Dications of fluorenylidenes. The relationship between redox potentials and antiaromaticity for meta- and para-substituted diphenylmethylidenefluorenes

[reaction: see text] Electrochemical oxidation of meta-substituted diphenylmethylidenefluorenes (3a-g) results in the formation of fluorenylidene dications that are shown to be antiaromatic through calculation of the nucleus independent chemical shift (NICS) for the 5- and 6-membered rings of the fluorenyl system. There is a strong linear correlation between the redox potential for the dication and both the calculated NICS and sigma(m). Redox potentials for formation of dications of analogously substituted tetraphenylethylenes shows that, with the exception of the p-methyl derivative, the redox potentials for these dications are less positive than for formation of the dications of 3a-g and for dications of p-substituted diphenylmethylidenefluorenes, 2a-g. The greater instability of dications of 2a-g and 3a-g compared to the reference system implies their antiaromaticity, which is supported by the positive NICS values. The redox potentials for formation of the dications of meta-substituted diphenylmethylidenes (3a-g) are more positive than for the formation of dications of para-substituted diphenylmethylidenes (2a-g), indicating their greater thermodynamic instability. The NICS values for dications of 3a-g are more antiaromatic than for dications of 2a-g, which is consistent with their greater instability of the dications of 3a-g. Although the substituted diphenylmethyl systems are not able to interact with the fluorenyl system through resonance because of their geometry, they are able to moderate the antiaromaticity of the fluorenyl cationic system. Two models have been suggested for this interaction, sigma to p donation and the ability of the charge on the substituted ring system to affect delocalization. Examination of bond lengths shows very limited variation, which argues against sigma to p donation in these systems. A strong correlation between NICS and sigma constants suggests that factors that affect the magnitude of the charge on the benzylic (alpha) carbon of the diphenylmethyl cation affect the antiaromaticity of the fluorenyl cation. Calculated atomic charges on carbons 1-8 and 10-13 show an increase in positive charge, and therefore greater delocalization of charge in the fluorenyl system, with increasing electronegativity of the substituent. The change in the amount of positive charge correlated strongly with NICS, supporting the model in which the amount of delocalization of charge is related to the antiaromaticity of the species. Thus, both aromatic and antiaromatic species are characterized by extensive delocalization of electron density.     

Rapid crack growth in a thermoelastic solid under mixed-mode thermomechanical loading

A two-dimensional steady-sate analysis of semi-infinite brittlecrack growth at a constant subcritical rate in an unboundedfully-coupled thermoelastic solid under mixed-mode thermomechanicalloading is made. The loading consists of normal and shear tractionsand heat fluxes applied as point sources (line loads in theout-of-plane direction). A related problem is solved exactly in an integral transformspace, and robust asymptotic forms used to reduce the originalproblem to a set of integral equations. The equations are partiallycoupled and exhibit operators of both Cauchy and Abel types,yet can be solved analytically. The temperature change field at a distance from the moving crackedge is then constructed, and its dominant term is found tobe controlled by the imposed heat fluxes. The role of this termis, indeed, enhanced if the heat fluxes serve to render thecrack as a net heat source/sink for the solid, as opposed tobeing a transmitter of heat across its plane. More generally,the influence of the thermoelastic coupling on this field, aswell as other functions, is found to increase with crack speed.     

Synthetic magnetic opals

We present studies of novel nanocomposites of BiNi impregnated into the structure of opals as well as inverse opals. Atomic force microscopy and high resolution elemental analyses show a highly ordered structure and uniform distribution of the BiNi filler in the matrix. These BiNi-based nanocomposites are found to exhibit distinct ferromagnetic-like ordering with transition temperature of about 675 K. As far as we know there exists no report in literature on any BiNi compound which is magnetic.     

Functional neural network analysis in frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease using EEG and graph theory

Background  

Although a large body of knowledge about both brain structure and function has been gathered over the last decades, we still have a poor understanding of their exact relationship. Graph theory provides a method to study the relation between network structure and function, and its application to neuroscientific data is an emerging research field. We investigated topological changes in large-scale functional brain networks in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) by means of graph theoretical analysis of resting-state EEG recordings. EEGs of 20 patients with mild to moderate AD, 15 FTLD patients, and 23 non-demented individuals were recorded in an eyes-closed resting-state. The synchronization likelihood (SL), a measure of functional connectivity, was calculated for each sensor pair in 0.5–4 Hz, 4–8 Hz, 8–10 Hz, 10–13 Hz, 13–30 Hz and 30–45 Hz frequency bands. The resulting connectivity matrices were converted to unweighted graphs, whose structure was characterized with several measures: mean clustering coefficient (local connectivity), characteristic path length (global connectivity) and degree correlation (network 'assortativity'). All results were normalized for network size and compared with random control networks.