A new half-condensed Schiff base compound: highly selective and sensitive pH-responsive fluorescent sensor

A new probe, 3-[(3-benzyloxypyridin-2-ylimino)methyl]-2-hydroxy-5-methylbenzaldehyde (1-H) behaves as a highly selective fluorescent pH sensor in a Britton-Robinson buffer at 25 °C. The pH titrations show a 250-fold increase in fluorescence intensity within the pH range of 4.2 to 8.3 with a pK(a) value of 6.63 which is valuable for studying many of the biological organelles.     

Rheological characterization in shear of a model dumbbell polymer concentrated solution

We investigate the linear and non-linear rheological behavior in shear of a concentrated solution of ??dumbbell?? polystyrene with long linear backbone and dense short brushes at both ends and compare it with corresponding linear polymers. This type of dumbbells has never been rheologically characterized before. In linear viscoelasticity, the dumbbell polymers show significant differences with conventional linear polymers. In particular, the reptation relaxation of the dumbbell is strongly slowed down. Furthermore, the addition of the side chains increases the friction so that the dumbbell lies above the ?? ₀ vs. number of entanglements relation of linear samples. Transient shear rheology experiments on weakly entangled solutions show a retardation of the chain stretch relaxation of the dumbbell by a factor 2.5 vs. a linear polymer with the same Rouse time. Additionally, a second peak in the transient viscosity is observed at high shear rates.     

Ferromagnetism Exhibited by Nanoparticles of Noble Metals

Gold nanoparticles with average diameters in the range 2.5–15 nm, prepared at the organic/aqueous interface by using tetrakis(hydroxymethyl)phosphonium chloride (THPC) as reducing agent, exhibit ferromagnetism whereby the saturation magnetization M_S increases with decreasing diameter and varies linearly with the fraction of surface atoms. The value of M_S is higher when the particles are present as a film instead of as a sol. Capping with strongly interacting ligands such as alkane thiols results in a higher M_S value, which varies with the strength of the metal–sulfur bond. Ferromagnetism is also found in Pt and Ag nanoparticles prepared as sols, and the M_S values vary as Pt>Au>Ag. A careful study of the temperature variation of the magnetization of Au nanoparticles, along with certain other observations, suggests that small bare nanoparticles of noble metals could indeed possess ferromagnetism, albeit weak, which is accentuated in the presence of capping agents, specially alkane thiols which form strong metal–sulfur bonds.     

Energy landscape, antiplasticization, and polydispersity induced crossover of heterogeneity in supercooled polydisperse liquids

Polydispersity is found to have a significant effect on the potential energy landscape; the average inherent structure energy decreases with polydispersity. Increasing polydispersity at a fixed volume fraction decreases the glass transition temperature and the fragility of glass formation analogous to the antiplasticization seen in some polymeric melts. An interesting temperature dependent crossover of heterogeneity with polydispersity is observed at low temperature due to the faster buildup of dynamic heterogeneity at lower polydispersity.     

Chemical shift anisotropy edited complete unraveling of overlapped 1H NMR spectra of enantiomers: application to small chiral molecules

The differential values of NMR spectral parameters like chemical shift anisotropies, dipolar couplings and quadrupolar couplings of enantiomers in chiral liquid crystalline media are employed not only for their visualization but also for their quantification. Large differences in chemical shift anisotropies and the quadrupolar couplings between the enantiomers enable the use of 13C and extensive 2H NMR detection for such a purpose. In spite of high magnetic moment, high sensitivity and abundant presence of protons in all the chiral molecules, 1H detection is not routinely employed due to severe overlap of unresolved transitions arising from short and long distance couplings. Furthermore, the doubling of the spectra from two enantiomers and their indistinguishable overlap due to negligible difference in chemical shift anisotropies hampers their discrimination. The present study demonstrates the use of proton chemical shift anisotropy as an exclusive parameter for such a discrimination. The method employs the non-selective excitation of homonuclear Nth quantum coherence of N coupled protons. The simultaneous flipping of all the coupled spins results in a single transition in the multiple quantum dimension at the cumulative sum of their anisotropic chemical shifts for each enantiomer, with the measurable difference between them, resulting in their complete unraveling.     

Light-matter interactions via the exact factorization approach

The exact factorization approach, originally developed for electron-nuclear dynamics, is extended to light-matter interactions within the dipole approximation. This allows for a Schrödinger equation for the photonic wavefunction, in which the potential contains exactly the effects on the photon field of its coupling to matter. We illustrate the formalism and potential for a two-level system representing the matter, coupled to an infinite number of photon modes in the Wigner-Weisskopf approximation, as well as to a single mode with various coupling strengths. Significant differences are found with the potential used in conventional approaches, especially for strong couplings. We discuss how our exact factorization approach for light-matter interactions can be used as a guideline to develop semiclassical trajectory methods for efficient simulations of light-matter dynamics.     

Certain Curvature Conditions on P-Sasakian Manifolds Admitting a Quater-Symmetric Metric Connection

The authors consider a quarter-symmetric metric connection in a P-Sasakian manifold and study the second order parallel tensor in a P-Sasakian manifold with respect to the quarter-symmetric metric connection. Then Ricci semisymmetric P-Sasakian manifold with respect to the quarter-symmetric metric connection is considered. Next the authors study ξ-concircularly flat P-Sasakian manifolds and concircularly semisymmetric P-Sasakian manifolds with respect to the quarter-symmetric metric connection. ...