A synthesis of the marine antibiotic (-)-malyngolide from D-glucose

(-)_Malyngolide, an antibiotic from the marine blue-green alga Lyngbya majuscula, was synthesized in about 30% yield from ethyl 4,6-0-benzylidene-2-deoxy-α-D-erythro-hexopyranosid-3-ulose, a chiral synthon easily derived from commercially available methyl α-D-glucopyranoside.     

Efficient, “one-pot” synthesis of silylene–acetylene and disilylene–acetylene preceramic polymers from trichloroethylene

An extremely efficient process has been developed for the synthesis of linear silylene-acetylene and disilylene-acetylene polymers. Trichloroethylene is quantitatively converted by n-butyllithium to dilithioacetylene. Quenching with dialkyl-or diaryldichlorosilanes affords high yields of the polymers, $ \rlap{--} [{\rm SiR}_{\rm 2} \hbox{---} {\rm C} \equiv {\rm C\rlap{--} ]}_n ,{\rm and }\rlap{--} [{\rm SiMe}_{\rm 2} {\rm SiMe}_{\rm 2} - {\rm C} \equiv {\rm C\rlap{--} ]}_n $ if ClMe₂SiSiMe₂Cl is employed. Molecular weights are much higher with this route than when acetylene is used as the dilithio- or dimagnesium acetylide precursor. Some of these polymers can be pulled into continuous fibers, and all can be cast into coherent films and thermally converted into silicon carbide.     

1‐Methoxyhexane‐3‐thiol,a Powerful Odorant of Clary Sage (Salvia sclarea L.)

The peculiar and highly diffusive odor signal of flowering clary‐sage plants (Salvia sclarea L.) was identified to derive from trace amounts of 1‐methoxyhexane‐3‐thiol ( 1 ) by mass‐spectrometry analysis and confirmed by comparison with synthetic racemic thiol (±)‐ 1 . The enantiomers (S)‐ and (R)‐ 1 were prepared by enantioselective synthesis, and the absolute configuration of (S)‐ 1 was fully corroborated by X‐ray‐diffraction analysis of the crystalline thioester (1′S,1S)‐ 2 . Compound (S)‐ 1 is one of the most powerful odorants known, with a detection threshold of 0.04⋅10⁻³ ng/l air, and is, with its herbaceous‐green, alliaceous, and perspiration profile, key to the fragrance of clary‐sage flowers and of the freshly distilled essential oil. As a consequence of its unique odor, 1 was also suspected to be part of the volatiles of a Ruta species where it was subsequently identified together with its homologue, 1‐methoxyheptane‐3‐thiol ( 3 ), 1‐methoxy‐4‐methylpentane‐3‐thiol ( 4 ), and the known 4‐methoxy‐2‐methylbutane‐2‐thiol ( 5 ). The syntheses of (±)‐ 3 and (±)‐ 4 as well as of the enantiomer (R)‐ 4 are described. In both natural fractions, the ratio (S)‐ 1 /(R)‐ 1 was slightly in favor of the (S)‐enantiomer. Natural 4 has (R)‐configuration.     

Training Multilayer Perceptron with Genetic Algorithms and Particle Swarm Optimization for Modeling Stock Price Index Prediction

Predicting stock market (SM) trends is an issue of great interest among researchers, investors and traders since the successful prediction of SMs’ direction may promise various benefits. Because of the fairly nonlinear nature of the historical data, accurate estimation of the SM direction is a rather challenging issue. The aim of this study is to present a novel machine learning (ML) model to forecast the movement of the Borsa Istanbul (BIST) 100 index. Modeling was performed by multilayer perceptron–genetic algorithms (MLP–GA) and multilayer perceptron–particle swarm optimization (MLP–PSO) in two scenarios considering Tanh (x) and the default Gaussian function as the output function. The historical financial time series data utilized in this research is from 1996 to 2020, consisting of nine technical indicators. Results are assessed using Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) and correlation coefficient values to compare the accuracy and performance of the developed models. Based on the results, the involvement of the Tanh (x) as the output function, improved the accuracy of models compared with the default Gaussian function, significantly. MLP–PSO with population size 125, followed by MLP–GA with population size 50, provided higher accuracy for testing, reporting RMSE of 0.732583 and 0.733063, MAPE of 28.16%, 29.09% and correlation coefficient of 0.694 and 0.695, respectively. According to the results, using the hybrid ML method could successfully improve the prediction accuracy.     

Approximate analysis and design of rectangular-lattice photonic crystals

We present a theoretical analysis of wave propagation in rectangular- and square-lattice photonic crystals by approximating the arbitrary refractive-index function with a staircase profile. This profile has a number of tunable parameters that allow one to fit the band structures of the staircase and the desired structure over a large frequency range. The staircase profile is such that its corresponding two-dimensional wave equation decomposes into two one-dimensional equations by means of a constant decoupling parameter. We show that basic features of the band structure and Bloch waves in photonic crystals can be analyzed theoretically through this simple approximation.     

Chaos after period-doubling bifurcations in the resonance of an impact oscillator

A linear, viscously damped oscillator that rebounds elastically whenever the displacement drops to zero is a well-defined quasi-linear deterministic system arising throughout the physical sciences. It exhibits a family of sub-harmonic resonant peaks between which we delineate cascades of period-doubling bifurcations leading to chaotic regimes typical of a strange attractor.