Synthesis of 3-methoxy-9-(3,4,5-trimethoxyphenyl)-6,7-dihydro-5H-benzo[7]annulen-4-ol,a potent antineoplastic benzosuberene derivative for anti-cancer chemotherapy

Benzosuberene 8 is a tubulin polymerization inhibitor that possesses remarkable potency against a variety of cancer cell lines. Herein, an efficient synthetic route for 8 is described featuring a Claisen rearrangement/RCM sequence and a late stage Suzuki coupling as the key steps. By adopting this strategy 8 was synthesized in eight steps in 18% overall yield starting from known compound 18.     

Influence of plant densities and fertilization on maize grains by near-infrared spectroscopy

Near-infrared spectroscopy is a rapid process analytical technology for measuring a wide range of constituents of biological materials. The objective of the current study was to investigate maize grains grown under different levels of fertilization and plant densities using near-infrared spectroscopy. Maize grains from the same plant density had their protein content increased with doses of nitrogen. In addition, it was observed the decrease in protein content with the increase in plant densities. Except for ash content, models for the assessed parameters indicated that near-infrared spectra has the potential for fast assessment of maize grains.     

An h-adaptive solution of the spherical blast wave problem

Shock waves and contact discontinuities usually appear in compressible flows, requiring a fine mesh in order to achieve an acceptable accuracy of the numerical solution. The usage of a mesh adaptation strategy is convenient as uniform refinement of the whole mesh becomes prohibitive in three-dimensional (3D) problems. An unsteady h-adaptive strategy for unstructured finite element meshes is introduced. Non-conformity of the refined mesh and a bounded decrease in the geometrical quality of the elements are some features of the refinement algorithm. A 3D extension of the well-known refinement constraint for 2D meshes is used to enforce a smooth size transition among neighbour elements with different levels of refinement. A density-based gradient indicator is used to track discontinuities. The solution procedure is partially parallelised, i.e. the inviscid flow equations are solved in parallel with a finite element SUPG formulation with shock capturing terms while the adaptation of the mesh is sequentially performed. Results are presented for a spherical blast wave driven by a point-like explosion with an initial pressure jump of 10⁵ atmospheres. The adapted solution is compared to that computed on a fixed mesh. Also, the results provided by the theory of self-similar solutions are considered for the analysis. In this particular problem, adapting the mesh to the solution accounts for approximately 4% of the total simulation time and the refinement algorithm scales almost linearly with the size of the problem.     

Phenylethyl Isothiocyanate: A Bioactive Agent for Gastrointestinal Health

The incidence of gastrointestinal pathologies (cancer in particular) has increased progressively, with considerable morbidity and mortality, and a high economic impact on the healthcare system. The dietary intake of natural phytochemicals with certain bioactive properties has shown therapeutic and preventive effects on these pathologies. This includes the cruciferous vegetable derivative phenylethyl isothiocyanate (PEITC), a bioactive compound present in some vegetables, such as watercress. Notably, PEITC has antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, bactericidal, and anticarcinogenic properties. This review summarized the current knowledge on the role of PEITC as a potential natural nutraceutical or an adjuvant against oxidative/inflammatory-related disorders in the gastrointestinal tract. We also discussed the safe and recommended dose of PEITC. In addition, we established a framework to guide the research and development of sustainable methodologies for obtaining and stabilizing this natural molecule for industrial use. With PEITC, there is great potential to develop a viable strategy for preventing cancer and other associated diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. However, this topic still needs more scientific studies to help develop new PEITC products for the nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, or food industries.     

Die F?llung von Ammoniumphosphormolybdat in Gegenwart organischer S?uren

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Embedded atom method study of Cu deposition on Ag(111)

A new model is applied to the study of Cu deposition on Ag(111), It links elements from the embedded atom model and Monte Carlo simulations. In agreement with the experiment, the present results favor overpotential upon underpotential deposition. A diffusion coefficient of 1.93 × 10⁻⁶ cm² s⁻¹ is estimated for the system. The predicted structure of the adsorbed monolayer is more compact than the electrochemical observation, a fact which may be due to some simplifications of the model like neglecting the solvent and anion effects or the nature of the potentials employed.     

Allylation of acetals and ketals with allyltrimethylsilane catalyzed by the mixed Lewis acid system AlBr3/CuBr

The synthesis of homoallyl ethers from various acetals and a cyclic ketal with allyltrimethylsilane catalyzed by aluminum bromide in the presence of trimethylaluminum as a desiccant is described. We found that the addition of a catalytic amount of copper(I) bromide accelerates the allylation reactions to afford the homoallyl ether derivatives in good to excellent yield.     

Measuring surface topography by scanning electron microscopy. II. Analysis of three estimators of surface roughness in second dimension and third dimension.

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is widely used in surface studies and continuous efforts are carried out in the search of estimators of different surface characteristics. By using the variogram, we developed two of these estimators that were used to characterize the surface roughness from the SEM image texture. One of the estimators is related to the crossover between fractal region at low scale and the periodic region at high scale, whereas the other estimator characterizes the periodic region. In this work, a full study of these estimators and the fractal dimension in two dimensions (2D) and three dimensions (3D) was carried out for emery papers. We show that the obtained fractal dimension with only one image is good enough to characterize the roughness surface because its behavior is similar to those obtained with 3D height data. We show also that the estimator that indicates the crossover is related to the minimum cell size in 2D and to the average particle size in 3D. The other estimator has different values for the three studied emery papers in 2D but it does not have a clear meaning, and these values are similar for those studied samples in 3D. Nevertheless, it indicates the formation tendency of compound cells. The fractal dimension values from the variogram and from an area versus step log-log graph were studied with 3D data. Both methods yield different values corresponding to different information from the samples.