The long‐time behaviour of the thermoconvective flow in a porous medium

For the Boussinesq approximation of the equations of coupled heat and fluid flow in a porous medium we show that the corresponding system of partial differential equations possesses a global attractor. We give lower and upper bounds of the Hausdorff dimension of the attractor depending on a physical parameter of the system, namely the Rayleigh number of the flow. Numerical experiments confirm the theoretical findings and raise new questions on the structure of the solutions of the system. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Non-protein amino acids in peptide design

An overview of the use of non-protein amino acids in the design of conformationally well-defined peptides, based on work from the author’s laboratory, is discussed. The crystal structures of several designed oligopeptides illustrate the useα-aminoisobutyric acid (Aib) in the construction of helices, D-amino acids in the design of helix termination segments and^DPro-Xxx segments for nucleating ofβ-hairpin structures.β- andγ-amino acid residues have been used to expand the range of designed polypeptide structures. Dedicated to Professor C N R Rao on his 70th birthday     

Microwave-accelerated conjugate addition of aldehydes to α,β-unsaturated ketones

Aldehydes undergo smooth conjugate addition to α,β-unsaturated ketones in the presence of 5-(2-hydroxyethyl)-1,3-thiazolium halides and DBU adsorbed onto the surface of basic alumina under microwave irradiation and solvent-free conditions to afford 1,4-diketones in enhanced yields and reduced reaction times compared to conventional methods.     

Addition of Bromotrichloromethane and Tetrachloromethane to cis-Cyclooctene,Cyclohexene, and Norbornadiene in the Presence of Palladium(II) Complexes

Addition of bromotrichloromethane and tetrachloromethane to alkenes in the presence of palladium(II) complexes begins with single-electron transfer from the palladium atom to polyhalomethane molecule, followed by fragmentation of the radical anion thus formed and generation of trichloromethyl radical. Halogen transfer to a carbon-centered radical arising from addition of trichloromethyl radical at the double bond occurs both from the polyhalomethane molecule and from halide palladium complex.     

Synthesis and Structure of Mixed Phosphonium-iodonium Ylide

A mixed phosphonium-iodonium ylide, phenyliodoniumethoxycarbonylmethylenetriphenylphosphorane borofluoride, was synthesized. Its structure was established by means of X-ray diffraction analysis. Temperature dependence of ¹H, ¹³C, and ³¹P spectra of the ylide synthesized was investigated. A dynamic equilibrium between Z and E-isomers was observed.     

Invariant ideals of twisted crossed products

We will prove a result concerning the inclusion of non-trivial invariant ideals inside non-trivial ideals of a twisted crossed product. We will also give results concerning the primeness and simplicity of crossed products of twisted actions of locally compact groups on -algebras. Received: 25 January 2002; in final form: 22 May 2002/Published online: 2 December 2002 This work is partially supported by Hong Kong RGC Direct Grant.     

Two-row nilpotent orbits of cyclic quivers

We prove that the local intersection cohomology of nilpotent orbit closures of cyclic quivers is trivial when the two orbits involved correspond to partitions with at most two rows. This gives a geometric proof of a result of Graham and Lehrer, which states that standard modules of the affine Hecke algebra of GL_d corresponding to nilpotents with at most two Jordan blocks are multiplicity-free. Received: 7 February 2002 / Published online: 8 November 2002