A convenient synthesis of 3-aryl-5-methylidene-2-thiohydantoins

3-Aryl-5-methylidene-2-thiohydantoins were constructed in one-pot reaction of aryl isothiocyanates and 3-morpholino- alanine in alkaline medium with the subsequent treatment with boiling hydrochloric acid.     

Highly diastereoselective multicomponent synthesis of polysubstituted 2-hydroxy-2-trifluoromethylpiperidineswith four and five stereogenic centers

The Michael–Mannich cascade cyclization of cyano olefins, ethyl 4,4,4-trifluoro-3-oxobutanoate, aromatic aldehydes and ammonium acetate provides convenient stereoselective formation of ethyl 5,5-dicyano-4,6-diaryl-2-hydroxy-2-(trifluoromethyl)piperidine-3-carboxylates with fourstereogenic centers and dialkyl 4,6-diaryl-5-cyano-2-hydroxy-2-(trifluoromethyl)piperidine-3,5-dicarboxylates with five stereogenic centers. Ammonium acetate plays dual role, acting as a base and as a nitrogen source.     

Collective Strategy Condensation: When Envy Splits Societies

Human societies are characterized by three constituent features, besides others. (A) Options, as for jobs and societal positions, differ with respect to their associated monetary and non-monetary payoffs. (B) Competition leads to reduced payoffs when individuals compete for the same option as others. (C) People care about how they are doing relatively to others. The latter trait—the propensity to compare one’s own success with that of others—expresses itself as envy. It is shown that the combination of (A)–(C) leads to spontaneous class stratification. Societies of agents split endogenously into two social classes, an upper and a lower class, when envy becomes relevant. A comprehensive analysis of the Nash equilibria characterizing a basic reference game is presented. Class separation is due to the condensation of the strategies of lower-class agents, which play an identical mixed strategy. Upper-class agents do not condense, following individualist pure strategies. The model and results are size-consistent, holding for arbitrary large numbers of agents and options. Analytic results are confirmed by extensive numerical simulations. An analogy to interacting confined classical particles is discussed.     

A probabilistic approach to spectral analysis of growth-fragmentation equations

The growth-fragmentation equation describes a system of growing and dividing particles, and arises in models of cell division, protein polymerisation and even telecommunications protocols. Several important questions about the equation concern the asymptotic behaviour of solutions at large times: at what rate do they converge to zero or infinity, and what does the asymptotic profile of the solutions look like? Does the rescaled solution converge to its asymptotic profile at an exponential speed? These questions have traditionally been studied using analytic techniques such as entropy methods or splitting of operators. In this work, we present a probabilistic approach: we use a Feynman–Kac formula to relate the solution of the growth-fragmentation equation to the semigroup of a Markov process, and characterise the rate of decay or growth in terms of this process. We then identify the Malthus exponent and the asymptotic profile in terms of a related Markov process, and give a spectral interpretation in terms of the growth-fragmentation operator and its dual.     

3D‐morphology reconstruction of nanoscale phase‐separation in polymer memory blends

In many organic electronic devices functionality is achieved by blending two or more materials, typically polymers or molecules, with distinctly different optical or electrical properties in a single film. The local scale morphology of such blends is vital for the device performance. Here, a simple approach to study the full 3D morphology of phase‐separated blends, taking advantage of the possibility to selectively dissolve the different components is introduced. This method is applied in combination with AFM to investigate a blend of a semiconducting and ferroelectric polymer typically used as active layer in organic ferroelectric resistive switches. It is found that the blend consists of a ferroelectric matrix with three types of embedded semiconductor domains and a thin wetting layer at the bottom electrode. Statistical analysis of the obtained images excludes the presence of a fourth type of domains. The criteria for the applicability of the presented technique are discussed. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2015 , 53, 1231–1237     

Morphology and microphase separation of star copolymers

Star copolymers have attracted significant interest due to their different characteristics compared with diblock copolymers, including higher critical micelle concentration, lower viscosity, unique spatial shape, or morphologies. Development of synthetic skills such as anionic polymerization and controlled radical polymerization have made it possible to make diverse architectures of polymers. Depending on the molecular architecture of the copolymer, numerous morphologies are possible, for instance, Archimedean tiling patterns and cylindrical microdomains at symmetric volume fraction for miktoarm star copolymers as well as asymmetric lamellar microdomains for star‐shaped copolymers, which have not been reported for linear block copolymers. In this review, we focus on morphologies and microphase separations of miktoarm (A_mB_n and ABC miktoarm) star copolymers and star‐shaped [(A‐b‐B)_n] copolymers with nonlinear architecture. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2015 , 53, 1–21     

Direct Transformation of Arenols Based on C—O Activation

In the view of substrate availability, atomic efficiency and cost, directly using arenols as coupling partners in cross‐coupling, would be one of the most attractive goals. Up to date, many efforts have been made to activate the C—O bond of phenols with different strategies, for example, through in‐situ formed intermediates, through a catalytic reductive dearomatization‐condensation‐rearomatization sequence or catalytic deoxygenation. In this review, we summarized recent advances in cross‐couplings of arenols as the electrophiles via C—O activation.