Piperaceae alkaloids: Part IV. Structure and Synthesis of Cyclostachine A,Cyclostachine B and Cyclopiperstachine

Three new alkaloids designated as cyclostachine A (2), cyclostachine B (7) and cyclopiperstachine (10) have been isolated from Piper trichostachyon C. DC. Their structures have been derived on the basis of spectral and degradative studies and confirmed by synthesis. The ¹H- and ¹³C-NMR. spectra of these compounds are discussed.     

Gorsky relaxation in the presence of traps

It has been shown recently that a linear response theoretic formalism leads to a straightforward derivation of the theory of the Gorsky effect at low interstitial concentrations, for arbitrary specimen geometry and applied stress inhomogeneity. We now extend this formalism to the practically important situation in which traps (e.g., N interstitials) inhibit the diffusion of the H interstitials, in order to motivate the experimental application of the Gorsky relaxation technique to the determination of the trap parameters. An explicit calculation is done for a typical specimen geometry, using Schroeder's phenomenological model for diffusion in the presence of traps. Exact expressions are obtained for the anelastic creep function, the relaxation strength and the internal friction. The structure and physical implications of these expressions are discussed using numerical values for the parameters deduced by other methods (in particular, neutron scattering). Noteworthy features of the predicted dynamic response include shifts in the position and height of the Gorsky peak owing to the occurrence of an effective diffusion constant and the difference in the values of the trace of the elastic dipole tensor in the free and trapped states; and an additional Snoek-like contribution due to local free trapped transitions of the diffusing particles.     

Thermodynamic functions of thorium–cerium mixed oxides

Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry - Thorium–cerium mixed oxides (Th1?xCex)O2 (x?=?0.25, 0.5, 0.75) were prepared by the citrate gel combustion technique. X-ray...     

Growth rate predictions of single- and multi-mode Richtmyer�CMeshkov instability with reshock

The single- and multi-mode Richtmyer–Meshkov instabilities (RMI) with reshock are numerically analyzed in two- and three-dimensional domains. Four different types of air/SF ₆ interface shapes are investigated in a shock tube configuration, and the predicted post-reshock growth rates are compared with available empirical models of Mikaelian’s (Physica D 36(3):343–347, 1989) and Charakhch’an’s (J Appl Mech Tech Phys 41(1):23–31, 2000). The simulation of 3D multi-mode RMI shows good agreement with a past experimental study, but other interface types (2D single-mode, 2D multi-mode and 3D single-mode) result in different growth rates after reshock. Parametric studies are therefore performed to investigate the sensitivities of the post-reshock growth rates to model the empirical parameters. For single-mode RMI configurations, the interface shape is found to be only a weak function of the post-reshock growth rate, as also predicted by previous reshock models. The post-reshock growth rate shows a linear correlation to the velocity jump due to reshock; however, it is only about a half of the prediction of Charakhch’an’s model even though the growth before reshock compares well with pre-reshock models. The 3D single-mode post-reshock RMI growth rate is nearly 1.6 times larger than the 2D single-mode RMI. The parametric studies of multi-mode RMI show two distinctly different growth rates depending on the mixing conditions at reshock. If the interface remains sharp at the time of reshock, the post-reshock growth rate is as large as the single-mode cases. However, if the interface is mixed due to non-linear interactions of bubbles and spikes, the growth rates becomes slow and independent of the interface shapes. Overall, this study provides new insights into the flow features of reshocked RMI for different initial perturbation types.     

Connectivity of the Mycielskian of a graph

In a search for triangle-free graphs with arbitrarily large chromatic numbers, Mycielski developed a graph transformation that transforms a graph G into a new graph μ(G), which is called the Mycielskian of G. This paper investigates the vertex-connectivity κ(μ(G)) and edge-connectivity κ^′(μ(G)) of μ(G) . We show that κ(μ(G))=min{δ(μ(G)),2κ(G)+1} and κ^′(μ(G))=δ(μ(G)).     

The Tempered Aspirations solution for bargaining problems with a reference point

Gupta and Livne (1988) modified Nash’s (1950) original bargaining problem through the introduction of a reference point restricted to lie in the bargaining set. Additionally, they characterized a solution concept for this augmented bargaining problem. We propose and axiomatically characterize a new solution concept for bargaining problems with a reference point: the Tempered Aspirations solution. In Kalai and Smorodinsky (1975), aspirations are given by the so called ideal or utopia point. In our setting, however, the salience of the reference point mutes or tempers the negotiators’ aspirations. Thus, our solution is defined to be the maximal feasible point on the line segment joining the modified aspirations and disagreement vectors. The Tempered Aspirations solution can be understood as a “dual” version of the Gupta-Livne solution or, alternatively, as a version of Chun and Thomson’s (1992) Proportional solution in which the claims point is endogenous. We also conduct an extensive axiomatic analysis comparing the Gupta-Livne to our Tempered Aspirations solution.     

A stochastic expectation-maximization algorithm for the analysis of system lifetime data with known signature

Statistical estimation of the model parameters of component lifetime distribution based on system lifetime data with known system structure is discussed here. We propose the use of stochastic expectation-maximization (SEM) algorithm for obtaining the maximum likelihood estimates of model parameters based on complete and censored system lifetimes. Different ways of implementing the SEM algorithm are also studied. We have shown that the proposed methods are feasible and are easy to implement for various families of component lifetime distributions. The proposed methodologies are then illustrated with two popular lifetime models—the Weibull and Birnbaum-Saunders distributions. Monte Carlo simulation is then used to compare the performance of the proposed methods with the corresponding estimation by direct maximization. Finally, two illustrative examples are presented along with some concluding remarks.     

On the predictive ability of narrative disclosures in annual reports

We investigate whether narrative disclosures in 10-K and 10K-405 filings contain value-relevant information for predicting market performance. We apply text classification techniques from computer science to machine code text disclosures in a sample of 4280 filings by 1236 firms over five years. Our methodology develops a model using documents and actual performance for a training sample. This model, when applied to documents from a test set, leads to performance prediction. We find that a portfolio based on model predictions earns significantly positive size-adjusted returns, indicating that narrative disclosures contain value-relevant information. Supplementary analyses show that the text classification model captures information not contained in document-level features of clarity, tone and risk sentiment considered in prior research. However, we find that the narrative score is not providing information incremental to traditional predictors such as size, market-to-book and momentum, but rather affects investors’ use of price momentum as a factor that predicts excess returns.     

Multivariate measures of skewness for the skew-normal distribution

The main objective of this work is to calculate and compare different measures of multivariate skewness for the skew-normal family of distributions. For this purpose, we consider the Mardia (1970) [10], Malkovich and Afifi (1973) [9], Isogai (1982) [17], Srivastava (1984) [15], Song (2001) [14], Móri et al. (1993) [11], Balakrishnan et al. (2007) [3] and Kollo (2008) [7] measures of skewness. The exact expressions of all measures of skewness, except for Song’s, are derived for the family of skew-normal distributions, while Song’s measure of shape is approximated by the use of delta method. The behavior of these measures, their similarities and differences, possible interpretations, and their practical use in testing for multivariate normal are studied by evaluating their power in the case of some specific members of the multivariate skew-normal family of distributions.