Triggered release of aqueous content from liposome-derived sol-gel nanocapsules

Liposomes prepared from a mixture of L-alpha-dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine and the PEGilated phospholipid N-(carbonylmethoxypoly(ethylene glycol 2000))-1,2-distearoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphoethanolamine were used as templates for the production of silica and alkylated silica approximately 100 nm capsules, "liposils", entrapping aqueous solutions of anionic dyes. Triggered release of this content was successfully affected by either low-frequency ultrasound or by microwave treatments. Cryo-TEM was used to follow the formation process of these particles, which are aggregated in a chain-like manner. A mechanism explaining this phenomenon is suggested.     

Acyclic amino acid-catalyzed direct asymmetric aldol reactions: alanine, the simplest stereoselective organocatalyst

The linear amino acid-catalyzed direct asymmetric intermolecular aldol reaction is presented; simple amino acids such as alanine, valine, isoleucine, aspartate, alanine tetrazole and serine catalyzed the direct catalytic asymmetric intermolecular aldol reactions between unmodified ketones and aldehydes with excellent stereocontrol and furnished the corresponding aldol products in up to 98% yield and with up to > 99% ee.     

Electronic Filtering of Interferometric Homodyne Crosstalk in WDM Systems with Absolute Frequency Reference

Electronic high pass filtering of interferometric crosstalk noise is investigated theoretically and experimentally in systems with absolute frequency reference employing external modulation and DC balanced coding. 4 dB improvement in the tolerance to crosstalk is demonstrated.     

Synthesis and characterization of Au102(p-MBA)44 nanoparticles

The synthesis of Au(102)(p-MBA)(44) nanoparticles on a preparative scale in high yield is described. Various analytical methods are shown to give results consistent with the composition and known structure of the particles, showing the preparation is essentially homogeneous, and attesting to the validity of the methods as well. Derivatization of the particles with proteins and DNA is demonstrated, and conditions are described for imaging individual particles by cryo-EM at low electron dose, close to focus, conditions optimal for recording high-resolution details.     

Electronic and vibrational signatures of the Au102(p-MBA)44 cluster

Optical absorption of a gold nanocluster of 102 Au atoms protected by 44 para-mercaptobenzoic acid (p-MBA) ligands is measured in the range of 0.05-6.2 eV (mid-IR to UV) by a combination of several techniques for purified samples in solid and solution phases. The results are compared to calculations for a model cluster Au(102)(SMe)(44) based on the time-dependent density functional theory in the linear-response regime and using the known structure of Au(102)(p-MBA)(44). The measured and calculated molar absorption coefficients in the NIR-vis region are comparable, within a factor of 2, in the absolute scale. Several characteristic features are observed in the absorption in the range of 1.5-3.5 eV. The onset of the electronic transitions in the mid-IR region is experimentally observed at 0.45 ± 0.05 eV which compares well with the lowest calculated transition at 0.55 eV. Vibrations in the ligand layer give rise to fingerprint IR features below the onset of low-energy metal-to-metal electronic transitions. Partial exchange of the p-MBA ligand to glutathione does not affect the onset of the electronic transitions, which indicates that the metal core of the cluster is not affected by the ligand exchange. The full spectroscopic characterization of the Au(102)(p-MBA)(44) reported here for the first time gives benchmarks for further studies of manipulation and functionalization of this nanocluster to various applications.     

Favoring Trienamine Activation through Unconjugated Dienals: Organocatalytic Enantioselective Remote Functionalization of Alkenes

Unconjugated 2,5‐dienals are more reactive substrates than the corresponding fully conjugated α,β,γ,δ‐unsaturated aldehydes towards organocatalytic activation through trienamine intermediates. This difference in reactivity has been demonstrated in the Diels–Alder reaction with nitroalkenes, a reaction that proceeds with clean β,ε‐selectivity to afford the final products in high yields and stereoselectivities, the related polyconjugated 2,4‐dienals being completely unreactive.     

A polynomial-time method to compute all Nash equilibria solutions of a general two-person inspection game

We consider a two-person nonzero-sum simultaneous inspection game that takes place at multiple sites. The inspector has a limited inspection resource. She needs to decide which sites to inspect, and with how much effort, while adhering also to local restrictions on the permitted inspections levels at the sites. The inspectee has several employees who work on his behalf. He needs to decide how to distribute them across the sites, and how they should act there. Computation of Nash equilibria is challenging for this sort of games. Still, we develop a linear-time algorithm that determines all Nash equilibria solutions of the game, and provide explicit (easily computable) expressions for all possible Nash equilibria. We then derive some managerial insights by applying the algorithm to several examples, and examining the Nash equilibria, including an outcome that an increase in the inspection resource may induce the inspectee to cooperate more at sites without increasing the inspection levels at them.     

Optical forces arising from phase gradients

We demonstrate both theoretically and experimentally that phase gradients in a light field can be used to create a new category of optical traps complementary to the more familiar intensity-gradient traps known as optical tweezers. We further show that the work done by phase-gradient forces is path dependent and briefly discuss some ramifications of this nonconservativity.     

Multiple agents finitely repeated inspection game with dismissals

Decision makers usually have to face a budget and other type of constraints when they have to decide which projects are going to be undertaken (to satisfy their requirements and guarantee profitable growth). Our purpose is to assist them in the task of selecting project portfolios. We have approached this problem by proposing a general nonlinear binary multi-objective mathematical model, which takes into account all the most important factors mentioned in the literature related with Project Portfolio Selection and Scheduling. Due to the existence of uncertainty in different aspects involved in the aforementioned decision task, we have also incorporated into the model some fuzzy parameters, which allow us to represent information not fully known by the decision maker/s. The resulting problem is both fuzzy and multiobjective. The results are complemented with graphical tools, which show the usefulness of the proposed model to assist the decision maker/s.