Shape optimization of a body located in low Reynolds number flow

The purpose of this study is to perform a numerical application of the shape optimization formulation of a body located in an incompressible viscous flow field. The formulation is based on an optimal control theory in which a performance function of the fluid force is introduced. The performance function should be minimized satisfying the state equation. This problem can be transformed into the minimization problem without constraint condition by the Lagrange multiplier method and the adjoint equations using adjoint variables corresponding to the state equations. As a numerical study, the drag force minimization problem in the steady Stokes flow, which means approximated equation of the low Reynolds number Navier–Stokes equation is carried out. After that, the unsteady Navier–Stokes flow is analysed. As the minimization algorithm, the steepest descent method is successfully applied. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Design and Synthesis of Carbon Nanotube Segments

The selective and predictable synthesis of structurally uniform carbon nanotubes (CNTs) represents a long‐standing goal in both nanocarbon science and synthetic organic chemistry. This Review focuses on synthetic studies toward the controlled synthesis of CNTs with single chirality through the organic synthesis of CNT segments and the organic template assisted growth of CNTs.     

Water cluster anions studied by the long-range corrected density functional theory

Long-range corrected density functional theory (LC-DFT) is applied to a series of small water cluster anions(n= 2-6) to compute their vertical detachment energies (VDEs). The LC scheme is shown to eliminate an unphysical overestimation of the electron-water attraction in the hybrid functional by properly accounting for the long-range exchange repulsions. It is shown that a correct correlation energy behavior for a rapidly varying density is also important for describing a spatially extent, excess electron. The one-parameter progressive (OP) correlation functional, which satisfies this condition, leads to a remarkable improvement in the calculated VDE over the conventional one. The LC-BOP method produces highly accurate VDEs with a mean absolute deviation of 13.8 meV from the reference CCSD(T) results, reducing the error of B3LYP by more than 15 times. LC-BOP is found to be more accurate than MP2 which yields an excess electron underbound by 43.6 meV. The effect of basis sets on the calculated VDE is also examined. The aug-cc-pVDZ basis set with an extra diffuse function is found to be more accurate and reliable than the extended Pople-type basis sets used in the previous works. The extrapolation of the calculated VDE of different electron binding motifs is compared with the VDEs of experimentally observed three isomers (Verlet, J. R. R.; Bragg,A. E.; Kammrath, A.; Cheshnovsky, O.; Neumark, D. M. Science 2005, 307, 93).     

Glucose sensor using a phospholipid polymer-based enzyme immobilization method

An electroenzymatic glucose sensor based on a simple enzyme immobilization technique was constructed and tested. The glucose sensor measures glucose concentrations as changes of oxygen concentrations induced by enzymatic reactions. The immobilizing procedure was developed with the purpose of producing wearable biosensors for clinical use. Two types of biocompatible polymers, 2-methacryloyloxyethyl phosphorylcholine (MPC) copolymerized with dodecyl methacrylate (PMD) and MPC copolymerized with 2-ethylhexyl methacrylate, were compared as a sensitive membrane of biosensors. The PMD enzyme membrane had a better response time. Linearity, reproducibility, effect of the concentrations of immobilized enzyme and drifts of sensor characteristics in long-term tests were also investigated. The linear characteristics were confirmed with glucose concentration from 0.01 to 2.00 mmol/l, with a coefficient of determination of 0.9999. The average output current for 1 mmol/l and the standard deviation were 0.992 and 0.0283 muA. Significant changes in the sensor's characteristics were not observed for 2 weeks when it was kept in a refrigerator at 4 degrees C. Because of the simple procedure, the enzyme immobilization method is not only useful for wearable devices but also other devices such as micro total analysis systems.     

Metallo supramolecular assemblies of bis-squaraines by allosteric Ca2+ ion binding

Alkyl chain tethered bis-squaraines bind to Ca2+ ions through the participation of the negatively charged oxygen of the central cyclobutene moiety to form folded H-type aggregates. The initially formed Ca2+ complex is preorganized to facilitate cooperative allosteric binding of Ca2+, resulting in the formation of extended supramolecular arrays. The electronic absorption, IR, and ESI-MS studies support the formation of metallo supramolecular architectures of the folded H-type dimers of the bis-squaraines.     

