The lead tetraacetate oxidation of bisacylhydrazones of α-diketones: A scope re-assesment

Oxidation of the title compounds yields, besides the reported isoimides 3 and/or the amides 4 , also the imides 5 . The observed product dichotomy is considered as the result of an intramolecular nucleophilic attack on the aroyl group, of the pressumed zwitterionic intermediate 2 , by O or N present in the ambident N-aroylimine site of 2 . The results of AM1 calculations agree with the product studies and both permit the formulation of a set of rules correlating structure and selectivity.     

Mass Power Spectrum in a Universe Dominated by the Chaplygin Gas

The mass power spectrum for a Universe dominated by the Chaplygin gas is evaluated numerically from scales of the order of the Hubble horizon to 100 Mpc. The results are compared with a pure baryonic Universe and a cosmological constant model. In all three cases, the spectrum increases with k, the wavenumber of the perturbations. The slope of the spectrum is higher for the baryonic model and smaller for the cosmological constant model, the Chaplygin gas interpolating these two models. The results are analyzed in terms of the sound velocity of the Chaplygin gas and the moment the Universe begins to accelerate.     

Deformation Quantization for Systems with Fermions

Deformation quantization, which achieves the passage from classical mechanics to quantum mechanics by the replacement of the pointwise multiplication of functions on phase space by the star product, is a powerful tool for treating systems involving bosonic degrees of freedom, both in quantum mechanics and in quantum field theory. In the present paper we show how these methods may be naturally extended to systems involving fermions. In particular we show how supersymmetric quantum mechanics can be formulated in this approach and consider examples involving both non-relativistic and relativistic systems.     

Ermakov Approach for Minisuperspace Oscillators

The Wheeler–DeWitt equation of arbitrary Hartle–Hawking factor ordering for several minisuperspace universe models, such as the pure gravity Friedmann–Robertson–Walker and Taub ones, is mapped onto the dynamics of corresponding classical oscillators. The latter ones are studied by the classical Ermakov invariant method, which is a natural approach in this context. For the more realistic case of a minimally coupled massive scalar field, one can study, within the same type of approach, the corresponding squeezing features as a possible means of describing cosmological evolution. Finally, we comment on the analogy with the accelerator physics.     

Numerical solutions of the shallow water equations with discontinuous bed topography

A simple scheme is developed for treatment of vertical bed topography in shallow water flows. The effect of the vertical step on flows is modelled with the shallow water equations including local energy loss terms. The bed elevation is denoted with z_b^‐ for the left and z_b⁺ for the right values at each grid point, hence exactly representing a discontinuity in the bed topography. The surface gradient method (SGM) is generalized to reconstruct water depths at cell interfaces involving a vertical step so that the fluxes at the cell interfaces can accurately be calculated with a Riemann solver. The scheme is verified by predicting a surge crossing a step, a tidal flow over a step and dam‐break flows on wet/dry beds. The results have shown good agreements compared with analytical solutions and available experimental data. The scheme is efficient, robust, and may be used for practical flow calculations. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.