Structural,morphological and mechanical properties of niobium nitride thin films grown by ion and electron beams emanated from plasma

The influence of variation in plasma deposition parameters on the structural, morphological and mechanical characteristics of the niobium nitride films grown by plasma-emanated ion and electron beams are investigated. Crystallographic investigation made by X-ray diffractometer shows that the film synthesized at 10?cm axial distance with 15 plasma focus shots (PFS) exhibits better crystallinity when compared to the other deposition conditions. Morphological analysis made by scanning electron microscope reveals a definite granular pattern composed of homogeneously distributed nano-spheroids grown as clustered particles for the film synthesized at 10?cm axial distance for 15 PFS. Roughness analysis demonstrates higher rms roughness for the films synthesized at shorter axial distance and by greater number of PFS. Maximum niobium atomic percentage (35.8) and maximum average hardness (19.4?±?0.4?GPa) characterized by energy-dispersive spectroscopy and nano-hardness analyzer respectively are observed for film synthesized at 10?cm axial distance with 15 PFS.     

MgCl2/Et3N Base System as a New Catalyst for the Synthesis of α‐Hydroxyphosphonate

An efficient and simple synthesis of α‐hydroxyphosphonates via reaction of aldehydes and ketones with dimethylphosphite in the presence of MgCl₂/Et₃N base system is reported. The use of readily available and easy to handle reagent MgCl₂/Et₃N makes this method simple, convenient, and practical.     

Optimized ultrasound‐assisted extraction procedure for the analysis of opium alkaloids in papaver plants by cyclodextrin‐modified capillary electrophoresis

This study investigated the use of ultrasound‐assisted extraction to improve the extraction efficiency of morphine, codeine and thebaine from the papaver plants. Extraction conditions such as type of solvent, temperature, duration, frequency and power level of ultrasonic were optimized and the influences of different parameters on resolution of alkaloids in CE were studied. The optimized condition for CE separation includes a sodium phosphate buffer (100 mM, pH 3.0) containing 5 mM α‐CD. The optimized extraction conditions for ultrasound‐assisted extraction was an extraction time of 1 h, an ultrasonic frequency of 60 kHz with water–methanol (80:20) at 40°C as the extraction solvent. The LOD for alkaloids was found to be 0.1 μg/mL at a signal‐to‐noise ratio of 3:1. The RSDs for peak areas were in the range of 1.4–4.4%. The amounts of opium alkaloids (mg/100 g dried sample) in four Iranian papaver plants were found to be in the range of 7.8–8.7 (morphine), 5.5–9.5 (codeine) and 1.4–10.4 (thebaine). It should be emphasized that no cleanup of the filtered extract was required; hence, direct determination after extraction drastically simplifies the analytical process.     

On the kinetics of the capillary imbibition of a simple fluid through a designed nanochannel using the molecular dynamics simulation approach

A molecular dynamics (MD) approach was employed to simulate the imbibition of a designed nanopore by a simple fluid (i.e., a Lennard-Jones (LJ) fluid). The length of imbibition as a function of time for various interactions between the LJ fluid and the pore wall was recorded for this system (i.e., the LJ fluid and the nanopore). By and large, the kinetics of imbibition was successfully described by the Lucas-Washburn (LW) equation, although deviation from it was observed in some cases. This lack of agreement is due to the neglect of the dynamic contact angle (DCA) in the LW equation. Two commonly used models (i.e., hydrodynamic and molecular-kinetic (MK) models) were thus employed to calculate the DCA. It is demonstrated that the MK model is able to justify the simulation results in which are not in good agreement with the simple LW equation. However, the hydrodynamic model is not capable of doing that. Further investigation of the MD simulation data revealed an interesting fact that there is a direct relationship between the wall-fluid interaction and the speed of the capillary imbibition. More evidence to support this claim is presented.     

XHSTT: an XML archive for high school timetabling problems in different countries

We present the progress on the benchmarking project for high school timetabling that was introduced at PATAT 2008. In particular, we announce the High School Timetabling Archive XHSTT-2011 with 21 instances from 8 countries and an evaluator capable of checking the syntax of instances and evaluating the solutions.     

Hydrangenone, a new isoprenoid with an unprecedented skeleton from Salvia hydrangea

Hydrangenone, a new heptacyclic isoprenoid with a 6/7/6/5/5 membered carbon ring skeleton, was isolated from the aerial parts of Salvia hydrangea. The structure was established by extensive NMR spectroscopic methods. The relative and absolute configuration of 1 was assigned by NOESY and X-ray crystallographic analysis and by comparison of experimental and calculated electronic circular dichroism (ECD) spectra. Compound 1 showed in vitro antiplasmodial activity, with an IC(50) value of 1.4 μM against P. falciparum. A plausible biosynthetic pathway of 1 was also proposed.     

Organocatalytic synthesis of amides from nitriles via the Ritter reaction

A simple, inexpensive, environmentally friendly, and efficient route for the synthesis of a wide variety of amides in high yields via the Ritter reaction of alcohols with nitriles has been demonstrated. Pentafluorophenyl ammonium triflate (PFPAT) is used as an organocatalyst and is air-stable, cost-effective, easy to handle, and easily removed from the reaction mixtures.     

Density Based Problem Space Search for the Capacitated Clustering p-Median Problem

In the Capacitated Clustering Problem (CCP), a given set of n weighted points is to be partitioned into p clusters such that, the total weight of the points in each cluster does not exceed a given cluster capacity. The objective is to find a set of p centers that minimises total scatter of points allocated to them. In this paper a new constructive method, a general framework to improve the performance of greedy constructive heuristics, and a problem space search procedure for the CCP are proposed. The constructive heuristic finds patterns of natural subgrouping in the input data using concept of density of points. Elements of adaptive computation and periodic construction–deconstruction concepts are implemented within the constructive heuristic to develop a general framework for building efficient heuristics. The problem-space search procedure is based on perturbations of input data for which a controlled perturbation strategy, intensification and diversification strategies are developed. The implemented algorithms are compared with existing methods on a standard set of bench-marks and on new sets of large-sized instances. The results illustrate the strengths of our algorithms in terms of solution quality and computational efficiency.     

An Efficient Supervised Deep Hashing Method for Image Retrieval

In recent years, searching and retrieving relevant images from large databases has become an emerging challenge for the researcher. Hashing methods that mapped raw data into a short binary code have attracted increasing attention from the researcher. Most existing hashing approaches map samples to a binary vector via a single linear projection, which restricts the flexibility of those methods and leads to optimization problems. We introduce a CNN-based hashing method that uses multiple nonlinear projections to produce additional short-bit binary code to tackle this issue. Further, an end-to-end hashing system is accomplished using a convolutional neural network. Also, we design a loss function that aims to maintain the similarity between images and minimize the quantization error by providing a uniform distribution of the hash bits to illustrate the proposed technique’s effectiveness and significance. Extensive experiments conducted on various datasets demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method in comparison with state-of-the-art deep hashing methods.