Versatile C(sp2)−C(sp3) Ligand Couplings of Sulfoxides for the Enantioselective Synthesis of Diarylalkanes

The reaction of chiral (hetero)aryl benzyl sulfoxides with Grignard reagents affords enantiomerically pure diarylalkanes in up to 98 % yield and greater than 99.5 % enantiomeric excess. This ligand coupling reaction is tolerant to multiple substitution patterns and provides access to diverse areas of chemical space in three operationally simple steps from commercially available reagents. This strategy provides orthogonal access to electron‐deficient heteroaromatic compounds, which are traditionally synthesized by transition metal catalyzed cross‐couplings, and circumvents common issues associated with proto‐demetalation and β‐hydride elimination.     

Evolution of femtosecond laser-induced damage in doped GaN thin films

Mg- and Si-doped GaN layers deposited by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition method were irradiated with femtosecond pulse duration laser of three different wavelengths 1,030, 515 and 343 nm. Both single and multiple shot laser induced damage thresholds of doped GaN layers were evaluated and discussed. The scanning electron microscopy employed with electron beam induced current and energy dispersive X-ray techniques were used to study laser damage morphology. It was observed that ablated area and laser-induced damage increased with irradiation fluence. The mechanism of damage generation by Gaussian beam profile laser was considered.     

Nonuniform estimate of the rate of convergence in the CLT with stable limit distribution

Institute of Mathematics and Cybernetics, Academy of Sciences of the Lithuanian SSR. V. Kapsukas Vilnius State University. Translated from Litovskii Matematicheskii Sbornik (Lietuvos Matematikos Rinkinys), Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 14–26, January–March, 1989.     

Empirical Edgeworth Expansion for Finite Population Statistics. I

For symmetric asymptotically linear statistics based on simple random samples, we construct the one-term empirical Edgeworth expansion, where the moments defining the true Edgeworth expansion are replaced by their jackknife estimators. In order to establish the validity of the empirical Edgeworth expansion (in probability), we prove the consistency of the jackknife estimators.     

Nonlinear oscillations in marine hydroids

Irregular oscillations in a colony of marine hydroids Podocoryne carnea were investigated. Quantitative characteristics were obtained as a result of long term (10-12 h) monitoring of oscillations at arbitrary sites. The sliding window spectra as well as the pulse-to-pulse dynamics argue the transient chaotic behavior of hydroid colony. The significant change of amplitudes and frequencies in intact colony oscillations after feeding and long sustained oscillations of stolons separated from colony suggest that the irregular activity could be determined by the network of pacemakers residing in stolon wall cells. These are influenced mechanically by the amount of digesting food and/or by chemical action of nutrients inside the stolon lumen. The possible correlation of these oscillations which can evoke Ca(2+) waves in stolon wall cells is discussed.     

Ripple formation in the chromium thin film during laser ablation

The beam of a nanosecond pulse laser tightly focused to a line was applied for the back-side ablation of the chromium thin film on a glass substrate. The stripe ablated with a single laser pulse had sharp edges on both sides and ridges of the melted metal around it. The partially overlapping pulses formed a wide cleaned area with a complicated structure made of the metal remaining from the ridges. Regular structures, ripples, were developed when laser fluence was slightly above the single-pulse removal threshold and the shift between pulses was less than half width of the line ablated with a single laser pulse. The ripples were located periodically (∼4 μm) and were orientated perpendicularly to the long axis of the beam spot. Their orientation did not depend on the laser beam polarization. Different models of the ripple formation in the thin metal film were considered, and instability of the moving vapor-liquid-solid contact line during evaporation of thin liquid films appears to be the most probable process responsible for the observed phenomena. Formation of regular gratings with the unlimited line length was experimentally implemented by using the above-mentioned technique.     

Determination of Organic Compounds,Fulvic Acid,Humic Acid,and Humin in Peat and Sapropel Alkaline Extracts

Black, brown, and light peat and sapropel were analyzed as natural sources of organic and humic substances. These specific substances are applicable in industry, agriculture, the environment, and biomedicine with well-known and novel approaches. Analysis of the organic compounds fulvic acid, humic acid, and humin in different peat and sapropel extracts from Lithuania was performed in this study. The dominant organic compound was bis(tert-butyldimethylsilyl) carbonate, which varied from 6.90% to 25.68% in peat extracts. The highest mass fraction of malonic acid amide was in the sapropel extract; it varied from 12.44% to 26.84%. Significant amounts of acetohydroxamic, lactic, and glycolic acid derivatives were identified in peat and sapropel extracts. Comparing the two extraction methods, it was concluded that active maceration was more efficient than ultrasound extraction in yielding higher amounts of organic compounds. The highest amounts of fulvic acid (1%) and humic acid and humin (15.3%) were determined in pure brown peat samples. This research on humic substances is useful to characterize the peat of different origins, to develop possible aspects of standardization, and to describe potential of the chemical constituents.     

Well‐posedness,smooth dependence and centre manifold reduction for a semilinear hyperbolic system from laser dynamics

We prove existence, uniqueness, regularity and smooth dependence of the weak solution on the initial data for a semilinear, first order, dissipative hyperbolic system with discontinuous coefficients. Such hyperbolic systems have successfully been used to model the dynamics of distributed feedback multisection semiconductor lasers. We show that in a function space of continuous functions the weak solutions generate a smooth skew product semiflow. Using slow fast structure and dissipativity we prove the existence of smooth exponentially attracting invariant centre manifolds for the non‐autonomous model. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.