Superheated water eluent capillary liquid chromatography

A capillary scale reverse phase liquid chromatography (LC) system using a super hot water eluent is described. The system, constructed in-house from readily available components, has been shown to operate at temperatures as high as 370 °C and pressures in excess of 10 000 psi. The capability of the system is demonstrated with the separation of a mixture of polar and non-polar benzene derivatives on polybutadiene and elemental carbon modified zirconia packings with or without temperature gradients. Six benzene derivatives can be separated in 2 min.     

Comparison of impurities in charcoal sorbents found by neutron activation analysis

Neutron activation of gas samples in a reactor often requires a medium to retain sufficient amounts of the gas for analysis. Charcoal is commonly used to adsorb gas and hold it for activation; however, the amount of activated sodium in the charcoal after irradiation swamps most signals of interest. Neutron activation analysis was performed on several commonly available charcoal samples in an effort to determine the activation background. The results for several elements, including the dominant sodium element, are reported. It was found that ECN charcoal had the lowest elemental background, containing sodium at 2.65 ± 0.05 ppm, as well as trace levels of copper and tungsten.     

An efficient synthesis of highly functionalized chiral lactams

A new method was developed to synthesize highly functionalized lactams via a one pot reductive amination/lactam formation reaction. This methodology is amenable for parallel synthesis and was used to prepare a large number of lactam analogs in a library format with good ee (de) retention.     

Family unification, exotic states and magnetic monopoles

The embedding in SU(4)×SU(3)×SU(3) of the well studied gauge groups SU(4)×SU(2)×SU(2) and SU(3)×SU(3)×SU(3) naturally leads to family unification as opposed to simple family replication. An inescapable consequence is the predicted existence of (exotic) color singlet states that carry fractional electric charge. The corresponding magnetic monopoles carry multiple Dirac magnetic charge, can be relatively light (10⁷–10¹³ GeV), and may be present in the galaxy not far below the Parker bound.