Gene delivery with polycationic fullerene hexakis-adducts

Polyplexes prepared from DNA and globular compact polycationic derivatives constructed around a fullerene hexakis-adduct core have shown remarkable gene delivery capabilities.     

Novel copolymers of styrene. 3. Some ring-substituted propyl 2-cyano-3-phenyl-2-propenoates

Novel trisubstituted ethylenes, ring-substituted propyl 2-cyano-3-phenyl-2-propenoates, RPhCH?C(CN)CO₂C₃H₇ (where R is 2-C₆H₅CH₂O, 3-C₆H₅CH₂O, 4-C₆H₅CH₂O, 4-CH₃COO, 3-CH₃CO, 4-CH₃CONH, 2-CN, 3-CN, 4-CN, 4-(CH₃)₂N, 4-(C₂H₅)₂N) were prepared and copolymerized with styrene. The monomers were synthesized by the piperidine catalyzed Knoevenagel condensation of ring-substituted benzaldehydes and propyl cyanoacetate, and characterized by CHN analysis, IR, ¹H and ¹³C-NMR. All the ethylenes were copolymerized with styrene (M₁) in solution with radical initiation (ABCN) at 70°C. The compositions of the copolymers were calculated from nitrogen analysis and the structures were analyzed by IR, ¹H and ¹³C-NMR. Decomposition of the copolymers in nitrogen occurred in two steps, first in the 200–500°C range with residue (2.7–8.6% wt.), which then decomposed in the 500–800°C range.     

Auxetic frameworks inspired by cubic crystals

In this work we show that a structure consisting of a network of bending beams can exhibit a negative Poisson’s ratio. We have shown that the negative Poisson’s ratio behaviour is driven by the (bcc analogous) type III beams, the type II (fcc like) beams result in a structure with a Poisson’s ratio of around zero and type I (simple cubic configuration) beams result in a Poisson’s ratio of nearly +1. The tensile and shear strengths of the type III beams are augmented by addition of type II and type III beams. By tailoring the relative stiffness of the component beams within the structure it is possible to design an auxetic truss structure with specific Poisson’s ratio, tensile and shear moduli.This validates the hypothesis that crystal structures can provide inspiration for macro structures with tailored mechanical properties where the mechanism for negative Poisson’s ratio (auxetic) behaviour at the atomic scale in cubic crystals is replicated by bending beams.     

Bifurcation analysis of a generalized Gause model with prey harvesting and a generalized Holling response function of type III

In this paper we study a generalized Gause model with prey harvesting and a generalized Holling response function of type III: . The goal of our study is to give the bifurcation diagram of the model. For this we need to study saddle-node bifurcations, Hopf bifurcation of codimension 1 and 2, heteroclinic bifurcation, and nilpotent saddle bifurcation of codimension 2 and 3. The nilpotent saddle of codimension 3 is the organizing center for the bifurcation diagram. The Hopf bifurcation is studied by means of a generalized Liénard system, and for b=0 we discuss the potential integrability of the system. The nilpotent point of multiplicity 3 occurs with an invariant line and can have a codimension up to 4. But because it occurs with an invariant line, the effective highest codimension is 3. We develop normal forms (in which the invariant line is preserved) for studying of the nilpotent saddle bifurcation. For b=0, the reversibility of the nilpotent saddle is discussed. We study the type of the heteroclinic loop and its cyclicity. The phase portraits of the bifurcations diagram (partially conjectured via the results obtained) allow us to give a biological interpretation of the behavior of the two species.     

Practical reduction of oxazolines to alcohols

A two-step, one-pot procedure using methyl chloroformate and lithium borohydride was developed to transform 2-substituted-oxazolines into alcohols. This methodology is compatible with a wide range of substrates including heterocyclic, aromatic, and aliphatic functionalized 2-oxazolines. Best results are obtained with electron-rich and ortho substituted 2-aryl-oxazolines.     

Prediction error sampling procedure based on dominant Schur decomposition. Application to state estimation in high dimensional oceanic model

Iterative procedure is described to generate patterns of dominant Schur vectors of the system dynamics. Their roles in estimating the filter gain is study. These patterns are produced by several integrations of the model from a set of perturbations. This approach is motivated by a number of interesting results on stability of the filter whose gain is approximated in a subspace of dominant Schur vectors. A simple method for the filter design is presented which is aimed at overcoming the most serious drawback of advanced filtering algorithms for high dimensional systems related to very high computational cost in evaluation of the filter gain.The resulting filter will be compared with the existing ones, showing its relevance from a practical point of view. In order to demonstrate its efficiency, the new filter is tested on various experiments. These experiments include the much studied problem of estimating the solution of the Lorenz system as well as that of assimilating sea surface height observations in a high dimensional oceanic model. It is shown that significant increases in efficiency can be obtained by using this filter and that the proposed filter is very promising for solving realistic assimilation problems in meteorology and oceanography.     

Flat rank of automorphism groups of buildings

The flat rank of a totally disconnected locally compact group G, denoted flat-rk(G), is an invariant of the topological group structure of G. It is defined thanks to a natural distance on the space of compact open subgroups of G. For a topological Kac-Moody group G with Weyl group W, we derive the inequalities alg-rk(W) ≤ flat-rk(G) ≤ rk(|W|₀). Here, alg-rk(W) is the maximal Z-rank of abelian subgroups of W, and rk(|W|₀) is the maximal dimension of isometrically embedded flats in the CAT0-realization |W|₀. We can prove these inequalities under weaker assumptions. We also show that for any integer n ≥ 1 there is a simple, compactly generated, locally compact, totally disconnected group G, with flat-rk(G) = n and which is not linear.     

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