Patterned polyfluorene surfaces by functionalization of nanoimprinted polymeric features

A new procedure is described for surface grafting polymer brushes by step-growth polymerization from initiator-embedded polymeric thin films and micron- and nanometer-scale patterns. An imprint lithographic process, nanocontact molding, was used to prepare thin patterned cross-linked polyacrylate network films on silicon wafers that incorporated 4-bromostyrene in the networks. These networks present reactive 4-bromophenyl functionality at the surface that act as attachment sites for the subsequent Ni(0)- mediated step-growth condensation polymerization of 2,7-dibromo-9,9-dihexylfluorene The step-growth polymerization medium consisted of 2,7-dibromo-9,9-dihexylfluorene, Ni(0)-catalyst, and bipyridine in a toluene/dimethylformamide solvent mixture. The resulting growth of polydihexylfluorene brushes from the patterned surface was monitored by contact angle, optical spectrometry, surface profilometry and AFM. Brush growth was conducted from patterned features ranging from 100 microm to 100 nm in width and 50 nm in height. The optical and fluorescence behavior of the polyfluorene brushes was similar to that of thin polyfluorene films made by spin coating.     

Two acceleration mechanisms in verified global optimization

Acceleration devices are very important to speed up interval global optimization algorithms. We propose here two techniques which can be applied in addition to other known techniques. Firstly, we propose a test based on the one-dimensional Newton iteration to discard or split the current box. This test is usually cheap and it is likely to be successful when a good approximation of the minimum is known early. The other technique proposed deals with parallelization. We propose to share the task of the manager process among other non-idle processes in such a way that not only one process is responsible for the load balancing. Experimental results presented show that both techniques yield significant improvements in many cases.     

Réduction des tores déployés par une extension modérément ramifiée

We study the connected component of the special fiber of the Néron model of a torus split over a tamely ramified extension. It turns out to be a product of Witt vectors of finite length, explicitly calculable. We are thus able to correct a result presented in Kunyavskii and Sansuc (C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 324 (1997) 307–312). To cite this article: C. Buchheim, H. Frommer, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 338 (2004).     

Parallel nonlinear multisplitting methods

Summary Linear multisplitting methods are known as parallel iterative methods for solving a linear systemAx=b. We extend the idea of multisplittings to the problem of solving a nonlinear system of equationsF(x)=0. Our nonlinear multisplittings are based on several nonlinear splittings of the functionF. In a parallel computing environment, each processor would have to calculate the exact solution of an individual nonlinear system belonging to his nonlinear multisplitting and these solutions are combined to yield the next iterate. Although the individual systems are usually much less involved than the original system, the exact solutions will in general not be available. Therefore, we consider important variants where the exact solutions of the individual systems are approximated by some standard method such as Newton's method. Several methods proposed in literature may be regarded as special nonlinear multisplitting methods. As an application of our systematic approach we present a local convergence analysis of the nonlinear multisplitting methods and their variants. One result is that the local convergence of these methods is determined by an induced linear multisplitting of the Jacobian ofF.Dedicated to the memory of Peter Henrici     

Parallel interval multisplittings

Summary We introduce interval multisplittings to enclose the setS={A^–1b|A[A], b[b]}, where [A] denotes an interval matrix and [b] an interval vector. The resulting iterative multisplitting methods have a natural parallelism. We investigate these methods with respect to convergence, speed of convergence and quality of the resulting enclosure forS.Dedicated to the memory of Peter Henrici     

Chemistry and Biochemistry of Microbial α-Glucosidase Inhibitors

α-Glucosidases are among the most important carbohydrate-splitting enzymes. They catalyze the hydrolysis of α-glucosidic linkages. Their substrates are—depending on their specificity—oligo- and polysaccharides. Microbial inhibitors of α-amylases and other mammalian intestinal carbohydrate-splitting enzymes studied during the last few years have aroused medical interest in the treatment of metabolic diseases such as diabetes. Moreover, they extend the spectrum of microbial secondary metabolites which comprises an enormous variety of structures. They also contribute considerably to a better understanding of the mechanism of action of α-glucosidases. These inhibitors belong to different classes of substances. Those studied most thoroughly are microbial α-glucosidase inhibitors which are members of a homologous series of pseudooligosaccharides of the general formula (4). They all have a core in common which is essential for their inhibitory action, a pseudodisaccharide residue consisting of an unsaturated cyclitol unit, and a 4-amino-4,6-dideoxy- glucose unit. The—in many respects—most interesting representative of this homologous series is acarbose (5), a pseudotetrasaccharide exhibiting a very pronounced inhibitory effect on intestinal α-glucosidases such as sucrase, maltase and glucoamylase. The present paper will review this new field of microbial α-glucosidase inhibitors which has been studied with particular intensity during the past ten years.     

On Preconditioners for the Borsuk Existence Test

Existence or fixed point theorems, combined with interval analytic methods, provide a means to computationally prove the existence of a zero of a nonlinear system in a given interval vector. One such test is based on Borsuk's existence theorem. We discuss preconditioning techniques that are aimed at improving the effectiveness of this test. (© 2004 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)