Noise correlations in shear flows

We consider the effects of a shear on velocity fluctuations in a flow. The shear gives rise to a transient amplification that not only influences the amplitude of perturbations but also their time correlations. We show that, in the presence of white noise, time correlations of transversal velocity components are exponential and that correlations of the longitudinal components are exponential with an algebraic prefactor. Cross correlations between transversal and downstream components are strongly asymmetric and provide a clear indication of non-normal amplification. We suggest experimental tests of our predictions. Received 26 February 2002 / Received in final form 11 March 2003 Published online 20 June 2003 RID="a" ID="a"e-mail: bruno.eckhardt@physik.uni-marburg.de RID="b" ID="b"Also at: Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, India     

Defibrillation via the elimination of spiral turbulence in a model for ventricular fibrillation

Ventricular fibrillation, the major reason behind sudden cardiac death, is turbulent cardiac electrical activity in which rapid, irregular disturbances in the spatiotemporal electrical activation of the heart make it incapable of any concerted pumping action. Methods of controlling ventricular fibrillation include electrical defibrillation as well as injected medication. Electrical defibrillation, though widely used, involves subjecting the whole heart to massive, and often counterproductive, electrical shocks. We propose a defibrillation method that uses a very low-amplitude shock (of order mV) applied for a brief duration (of order 100 ms) and over a coarse mesh of lines on our model ventricle.     

Production of Siderophores by an Apple Root-Associated Streptomyces ciscaucasicus Strain GS2 Using Chemical and Biological OSMAC Approaches

Apple Replant Disease (ARD) is a significant problem in apple orchards that causes root tissue damage, stunted plant growth, and decline in fruit quality, size, and overall yield. Dysbiosis of apple root-associated microbiome and selective richness of Streptomyces species in the rhizosphere typically concurs root impairment associated with ARD. However, possible roles of Streptomyces secondary metabolites within these observations remain unstudied. Therefore, we employed the One Strain Many Compounds (OSMAC) approach coupled to high-performance liquid chromatography-high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-HRMSⁿ) to evaluate the chemical ecology of an apple root-associated Streptomyces ciscaucasicus strain GS2, temporally over 14 days. The chemical OSMAC approach comprised cultivation media alterations using six different media compositions, which led to the biosynthesis of the iron-chelated siderophores, ferrioxamines. The biological OSMAC approach was concomitantly applied by dual-culture cultivation for microorganismal interactions with an endophytic Streptomyces pulveraceus strain ES16 and the pathogen Cylindrocarpon olidum. This led to the modulation of ferrioxamines produced and further triggered biosynthesis of the unchelated siderophores, desferrioxamines. The structures of the compounds were elucidated using HRMSⁿ and by comparison with the literature. We evaluated the dynamics of siderophore production under the combined influence of chemical and biological OSMAC triggers, temporally over 3, 7, and 14 days, to discern the strain’s siderophore-mediated chemical ecology. We discuss our results based on the plausible chemical implications of S. ciscaucasicus strain GS2 in the rhizosphere.     

Dynamic multiscaling in two-dimensional fluid turbulence

We obtain, by extensive direct numerical simulations, time-dependent and equal-time structure functions for the vorticity, in both quasi-Lagrangian and Eulerian frames, for the direct-cascade regime in two-dimensional fluid turbulence with air-drag-induced friction. We show that different ways of extracting time scales from these time-dependent structure functions lead to different dynamic-multiscaling exponents, which are related to equal-time multiscaling exponents by different classes of bridge relations; for a representative value of the friction we verify that, given our error bars, these bridge relations hold.     

Persistence problem in two-dimensional fluid turbulence

We present a natural framework for studying the persistence problem in two-dimensional fluid turbulence by using the Okubo-Weiss parameter Λ to distinguish between vortical and extensional regions. We then use a direct numerical simulation of the two-dimensional, incompressible Navier-Stokes equation with Ekman friction to study probability distribution functions (PDFs) of the persistence times of vortical and extensional regions by employing both Eulerian and Lagrangian measurements. We find that, in the Eulerian case, the persistence-time PDFs have exponential tails; by contrast, this PDF for Lagrangian particles, in vortical regions, has a power-law tail with an exponent θ=2.9±0.2.     

Synthesis of chalcone (3-(4-fluorophenyl)-1-(4-methoxyphenyl)prop-2-en-1-one): advantage of sonochemical method over conventional method

In this work, an attempt was made to synthesize chalcone (3-(4-fluorophenyl)-1-(4-methoxyphenyl)prop-2-en-1-one) by condensation of 4-fluorobenzaldehyde with 1-(4-methoxyphenyl)ethanone under basic conditions by using both conventional (NUS) and sonochemical (US) methods. A simple condensation reaction of 4-fluorobenzaldehyde and 1-(4-methoxyphenyl)ethanone using potassium hydroxide as a base was carried out for the study. The synthesized chalcone derivative was characterized for FTIR, NMR, elemental analyses and studied for XRD, PSM, TGA and SEM properties to evaluate its performance obtained under ultrasonic energy. It was observed that complete conversion to chalcone occurred in 10 min by sonochemical method and in 4h by conventional method. Also it was found that crystallinity of the US synthesized chalcone was found to be increased by 63% than that of NUS synthesized chalcone. Finally, it has been observed that chalcone synthesis using sonochemical method is an energy efficient technique over conventional method (almost 90% of energy saving).     

Synthesis and characterization of a polymer-anchored palladium(II) Schiff base complex and its catalytic efficiency in phosphine-free Sonogashira coupling reactions

A polymer-anchored Pd(II) Schiff base complex has been synthesized by reacting a polymeric amine with 2-pyridinecarboxaldehyde to get the polymer-anchored Schiff base, which was then reacted with palladium acetate. The catalyst was characterized by physicochemical and spectroscopic methods. It shows excellent catalytic activity in the Sonogashira coupling of phenylacetylene with aryl halides using triethylamine as a base and copper iodide as a co-catalyst in water under open air at 70 °C. We have also studied the effects of base and solvent on the coupling reaction. Sonogashira reactions of phenylacetylene with a variety of functionalized aryl halides were performed under the optimized reaction conditions. This catalyst gives excellent yields without the use of phosphine ligands. Further experiments showed that the catalyst can be used five times without much loss in the catalytic activity.     

Small-angle neutron scattering studies on water soluble complexes of poly(ethylene glycol)-based cationic random copolymer and SDS

The interaction of cationic random copolymers of methoxy poly(ethylene glycol) monomethacrylate and (3-(methacryloylamino)propyl) trimethylammonium chloride with oppositely charged surfactant, sodium dodecyl sulphate, and the influence of surfactant association on the polymer conformation have been investigated by small-angle neutron scattering. SANS data showed a positive indication of the formation of RCPSDS complexes. Even though the complete structure of the polyion complexes could not be ascertained, the results obtained give us the information on the local structure in these polymer-surfactant systems. The data were analysed using the log-normal distribution of the polydispersed spherical aggregate model for the local structure in these complexes. For all the systems the median radius and the polydispersity were found to be in the range of 20 ± 2 Å and 0.6 ± 0.05, respectively.