-protein transferase (FPTase) is an enzyme responsible for the farnesylation of Ras protein. Farnesylation is required for cell-transforming activity in several tumor-types, and therefore, inhibition of FPTase activity may be a potential target for anticancer drugs. Our continued search for novel inhibitors led to the isolation of a number of bicyclic resorcinaldehyde cyclohexanone derivatives named here cylindrols A(1) to A(4), cylindrols B and B(1), and a number of known compounds, from Cylindrocarpon lucidum. The compounds were isolated by bioassay-guided separation using Sephadex LH-20, silica gel, and reverse phase HPLC. Structures were elucidated by extensive application of 2D NMR and X-ray crystallography. The determination of absolute stereochemistry was accomplished by CD measurements. Chemical transformations of the most abundant compound resulted in a number of key derivatives which were critical for the evaluation of structure activity relationship. These compounds are members of ascochlorin family and showed a wide range of inhibitory activity (0.7 &mgr;M to >140 &mgr;M) against FPTase. The FPTase activity was noncompetitive with respect to both substrates. Isolation, structures, chemical transformations, and FPTase activity are discussed in detail.     

Universal singular sets for one-dimensional variational problems

Summary A study is made of the regularity properties of minimizers u of the integralI(u)= _a ^b f(x, u, u) dx subject to the boundary conditionsu(a)=, u(b)= as the interval (a, b) and boundary values, are varied. Under natural hypotheses onf it is shown that the set of points in the (x, u)-plane at which a minimizer u can have infinite derivative for some interval and boundary values is small in the sense of category.This article was processed by the author using the LaT_EX style filepljour1 from Springer-Verlag.     

Single-run analysis of retinal isomers, retinol and photooxidation products by high-performance liquid chromatography

A high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) procedure was developed to allow the rapid separation, in a single run, of a mixture of the main retinal isomers (all-trans, 13-cis, 9-cis), all-trans-retinol, and of the two major photooxygenated photoproducts (5,8-peroxyretinal and 5,6-epoxyretinal). The mixture was separated by HPLC on an octadecyl (ODS) column with 16% (v/v) diethyl ether in hexane as mobile phase and anthracene as the internal standard. A commercial type cosmetic formulation containing 0.05% all-trans-retinal was analyzed successfully for this analyte.