Comparison of Several Calibration Procedures for Glass Electrodes in Proton Concentration

Several reported procedures for calibrating glass electrodes in proton concentration are compared. Some recommendations for non-experts are also given. The examined procedures can be classified into two broad categories, namely: those based on direct potential difference measurements of solutions of known proton concentration and those that use one or several pH standards to calibrate the electrode and subsequently measure the pH of solutions containing known proton concentrations. With a single buffer, the two types of procedures lead to equivalent results. However, if two pH buffers are used, the slope of the calibration graph in proton concentration will differ from the real electrode slope to an extent proportional to the difference between the liquid junction potentials of the two buffers. Therefore, any other method is preferable under these circumstances.     

Finding nonnormal bent functions

The question if there exist nonnormal bent functions was an open question for several years. A Boolean function in n variables is called normal if there exists an affine subspace of dimension n/2 on which the function is constant. In this paper we give the first nonnormal bent function and even an example for a nonweakly normal bent function. These examples belong to a class of bent functions found in [J.F. Dillon, H. Dobbertin, New cyclic difference sets with Singer parameters, in: Finite Fields and Applications, to appear], namely the Kasami functions. We furthermore give a construction which extends these examples to higher dimensions. Additionally, we present a very efficient algorithm that was used to verify the nonnormality of these functions.     

Electrochemistry nanometric patterning of MOF particles: Anisotropic metal electrodeposition in Cu/MOF

Electrodeposition of copper from Cu/MOF immersed into acetate buffer produces a quasi-periodic series of 10–20 nm sized laminae sandwiched within the pristine MOF lattice as monitored by voltammetry of microparticles/atomic force microscopy. This anisotropic patterning can be qualitatively described in terms of a highly orientation-dependent diffusion of electrons and charge-balancing electrolyte counterions in the MOF network.     

Disorder arising from the location of enantiomers in a twist-boat structure: 2,6-trans-2,4,6-tris(trichloromethyl)-1-oxa-3,5-dithian

Crystals of the title compound are orthorhombic, Pca2₁;a=27.586(4),b=10.509(3),c=11.080(2) Å,V=3212(1) ų,Z=8. The structure was solved by direct methods, from data collected at room temperature on an Enraf-Nonius CAD4 diffractometer, and refined by full-matrix least squares to a finalR value of 0.055 using 2043 reflections. One of the two independent molecules in the asymmetric unit is disordered. The disorder is manifested mainly between the oxygen atom and one sulfur atom and is caused by opposite enantiomers occupying corresponding positions in different unit cells. The endocyclic torsion angles in both independent molecules are very similar but the disposition of the heteroatoms on the twist-boat framework is different in the two molecules. Site occupancy of the two models on this framework in the disordered molecule is in the ratio 2179 with the smaller proportion being very similar to the ordered molecule and the remainder similar to that found in the normal molecule oftrans-4-chloro-2,4,6-tris(trichloromethyl)-1-oxa-3,5-dithian (Irving and Irving, 1988).     

Magydardiendiol,diterpenoid with a new skeleton from magydaris panacifolia (umbelliferae).

Three new diterpenoids with a substituted α-cyclogeraniol skeleton have been isolated from the umbelliferae $\text{Magydaris panacifolia}$ (Vahl) Lange, for which the names of magydar-2,13-dien-11,17-diol, $\text{1}$, magydar-2,10 (20), 13-trien-17-ol, $\text{2}$, and magydar-2,10(20), 13-trien-17-yl acetate, $\text{3}$, are proposed. The structures of these substances have been deduced from spectroscopic and chemical data.     

Sensitivity of metal nanoparticle surface plasmon resonance to the dielectric environment

Electrodynamic simulations of gold nanoparticle spectra were used to investigate the sensitivity of localized surface plasmon band position to the refractive index, n, of the medium for nanoparticles of various shapes and nanoshells of various structures. Among single-component nanoparticles less than 130 nm in size, sensitivities of dipole resonance positions to bulk refractive index are found to depend only upon the wavelength of the resonance and the dielectric properties of the metal and the medium. Among particle plasmons that peak in the frequency range where the real part of the metal dielectric function varies linearly with wavelength and the imaginary part is small and slowly varying, the sensitivity of the peak wavelength, lambda, to refractive index, n, is found to be a linearly increasing function of lambda, regardless of the structural features of the particle that determine lambda. Quasistatic theory is used to derive an analytical expression for the refractive index sensitivity of small particle plasmon peaks. Through this analysis, the dependence of sensitivity on band position is found to be determined by the wavelength dependence of the real part, epsilon', of the particle dielectric function, and the sensitivity results are found to extend to all particles with resonance conditions of the form, epsilon' = -2chin(2), where chi is a function of geometric parameters and other constants. The sensitivity results observed using accurate computational methods for dipolar plasmon bands of gold nanodisks, nanorods, and hollow nanoshells extend, therefore, to particles of other shapes (such as hexagonal and chopped tetrahedral), composed of other metals, and to higher-order modes. The bulk refractive index sensitivity yielded by the theory serves as an upper bound to sensitivities of nanoparticles on dielectric substrates and sensitivities of nanoparticles to local refractive index changes, such as those associated with biomolecule sensing.