A Practical Solution to a Cargo Loading Problem at Bethlehem Steel

The optimum assignment of structural steel shapes to rail cars is an important logistical problem in the steel industry. In this paper, we discuss an application at Bethlehem Steel that not only involves weight and dimensional constraints, but also customer unloading constraints. The formulation is a generalized bin packing problem which is solved by modifying and extending the first fit decreasing algorithm. The solution algorithm, SOLID (for Structural Optimal Loading IDentification), has been used extensively for one of Bethlehem's high tonnage customers providing very good practical (implementable) results that achieve the desired goals. Bethlehem has enhanced this approach for use with other customers.     

Analysis of carboxylic acids by gas chromatography of acetonyl esters. Application to aromatic,dicarboxylic and higher fatty acids

Summary The gas chromatographic analysis of the acetonyl esters of aromatic, dicarboxylic and higher fatty acids is reported and discussed together with their electron impact and chemical ionisation mass spectra. An improved method for the preparation of acetonyl esters is discussed.     

Chromogenic benzo- and monoaza-12-crown-4, 13-crown-4 and 14-crown-4 lithium-selective crown ethers

Chromogenic benzo-12-crown-4, benzo-13-crown-4 and benzo-14-crown-4 ethers have been compared with monoaza-12-crown-4 and monoazal-13-crown-4 ethers. Of these compounds, monoaza-13-crown-4 exhibited the best analytical characteristics toward the selective determination of lithium. K(ex)Li/K(ex)Na was 525 for the monoaza-crown-4 compound.     

A Study of the 13C NMR Shifts in Two Tetradehydrocyclodecabiphenylenes and Related Aryl and Biphenylenylacetylenes

The ¹³C spectra of 5,6,9,10-tetradehydrocyclodeca[1,2,3,4-def]-benzo [7,8]biphenylene, 1, and 5,6,9,10-tetradehydrocyclodeca [1,2,3,4-def]-naphtho [2,3-7,8]biphenylene, 2, are reported as are those of a number of simpler acetylenic hydrocarbons used as spectral references. Most of the shifts can be assigned unambiguously. The acetylenic shift assignments were verified by ortho-proton, sp-carbon (¹H(1)-¹³C_sp(3)) decoupling experiments. A simple additive shift correlation is found for the hydrocarbons containing unstrained acetylenic groups. However, significant discrepencies are found for the ¹³C shifts for the strained hydrocarbons 1, 2, 1,2-bis(phenylethynyl)-benzene, 12, and 2,3-bis(phenylethynyl)-naphthalene, 13. The discrepencies are particularily large for carbons near the triple bonds and are attributed to a combination of strain, rehybridization, and other proximity effects related to the interaction between the ortho-substituted acetylenic carbons.     

The effect of minor-groove hydrogen-bond acceptors and donors on the stability and replication of four unnatural base pairs

The stability and replication of DNA containing self-pairs formed between unnatural nucleotides bearing benzofuran, benzothiophene, indole, and benzotriazole nucleobases are reported. These nucleobase analogues are based on a similar scaffold but have different hydrogen-bond donor/acceptor groups that are expected to be oriented in the duplex minor groove. The unnatural base pairs do not appear to induce major structural distortions and are accommodated within the constraints of a B-form duplex. The differences between these unnatural base pairs are manifest only in the polymerase-mediated extension step, not in base-pair stability or synthesis. The benzotriazole self-pair is extended with an efficiency that is only 200-fold less than a correct natural base pair. The data are discussed in terms of available polymerase crystal structures and imply that further modifications may result in unnatural base pairs that can be both efficiently synthesized and extended, resulting in an expanded genetic alphabet.     

Aromatic substitution

It is demonstrated that a previously developed topological expression for the total π-electron energy of aromatic molecules provides a good qualitative account of localization energies. The logarithm of the ratio of the algebraic structure counts for the ground state and the localized reaction intermediate is the principle energy determining factor. This expression fails for hydrocarbons with unusually small HOMO-LUMO separations. An alternative topological expression that includes a correction for this situation provides an excellent non-empirical explanation for the successful empirical use of Dewar reactivity numbers in correlating exact localization energies. The present analysis provides an explanation for the success of the traditional resonance structure counting technique in predicting relative rates of aromatic substitution. The analysis develop applied only to alternant hydrocarbons.     

Model compounds of caged capsaicin: design, synthesis, and photoreactivity

Molecules were prepared with substituted nitrobenzyl groups covalently bonded to N-(4-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzyl)acetamide (2) by ether or carbonate linkages. These compounds decomposed under irradiation at 363 nm. Those with carbonate linkages decomposed at slower rates than those with ether linkages. Molecules with dimethoxy-substituted benzyl groups decomposed more slowly than monomethoxy-substituted benzyl groups due to the electronic characteristics of the benzylic carbon.     

Growth functions for semi-regular tilings of the hyperbolic plane

This paper studies the growth function, with respect to the generating set of edge identifications, of a surface group with fundamental domainD in the hyperbolic plane ann-gon whose angles alternate between /p and /q. The possibilities ofn,p andq for which a torsion-free surface group can have such a fundamental polygon are classified, and the growth functions are computed. Conditions are given for which the denominator of the growth function is a product of cyclotomic polynomials and a Salem polynomial.This work was supported in part by NSF Research Grants.