A case of concomitant polymorphism and spontaneous resolution: the tetragonal phase of 5‐hydroxymethyl‐7,7,N‐trimethyl‐6‐oxabicyclo[3.2.1]octane‐1‐carboxamide

The title compound, C₁₂H₂₁NO₃, crystallizes in two polymorphic forms, viz. the tetragonal form described here and the monoclinic form described previously [Foces‐Foces, López‐Rodríguez, Pérez, Martín & Pérez‐Hernández (2007). Cryst. Growth Des. 7 , 905–911]. The differences in the conformations of the hydroxymethyl and methylaminocarbonyl substituents have important consequences in the hydrogen‐bond interaction motifs and, therefore, in the packing arrangements. These forms are concomitant polymorphs with melting points differing by 3 K.     

Polarized Lidar Reflectance Measurements of Vegetation at Near-Infrared and Green Wavelengths

There is growing interest in the use of lidar for remote sensing of vegetation owing to the emergence of reliable and rugged lasers and highly sensitive detectors. Lidar remote sensing has a distinct advantage over conventional techniques in vegetation remote sensing due to its capability for three-dimensional characterization of vegetative targets. The Multiwavelength Airborne Polarimetric Lidar (MAPL) system was developed primarily for vegetation remote sensing applications from an airborne platform of up to 1,000 -m altitude. The lidar system has full waveform capture and polarimetric measurement capability at two wavelengths in the near-infrared (1064 nm) and the green (532 nm) spectral regions. This study presents preliminary ground-based lidar reflectance measurements on a variety of deciduous and coniferous trees under fully foliated conditions with a view towards tree species discrimination. Variations in the reflectance characteristics of selected deciduous trees under unfoliated and fully foliated conditions were also investigated. Our study reveals distinct differences in the reflectance characteristics of various trees.     

Combined supercritical-fluid chromatography/mass spectrometry in the analysis of diuron in plasma using on-line phase-system switching

On-line sample pretreatment by means of the phase-system switching approach is an interesting technique for the analysis of aqueous samples, e.g., plasma, by means of supercritical-fluid chromatography. In order to analyse plasma samples the following analytical procedure is used. The plasma sample is injected on to a short precolumn, which is washed with water and subsequently dried with nitrogen. Next, the solutes are desorbed with the supercritical mobile phase, analysed with packed-column supercritical-fluid chromatography and detected with either a UV detector or a mass spectrometer, equipped with a moving-belt interface. The herbicide diuron is selected as a test compound to study the feasibility of this approach. Using a selective detector the procedure is sufficiently sensitive to detect diuron in plasma, but not appropriate to detect the diuron metabolites in a post-mortem plasma sample. These have been identified with liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry. The detection limit of diuron in plasma using the procedure described is about 30 ng/mL.     

Fermions in Odd Space-Time Dimensions: Back to Basics

It is a well-known feature of odd space-time dimensions d that there exist two inequivalent fundamental representations A and B of the Dirac gamma matrices. Moreover, the parity transformation swaps the fermion fields living in A and B. As a consequence, a parity-invariant Lagrangian can only be constructed by incorporating both the representations. Based upon these ideas and contrary to long-held belief, we show that in addition to a discrete exchange symmetry for the massless case, we can also define chiral symmetry provided the Lagrangian contains fields corresponding to both the inequivalent representations. We also study the transformation properties of the corresponding chiral currents under parity and charge-conjugation operations. We work explicitly in 2 + 1 dimensions and later show how some of these ideas generalize to an arbitrary number of odd dimensions.     

