C−C Bond Formation of Benzyl Alcohols and Alkynes Using a Catalytic Amount of KOtBu: Unusual Regioselectivity through a Radical Mechanism

We report a C?C bond‐forming reaction between benzyl alcohols and alkynes in the presence of a catalytic amount of KO^tBu to form α‐alkylated ketones in which the C=O group is located on the side derived from the alcohol. The reaction proceeds under thermal conditions (125 °C) and produces no waste, making the reaction highly atom efficient, environmentally benign, and sustainable. Based on our mechanistic investigations, we propose that the reaction proceeds through radical pathways.     

Gravity stabilizes itself

We show that a possible resolution to the stabilization of an extra spatial dimension (radion) can be obtained solely in the context of gravitational dynamics itself without the necessity of introducing any external stabilizing field. In this scenario the stabilized value of the radion field gets determined in terms of the parameters appearing in the higher curvature gravitational action. Furthermore, the mass of the radion field and its coupling to the standard model fields are found to be in the weak scale implying possible signatures in the TeV scale colliders. Some resulting implications are also discussed.     

Application of spectroscopic techniques for monitoring microbial diversity and bioremediation

Microbes are the most fascinating group, with huge diversity devising myriad functional applications in the field of medicine, pharmaceuticals, environmental remediation, and industries. Quantitative and qualitative determination of biomolecules and microbial assisted phenomena by spectroscopy is a pioneer approach. It facilitates the study of atomic and molecular geometries, energy levels, chemical bonds, and interactions between molecules and microbes. It produces fingerprints of the microbial species serving to characterize, differentiate, and identify microorganisms, in both the environment and at single-cell level. Spectroscopy-based bioremediation techniques like Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, mass spectroscopy, force spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, photoemission spectroscopy, and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy have been very well represented and linked with the microbial applications. This review summarizes the traditional spectroscopic techniques used for the study of microbes and microbial-assisted products as well as illustrates its application in the field of microbial diversity and remediation. This will provide an outlook for the intricate characterization and dimension of microbes to be used for effective application in bioremediation.     

Complex-scaling treatment for high-lying doubly excited resonances for screened Coulomb helium atom

This work presents an investigation on the doubly excited ¹S ^e autoionizing states of screened helium atom lying below the n = 4 threshold of the He⁺ ion. The potential generated in this system is represented by a Yukawa type potential. We have employed complex-coordinate rotation method, as it is a powerful scheme to study high lying resonances. Hylleraas type wave function is used to consider the correlation effect between all the charged particles. Our resonance parameters for the resonances lying below the He⁺ (n = 2) threshold agree well with those of the existing calculations by using the stabilization method. Resonances associated with higher thresholds are new calculations. All the present results are well converged with basis length N = 444.     

Gravitational collapse in higher dimensional Husain space–time

We investigate exact solution in higher dimensional Husain model for a null fluid source with pressure p and density ρ are related by the following relations (i) p  =  kρ, (ii) (variable modified Chaplygin) and (iii) p  =  kρ^α (polytropic). We have studied the nature of singularity in gravitational collapse for the above equations of state and also for different choices of the of the parameters k and B namely, (i) k  =  0, B  =  constant (generalized Chaplygin), (ii) B  =  constant (modified Chaplygin). It is found that the nature of singularity is independent of these choices of different equation of state except for variable Chaplygin model. Choices of various parameters are shown in tabular form. Finally, matching of Szekeres model with exterior Husain space–time is done.     

Ion beam synthesis of metal-quantum dots for photonic applications

Although electronics technologies have made great advances in device speed, optical devices can function in the time domain inaccessible to electronics. In the time domain less than 1 ps, optical devices have no competition. Photonic or optical devices are designed to switch and process light signals without converting them to electronic form. The major advantages that these devices offer are speed and preservation of bandwidth. The switching is accomplished through changes in refractive index of the material that are proportional to the light intensity. The third-order optical susceptibility, χ⁽³⁾, known as the optical Kerr susceptibility which is related to the non-linear part of the total refractive index, is the nonlinearity which provides this particular feature. Future opportunities in photonic switching and information processing will depend critically on the development of improved photonic materials with enhanced Kerr susceptibilities, as these materials are still in a relatively early stage of development. Different glass systems are now under investigation to increase their nonlinearity by introducing a variety of modifiers into the glass-network. Ion implantation is an attractive method for inducing colloid formation at a high local concentration unattainable by the melt-glass fabrication process and for confining the non-linearities to specific patterned regions in a variety of host matrices. Recent works on metal-ion implanted colloid generation in bulk fused silica glasses have shown that these nanocluster-glass composites under favourable circumstances have significant enhancement of χ⁽³⁾ with picosecond to femtosecond temporal responses.     

Automated leukocyte recognition using fuzzy divergence

This paper aims at introducing an automated approach to leukocyte recognition using fuzzy divergence and modified thresholding techniques. The recognition is done through the segmentation of nuclei where Gamma, Gaussian and Cauchy type of fuzzy membership functions are studied for the image pixels. It is in fact found that Cauchy leads better segmentation as compared to others. In addition, image thresholding is modified for better recognition. Results are studied and discussed.     

Viscoelastic flow in a two-dimensional collapsible channel

We compute the flow of three viscoelastic fluids (Oldroyd-B, FENE-P, and Owens blood model) in a two-dimensional channel partly bounded by a tensioned membrane, a benchmark geometry for fluid–structure interactions. The predicted flow patterns are compared to those of a Newtonian liquid. We find that computations fail beyond a limiting Weissenberg number. Flow fields and membrane shape differ significantly because of the different degree of shear thinning and molecular extensibility underlying the three different microstructural models.