5-[5-R-furfurylidene]-2,2-dimethyl-1,3-dioxane-4,6-diones 5. Nucleophilic replacement of halogen in the furan ring

Halogen in positions 3 and 5 of the furan ring in ftirfurylidenedioxanediones is readily replaced by dithiocarbonate, dithiocarbatnate, dithiophosphate, thiocyanate, and azide anions, and by thiourea, and secondary and tertiary amines. The conformation of the initial halogen derivative is retained in the substitution products.Translated from Khimiya Geterotsiklicheskikh Soedinenii, No. 3, pp. 327–334, March, 1994.     

Mass spectra of pseudoguaianolides related to carpesiolin

The main directions of fragmentation and the EI of six pseudoguaianolides related to carpesiolin have been studied. It has been established that acylation of the OH group at C-6 suppresses the selective breakdown of the guaiane skeleton, while the simultaneous presence of AcO groups at C-2 and C-4 favors the formation of a number of characteristic ions. The hydrogenation of the exomethylene group has no appreciable influence on direction of fragmentation.Institute of the Chemistry of Plant Substances, Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Tashkent. Translated from Khimiya Prirodnykh Soedinenii, No. 4, pp. 530–535, July–August, 1993.     

Isolation of phospholipase A2 from the venom of the green toadBufo viridis

Phospholipase A₂ has been isolated fromthe venom of he Central Asian green toad Bufo viridis in the electroophoretically homogeneous state for the first time by biospecific absorption chromatography. The affinity sorbent used was Affi-Gel 10 with covalently bound phosphatidylserine (PDS). The chemical inertness of the bound PDS to the hydrolytic action of phospholipase A2 and its high tendency to form biospecific complexes have been shown. Some biochemical characteristics of the enzyme isolated have been studied: influence of the pH and of the Ca²⁺ concentration and dependence of activity on substrate concentration.A. S. Sadykov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, fax 627071. Tashkent State University, fax 462472. Translated from Khimiya Prirodnykh Soedinenii, No. 1, pp. 105–109, January–February, 1994.     

Stress–Strain Analysis of Rectangular Plates with a Variable Thickness and Constant Weight

The stress–strain state of rectangular plates with a variable thickness and constant weight is analyzed. The laws of variation in the thickness are specified to depend on parameters so that the plate weight remains constant for any of their values. To solve the problem, discrete Fourier series are used, which makes it possible to reduce a two-dimensional problem to one-dimensional. Calculation results are presented.     

Characterization of low molecular weight hydrocarbon oligomers by laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry using a solvent-free sample preparation method.

A new solvent-free sample preparation method using silver trifluoroacetate (AgTFA) was developed for the analysis of low molecular weight paraffins and microcrystalline waxes by laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LDI-TOFMS). Experiments show that spectral quality can be enhanced by dispersing AgTFA directly in liquid paraffins without the use of additional solvents. This preparation mixture is applied directly to the MALDI probe. Solid waxes could be examined by melting prior to analysis. The method also provides sufficiently reproducible spectra that peak area ratios between mono- and bicyclic alkane peaks indicated variations in the cycloalkane content of paraffin samples. Dehydrogenation of hydrocarbons observed during the desorption/ionization process was studied by analysis of alkane standards.     

Design of neutral, mono- or di-cationic water-soluble trihydrazidophosphoradamantanes

The versatile behavior of a trihydrazidophosphoradamantane allowing the synthesis of a variety of neutral, mono- or di-cationic water-soluble molecules of potential interest for biphasic catalysis is reported.     

On the geometry of infinite cyclic subgroups

In this paper we construct an example of a word metric on an infinite cyclic subgroup. This example shows that subexponential distortion does not obstruct non-trivial growth of connected radii. This answers a question of Gromov [6]. The constructed metric has other pathological properies. Specifically, its asymptotic cone depends on the choice of ultrafilter and scaling sequence. The work has been partially supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation.     

IFS attractors and Cantor sets

We build a metric space which is homeomorphic to a Cantor set but cannot be realized as the attractor of an iterated function system. We give also an example of a Cantor set K in R³ such that every homeomorphism f of R³ which preserves K coincides with the identity on K.