Polar effects in nitride coupling reactions

The nucleophilic molybdenum nitride (Et(2)NCS(2))(3)MoN (1) reacts with the electrophilic osmium nitride complex TpOsNCl(2) (2, Tp = hydrotris(1-pyrazolyl)borate) to produce molecular nitrogen. Reaction of 1 at the nitride is accompanied by a substantial amount of reaction at a sulfur atom of the dithiocarbamate ligand, forming the osmium thionitrosyl complex TpOs(NS)Cl(2) (4). Labeling experiments establish that the N(2) produced comes specifically (>96%) from mixed-metal (molybdenum-osmium) coupling. The major transition-metal-containing product of the reaction is the mu-nitrido complex TpOsCl(2)(mu-N)Mo(S(2)CNEt(2))(3) (3), where the bridging nitride derives primarily (82%) from the osmium nitride 2. The mu-nitrido complex 3 has been characterized crystallographically, and shows a nitride bridge that is very asymmetric (Mo-N = 1.721(3) A, Os-N = 1.906(3) A), with less multiple bonding toward osmium and more toward molybdenum. Heterometallic coupling is much faster than either homometallic coupling reaction, in particular the osmium-osmium coupling, despite the greater oxidizing power of osmium over molybdenum. The origin and implications of this kinetic effect on nitride coupling and dinitrogen cleavage are discussed.     

Analysis of repetitive mechanism signatures

A new signal decomposition for repetitive signatures is introduced. This is based on the concept of derived time series, produced by rearranging the original signal by using points one period apart. Time domain averaging is shown to be a special case of such rearrangement, and a second technique of variance analysis is presented. Applications to rotating machinery show that the decomposition can be very sensitive to various generating mechanisms, making them suitable for signature analysis of mechanical systems.     

Nematic phase transitions in mixtures of thin and thick colloidal rods

We report experimental measurements of the phase behavior of mixtures of thin (charged semiflexible fd virus) and thick (fd-PEG, fd virus covalently coated with polyethylene glycol) rods with diameter ratio varying from 3.7 to 1.1. The phase diagrams of the rod mixtures reveal isotropic-nematic, isotropic-nematic-nematic, and nematic-nematic coexisting phases with increasing concentration. In stark contrast to predictions from earlier theoretical work, we observe a nematic-nematic coexistence region bound by a lower critical point. Moreover, we show that a rescaled Onsager-type theory for binary hard-rod mixtures qualitatively describes the observed phase behavior.     

Physical limits to communication

The limits posed by physics to the quantity of information that can be transmitted with a certain amount of power are investigated. The same ultimate limits are found for transmission of information encoded using matter and massless fields.     

Quantum tensor product structures are observable induced

It is argued that the partition of a quantum system into subsystems is dictated by the set of operationally accessible interactions and measurements. The emergence of a multipartite tensor product structure of the state space and the associated notion of quantum entanglement are then relative and observable induced. We develop a general algebraic framework aimed to formalize this concept.     

Power of entanglement in quantum communication

A communication channel is a physical system that transfers information from one place to another. Examples of communication channels include wires, optical fibers, and chains of spins that propagate spin waves through a medium. This Letter shows that the power-limited communication capacity of a multimode optical fiber or a set of parallel spin chains can be enhanced by introducing nonlinear couplings between the modes or chains. In particular, M coupled, entangled modes can send M bits in the same time it takes a single mode to send a single bit, and in the same time it takes M uncoupled, unentangled modes to send sqrt[M] bits.     

Identification of a novel Michael acceptor group for the reversible addition of oxygen- and sulfur-based nucleophiles. Synthesis and reactivity of the 3-alkylidene-3H-indole 1-oxide function of avrainvillamide

The 3-alkylidene-3H-indole 1-oxide functional group found in the naturally occurring alkaloid avrainvillamide has been synthesized by a cross coupling-reductive condensation sequence and found to undergo reversible addition of oxygen- and sulfur-based nucleophiles.