Moreau's hydrodynamic helicity and the life of vortex knots and links

This contribution to an issue of Comptes rendus Mécanique, commemorating the scientific work of Jean-Jacques Moreau (1923–2014), is intended to give a brief overview of recent developments in the study of helicity dynamics in real fluids and an outlook on the growing legacy of Moreau's work. Moreau's discovery of the conservation of hydrodynamic helicity, presented in an article in the Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences in 1961, was not recognized until long after it was published. This seminal contribution is gaining a new life now that modern developments allow the study of helicity and topology in fields and is having a growing impact on diverse areas of physics.     

Vacuum moulding of a superplastic in two dimensions

A mathematical model is proposed for the process of vacuum superplasticforming. The model exploits the fact that in most industrialapplications the sheet aspect ratio (thickness/sheet width)is small. After an initial consideration of some of the moregeneral properties and the literature of superplastic materials,the elastic/plastic deformation of an internally-inflated thin-walledcylinder is examined. Plates of arbitrary geometry are thenconsidered. A quasisteady model in which the sheet moves througha sequence of steady states is developed. Some simplified closed-formsolutions are examined, but for general cases a system of nonlinearpartial differential equations must be solved numerically. Anefficient and accurate semi-explicit numerical scheme is proposedand a simplified stability analysis is presented; the methodis then used to compute properties of superplastic vacuum mouldedsheets in a number of practically motivated cases.     

Searches for new interstellar molecules, including a tentative detection of aziridine and a possible detection of propenal

Rotational spectroscopy at millimeter wavelengths is a powerful means of investigating the chemistry of dense interstellar clouds. These regions can exhibit an interesting complement of gas phase molecules, including relatively complex organics. Here we report the tentative first astronomical detection of aziridine (ethylenimine), the possible detection of propenal (acrolein), and upper limits on the abundances of cyclopropenone, furan, hydroxyethanal (glycolaldehyde), thiohydroxylamine (NH2SH), and ethenol (vinyl alcohol) in various interstellar clouds.     

Characterization of two hydroxytrichloropicolinic acids: application of the one-bond chlorine-isotope effect in 13C NMR

The structures of 4-hydroxy-3,5,6-trichloropyridine-2-carboxylic acid (1a) and 6-hydroxy-3,4,5-trichloro-2-carboxylic acid (1b) were verified by the NMR analysis of their corresponding methylated and decarboxylated derivatives 2,3,5-trichloro-4-methoxypyridine (5) and 3,4,5-trichloro-2-methoxypyridine (8), respectively. The 6-hydroxy isomer (1a) was found to be in equilibrium with its pyridinone tautomer as evidenced by the formation of significant amounts of 3,4,5-trichloro-1-methyl-6-oxo-1,6-dihydropyridine-2-carboxylic acid methyl ester (6b) on exhaustive methylation. The one-bond chlorine-isotope effect was used and shown to be an effective tool for the identification of chlorinated carbons in (13)C NMR spectra providing an additional tool for solving structural problems in chlorinated compounds.     

Highly active iridium(I) complexes for catalytic hydrogen isotope exchange

Practically convenient methods have been developed for the preparation of new iridium complexes, possessing bulky N-heterocyclic carbene and phosphine ligands; these routinely handled complexes are highly active catalysts within directed hydrogen isotope exchange processes.