One-pot synthesis of cyclic enecarbamates from lactam carbamates

A general, practical and efficient one-pot synthesis of cyclic enecarbamates is described. The protocol proceeds via reduction of lactam carbamate with Super-Hydride^®, followed by in situ dehydration with trifluoroacetic anhydride (TFAA) and diisopropylethylamine (DIPEA).     

Regularity of weak solutions to rate‐independent systems in one‐dimension

We show that under some appropriate assumptions, every weak solution (e.g. energetic solution) to a given rate‐independent system is of class SBV, or has finite jumps, or is even piecewise C¹. Our assumption is essentially imposed on the energy functional, but not convexity is required.     

Robust energy planning in buildings with energy and comfort costs

Energy management in buildings is addressed in this paper. The energetic impact of buildings in the current energetic context is first depicted. Then the studied optimization problem is defined as the optimal management of production and consumption activities in houses. A scheduling problem is identified to adjust the energy consumption to both the energy cost and the inhabitant’s comfort. The available flexibilities of the services provided by domestic appliances are used to compute optimal energy plans. These flexibilities are associated to time windows or heating storage abilities. A constraints formulation of the energy allocation problem is given. A derived mixed linear program is used to solve this problem. The energy consumption in houses is very dependent to uncertain data such as weather forecasts and inhabitants’ activities. Parametric uncertainties are introduced in the home energy management problem in order to provide robust energy allocation. Robust linear programming is implemented. Event related uncertainties are also addressed through stochastic programming in order to take into account the inhabitant’s activities. A scenario based approach is implemented to face this robust optimization problem.     

A Boat-Shaped Tetracationic Macrocycle with a Semiconducting Organic Framework

We report the synthesis of a tetracationic macrocycle which contains two N,N′-bis(methylene)naphthalenediimide units inserted in between the pyridinium rings of the bipyridinium units in cyclobis(paraquat-p-phenylene) (CBPQT⁴⁺ or “blue box”) and describe the investigation of its potential use in materials for organic electronics. The incorporation of the two naphthalenediimide (NDI) units into the constitution of CBPQT⁴⁺, not only changes the supramolecular properties of the tetracation in the solid state, but also has a profound influence on the electrochemical and electronic behavior of the resulting tetracationic macrocycle. In particular, the solid-state (super)structure, investigated by single-crystal X-ray diffraction, reveals the formation of a three-dimensional (3D) supramolecular framework with ca. 2.8 nm diameter one-dimensional (1D) hexagonal channels. Electrochemical studies on solid-state thin films of the macrocycle show that they exhibit semiconducting properties with a redox-conductivity of up to 7.6×10⁻⁴ S m⁻¹. Moreover, EPR and ENDOR spectroscopies show that charge is equally shared between the NDIs within the one-electron reduced state of the NDI-based macrocycle on the time scale of these techniques.     

Discrete and selective absorption in crystalline molecular nanofilms

Recent research in nano-optical engineering and in nanomedicine as well, seeks for methods of construction of various types of nano-markers, nano-carriers, and ways to deliver drugs to the exactly determined regions of body. In this process it is important to find methods of recognition of certain types of molecules. It is obvious that optical recognition would be the easiest and the most effective way to do it. Our research presents a model of a molecular ultrathin crystalline film and generated exciton system inside it and corresponding methodology of analysis of their optical characteristics. Properties of these spatially very restricted structures are very sensitive to their surrounding surfaces. Using the two-time Green’s functions adapted for crystalline structures with symmetry breaking, and graphical-numerical software, we have calculated the energy spectra and possible exciton states. We have shown that the appearance and the presence of localized states on the surfaces and in the boundary layers of the film depend on the thickness of the film and the film surroundings, presented through the perturbation of parameters on surfaces. Optical properties in these structures demonstrate discrete and very selective resonant absorption spectra, depending on the perturbation on their surfaces.     

Clique-cutsets beyond chordal graphs

Truemper configurations (thetas, pyramids, prisms, and wheels) have played an important role in the study of complex hereditary graph classes (eg, the class of perfect graphs and the class of even-hole-free graphs), appearing both as excluded configurations, and as configurations around which graphs can be decomposed. In this paper, we study the structure of graphs that contain (as induced subgraphs) no Truemper configurations other than (possibly) universal wheels and twin wheels. We also study several subclasses of this class. We use our structural results to analyze the complexity of the recognition, maximum weight clique, maximum weight stable set, and optimal vertex coloring problems for these classes. Furthermore, we obtain polynomial -bounding functions for these classes.     

Law of the iterated logarithm for random graphs

A milestone in probability theory is the law of the iterated logarithm (LIL), proved by Khinchin and independently by Kolmogorov in the 1920s, which asserts that for iid random variables with mean 0 and variance 1 In this paper we prove that LIL holds for various functionals of random graphs and hypergraphs models. We first prove LIL for the number of copies of a fixed subgraph H. Two harder results concern the number of global objects: perfect matchings and Hamiltonian cycles. The main new ingredient in these results is a large deviation bound, which may be of independent interest. For random k‐uniform hypergraphs, we obtain the Central Limit Theorem and LIL for the number of Hamilton cycles.