Mass spectrometric studies of phosphodiesters linked to oxysterols and nucleosides,a family of biologically potent oxygenated sterols

Negative-ion fast atom bombardment mass spectra of five compounds resulting from combinations between oxysterols and nucleoside analogues linked by phosphodiester bonds are presented and interpreted. This method seems to be the most appropriate for elucidating the structure of these complex, labile and non-volatile phosphate-containing molecules which exhibit important antitumour and/or immunosuppressive activities.     

Electron-pairing analysis from localization and delocalization indices in the framework of the atoms-in-molecules theory

This article presents an overview of recent advances in the study of electron pairing through the use of localization and delocalization indices obtained from double integration over atomic basins of the exchange–correlation density in the framework of the atoms-in-molecules theory. These localization and delocalization indices describe the intra- and interatomic distribution of the electron pairs in a molecule. The main results of the application of these second-order indices to the analysis of molecular structure and chemical reactivity are briefly reviewed. It is shown that localization and delocalization indices represent a powerful tool to describe the electron-pair structure of molecules, which, in turn, provides deeper insight into relevant chemical phenomena such as electron correlation effects and the formation of localized α, β electron pairs. Received: 8 April 2002 / Accepted: 26 June 2002 / Published online: 6 September 2002 Acknowledgements. Financial help was furnished by the Spanish DGES projects no. PB98-0457-C02-01 and BQU2002-04112-C02-02. J.P. thanks the Departament d'Universitats, Recerca i Societat de la Informació de la Generalitat de Catalunya for benefiting from a doctoral fellowship, no. 2000FI-00582. M.S. is indebted to the Departament d'Universitats, Recerca i Societat de la Informació of the Generalitat de Catalunya for financial support through the Distinguished University Research Promotion, 2001. We also thank the Centre de Supercomputació de Catalunya for providing us with computing facilities. Correspondence to: M. Solà e-mail: miquel.sola@udg.es     

Multigrid preconditioned Krylov subspace methods for three-dimensional numerical solutions of the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations

We consider numerical methods for the incompressible Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes equations discretized by finite difference techniques on non-staggered grids in body-fitted coordinates. A segregated approach is used to solve the pressure–velocity coupling problem. Several iterative pressure linear solvers including Krylov subspace and multigrid methods and their combination have been developed to compare the efficiency of each method and to design a robust solver. Three-dimensional numerical experiments carried out on scalar and vector machines and performed on different fluid flow problems show that a combination of multigrid and Krylov subspace methods is a robust and efficient pressure solver. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Palladium catalyzed synthesis of a chromenes and chromenols

Palladium catalyzed coupling of tertiary allylic alcohols (having five, ten or fifteen carbon atoms) with 2-iodophenols or hydroquinones furnishes the corresponding 2,2-disubstituted chromenes (2H-1-benzopyrans) and chromen-6-ols.     

A glimpse at ten years of microwaves and IR spectroscopy on high temperature superconductors

The different technical approaches are considered mostly to compare the accuracy attainable in microwaves to Far IR where new resonant tchniques have been developped. It is possible to use the fringes of the observed spectra to get directly the London penetration length. However in the present state of the Art there is more accuracy to use a two-fluid model with at least one Mid-IR oscillator, and a strategy is possible to fit separately the different parameters. The different results are reviewed and compared to the microwaves data. There is a good accordance, except perhaps for the power law-giving the concentration of quasiparticles in the superconductive phase. For a thin film of YBCO devoid of grain-boundaries (no twins), a θ⁴ law is found instead of a θ^1.5 law for an ordinary film. It should be highly valuable that both microwaves and Far-IR data should be taken on the same sample. presented at the 22nd International Conference on Infrared and Millimeter Waves, July 20–25, 1997, Wintergreen, Virginia 22958 USA.     

Domain decomposition preconditioners of Neumann-Neumann type for hp-approximations on boundary layer meshes in three dimensions

We develop and analyse Neumann–Neumann methods for hpfinite-element approximations of scalar elliptic problems ongeometrically refined boundary layer meshes in three dimensions.These are meshes that are highly anisotropic where the aspectratio typically grows exponentially with the polynomial degree.The condition number of our preconditioners is shown to be independentof the aspect ratio of the mesh and of potentially large jumpsof the coefficients. In addition, it only grows polylogarithmicallywith the polynomial degree, as in the case of p approximationson shape-regular meshes. This work generalizes our previousone on two-dimensional problems in Toselli & Vasseur (2003a,submitted to Numerische Mathematik, 2003c to appear in Comput.Methods Appl. Mech. Engng.) and the estimates derived here canbe employed to prove condition number bounds for certain typesof FETI methods.     

Local field enhancements on gold and silver nanostructures for aperture near field spectroscopy

Optical properties of silver and gold semi-continuous films near the percolation threshold are investigated by scanning near field optical microscopy (SNOM) operating in the collection/transmission mode. The electromagnetic enhanced fields, due to plasmon-polariton localizations, are observed and the intensity distribution is shown to present high intensity variations that increase with the wavelength. The local fields are also demonstrated to be polarization dependent. The intensity distribution is investigated as function of the incident wavelength both for gold and silver films. The calculated probability distribution function (PDF) exhibits an exponential decay for large enhancement factors and is proved to be wavelength dependent.     

Évaluation de l'influence des changements de géométrie sur les déformations de séchage d'un milieu poreux fissuréInfluence of geometry changes on drying-induced strains in a cracked solid

The macroscopic response of a cracked solid subjected to drying is investigated within the framework of micromechanics. The originality of this contribution lies in the fact that the variations of the aspect ratios of cracks induced by the capillary pressure increase are accounted for. When the initial aspect ratio is small enough, it is shown that neglecting the geometrical changes yields an erroneous prediction of the sign of the macroscopic volume strain rate. To cite this article: X. Chateau et al., C. R. Mecanique 331 (2003).