Isolation and structure elucidation of two new alkaloids,pandamarilactonine-C and -D,from Pandanus amaryllifolius and revision of relative stereochemistry of pandamarilactonine-A and -B by total synthesis

Two new pyrrolidine alkaloids, pandamarilactonine-C and -D, were isolated from Pandanus amaryllifolius. Based on the total synthesis of pandamarilactonine-C and its related alkaloid, pandamarilactonine-A, the relative stereochemistry of pandamarilactonine-A and -B, which was previously proposed by spectroscopic analysis, was revised.     

Catalytic flow-injection determination of sub-ppb copper(II) using the redox reaction of cysteine with iron(III) in the presence of 2,4,6-tris(2-pyridyl)-1,3,5-triazine.

A kinetic-catalytic spectrophotometric flow-injection method was developed for the rapid and sensitive determination of trace amounts of copper(II). The method is based on the catalytic effect of copper(II) on the redox reaction of cysteine with iron(III). Iron(II) produced by the catalytic reaction reacts with 2,4,6-tris(2-pyridyl)-1,3,5-triazine (TPTZ) to form the iron(II)-TPTZ complex (lambda(max) = 593 nm). By measuring an absorbance of the complex, one could determine 0.05-8 ppb copper(II) with the relative standard deviations (n = 10) of 1.6%, 1.3%, and 0.8% for 0.5 ppb, 1 ppb, and 2 ppb copper(II), respectively. The limit of detection (S/N = 3) was 0.005 ppb. The sample throughput was 30 h(-1). The proposed method was successfully applied to the determination of copper in natural water and serum samples.     

Asymmetric 1,4-addition of triarylbismuths to enones catalyzed by dicationic palladium(II) complexes

A 1,4-addition of triarylbismuths to cyclic and acyclic enones was carried out in aqueous methanol in the presence of a chiral phosphine-dicationic palladium(ii) complex. Palladium complexes of (S,S)-chiraphos or (S,S)-dipamp gave optically active beta-arylketones of up to 95% ee.     

Robustness of the noise-induced phase synchronization in a general class of limit cycle oscillators

We show that a wide class of uncoupled limit-cycle oscillators can be in-phase synchronized by common weak additive noise. An expression of the Lyapunov exponent is analytically derived to study the stability of the noise-driven synchronizing state. The result shows that such a synchronization can be achieved in a broad class of oscillators with little constraint on their intrinsic property. On the other hand, the leaky integrate-and-fire neuron oscillators do not belong to this class, generating intermittent phase slips according to a power law distribution of their intervals.     

Encapsulation of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) in Ba(2+)-alginate to form coated micro-beads and their application to the pre-concentration/elimination of dibenzo-p-dioxin, dibenzofuran, and biphenyl from contaminated water

We report preliminary data on the first use of multi-walled carbon nanotubes as adsorbents for the pre-concentration/elimination of dibenzo-p-dioxin, dibenzofuran and biphenyl from contaminated water.     

Breakdown of an electric-field driven system: a mapping to a quantum walk

Quantum transport properties of electron systems driven by strong electric fields are studied by mapping the Landau-Zener transition dynamics to a quantum walk on a semi-infinite one-dimensional lattice with a reflecting boundary, where the sites correspond to energy levels and the boundary the ground state. Quantum interference induces a distribution localized around the ground state, and a delocalization transition occurs when the electric field is increased, which describes the dielectric breakdown in the original electron system.     

Drude weight at finite temperatures for some nonintegrable quantum systems in one dimension

Using conformal perturbation theory, we show that, for some classes of the one-dimensional quantum liquids that possess the Luttinger liquid fixed point in the low-energy limit, the Drude weight at finite temperatures is nonvanishing, even when the system is nonintegrable and the total current is not conserved. We also obtain the asymptotically exact low-temperature formula of the Drude weight for Heisenberg XXZ spin chains, which agrees quite well with recent numerical data.