Tight Fluctuations of Weight-Distances in Random Graphs with Infinite-Variance Degrees

Journal of Statistical Physics - We prove results for first-passage percolation on the configuration model with degrees having asymptotic finite mean, infinite variance and i.i.d. edge-weights with...     

Metal Nanoparticle–Microbe Interactions: Synthesis and Antimicrobial Effects

Metal nanoparticles (NPs), chalcogenides, and carbon quantum dots can be easily synthesized from whole microorganisms (fungi and bacteria) and cell-free sterile filtered spent medium. The particle size distribution and the biosynthesis time can be somewhat controlled through the biomass/metal solution ratio. The biosynthetic mechanism can be explained through the ion-reduction theory and UV photoconversion theory. Formation of biosynthetic NPs is part of the detoxification strategy employed by microorganisms, either in planktonic or biofilm form, to reduce the chemical toxicity of metal ions. In fact, most reports on NP biosynthesis show extracellular metal ion reduction. This is important for environmental and industrial applications, particularly in biofilms, as it allows in principle high biosynthetic rates. The antimicrobial and antifungal effect on biosynthetic NPs can be explained in terms of reactive oxygen species and can be enhanced by the capping agents attached to the NP during the biosynthesis process. Industrial applications of NP biosynthesis are still lagging, due to the difficulty of controlling NP size and low titer. Further, the environmental assessment of biosynthetic NPs has not yet been carried out. It is expected that further advancements in biosynthetic NP research will lead to applications, particularly in environmental biotechnology.     

Visible-Light Controlled Divergent Catalysis Using a Bench-Stable Cobalt(I) Hydride Complex

While the use of visible light in conjunction with transition metal catalysis offers powerful opportunities to switch between on/-off states of catalytic activity, the next frontier would be the ability to switch the actual function of the catalyst and resulting products. Here we report such an example of multi-dimensional catalysis. Featuring an easily prepared, bench-stable cobalt(I) hydride complex in conjunction with pinacolborane, we can switch the reaction outcome between two widely employed transformations, olefin migration and hydroboration, with visible light as the trigger.     

Generalization of Heron’s and Brahmagupta’s equalities to any cyclic polygon

Aequationes mathematicae - It is well known that Heron’s equality provides an explicit formula for the area of a triangle, as a symmetric function of the lengths of its edges. It has been...     

Comparison of Different Reweighting Approaches for the Calculation of Conformational Variability of Macromolecules from Molecular Simulations

Conformational variability and heterogeneity are crucial determinants of the function of biological macromolecules. The possibility of accessing this information experimentally suffers from severe under-determination of the problem, since there are a few experimental observables to be accounted for by a (potentially) infinite number of available conformational states. Several computational methods have been proposed over the years in order to circumvent this theoretically insurmountable obstacle. A large share of these strategies is based on reweighting an initial conformational ensemble which arises from, for example, molecular simulations of different qualities and levels of theory. In this work, we compare the outcome of three reweighting approaches based on radically different views of the conformational heterogeneity problem, namely Maximum Entropy, Maximum Parsimony and Maximum Occurrence, and we do so using the same experimental data. In this comparison we find both expected as well as unexpected similarities.     

Reaction of singlet oxygen with thioanisole in ionic liquid-acetonitrile binary mixtures

A study of the reaction of thioanisole with singlet oxygen in different ionic liquid-acetonitrile binary mixtures has shown that ILs are able to accelerate the thioanisole sulfoxidation when used as additives. With imidazolium ILs, the maximum efficiency is reached at x(IL) ～ 0.1-0.2, whereas for the pyrrolidinium IL a plateau is reached. These results are discussed in terms of the ILs' tendency to form ionic aggregates and of differences in sulfoxidation reaction mechanism.     

Direct assembly of polyarenes via C-C coupling Using PIFA/BF3·Et2O

Direct oxidative Kita-type coupling between naphthalene and substituted benzenes was found to proceed via four-component coupling, leading to a linear tetraarene with a binaphthalene core. The methodology was extendable to the coupling of unfunctionalized 1,1'-binaphthalene with mesitylene to give a linear hexaarene product in a remarkably chemoselective manner in 87% yield. The method represents an attractive alternative to the traditional syntheses of related oligonaphthalene products via a sequence of metal-catalyzed cross-coupling steps.     

A nonperturbative foundation of the Euclidean–Minkowskian duality of Wilson-loop correlation functions

In this Letter we discuss the analyticity properties of the Wilson-loop correlation functions relevant to the problem of soft high-energy scattering, directly at the level of the functional integral, in a genuinely nonperturbative way. The strategy is to start from the Euclidean theory and to push the dependence on the relevant variables θ (the relative angle between the loops) and T (the half-length of the loops) into the action by means of a field and coordinate transformation, and then to allow them to take complex values. In particular, we determine the analyticity domain of the relevant Euclidean correlation function, and we show that the corresponding Minkowskian quantity is recovered with the usual double analytic continuation in θ and T inside this domain. The formal manipulations of the functional integral are justified making use of a lattice regularisation. The new rescaled action so derived could also be used directly to get new insights (from first principles) in the problem of soft high-energy scattering.