Microwave‐assisted Synthesis of 6‐{(5‐Aryl‐1,3,4‐oxadiazol‐2‐yl)methyl}‐6H‐indolo[2,3‐b]quinoxalines

An efficient and convenient synthesis of a new series of 2‐{(6H‐indolo[2,3‐b]quinoxalin‐6‐yl)methyl}‐5‐aryl‐1,3,4‐oxadiazoles from readily available 1,2‐diaminobenzene and isatins under microwave irradiation conditions was disclosed. The 6‐{(5‐aryl‐1,3,4‐oxadiazol‐2‐yl)methyl}‐6H‐indolo[2,3‐b]quinoxalines were also prepared by the thermal cyclo‐condensation reaction of 2‐(6H‐indolo[2,3‐b]quinoxalin‐6‐yl)acetohydrazides with carboxylic acids in refluxing POCl₃. The microwave‐assisted synthesis was rapid and resulted in higher yield of the products at lower operating temperature with reduced waste generation in comparison with the thermal reaction protocol.     

Effective Amyloid Defibrillation by Polyhydroxyl‐Substituted Squaraine Dyes

With an objective to develop β‐amyloid destabilizing agents, we have investigated the interactions of a few water‐soluble near‐infrared (NIR)‐absorbing squaraine dyes 1 – 3 with lysozyme and its amyloid aggregates through photophysical and biophysical techniques. These dyes exhibited strong interactions with lysozyme and β‐amyloids in addition to serum albumins as evidenced by the absorption and emission changes. The interactions were found to be spontaneous with association constant values in the range of approximately 10⁴–10⁵ m ^?1, as confirmed through half‐reciprocal analysis and isothermal calorimetric measurements. Uniquely, such effective interactions of the dyes have led to the complete disassembly of the β‐amyloid fibrillar structures to form spherical particles approximately 350 nm in size, as confirmed through photophysical, thioflavin assay, circular dichroism (CD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), TEM, and selected‐area electron diffraction (SAED) techniques. These results demonstrate that the squaraine dyes 1 – 3 under investigation act as effective protein‐labelling and destabilizing agents of the protein amyloidogenesis.     

A general contact mechanical formulation of multilayered structures and its application to deconvolute thickness/mechanical properties of glue used in surface force apparatus

Currently data obtained from surface force apparatus experiments are convoluted with the mechanical response of glue of unknown thickness, used to bond mica sheets to the substrates. This paper describes a formulation to precisely deconvolute out the forces between the mica sheets by determining the thickness of glue, knowing the mechanical properties of the glue. The formulation consists of a general solution based on the noniterative Hankel transform of the Laplace equation. The generality is achieved by treating all the layers except the one in contact as an effective lumped system consisting of a set of springs in series, where each spring represents a layer. The solution is validated by nanoindentation of trilayer systems consisting of layers with widely diverse mechanical properties, some differing from each other by three orders of magnitude. SFA experiments are done with carefully metered slabs of glue. The proposed method is validated by comparing the actual glue thicknesses with those determined using the present analysis.     

Strength of hydrogen bonds in α helices

The intramolecular helix backbone >C(DOUBLE BOND)O---H—N< hydrogen bonding energies in poly(L -alanine) α helices have been estimated both in vacuum and in an aqueous environment using the parameter sets of five of the most commonly used force fields for modeling biomolecules, namely AMBER, CHARMM, ECEPP, GROMOS, and OPLS. The relative capabilities of these force fields in describing the H-bonding interactions with different dielectric continuum models have been assessed. A modified Hingerty–Lavery function is proposed for the treatment of electrostatic interactions of biomolecules in an aqueous environment. The helix backbone H-bonding energies predicted by this function (∼−1 kcal/mol) correspond closely with the experiment. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Comput Chem 18: 1245–1252     

Space charge analysis in enamelled wires by using thermally stimulated depolarization current (TSDC)

This paper reports on measurements of thermally stimulated depolarization current (TSDC) that is applied to characterize changes in the large motors and generators enamelled wires that have been exposed to aging under steep-front pulse voltage waveforms. The thermoelectrets are prepared at various polarizing fields, E_P, and measurements of TSDC are carried out both as a function of time and temperature over the range of 23–200 °C. In addition, various TSDC parameters such as activation energy, ?_a, characteristic relaxation time, τ and the released charge, Q during the relaxation process have been determined by applying initial rise method. The experimental results for TSDC spectra of wire specimens have shown that the total stored charge in the insulation bulk increases significantly, as the number of insulation layers increases on the wire. The reason for such a higher concentration of trapped charges is more likely due to the presence of a broad distribution of the traps, which are occupied by the injected charges.     

Synthesis of solid solutions of Mn and Bi substituted V2O5 and substitutional effect in structural and optoelectronic behavior

V₂O₅ is an attractive material with enormous technological applications such as cathode material in lithium batteries and electrochromic displays. Mn and Bi substitution in vanadium pentoxide (V₂O₅) was done by conventional solid state reaction technique with different composition. The chemical composition, structural and optical properties were investigated employing different techniques, such as XRD, SEM and UV-Vis Spectra. XRD studies exhibit the predominant (0 0 1) peak of orthorhombic phase. SEM image shows the uniformity of the material synthesized. Variable transmittance is exhibited by samples doped with different percentages of dopants. The dielectric property studies and ac conductivity measurements were carried out by Hioki LCR Hi-Tester.     

Delay-dependent stability criterion for a class of non-linear singular Markovian jump systems with mode-dependent interval time-varying delays

This paper deals with the problem of stability analysis of non-linear singular systems with Markovian jumping parameters and mode-dependent interval time varying delays. New delay-dependent stability conditions are derived in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) by constructing a mode-dependent Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional and using some integral inequalities. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the usefulness and less conservativeness of the proposed theoretical results.     

Kinetic energies of cluster fragments in ternary fission of <Superscript>252</Superscript> Cf

The kinetic energy distribution and potential energies of fragments from the collinear cluster tripartition (CCT), the “true” ternary fission of ²⁵²Cf, have been calculated. It is assumed that the breakup of the nucleus into three fragments happens sequentially in two steps from a hyper-deformed shape. In the first step a first neck rupture occurs of the parent radioactive nucleus, forming two fragments (one of them is usually ¹³²Sn) and, in the second step, one of the two fragments breaks into two other fragments, resulting finally in three fragments (the experiment is based on a binary coincidence where a missing mass is determined). We show the result for the principal combination of the three spherical fragments (semi-magic isotopes of Sn, Ca, Ni) observed recently experimentally. These isotopes are clusters with high Q -values, which produce the highest yields in the ternary fission bump. It is shown that the kinetic energies of the middle fragments have very low values, making their experimental detection quite difficult. This fact explains why the direct detection of true ternary fission with three fragments heavier than A > 40 has escaped experimental observation.     

On the continuity of residuals of triangular norms

In this work a long-standing problem related to the continuity of R-implications, i.e., implications obtained as the residuum of t-norms, has been solved. A complete characterization of the class of continuous R-implications obtained from any arbitrary t-norm is given. In particular, it is shown that an R-implication I_T is continuous if and only if T is a nilpotent t-norm. Using this result, the exact intersection between the continuous subsets of R-implications and (S,N)-implications has been determined, by showing that the only continuous (S,N)-implication that is also an R-implication obtained from any t-norm, not necessarily left-continuous, is the ?ukasiewicz implication up to an isomorphism.