Influence of the cocatalyst structure on the statistical copolymerization of methyl methacrylate with bulky methacrylates using the zirconocene complex Cp2ZrMe2

Statistical copolymers of methyl methacrylate with cyclohexyl and trimethylsilyloxy ethyl methacrylate were synthesized with two different catalytic systems based on the zirconocene complex Cp₂ZrMe₂. The reactivity ratios of methyl methacrylate and these methacrylates were calculated with the Finemann–Ross, inverted Finemann–Ross, and Kelen–Tüdos graphical methods. The structural parameters of these copolymers were estimated from the calculation of the dyad monomer sequence fractions. Two different borate cocatalysts were employed, and their effect on the copolymerization process is discussed. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 43: 3305–3314, 2005     

Reactions of o‐quinones with α‐methyl‐ (or methylene) substituted phosphorus ylides. Synthesis of benzo[b]furan derivatives

In Wittig reaction of some α‐methyl‐ and α‐methylene‐substituted phosphorus ylides with o‐quinones, benzo[b]furan derivatives were obtained via the cyclization of the o‐vinylphenols, initially formed from the tautomerization of the corresponding intermediate o‐quinone methides.     

Power Divergence Family of Tests for Categorical Time Series Models

A fundamental issue that arises after fitting a regression model is that of testing the goodness of the fit. Our work brings together the power divergence family of goodness of fit tests and regression models for categorical time series. We show that under some reasonable assumptions, the asymptotic distribution of the power divergence family of goodness of fit tests converges to a normal random variable. This fact introduces a novel method for carrying out goodness of fit tests about a regression model for categorical time series. We couple the theory with some empirical results.     

Vortex generation in the cross-flow around a cylinder attached to an end-wall

A cylinder attached to an end-wall normal to its axis is a common feature of many practical flow systems, e.g. in turbo-machinery or when a bridge is supported by a pillar from the bed of a river. In this situation, the nominally two-dimensional boundary layer flow incident upon the cylinder develops strong three-dimensional features and a very pronounced vortex structure may arise in the upstream flow close to the wall. For the appropriate Reynolds number range, the upstream vortical structure is nominally steady and is commonly referred to as the “horseshoe vortex system”. In contrast, the flow downstream is unsteady and periodic over a wide range of Reynolds numbers and vortices aligned with the cylinder axis are shed at a regular frequency into the wake. The generation of both these vortex systems requires energy to be extracted from the incident flow with the result that the drag force on the cylinder is increased.This paper concentrates on the upstream region of the cylinder and discusses an investigation in which two-component Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) has been used to visualise the flow behaviour for a circular cylinder on a plane end-wall. The use of PIV has enabled two orthogonal velocity components to be measured in planes defined by the upstream flow direction and the axis of the cylinder. The third (out-of-plane) velocity component was then calculated by integrating the continuity equation. Subsequently, the velocity field information has been manipulated and converted into time-averaged information.Discussion of the measured results confirms that colour displays are an invaluable aid to understanding this complex fluid flow situation since they reveal substantially more information than grey-scale plots of the same data. In particular, the source of the horseshoe vortex system can be identified when colour plots of the time-averaged velocity and vorticity distributions are obtained. A limited amount of information on the unsteady vortex structures appearing in the end-wall region upstream of the cylinder is also presented. Finally, the experimental findings are discussed in relation to the results of previous workers.     

Efficient Chemoselective Oxidation of Phenylmethanols to Aldehydes with Iodosobenzene

Primary phenylmethanols are selectively and efficiently oxidized to the corresponding aldehydes by the system C₆H₅IO/(C₆H₅)₄PBr/CH₂Cl₂, T = 298 K under aerobic conditions. The use of the relatively stable iodosobenzene, an iodine(III) compound, in place of the usually employed and potentially explosive iodine(V) reagents, the easy work-up procedure, and the facile recycling of solvent and oxidant provides a convenient and environmentally benign oxidation method.     

