Correction to: Macrocycles in dual role: ancillary ligands in metal complexes and organocatalysts for the ring‑opening polymerization of lactide

Journal of Inclusion Phenomena and Macrocyclic Chemistry - A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10847-021-01060-y     

Electronic absorption spectra of 1,2,3-trimethyl benzene

The electronic absorption spectra of 1,2,3-trimethyl benzene in the vapour and solid phases and in an isobutyl alcohol rigid glass at 90°K are described in this paper. Some characteristic features of the vibrational structure of the spectra are discussed.     

Influence of high intensity ultrasound on wet process phosphoric acid

High intensity ultrasound (800 kHz and 80 Wcm^-2) is passed through phosphoric acid of different origins and concentrations. Its influence on fluorine content, viscosity, density, colour and tendency to form sludge on ageing is observed. The quantity of fluorine in all samples of acid goes on decreasing with the time of exposure to ultrasound. Due to removal of fluorine by the ultrasound, the tendency of the acids to form sludge also decreases. The evolution of fluorine from the wet process phosphoric acid may be due to the decomposition of H₂SiF₆ present in the acid to HF and SiF₄ by the enormous amount of energy released due to cavitation. The exposed acid thus becomes purer, and can be concentrated and transported easily without sludge formation.     

Observation of a phase object using carrier-frequency photography

A Ronch ruling is photographed through a phase object which produces deformations in the grating lines. The superposition of the straight rulings and the deformed ones on the photographic plate gives rise to a moiré pattern which characterises the phase variations of the object.     

A phenomenological model for bake hardening in minimal carbon steels

The essence of bake hardening is to exploit the classical strain ageing in a positive way to increase the strength of the formed steel sheets used in outer body panel of a passenger car during the paint-baking operation. A new model that takes into account the strengthening contributions from Cottrell atmosphere and precipitate formation has been developed in the present work. The model predicts the increase in strength as a function of the amount of free solute C (calculated as a function of the annealing temperature), the amount of deformation, ageing temperature and time. The model predictions have been found to agree quite well with the experimental results; the individual contributions of Cottrell atmosphere and precipitation strengthening have been quantified.     

Photo-driven molecular devices

In this critical review, we discuss switching of the light-powered bistable rotaxanes and catenanes and highlight the practical applications of some of these systems. Photoactive molecular and supramolecular machines are comprised of two parts-1) a switching element, based on noncovalent interactions within the recognition units, which is responsible for executing mechanical movement, and 2) a light-harvesting unit which utilizes light to control the competitive interactions between the recognition sites. We also survey another class of molecular devices, namely molecular rotary motors--i.e., those that behave like their macroscopic counterparts--in which photochemically and thermally induced mechanical movement relies on isomerizations of a pivotal C=C bond, leading to a rotation of the top propeller part with respect to the stationary bottom part of the helical shaped chiral molecule. (146 references.).     

Synergistic effect of magnesium and fluorine doping on the electrochemical performance of lithium-manganese rich (LMR)-based Ni-Mn-Co-oxide (NMC) cathodes for lithium-ion batteries

Mg-doped-LMR-NMC (Li_1.2Ni_0.15-xMg_xMn_0.55Co_0.1 O₂) is synthesized by combustion method followed by fluorine doping by solid-state synthesis. In this approach, we substituted the Ni²⁺ by Mg²⁺ in varying mole percentages (x = 0.02, 0.05, 0.08) and partly oxygen by fluorine (LiF: LMR-NMC = 1:50 wt%). The synergistic effect of both magnesium and fluorine substitution on electrochemical performance of LMR-NMC is studied by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and galvanostatic-charge-discharge cycling. Mg-F-doped LMR-NMC (Mg 0.02 mol) composite cathodes shows excellent discharge capacity of ~300 mAh g^?1 at C/20 rate whereas pristine LMR-NMC shows the initial capacity around 250 mAh g^?1 in the voltage range between 2.5 and 4.7 V. Mg-F-doped LMR-NMC shows lesser Ohmic and charge transfer resistance, cycles well, and delivers a stable high capacity of ~280 mAh g^?1 at C/10 rate. The voltage decay which is the major issue of LMR-NMC is minimized in Mg-F-doped LMR-NMC compared to pristine LMR-NMC.     

Monotonicity testing and shortest-path routing on the cube

We study the problem of monotonicity testing over the hypercube. As previously observed in several works, a positive answer to a natural question about routing properties of the hypercube network would imply the existence of efficient monotonicity testers. In particular, if any set of source-sink pairs on the directed hypercube (with all sources and all sinks distinct) can be connected with edge-disjoint paths, then monotonicity of functions $f:\{ 0,1\} ^n \to \mathcal{R}$ can be tested with O(n/∈) queries, for any totally ordered range $\mathcal{R}$ . More generally, if at least a µ(n) fraction of the pairs can always be connected with edge-disjoint paths then the query complexity is O(n/(∈µ(n))). We construct a family of instances of Ω(2 ⁿ ) pairs in n-dimensional hypercubes such that no more than roughly a $\frac{1} {{\sqrt n }}$ fraction of the pairs can be simultaneously connected with edge-disjoint paths. This answers an open question of Lehman and Ron [16], and suggests that the aforementioned appealing combinatorial approach for deriving query-complexity upper bounds from routing properties cannot yield, by itself, query-complexity bounds better than ≈ n ^3/2. Additionally, our construction can also be used to obtain a strong counterexample to Szymanski’s conjecture about routing on the hypercube. In particular, we show that for any δ > 0, the n-dimensional hypercube is not $n^{\tfrac{1} {2} - \delta }$ -realizable with shortest paths, while previously it was only known that hypercubes are not 1-realizable with shortest paths. We also prove a lower bound of Ω(n/∈) queries for one-sided non-adaptive testing of monotonicity over the n-dimensional hypercube, as well as additional bounds for specific classes of functions and testers.     

Helical folding in heterogeneous foldamers without inter-residual backbone hydrogen-bonding

This communication describes a set of hybrid foldamers that do not feature inter-residual, but intra-residual backbone hydrogen-bonding, yet adopt a preferentially folded conformation displaying right-handed helical architecture. Conformational ordering is apparently due to the combined conformational restrictions imposed by the conformationally restricted individual amino acid residues with which the oligomers are made of.     

Photophysical and photodynamical study of fluoroquinolone drug molecule in bile salt aggregates

Photophysical properties of two widely used antibiotic fluoroquinolone drugs, namely Norfloxacin (NOR) and Ofloxacin (OFL) have been investigated in biomimicking environments formed by bile salts. Experimental results demonstrate that photophysical enhancement and fall of a particular prototropic species are sensitive to the excitation wavelength in bile salt aggregates. Excitation at shorter wavelengths reveals quenching of fluorescence of these fluoroquinolone with addition of sodium deoxycholate (NaDC), sodium taurocholate (NaTC) and sodium glycodeoxycholate (NaGDC). On the contrary, we observe a steady increase in the fluorescence intensity with a continuous redshift upon excitation at longer wavelength. The experimental results were rationalized in terms of the fact that, neutral and zwitterionic species of fluoroquinolone molecules in bile salt aggregates are selectively excited at shorter wavelength while the cationic form of fluoroquinolone molecules are excited at longer wavelength. The excess hydronium ions in the hydrophilic surface of bile salt aggregates convert the neutral species of NOR and OFL into cationic species causing an enhancement in the emission intensity. We found that NaGDC and NaTC because of the conjugate head group are more effective in converting the neutral species of fluoroquinolones into a cationic species than NaDC. The quenching order is in accordance with hydrophobicity indices of bile salt.