Synthesis and characterization of coordination compounds of organotin(IV) with nitrogen and sulfur donor ligands

The reactions of dimethyltin dichloride with nitrogen and sulfur donor ligands derived by condensation of S‐benzyldithiocarbazate with indol‐3‐carboxylaldehyde, thiophene‐2‐aldehyde and furfuraldehyde have been investigated in 1:1 and 1:2 molar ratios in anhydrous alcohol. These ligands act as mononegatively charged bidentate species and coordinate to the central tin(IV) atom through the thiosulfur by proton exchange with the azomethine nitrogen. The newly synthesized complexes have been characterized by elemental analysis, conductance measurements and molecular weight determinations. The mode of bonding and the geometry of the complexes have been suggested on the basis of infrared, electronic and ¹H, ¹³C and ¹¹⁹Sn NMR spectroscopy, and probable structures have been assigned to these complexes. A few representative ligands and their tin(IV) complexes have also been screened for their antifungal and antibacterial activities and found to be quite active in this respect. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Oxygen stability in YBa2Cu3O7−x

The highT _c superconductor YBa₂Cu₃O_7?x has been found to lose appreciable amount of oxygen in a surprisingly low temperature range (～425–630 K), which drastically degrades the superconducting property. Accompanying this oxygen loss, the resistance behaviour has also been found to change from metallic to semiconducting.     

Microwave propagation through modulated air plasma

When a microwave propagates through a plasma in which electron density and electron collision frequency periodically vary, the propagating wave is modulated in amplitude and phase. An approximate theory is derived to suit the laboratory experimental conditions. Introducing the amplitude and phase difference, the dependence of electron density and electron collision frequency has been derived for different radio frequency modulation and frequency parameter. A scanning double probe technique is used to measure the exact time variation in the plasma parameters at any fixed position during a single cycle of the applied field. Theoretical values agree with those of experiment.     

Desorption to delamination: dynamics of detachment in a colloidal thin film

Colloidal thin films of varying rigidity detaching from a substrate under an electric field induced stress are studied by video microscopy. For soft films, the process of detachment shows single-particle dynamics, analogous to desorption. For rigid films, a collective delamination spanning hundreds of particles occurs. A competition among the rigidity of the film, the interaction with the substrate, and the external stress leads to a correlation length over which the film delaminates at a critical stress. The phenomenon is described as a dynamical transition in a disordered elastic medium.     

A Dispersion Flattening Dispersion Compensating Fiber Design for Broadband Dispersion Compensation

An efficient dispersion compensating fiber (DCF) design is proposed based on a coaxial fiber structure, which provides dispersion compensation over a broad wavelength region matching that of an erbium-doped fiber amplifier gain spectrum. The design can provide dispersion coefficient that is nearly twice those of existing DCF designs. Due to the basic nature of the dispersion curve of this design, the total link dispersion cannot only be compensated but also can be flattened.     

Study of electrical conductivity changes and phase transitions in Co3O4 doped ZrO2

The electrical conductivity of ZrO₂ doped with Co₃O₄ has been measured at various temperatures for different molar ratios. The conductivity increases due to the migration of vacancies created by doping. The conductivity is also found to increase with rise in temperature up to 120°C, and after attaining a maximum the conductivity decreases due to a collapse of the lattice framework. A second rise in conductivity around 460°C in all the compositions confirms the phase transition in ZrO₂ from monoclinic to tetragonal symmetry. X-ray powder diffraction and DTA studies were carried out for confirming the doping effects and the transition in ZrO₂.     

Fungicidal and bactericidal activity of metal diethyldithiocarbamate fungicides

Copper diethyldithiocarbamate, cadmium diethyldithiocarbamate, lead diethyldithiocarbamate, nickel diethyldithiocarbamate and zinc diethyldithiocarbamate have been synthesized. They have been characterized using TG, DTA, IR spectroscopy, X-ray and atomic absorption spectrophotometry. The thermal conversion of the compounds is 54.36–88% at 1000°C. Their solubility in sodium hydroxide, mineral acids, organic solvents, distilled water and salts solution has been measured. Fungicidal activity of the dithiocarbamates has been tested by well or cup diffusion method using five fungi species. Their activity has also been tested by broth dilution method using six bacterial species. Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (bactericidal) is 6.25–25.00 μg mL⁻¹.     

Interventional Fairness with Indirect Knowledge of Unobserved Protected Attributes

The deployment of machine learning (ML) systems in applications with societal impact has motivated the study of fairness for marginalized groups. Often, the protected attribute is absent from the training dataset for legal reasons. However, datasets still contain proxy attributes that capture protected information and can inject unfairness in the ML model. Some deployed systems allow auditors, decision makers, or affected users to report issues or seek recourse by flagging individual samples. In this work, we examine such systems and consider a feedback-based framework where the protected attribute is unavailable and the flagged samples are indirect knowledge. The reported samples are used as guidance to identify the proxy attributes that are causally dependent on the (unknown) protected attribute. We work under the causal interventional fairness paradigm. Without requiring the underlying structural causal model a priori, we propose an approach that performs conditional independence tests on observed data to identify such proxy attributes. We theoretically prove the optimality of our algorithm, bound its complexity, and complement it with an empirical evaluation demonstrating its efficacy on various real-world and synthetic datasets.     

Toward the identification of a reliable 3D QSAR pharmacophore model for the CCK2 receptor antagonism

The present study describes application of computational approaches to identify a validated and reliable 3D QSAR pharmacophore model for the CCK-2R antagonism through integrated ligand and structure based studies using anthranilic sulfonamide and 1,3,4-benzotriazepine based CCK-2R antagonists. The best hypothesis consisted five features viz. two aliphatic hydrophobic, one aromatic hydrophobic, one H-bond acceptor, and one ring aromatic feature with an excellent correlation for 34 training set (r2(training) = 0.83) and 58 test set compounds (r2(test) = 0.74). This model was validated through F-test and docking studies at the active site of the plausible CCK-2R where the 99% significance and well corroboration with the pharmacophore model respectively describes the model's reliability. The model also predicts well to other known clinically effective CCK-2R antagonists. Therefore, the developed model may useful in finding new scaffolds that may aid in design and develop new chemical entities (NCEs) as potent CCK-2R antagonists before their synthesis.