The liquid-liquid extraction using hydrophilic solvents occluded to an oil-adsorbent as an organic phase: extraction of 8-quinolinolato complexes of alkaline earth metals into tetrahydrofuran.

In order to use a hydrophilic solvent as an organic phase in liquid-liquid extraction by retaining it to a solid support, the occlusion and desorption of nine hydrophilic solvents, such as methanol, to three kinds of commercially available oil-adsorbent were examined. The combination of tetrahydrofuran and WOSEP made by fibrous polypropylene was finally selected, and was subjected to the extraction of alkaline Earth metals with 8-quinolinol. It was proved that Mg2+, Ca2+, and Sr2+ ions could be successfully extracted into the tetrahydrofuran phase in the form of 8-quinolinolato complexes, which could not be extracted into CHCl3.     

Change in reaction pathway in the reduction of 3,5-di-tert-butyl-1,2-benzoquinone with increasing concentrations of 2,2,2-trifluoroethanol

The electrochemical reduction of 3,5-di-tert-butyl-1,2-benzoquinone, 1, has been studied in acetonitrile with added 2,2,2-trifluoroethanol, 2. At low concentrations of 2 the reaction proceeds by the following pathway: reduction of the quinone (Q) to its anion radical (Q*-) followed by complexation of the anion radical with 2 (HA) and the further reduction of the hydrogen-bonded complex (Q*- (HA)) to form HQ- and A-. The latter reaction is a concerted proton and electron- transfer reaction (CPET). At higher concentrations of 2, the pathway changes. The first steps remain the same, but now Q*- (HA) is reduced to HQ- via a disproportionation reaction with Q*- along with proton transfer from HA to Q*- to form HQ* which is reduced to HQ-. The only mechanism that could be found which would account for all of the data involves proton transfer to Q*- occurring within a higher complex, Q*-(HA)3.     

Normal curvature of CR submanifolds of maximal CR dimension of the complex projective space

We prove that there do not exist CR submanifolds Mⁿ of maximal CR dimension of a complex projective space \({\mathbf{P}^{\frac{n+p}{2}}(\mathbf{C})}\) with flat normal connection D of M, when the distinguished normal vector field is parallel with respect to D. If D is lift-flat, then there exists a totally geodesic complex projective subspace \({\mathbf{P}^{\frac{n+1}{2}}(\mathbf{C})}\) of \({\mathbf{P}^{\frac{n+p}{2}}(\mathbf{C})}\) such that M is a real hypersurface of \({\mathbf{P}^{\frac{n+1}{2}}(\mathbf{C})}\).     

Replica sub-permutation method for molecular dynamics and monte carlo simulations

We propose an improvement of the replica-exchange and replica-permutation methods, which we call the replica sub-permutation method (RSPM). Instead of considering all permutations, this method uses a new algorithm referred to as sub-permutation to perform parameter transition. The RSPM succeeds in reducing the number of combinations between replicas and parameters without the loss of sampling efficiency. For comparison, we applied the replica sub-permutation, replica-permutation, and replica-exchange methods to a β-hairpin mini protein, chignolin, in explicit water. We calculated the transition ratio and number of tunneling events in the parameter space, the number of folding–unfolding events, the autocorrelation function, and the autocorrelation time as measures of sampling efficiency. The results indicate that among the three methods, the proposed RSPM is the most efficient in both parameter and conformational spaces. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.