Synthesis,properties, and crystal structure of a novel 3-hydroxy-(4<Emphasis Type="Italic">H</Emphasis>)-benzopyran-4-one containing copper(II) complex,and its oxygenation and relevance to quercetinase

The preparation, spectroscopic properties, and crystal structure of [Cu(ind)(mco)] [ind is the anion of 1,3-bis(2-pyridylimino)isoindoline and mco is the anion of 3-hydroxy-(4H)-benzopyran-4-one] are reported. The complex exhibits a distorted square pyramidal geometry. The oxygenation of the title compound results in oxidative cleavage of the heterocyclic ring to give the (acetylsalicylato)copper(II) complex [Cu(asp)(ind)] (asp is the anion of acetylsalicylic acid) and CO as primary products, which reaction resembles the enzymatic reaction of quercetinase.     

Mother-to-child transmission of HIV: a simulation-based approach for the evaluation of intervention strategies

Mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV is the most significant source of HIV infection in children below the age of 15 years. In 2000 alone, about 600 000 new infections occurred, the vast majority from mothers living in developing countries who were not aware of their HIV-positive status. To date, at least 4.3 million children have died from AIDS. In this paper, we discuss the development of an operational model that can be used to evaluate intervention options for the prevention of MTCT of HIV. The problem was approached by defining suitable pregnancy risk groups, prevention options and the required model outputs to evaluate different intervention strategies. The method chosen to approach the problem was a discrete-event, three-phase simulation, built in Visual Basic, with a stochastic semi-Markov structure. The developed model takes individual pregnant women through each stage of their pregnancy, labour and birth. Different intervention strategies may be modelled at any time, including short-course antiretroviral drugs and cessation of breastfeeding. The model is demonstrated with data from Botswana, which has one of the highest HIV-infection rates in the world.     

Finite Hurwitz braid group actions for Artin groups

We prove that (with two possible exceptions) the Hurwitz braid group action on the sequence of standard generators of an irreducible Artin group has a finite orbit if and only if the Artin group is of finite type (i.e., the corresponding Coxeter group is finite).     

The spectral measure of a Jacobi matrix in terms of the Fourier transform of the perturbation

We study the spectral properties of Jacobi matrices. By combining Killip's technique [12] with the technique of Killip and Simon [13] we obtain a result relating the properties of the elements of Jacobi matrices and the corresponding spectral measures. This theorem is a natural extension of a recent result of Laptev-Naboko-Safronov [17]. The author thanks Sergei Naboko for useful discussions and Barry Simon for pointing out the conjecture.     

On the characterisation of paired monotone metrics

Hasegawa and Petz introduced the notion of paired monotone metrics. They also gave a characterisation theorem showing that Wigner-Yanase-Dyson metrics are the only members of the paired family. In this paper we show that the characterisation theorem holds true under hypotheses that are more general than those used in the above quoted references.     

Natural Operators Lifting Vector Fields to Bundles of Weil Contact Elements

Let A be a Weil algebra. The bijection between all natural operators lifting vector fields from m-manifolds to the bundle functor K ^A of Weil contact elements and the subalgebra of fixed elements SA of the Weil algebra A is determined and the bijection between all natural affinors on K ^A and SA is deduced. Furthermore, the rigidity of the functor K ^A is proved. Requisite results about the structure of SA are obtained by a purely algebraic approach, namely the existence of nontrivial SA is discussed.     

The optical near-field speckles and their first order statistics on the basis of the integral equations of electromagnetic field

Speckle fields are the random light wave distributions produced when the light fields are scattered from random surfaces or a random medium. They appear in many optical phenomena that are related to light propagations[1,2] and have found wide appli-cations in a variety of scientific and technical fields. The examples of the recent impor-tant applications of speckles include the analysis of the movement of the granules[3], the three-dimensional imaging for the microstructures of metal nanocryst…     

Recent developments in algebraic combinatorics

We survey three recent developments in algebraic combinatorics. The first is the theory of cluster algebras and the Laurent phenomenon of Sergey Fomin and Andrei Zelevinsky. The second is the construction of toric Schur functions and their application to computing three-point Gromov-Witten invariants, by Alexander Postnikov. The third development is the construction of intersection cohomology for nonrational fans by Paul Bressler and Valery Lunts and its application by Kalle Karu to the torich-vector of a nonrational polytope. We also briefly discuss the “half hard Lefschetz theorem” of Ed Swartz and its application to matroid complexes. Partially supported by NSF grant #DMS-9988459.