Fast electrons generation by RF and random fields near the antenna I. One dimensional model and regular fields

Test particle motion and acceleration has been explored in strong radio frequency (RF) fields, for which quasilinear ponderomotive force approximation is not valid. By nonlinear acceleration in spatially varying wave amplitude of RF travelling wave, electrons may be accelerated to time averaged velocities significantly larger than the RF wave phase velocity, and than the boundary plasma thermal velocity, in RF fields of several Volts per centimeter at wave frequency of 7 MHz. It is also demonstrated that even weak spatial gradients, much weaker than those expected in experiments, of the RF wave field amplitude, have significant consequences for the particle motion. Estimates are presented of the total energy transferred from the near antenna RF field to the plasma due to the nonlinear electron acceleration effects.     

Transient binary nucleation from ethanol-hexanol vapour

We study condensation of ethanol-hexanol vapour by numerical solution of kinetic equations. The number of droplets formed in unit volume is computed within self-consistent classical model. It is shown that formation of ethanol-rich droplets prevails at the initial stage of nucleation process, but in the stationary state formation of droplets near the saddle point (on cluster formation energy surface) plays the dominant role. Presented at the 6th Joint Seminar “Development of Materials Science in Research and Education”, Karlštejn, Czech Republic, 17–19 September 1996. This work was supported by Grant No. A1010615 of the Grant Agency of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.     

The multiple-scale wave equation

An analytic and numerical study of the behavior of the linear nonhomogeneous wave equation of the form ε²u_tt = Δu + tf with high wave speed (ε 1) is carried out. This study was initially motivated by meteorological observations which have indicated the presence of large spatial scale gravity waves in the neighborhood of a number of summer and winter storms, mainly from visible images of ripples in clouds in satellite photos. There is a question as to whether the presence of these waves is caused by the nearby storms. Since the linear wave equation is an approximation to the full system describing pressure waves in the atmosphere, yet is considerably more tractable, we have chosen to analyze the behavior of the linear nonhomogeneous wave equation with high wave speed. The analysis is shown to be valid in one, two, and three space dimensions. Partly because of the high wave speed, the solution is known to consist of behavior which changes on two different time scales, one rapid and one slow. Additionally, because of the presence of the nonhomogeneous forcing term tf, we show that there is a component of the solution which will vary only on a very large spatial scale. Since even the linearized wave equation can give rise to persistent large spatial scale waves under the right conditions, the implication is that certain storms could be responsible for the generation of large-scale waves. Numerical simulations in one and two dimensions confirm analytic results.     

The spin-S Blume-Capel RG flow diagram

Using the finite-size scaling renormalization group, we obtain the two-dimensional flow diagram of the Blume-Capel model forS=1 andS=3/2. In the first case our results are similar to those of mean-field theory, which predicts the existence of first- and second-order transitions with a tricritical point. In the second case, however, our results are different. While we obtain in theS=1 case a phase diagram presenting a multicritical point, the mean-field approach predicts only a second-order transition and a critical endpoint.     

Dirac-Hestenes spinor fields on Riemann-Cartan manifolds

In this paper we study Dirac-Hestenes spinor fields (DHSF) on a four-dimensional Riemann-Cartan spacetime (RCST). We prove that these fields must be defined as certain equivalence classes of even sections of the Clifford bundle (over the RCST), thereby being certain particular sections of a new bundle named the spin-Clifford bundle (SCB). The conditions for the existence of the SCB are studied and are shown to be equivalent to Geroch's theorem concerning the existence of spinor structures in a Lorentzian spacetime. We introduce also the covariant and algebraic Dirac spinor fields and compare these with DHSF, showing that all three kinds of spinor fields contain the same mathematical and physical information. We clarify also the notion of (Crumeyrolle's) amorphous spinors (Dirac-Kähler spinor fields are of this type), showing that they cannot be used to describe fermionic fields. We develop a rigorous theory for the covariant derivatives of Clifford fields (sections of the Clifford bundle, CB) and of Dirac-Hestenes spinor fields. We show how to generalize the original Dirac-Hestenes equation in Minkowski spacetime for the case of RCST. Our results are obtained from a variational principle formulated through the multiform derivative approach to Lagrangian field theory in the Clifford bundle.