A covering construction for packing disjoint copies of the Hoffman‐Singleton graph into K50

In this note we show how coverings induced by voltage assignments can be used to produce packings of disjoint copies of the Hoffman‐Singleton graph into K₅₀. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 11: 408–412, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/jcd.10049     

Total synthesis of (3S,4S,2′S)- and (3R,4R,2′S)-viridiofungin A triester

The total synthesis of an alkylcitrate secondary metabolite from the fungi Trichoderma viride is described. An ester dienolate [2,3]-Wittig rearrangement and a S. Julia-Kocienski olefination served as key C/C-connecting transformations. The highly convergent synthesis consists of a longest linear sequence of 17 steps.     

Quantification of trace elements in human serum fractions by liquid chromatography and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

On‐line coupling of LC and ICP‐MS has been used for fractionation and detection of species of Cu, Fe, I, Se and Zn in human serum. It has been shown that anion exchange chromatography provided better separation capability (both intra‐ and inter‐element) than size‐exclusion chromatography. The mobile phases for ion exchange chromatography consisted of Tris–HNO₃ buffer and ammonium salt (nitrate, acetate or formate). Formate was found to be the best mobile phase counter ion, enabling good chromatographic separation, and is acceptable for mass spectrometry too. The quantitative evaluation of element concentrations adhering to individual fractions was performed by the peak area normalization method. The repeatability of results ranged from 3 to 15% (depending on the element concentration level) and represented the main part of the result uncertainty. The accuracy of Cu and Zn fraction determinations was confirmed by comparison with the isotope dilution technique. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Aeroelastic flutter of a disk rotating in an unbounded acoustic medium

The linear aeroelastic stability of an unbaffled flexible disk rotating in an unbounded fluid is investigated by modeling the disk-fluid system as a rotating Kirchhoff plate coupled to the irrotational motions of a compressible inviscid fluid. A perturbed eigenvalue formulation is used to compute systematically the coupled system eigenvalues. Both a semi-analytical and a numerical method are employed to solve the fluid boundary value problem. The semi-analytical approach involves a perturbation series solution of the dual integral equations arising from the fluid boundary value problem. The numerical approach is a boundary element method based on the Hadamard finite part. Unlike previous works, it is found that a disk with zero material damping destabilizes immediately beyond its lowest critical speed. Upon the inclusion of small disk material damping, the flutter speeds become supercritical and increase with decreasing fluid density. The competing effects of radiation damping into the surrounding fluid and disk material damping control the onset of flutter at supercritical speed. The results are expected to be relevant for the design of rotating disk systems in data storage, turbomachinery and manufacturing applications.     

Multifunctional ToF-SIMS: combinatorial mapping of gradient energy substrates

We present a simple method for chemical modification of chlorosilane self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on Si surfaces by exposure to a gradient of UV-ozone radiation to create stable substrates with a range of contact angles (θ_H2O≈5–95°) and surface energies on a single substrate. These gradient energy substrates are developed to potentially generate libraries for combinatorial studies of thin film phenomenology, where a systematic variation of interfacial surface energy represents one of the significant parameters along one axis. The graded oxidation process presents a systematic variation of surface chemical composition. We have utilized contact angle measurements and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) to investigate this variation for a series of ions, among which are SiCH₃⁺, SiOH⁺ and COOH⁻. We show that the macroscopic measurements of surface free energy/contact angle correlate with the detailed analysis of surface chemistry (as assessed by ToF-SIMS) on these test substrates.