New D-π-A-conjugated organic sensitizers based on α-pyranylidene donors for dye-sensitized solar cells

A series of new push-pull organic dyes incorporating a cyanoacrylic acid group as electron acceptor unit and α-chalcogenopyranylidene group (X = S; O) as electron donor unit has been synthesized, characterized and used as sensitizer for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). For the first time, α-pyranylidene and thiopyranylidene groups, have been evaluated in DSSC. To obtain the thermodynamic values of the solar cell, an investigation of their electrochemical (CV) and optical properties (UV–vis absorption spectroscopy) is also reported.     

Vesicular exocytosis under hypotonic conditions shows two distinct populations of dense core vesicles in bovine chromaffin cells.

Several previous reports have discussed the effects of external osmolarity on vesicular exocytotic processes. However, few of these studies considered hypotonic conditions on chromaffin cells. Herein, the exocytosis of catecholamines by chromaffin cells was investigated in a medium of low osmolarity (200 mOsm) by amperometry at carbon fiber microelectrodes. It is observed that the frequency of the exocytotic events is significantly higher under hypotonic conditions than under physiological conditions (315 mOsm). This further confirms that the swelling of the polyelectrolytic matrix (which follows ionic exchanges) contained in dense core vesicles is the energetic driving force of the exocytotic phenomenon, being favored by a lower osmolarity. The mean amount of catecholamines released during secretory events also increases importantly under the hypotonic condition. This may be rationalized by the coexistence of two distinct populations of dense core vesicles with a relative content ratio of 4.7. The larger content population is favored under hypotonic conditions but plays only a side role under isotonic conditions.     

Synthesis of vulpinic and pulvinic acids from tetronic acid

A common precursor, tetronic acid, was used in the synthesis of several vulpinic acids and pulvinic acids, which are pigments found in several lichens and mushrooms. The key features of this method are a two-step alkylidenation of benzyl tetronate and a Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling. The synthesis of several natural products, vulpinic acid, pinastric acid, xerocomic acid is described.     

Resolution-independent characteristic scale dedicated to satellite images.

We study the problem of finding the characteristic scale of a given satellite image. This feature is defined so that it does not depend on the spatial resolution of the image. This is a different problem than achieving scale invariance, as often studied in the literature. Our approach is based on the use of a linear scale space and the total variation (TV). The critical scale is defined as the one at which the normalized TV reaches its maximum. It is shown experimentally, both on synthetic and real data, that the computed characteristic scale is resolution independent.     

On Some Exponential Diophantine Equations

 We apply a new, deep result of Bilu, Hanrot and Voutier to solve completely some exponential Diophantine equations of the type , where are given coprime positive integers, , and are unknown. (Received 29 May 2000; in revised form 21 September 2000)     

Structures and spectral properties of heteroleptic copper (I) complexes: A theoretical study based on density functional theory

The structures and electronic absorption spectra of newly synthesized heteroleptic copper (I) complexes [CuL₁L₂]⁺ (L₁ = phen-imidazole and/or L₂ = dipyrido [3,2-a:2’,3’-c] phenazine derivatives) are analyzed under the light of density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT). The ground states geometries, characterized by π-stacking interactions, have been optimized using PBE-D functional taking into account dispersion correction. The UV-visible theoretical absorption spectra have been calculated using B3LYP functional in vacuum and taking into account solvent corrections by means of the polarized continuum model (PCM). Whereas the PBE-D functional is well adapted to the determination of the structures, it does underestimate drastically the transition energies. The spectra are characterized by high density of states, mainly metal-to-ligand-charge-transfer (MLCT) and intra-ligand (IL), between 600 nm and 250 nm. Most of the complexes show an intense band in the near-UV energy domain (～320 nm) corresponding to an IL transition. The lowest part of the absorption spectra, starting at 600 nm, corresponds to MLCT transitions leading to a shoulder observed experimentally between 400 and 500 nm. The upper part of the spectra, beyond 300 nm, puts in evidence strong mixing between ligand-to-ligand-charge-transfer (LLCT), IL and MLCT states.     

High order numerical simulation of the thermal load on a lobed strut injector for scramjet applications

In this paper, the thermal load on an actively cooled lobed strut injector for scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) applications is investigated numerically. This requires coupled simulations of the strut internal and external flow fields together with the heat conduction in the solid injector body. In order to achieve a fast mixing, the lobed strut is positioned at the channel axis to inject hydrogen into the core of a Mach 3 air stream. There it is exposed to the extremely high temperatures of the high speed flow. While the external air and hydrogen flows are supersonic, the strut internal hydrogen flow is mainly subsonic, in some regions at very low Mach numbers. To enable a simulation of the internal flow field which ranges from very low to very high Mach numbers (approximately Mach 2.25 at the nozzle exit), a preconditioning technique is employed. The compressible finite‐volume scheme uses a spatially fourth order multi‐dimensional limiting process discretization, which is used here for a first time to simulate a geometrically and fluid mechanically highly complex problem. It will be demonstrated that besides its high accuracy the multi‐dimensional limiting process scheme is numerically stable even in case of demanding practical applications. The coupled simulation of the lobed strut injector delivers unique insight into the flow phenomena inside and outside the strut, the heat fluxes, the temperature distribution in the solid material, the required hydrogen mass flux with respect to cooling requirements and details concerning the conditions at the exit of the injector. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Remarks on the minimizing geodesic problem in inviscid incompressible fluid mechanics

We consider L2 minimizing geodesics along the group of volume preserving maps SDiff(D) of a given 3-dimensional domain D. The corresponding curves describe the motion of an ideal incompressible fluid inside D and are (formally) solutions of the Euler equations. It is known that there is a unique possible pressure gradient for these curves whenever their end points are fixed. In addition, this pressure field has a limited but unconditional (internal) regularity. The present paper completes these results by showing: (1) the uniqueness property can be viewed as an infinite dimensional phenomenon (related to the possibility of relaxing the corresponding minimization problem by convex optimization), which is false for finite dimensional configuration spaces such as O(3) for the motion of rigid bodies; (2) the unconditional partial regularity is necessarily limited.