Numerical Simulation of Turbulent Swirling Flows

In this paper, turbulent swirling flow in circular pipe in the wake behind an axial fan is investigated by URANS and LES using two different CFD codes: SPARC, developed at Institute of Fluid Machinery, at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and OpenFOAM. Results of simulations are compared with experimental results obtained with LDA measurement techniques in that flow field. (© 2013 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

VUV synchrotron radiation: a new activation technique for tandem mass spectrometry

A novel experimental technique for tandem mass spectrometry and ion spectroscopy of electrosprayed ions using vacuum‐ultraviolet (VUV) synchrotron radiation is presented. Photon activation of trapped precursor ions has been performed by coupling a commercial linear quadrupole ion trap (Thermo scientific LTQ XL), equipped with the electrosprayed ions source, to the DESIRS beamline at the SOLEIL synchrotron radiation facility. The obtained results include, for the first time on biopolymers, photodetachment spectroscopy using monochromated synchrotron radiation of multi‐charged anions and the single photon ionization of large charge‐selected polycations. The high efficiency and signal‐to‐noise ratio achieved by the present set‐up open up possibilities of using synchrotron light as a new controllable activation method in tandem mass spectrometry of biopolymers and VUV‐photon spectroscopy of large biological ions.     

Some geometric mixed integer-valued autoregressive (INAR) models

In this paper, we introduce some mixed integer-valued autoregressive models of orders 1 and 2 with geometric marginal distributions, denoted by MGINAR(1) and MGINAR(2), using a mixture of the well-known binomial and the negative binomial thinning. The distributions of the innovation processes are derived and several properties of the model are discussed. Conditional least squares and Yule-Walker estimators are obtained, and some numerical results of the estimations are presented. A real-life data example is investigated to assess the performance of the models.     

On the martingale property of certain local martingales

The stochastic exponential ${Z_t= {\rm exp}\{M_t-M_0-(1/2)\langle M,M\rangle_t\}}$ of a continuous local martingale M is itself a continuous local martingale. We give a necessary and sufficient condition for the process Z to be a true martingale in the case where ${M_t=\int_0^t b(Y_u)\,dW_u}$ and Y is a one-dimensional diffusion driven by a Brownian motion W. Furthermore, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition for Z to be a uniformly integrable martingale in the same setting. These conditions are deterministic and expressed only in terms of the function b and the drift and diffusion coefficients of Y. As an application we provide a deterministic criterion for the absence of bubbles in a one-dimensional setting.     

Chiral amine-induced stereoselectivity in trans-β-lactam formation via Staudinger cycloaddition

A series of chiral trans-β-lactams was obtained via Staudinger cycloaddition with low to moderate diastereoselectivity (up to 54% de) induced by a chiral amine component of the imine. It was shown that the direct connection of nitrogen to a chiral centre is crucial to induce chirality; moderate asymmetric induction was achieved by using isomeric 1-phenylethylamines, which are among the cheapest chiral sources on the market, while low diastereoselectivity was obtained from 3-aminomethylpinane, where the chiral centres are distant from nitrogen by a methylene group. It was shown, that an increase of the reaction temperature from 110 °C to 140 °C led to commensurable results but speeded-up the transformation significantly. The absolute configurations of phenylethylamine derivatives were determined by X-ray analysis of selected samples.     

Finite-time stability analysis of fractional order time-delay systems: Gronwall’s approach

In this paper, a stability test procedure is proposed for linear nonhomogeneous fractional order systems with a pure time delay. Some basic results from the area of finite time and practical stability are extended to linear, continuous, fractional order time-delay systems given in state-space form. Sufficient conditions of this kind of stability are derived for particular class of fractional time-delay systems. A numerical example is given to illustrate the validity of the proposed procedure.     

Laplacian coefficients of trees with given number of leaves or vertices of degree two

Let G be a simple undirected n-vertex graph with the characteristic polynomial of its Laplacian matrix . It is well known that for trees the Laplacian coefficient c_n-2 is equal to the Wiener index of G, while c_n-3 is equal to the modified hyper-Wiener index of graph. Using a result of Zhou and Gutman on the relation between the Laplacian coefficients and the matching numbers in subdivided bipartite graphs, we characterize the trees with k leaves (pendent vertices) which simultaneously minimize all Laplacian coefficients. In particular, this extremal balanced starlike tree S(n,k) minimizes the Wiener index, the modified hyper-Wiener index and recently introduced Laplacian-like energy. We prove that graph S(n,n-1-p) has minimal Laplacian coefficients among n-vertex trees with p vertices of degree two. In conclusion, we illustrate on examples of these spectrum-based invariants that the opposite problem of simultaneously maximizing all Laplacian coefficients has no solution, and pose a conjecture on extremal unicyclic graphs with k leaves.     

Quadrature formulae with multiple nodes and a maximal trigonometric degree of exactness

In this paper we consider interpolatory quadrature formulae with multiple nodes, which have the maximal trigonometric degree of exactness. Our approach is based on a procedure given by Ghizzeti and Ossicini (Quadrature formulae, Academie-Verlag, Berlin, 1970). We introduce and consider the so-called σ-orthogonal trigonometric polynomials of semi-integer degree and give a numerical method for their construction. Also, some numerical examples are included. The authors were supported in part by the Serbian Ministry of Science and Technological Development (Project: Orthogonal Systems and Applications, grant number #144004) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SCOPES Joint Research Project No. IB7320-111079 “New Methods for Quadrature”).     

Vacuum-UV and Low-Energy Electron-Induced DNA Strand Breaks – Influence of the DNA Sequence and Substrate

DNA is effectively damaged by radiation, which can on the one hand lead to cancer and is on the other hand directly exploited in the treatment of tumor tissue. DNA strand breaks are already induced by photons having an energy below the ionization energy of DNA. At high photon energies, most of the DNA strand breaks are induced by low-energy secondary electrons. In the present study we quantified photon and electron induced DNA strand breaks in four different 12mer oligonucleotides. They are irradiated directly with 8.44 eV vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) photons and 8.8 eV low energy electrons (LEE). By using Si instead of VUV transparent CaF₂ as a substrate the VUV exposure leads to an additional release of LEEs, which have a maximum energy of 3.6 eV and can significantly enhance strand break cross sections. Atomic force microscopy is used to visualize strand breaks on DNA origami platforms and to determine absolute values for the strand break cross sections. Upon irradiation with 8.44 eV photons all the investigated sequences show very similar strand break cross sections in the range of 1.7–2.3×10⁻¹⁶ cm². The strand break cross sections for LEE irradiation at 8.8 eV are one to two orders of magnitude larger than the ones for VUV photons, and a slight sequence dependence is observed. The sequence dependence is even more pronounced for LEEs with energies <3.6 eV. The present results help to assess DNA damage by photons and electrons close to the ionization threshold.     

Synthesis,characterization and biological activity of copper(II) complexes with ligands derived from β-amino acids

Transition Metal Chemistry - Two copper(II) complexes with ligands derived from β-amino acids, 2-(1-aminocyclohexyl)acetic acid L1 and 2-(1-amino-4-(tert-butyl)cyclohexyl)acetic acid L2, were...