Spin relaxation studies of the muonium substituted ethyl radical in the gas phase

This short communication draws attention to the power of μSR and related measurements in providing an unusually complete characterisation of muonium substituted organic radicals in the gas phase. Spectroscopic information is available from muon spin rotation and muon level crossing resonance, giving all the nuclear hyperfine coupling constants, just as in the liquid phase. In addition, measurements of the relaxation time of the muon Zeeman energy become possible; these are potentially informative on the molecular collision dynamics. Demonstration results are presented in summary for the muonium substituted ethyl radical, ĊH₂CH₂Mu, in ethene gas.     

Scanning tunneling microscopy of sputtered aluminum particles

The scanning tunneling microscope is an ideal tool to study the local geometric and electronic structure of single supported metal clusters. Our experimental setup consists of an extraction type ion gun combined with a quadrupol mass spectrometer to deposit mass-selected metal cluster. ions. First results showing scanning tunneling microscopy pictures of sputtered aluminum clusters are presented.     

A parallel wilf algorithm for complex zeros of a polynomial

A global recursive bisection algorithm is described for computing the complex zeros of a polynomial. It has complexityO(n ³ p) wheren is the degree of the polynomial andp the bit precision requirement. Ifn processors are available, it can be realized in parallel with complexityO(n ² p); also it can be implemented using exact arithmetic. A combined Wilf-Hansen algorithm is suggested for reduction in complexity.     

Investigation of the role of chelating ligand in the synthesis of ion-imprinted polymeric resins on the selective enrichment of uranium(VI)

Uranyl ion-imprinted polymeric (IIP) resins were prepared by dissolving stoichiometric amounts of uranyl nitrate and selected chelating ligands, viz. salicylaldoxime, catechol, succinicacid, 5,7-dichloroquinoline-8-ol and 4-vinyl pyridine in 2-methoxy ethanol (porogen) and copolymerizing thermally in the presence of 2-hydroxyethylmethacrylate (HEMA) and ethyleneglycol-dimethacrylate (EGDMA), using 2,2′-azobisisobutyronitrile (initiator). Again, IIP resins were also prepared on similar lines by utilizing ternary [uranium-non-vinylated ligand-vinylated ligand (4-vinyl pyridine)] complexes. Non-imprinted polymeric resins were identically prepared in both cases without the use of uranyl imprint ion. The percent enrichment and retention capacity studies showed significant imprinting effect in all cases. However, ion-imprinted polymeric resins formed with succinic acid (SA) or 5,7-dichloroquinoline-8-ol (DCQ) and 4-vinylpyridine (VP) alone gave quantitative enrichment and various parameters that influence the enrichment and elution were then optimized. The percent enrichment of uranium from synthetic seawater solutions was found to be 25.0 ± 0.5 and 83.0 ± 0.8 for SA-VP and DCQ-VP systems, respectively. The DCQ-VP-based IIP resins were successfully tested for the recovery of uranium from real seawater samples.     

Biomimetic type approach to the tricyclic core of xyloketals. Application to a short, stereocontrolled synthesis of alboatrin and first synthesis of xyloketal G

A convenient approach to the linear tetrahydrofurano benzopyran ring system of xyloketals is described. An orthoester Claisen rearrangement of a chromenol and an intra-molecular cationic cyclization are the key steps in the synthesis. A short, stereocontrolled and high yield synthesis of the phytotoxic metabolite alboatrin was achieved employing this strategy. A unique case of Lewis acid catalyzed isomerization of epi-alboatrin to alboatrin was observed. Subsequently this methodology was extended for the first total synthesis of xyloketal G, where a one pot reaction of three steps viz., acetylation, isomerization and demethylation occurred during acetylation of a mixture of nor-o-methyl xyloketal G and nor-o-methyl epi xyloketal G in presence of AlCl₃ to furnish xyloketal G in very good overall yield.     

Application of strand meshes to complex aerodynamic flow fields

We explore a new approach for viscous computational fluid dynamics calculations for external aerodynamics around geometrically complex bodies that incorporates nearly automatic mesh generation and efficient flow solution methods. A prismatic-like grid using “strands” is grown a short distance from the body surface to capture the viscous boundary layer, and adaptive Cartesian grids are used throughout the rest of the domain. The approach presents several advantages over established methods: nearly automatic grid generation from triangular or quadrilateral surface tessellations, very low memory overhead, automatic mesh adaptivity for time-dependent problems, and fast and efficient solvers from structured data in both the strand and Cartesian grids.The approach is evaluated for complex geometries and flow fields. We investigate the effects of strand length and strand vector smoothing to understand the effects on computed solutions. Results of three applications using the strand-adaptive Cartesian approach are given, including a NACA wing, isolated V-22 (TRAM) rotor in hover, and the DLR-F6 wing-body transport. The results from these cases show that the strand approach can successfully resolve near-body and off-body features as well as or better than established methods.