On the Identification and Quantification of Ergothioneine and Lovastatin in Various Mushroom Species: Assets and Challenges of Different Analytical Approaches

In recent years, mushrooms have drawn the attention of agro-industries and food-industries as they were considered to be valuable natural sources of health promoting compounds such as β-glucans, ergothioneine, and lovastatin. The detection and quantification of such compounds by implementing reliable analytical approaches is of the utmost importance in order to adjust mushrooms’ cultivation conditions and maximize the production in different species. Toward this direction, the current study focuses on the comparison of ultraviolet–visible (UV–Vis) spectrometry and liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) methods (a) by evaluating the content of ergothioneine and lovastatin in mushrooms and (b) by highlighting any possible substrate-based interferences that hinder the accurate determination of these two compounds in order to propose the technique-of-choice for a standardized bioactive compounds monitoring. For this purpose, mushrooms produced by three species (i.e., Agaricus bisporus, Pleurotus ostreatus, and P. citrinopileatus) on various cultivation substrates, namely wheat straw (WS), winery (grape marc (GM)), and olive oil (OL) by-products, were examined. Among the two applied techniques, the developed and validated LC–MS methods, exhibiting relatively short analysis time and higher resolution, emerge as the methods-of-choice for detecting ergothioneine and lovastatin in mushrooms. On the contrary, UV–Vis methods were hindered due to co-absorbance of different constituents, resulting in invalid results. Among the studied mushrooms, P. citrinopileatus contained the highest amount of ergothioneine (822.1 ± 20.6 mg kg⁻¹ dry sample), whereas A. bisporus contained the highest amounts of lovastatin (1.39 ± 0.014 mg kg⁻¹ dry sample). Regarding the effect of different cultivation substrates, mushrooms produced on OL and WS contained the highest amount of ergothioneine, while mushrooms deriving from GM-based substrates contained the highest amount of lovastatin.     

A General Method for Obtaining Degenerate Solutions to the Dirac and Weyl Equations and a Discussion on the Experimental Detection of Degenerate States

In this work, a general method is described for obtaining degenerate solutions of the Dirac equation, corresponding to an infinite number of electromagnetic 4-potentials and fields, which are explicitly calculated. More specifically, using four arbitrary real functions, one can automatically construct a spinor that satisfies the Dirac equation for an infinite number of electromagnetic 4-potentials, defined by those functions. An interesting characteristic of these solutions is that, in the case of Dirac particles with nonzero mass, the degenerate spinors should be localized, both in space and time. The method is also extended to the cases of massless Dirac and Weyl particles, where the localization of the spinors is no longer required. Finally, two experimental methods are proposed for detecting the presence of degenerate states.     

Symmetry groups and similarity solutions for a free convective boundary-layer problem

The free convective boundary-layer problem due to the motion of an elastic surface into an electrically conducting fluid is studied with group-theoretical methods. The symmetry groups admitted by the corresponding boundary value problem are obtained. Particular attention is paid on the group of scaling which provides the similarity solution of the problem. Also, the admissible form of the data, in order to be conformed to the obtained symmetries, is provided. Finally, with the use of the entailed similarity solution the problem is transformed into a boundary value problem of ODEs and is solved numerically.     

A Methodology for Speeding up MVM for Regular,Toeplitz and Bisymmetric Toeplitz Matrices

The Matrix Vector Multiplication algorithm is an important kernel in most varied domains and application areas and the performance of its implementations highly depends on the memory utilization and data locality. In this paper, a new methodology for MVM including different types of matrices, i.e. Regular, Toeplitz and Bisymmetric Toeplitz, is presented in detail. This methodology achieves higher execution speed than the software state of the art library, ATLAS (speedup from 1.2 up to 4.4), and other conventional software implementations, for both general (SIMD unit is used) and embedded processors. This is achieved by fully and simultaneously exploiting the combination of software and hardware parameters as one problem and not separately.