Synthesis and electrogenerated chemiluminescence of donor-substituted phenylquinolinylethynes and phenylisoquinolinylethynes: effect of positional isomerism

In furtherance of our research on the design, synthesis and study of electrogenerated chemiluminescence (ECL) of new donor substituted phenylquinolinylethynes, we report here more new series with the aim of studying the effect of positional isomerism on their overall photophysical properties with a special focus on ECL. For this study we have chosen 2-, 3-, and 4-(p-substituted phenyl)ethynylquinolines, and 1- and 4-(p-substituted phenyl)ethynylisoquinolines. These ethynes were synthesized in good yields by modified Sonogashira coupling of the corresponding terminal alkyne with the respective haloquinolines. The photophysical properties and ECL were studied in acetonitrile solvent and the various results are discussed.     

Crystal Structures of Analogs of threo-Methylphenidate

The crystal structures of the chloride salts of five analogs of threo-methylphenidate have been obtained. Four of these have different substituents on the phenyl ring while the fifth is the ethyl ester of methylphenidate. All five structures have similar three-dimensional conformations and these are compared with the global minimum obtained by MM2-87 calculations. There is good agreement between the crystal structures and the computed global minimum with the major difference being the presence of a chloride counterion in the crystal structures that prevents the carbonyl oxygen from approaching the equatorial ammonium hydrogen as closely as in the computed global minimum.     

A second degree Newton method for an inverse obstacle scattering problem

A regularized second degree Newton method is proposed and implemented for the inverse problem for scattering of time-harmonic acoustic waves from a sound-soft obstacle. It combines ideas due to Johansson and Sleeman [18] and Hettlich and Rundell [8] and reconstructs the obstacle from the far field pattern for scattering of one incident plane wave.     

A Markov Chain Model for Medical Record Analysis

This paper presents a Markov chain model for the analysis of a centralized medical record system in a large general hospital. The model is used to describe the dynamic behaviour of the age of records associated with patients' visits to a hospital and provides a method for the long-term planning of the medical record storage facilities.     

Synthesis, electronic properties, and electrochemiluminescence of donor-substituted phenylethynylanthronitriles

A new series of pi-conjugated donor-acceptor compounds (1-6) with inherent redox centers have been prepared and studied with respect to their electronic properties. The photophysical characteristics of these compounds have been studied in relation to their structures. Cyclic voltammetry and UV-vis spectroelectrochemistry were used to probe the ground-state electronic properties of the neutral and charged species. The observed electronic absorption properties of the neutral and charged molecules are explained with the help of frontier orbital structures and electrostatic potential maps obtained from density functional theory (DFT, B3LYP/6-31G) calculations. Electrochemiluminescence (ECL) of this series of donor-substituted phenylethynylanthronitriles with different donors was also studied. The structure-property relationship of all of the compounds is discussed.     

Current situation and industrialization of Taiwan nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is projected to be a very promising field, and the impact of nanotechnology on society is increasingly significant as the research funding and manufactured goods increase exponentially. A clearer picture of Taiwan’s current and future nanotechnology industry is an essential component for future planning. Therefore, this investigation studies the progress of industrializing nanotechnology in Taiwan by surveying 150 companies. Along with understanding Taiwan’s current nanotechnology industrialization, this paper also suggests ways to promote Taiwan’s nanotechnology. The survey results are summarized and serve as the basis for planning a nanotechnology industrialization strategy.     

Coplanarity analysis and validation of PBGA and T-BGA packages

Plastic BGA (PBGA) has recently been extensively used in microelectronics package. However, its heat-dissipating capacity is limited to below 2 or 3 W, and thus fails to satisfy the requirement of high heat dissipation and improved electrical performance. This work offers a finite element analytic methodology to predict the coplanarity of T²-BGA (Turbo thermal ball grid array) and PBGA, using ANSYS software. T²-BGA involves inserting a heat slug into the molding compound of a PBGA. The material of the heat slug can be either aluminum or copper. Surface mount technology (SMT) of BGA is limited mainly by the coplanarity due to coefficient of thermal expansion mismatch, since the structure of BGA is asymmetric. The coplanarity is limited below 0.2 mm (8 mil) by the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) standard (JEDEC Design Standard, No. 95-1, Section 14, Ball Grid Array, June 2000). Coplanarity analysis is performed for both PBGA and T²-BGA, using ANSYS. Finally, a coplanarity experiment is conducted on the constructed specimens of PBGA and T²-BGA, to confirm the analytic results. The results in this work establish the effectiveness of T²-BGA in improving coplanarity. Moreover, the analytic results differ slightly from the experimental results, by 1.53–10.50%. The FEM model proposed here can be extended to optimize the structure of T²-BGA.     

Conformational preferences of the potent dopamine reuptake blocker BTCP and its analogs and their incorporation into a pharmacophore model

Molecular mechanics calculations using MM3-92 and ab initio quantum mechanical calculations using SPARTAN 5.0 were performed on the structurally similar PCP and BTCP, in which only the latter has a cocaine-like pharmacological profile as a dopamine reuptake blocker. Calculations were also performed on BTCP analogs with a methyl group in various positions of the cyclohexane ring. The results for the cis-2-methyl compound, which retains good pharmacological activity, allowed us to determine that an aryl-axial conformer is the biologically active form for at least some of the compounds in this series. However, an aryl-equatorial conformer presents the identical pharmacophore, as shown by superposition of the two conformers. X-ray crystallographic structures were also obtained for BTCP and related compounds with a 2-methyl group on the cyclohexane ring, with reasonable agreement between the computational and experimental results. Superposition studies were performed with two rigid analogs of cocaine which illustrate the optimal orientations of the ammonium hydrogen for monoamine transporters. There is excellent agreement between a `back-bridged' cocaine analog that is optimal as a dopamine reuptake blocker and the previously proposed biologically active conformer of methylphenidate. However, BTCP is found to be a better fit to the `front-bridged' cocaine analog that is optimal for a serotonin reuptake blocker.     

Robust synchronization of drive–response chaotic systems via adaptive sliding mode control

A robust adaptive sliding control scheme is developed in this study to achieve synchronization for two identical chaotic systems in the presence of uncertain system parameters, external disturbances and nonlinear control inputs. An adaptation algorithm is given based on the Lyapunov stability theory. Using this adaptation technique to estimate the upper-bounds of parameter variation and external disturbance uncertainties, an adaptive sliding mode controller is then constructed without requiring the bounds of parameter and disturbance uncertainties to be known in advance. It is proven that the proposed adaptive sliding mode controller can maintain the existence of sliding mode in finite time in uncertain chaotic systems. Finally, numerical simulations are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.