Stepwise solvatochromism of ketyl anions in the gas phase: photodetachment excitation spectroscopy of benzophenone and acetophenone radical anions microsolvated with methanol

Electronic absorption spectra of bare and methanol-solvated radical anions of benzophenone ((C6H5)2CO) and acetophenone ((C6H5)CH3CO) were measured by monitoring the photodetachment efficiency in the gas phase. Strong absorption bands due to autodetachment after transitions to bound excited states were observed. Stepwise spectral shifts approaching the limit of the condensed phase spectra were found to occur as the cluster size increases. In the case of benzophenone radical anion, the solvation of two methanol molecules exhibits the near convergence to the limit, representing the full coordination with the solvent molecules around the carbonyl group. For the acetophenone case, the coordination number was not apparently determined because of their relatively small shifts. Relationships between hydrogen bonding and electronic structure are analyzed for the spectral shifts with the aid of calculations based on density functional theory. The calculational results show that the coordination angle of the solvent molecule is affected mostly by steric hindrance around the carbonyl group, and that there is no evidence for reorientation due to specific hydrogen bonding interaction with the singly occupied orbital, which has been formerly persisted for an interpretation of the transient absorption following pulse radiolysis in alcoholic solutions. An alternative possibility involving deformation with respect to intramolecular coordinates is discussed.     

A New Synthesis of Some Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Agents via Cyanophosphates1)

A simple and convenient procedure for the syntheses of some nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents, ibuprofen, rac-naproxen, clidanac and loxoprofen, is described.     

Parallel Fock matrix construction with distributed shared memory model for the FMO‐MO method

A parallel Fock matrix construction program for FMO‐MO method has been developed with the distributed shared memory model. To construct a large‐sized Fock matrix during FMO‐MO calculations, a distributed parallel algorithm was designed to make full use of local memory to reduce communication, and was implemented on the Global Array toolkit. A benchmark calculation for a small system indicates that the parallelization efficiency of the matrix construction portion is as high as 93% at 1,024 processors. A large FMO‐MO application on the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) protein (17,246 atoms and 96,234 basis functions) was also carried out at the HF/6‐31G level of theory, with the frontier orbitals being extracted by a Sakurai‐Sugiura eigensolver. It takes 11.3 h for the FMO calculation, 49.1 h for the Fock matrix construction, and 10 min to extract 94 eigen‐components on a PC cluster system using 256 processors. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem, 2010     

Pressure-induced structural, magnetic, and transport transitions in the two-legged ladder Sr3Fe2O5

The layered compound SrFeO(2) with an FeO(4) square-planar motif exhibits an unprecedented pressure-induced spin state transition (S = 2 to 1), together with an insulator-to-metal (I-M) and an antiferromagnetic-to-ferromagnetic (AFM-FM) transition. In this work, we have studied the pressure effect on the structural, magnetic, and transport properties of the structurally related two-legged spin ladder Sr(3)Fe(2)O(5). When pressure was applied, this material first exhibited a structural transition from Immm to Ammm at P(s) = 30 ± 2 GPa. This transition involves a phase shift of the ladder blocks from (1/2,1/2,1/2) to (0,1/2,1/2), by which a rock-salt type SrO block with a 7-fold coordination around Sr changes into a CsCl-type block with 8-fold coordination, allowing a significant reduction of volume. However, the S = 2 antiferromagnetic state stays the same. Next, a spin state transition from S = 2 to S = 1, along with an AFM-FM transition, was observed at P(c) = 34 ± 2 GPa, similar to that of SrFeO(2). A sign of an I-M transition was also observed at pressure around P(c). These results suggest a generality of the spin state transition in square planar coordinated S = 2 irons of n-legged ladder series Sr(n+1)Fe(n)O(2n+1) (n = 1, 2, 3, ...). It appears that the structural transition independently occurs without respect to other transitions. The necessary conditions for a structural transition of this type and possible candidate materials are discussed.