Synergistic effect of cellulose nanowhiskers reinforcement and dicarboxylic acids crosslinking towards polyvinyl alcohol properties

In the presented work, a significant increase in the tensile strength of the PVA composite material is reported. The obtained best value of 122 MPa and 14.6% swelling shows the excellent synergistic effect of both crosslinker and reinforcement material. The composite films were prepared by simple mechanical dispersion of reinforcement material, bacterial cellulose nanowhiskers (BCNW) into PVA solution followed by crosslinking with diacids, succinic acid (SuA), and adipic acid (AdA). The effect of aliphatic carbon chain length of crosslinker on thermal, mechanical, and water uptake properties is evaluated and discussed in detail. Neat PVA had the strength of 37.3 MPa. With 5% reinforcement of BCNW, that is, without crosslinking, it exhibited 97% increase, that is, 74.5 MPa. With crosslinking of 15 mmol of SuA and AdA PVA films for 2 h had excellent thermal properties with swelling percentage of 19 and 26.6% and tensile strength of 103 and 67 MPa, respectively. The best result obtained was for 5% BCNW–PVA films crosslinked with 15 mmol SuA. These results were explained on the basis of synergetic crosslinking and extended hydrogen bonding between PVA and reinforcement material. The composite films can be used as biological implants, a membrane for pervaporation and filtration system, etc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2016 , 54, 2515–2525     

N,N,N′-Tri­methyl­ethyl­enediammonium dichloride

The title compound, C₅H₁₆N₂²⁺·2Cl⁻, was isolated as a by-product from the reaction between trimethylethyl­enedi­amine and germanium tetrachloride in the presence of triethyl­amine. The asymmetric unit contains two cations, one in the gauche and the other in the trans conformation; these conformations are stabilized by hydrogen-bonding interactions between the N—H moieties and the chloride anions.     

Preparation and Characterization of Doped Polybenzidine

The polybenzidine has been synthesized by thermal method and characterized by X‐ray diffraction and infrared absorption studies. Further, polybenzidine has been doped with nitrate, sulfate and acetate ions. The electrical conductivity behavior of doped and undoped polybenzidine has been studied for various concentrations of dopants between room temperature and 200 °C. All these polymers were found to behave like semiconductors. The activation energies of all the samples within the semiconducting region are estimated and analysed with the variation in dopant concentration. The results are explained with the effective charge formation due to ion pair association.     

A combined resonance-Doppler technique for studying bubble evolution in liquids

Gas bubbles in liquids have been studied for decades with a variety of optical and acoustic techniques. The evolution of a bubble consists of several stages, including formation and growth at a nozzle, detachment and resonance, and rise towards terminal velocity. Most existing techniques can monitor only a single aspect of the bubble behaviour. This work describes an acoustic technique to monitor all stages of an air bubble's evolution. The technique uses a combination of passive acoustic listening and active ultrasonic Doppler observation to study millimetre-sized air bubbles in liquid. A hollow cylindrical piezoelectric transducer, located around the nozzle used to produce the bubbles, detects the resonance of the bubble following its detachment. An ultrasonic Doppler system, positioned several centimetres above the nozzle, monitors both the growth and the rise of the bubble, including shape oscillations and the terminal velocity through the use of joint time-frequency analysis. Because all aspects of the bubble evolution are affected by the properties of the liquid, by monitoring the bubble evolution with this technique the rising bubble can potentially be used as a tool to characterize the liquid.     

Radical scavenging activity of decalpoline,a novel compound characterized from <Emphasis Type=Italic>Decalepis hamiltonii</Emphasis>

The ethanol extract of Decalepis hamiltonii roots was subjected to antioxidant activity-guided fractionation by repeated silica gel column chromatography to get a pure antioxidant compound which was subjected to extensive analysis by UV, IR, LC-MS, and 2D HMQC NMR. The spectral data of the isolated compound was analyzed, and its structure was elucidated as decalpoline, a novel antioxidant compound not reported so far. Decalpoline exhibited multiple antioxidant properties like DPPH scavenging activity, superoxide radical scavenging activity, lipid peroxidation inhibitory activity, metal chelating and total reducing activity.     

Synthesis,crystal structure and molecular docking studies of novel 2-(4-(4-substitutedphenylsulfonyl)piperazin-1-yl)quinolone-3-carbaldehyde derivatives

The present work reports the synthesis of novel 2-(4-(4-substitutedphenylsulfonyl) piperazin-1-yl) quinolone-3-carbaldehyde derivatives, namely, 2-(4-tosylpiperazin-1-yl)quinoline-3-carbaldehyde (4a), 2-(4-(4-nitrophenylsulfonyl)piperazin-1-yl)quinoline-3-carbaldehyde (4b) and 2-(4-(4-tert-butylphenylsulfonyl) piperazin-1-yl)quinoline-3-carbaldehyde (4c). These compounds have been characterized by FT-IR, ¹H-NMR, ¹³C-NMR and LCMS. Further, the structures of compounds 4b and 4c have been elucidated by single crystal X-ray diffraction studies. The asymmetric unit of 4b contains two molecules (A and B) and that of 4c contains one. The piperazine ring in both the molecules 4b and 4c has chair conformation and the aldehyde group is twisted with respect to the quinoline group, respectively, by 13.3 (3)°, 18.2 (3)° and 11.2 (3)° in Molecule A & B of 4b and 4c due to the bulky piperazinyl group present in the ortho position. The crystal structures of both features interactions of the type C-H…O, C-H…π_aryl and π_aryl… π_aryl, leading to a three-dimensional (3D) supramolecular architecture in 4b and a one-dimensional (1D) architecture in 4c. The various intermolecular interactions exhibited in 4b and 4c are well supported by Hirshfeld surface and fingerprint plots analysis. Further, the three compounds were evaluated for their in-silico antimicrobial activity. In-silico molecular docking studies were carried out in order to know the binding modes of the synthesized compounds with DNA Gyrase A and N-myristoyltranferase as target proteins for antibacterial and antifungal docking studies, respectively.     

Integer plane multiflow maximisation: one-quarter-approximation and gaps

Mathematical Programming - In this paper, we bound the integrality gap and the approximation ratio for maximum plane multiflow problems and deduce bounds on the flow-multicut-gap. We consider...