Carbohydrate-based nanostructured catalysts: applications in organic transformations

The requirement of green and sustainable materials to prepare heterogeneous catalysts has intensified for practical reasons over the past few decades. Carbohydrates are possibly the most plentiful and renewable organic materials in nature with inimitable physiochemical properties, plausible low-cost and large-scale production, and sustainability features could be exploited in the generation of nanostructured heterogeneous catalysts. This review article outlines the organic transformations catalyzed by diverse carbohydrate-based nanostructured catalysts in greener and environmentally friendly processes. Selected examples are highlighted for a variety of organic reactions exploiting the proposed catalysts’ reactivity and reusability, and interactions with the intrinsic nature of the applied carbohydrate supports; advantages and speculated challenges of the introduced catalysts are deliberated as well.     

Sufficient Conditions for a Digraph to be Supereulerian

A (di)graph is supereulerian if it contains a spanning eulerian sub(di)graph. This property is a relaxation of hamiltonicity. Inspired by this analogy with hamiltonian cycles and by similar results in supereulerian graph theory, we analyze a number of sufficient Ore type conditions for a digraph to be supereulerian. Furthermore, we study the following conjecture due to Thomassé and the first author: if the arc‐connectivity of a digraph is not smaller than its independence number, then the digraph is supereulerian. As a support for this conjecture we prove it for digraphs that are semicomplete multipartite or quasitransitive and verify the analogous statement for undirected graphs.     

Molecular design of ambipolar redox-active molecules II: closed-shell systems

This mini-review highlights key structural features that should be taken into account when creating ambipolar redox-active closed-shell metal-free molecules. This type of compound is strongly required for the fabrication of all-organic ‘poleless’ batteries and semiconductors. The suggested strategies aimed at stabilization of both oxidized (cationic) and reduced (anionic) redox-states are based on the comprehensive analysis of the most successful structures taken from the recent publications.     

Vertex-disjoint rainbow triangles in edge-colored graphs

Let $G$ be an edge-colored graph of order $n$. The minimum color degree of $G$, denoted by ${\delta }^c\left(G\right)$, is the largest integer $k$ such that for every vertex $v$, there are at least $k$ distinct colors on edges incident to $v$. We say that an edge-colored graph is rainbow if all its edges have different colors. In this paper, we consider vertex-disjoint rainbow triangles in edge-colored graphs. Li (2013) showed that if ${\delta }^c\left(G\right)\ge (n+1)∕2$, then $G$ contains a rainbow triangle and the lower bound is tight. Motivated by this result, we prove that if $n\ge 20$ and ${\delta }^c\left(G\right)\ge (n+2)∕2$, then $G$ contains two vertex-disjoint rainbow triangles. In particular, we conjecture that if ${\delta }^c\left(G\right)\ge (n+k)∕2$, then $G$ contains $k$ vertex-disjoint rainbow triangles. For any integer $k\ge 2$, we show that if $n\ge 16k-12$ and ${\delta }^c\left(G\right)\ge n∕2+k-1$, then $G$ contains $k$ vertex-disjoint rainbow triangles. Moreover, we provide sufficient conditions for the existence of $k$ edge-disjoint rainbow triangles.     

Influence of the Degree of Deacetylation of Chitosan and BMP-2 Concentration on Biocompatibility and Osteogenic Properties of BMP-2/PLA Granule-Loaded Chitosan/β-Glycerophosphate Hydrogels

Compositions based on chitosan/β-glycerophosphate hydrogels with highly porous polylactide granules can be used to obtain moldable bone graft materials that have osteoinductive and osteoconductive properties. To eliminate the influence of such characteristics as chain length, degree of purification, and molecular weight on a designed material, the one-stock chitosan sample was reacetylated to degrees of deacetylation (DD%) of 19.5, 39, 49, 55, and 56. A study of the chitosan/β-glycerophosphate hydrogel with chitosan of a reduced DD% showed that a low degree of deacetylation increased the MSCs (multipotent stromal cells) viability rate in vitro and reduced the leukocyte infiltration in subcutaneous implantation to Wistar rats in vivo. The addition of 12 wt% polylactide granules resulted in optimal composite mechanical and moldable properties, and increased the modulus of elasticity of the hydrogel-based material by approximately 100 times. Excessive filling of the material with PLA (polylactide) granules (more than 20%) led to material destruction at a ~10% strain. Osteoinductive and osteoconductive properties of the chitosan hydrogel-based material with reacetylated chitosan (39 DD%) and highly porous polylactide granules impregnated with BMP-2 (bone morphogenetic protein-2) have been demonstrated in models of orthotopic and ectopic bone formation. When implanted into a critical-size calvarial defect in rats, the optimal concentration of BMP-2 was 10 μg/mL: bone tissue areas filled the entire material’s thickness. Implantation of the material with 50 μg/mL BMP-2 was accompanied with excessive growth of bone tissue and material displacement beyond the defect. Significant osteoinductive and osteoconductive properties of the material with 10 μg/mL of BMP-2 were also shown in subcutaneous implantation.     

The Chang-Łoś-Suszko theorem in a topological setting

The Chang-Łoś-Suszko theorem of first-order model theory characterizes universal-existential classes of models as just those elementary classes that are closed under unions of chains. This theorem can then be used to equate two model-theoretic closure conditions for elementary classes; namely unions of chains and existential substructures. In the present paper we prove a topological analogue and indicate some applications.     

可重构制造系统重组过程中设备选择模型的研究

根据生产任务选择加工设备进行制造资源重组是实现可重构制造系统的关键问题之一，由于设备的选择涉及到多种因素，既有定量指标，又有定性指标，传统的依靠人工经验的方法显得力不从心。本文首先结合实际情况，提出了一套设备选择评价体系，通过对模糊判断矩阵采用最小对数二乘法确定各评价因素的权重系数，针对定性指标和定量指标采用不同的方法确定其性能指标值，通过模糊积分对评判指标进行综合评判，最后进行了实例研究。所提出的方法有效地简化了决策过程，为可重构制造系统设备选择提供了一套行之有效的方法。     

图有分数因子的度条件

本文研究了图有分数因子的度条件,得到了下面的结果：令k(?)1是一个整数,G是一个连通的n阶图,n(?)4k-3且最小度δ(G)(?)k,若对于每一对不相邻的顶点u,v∈V(G)都有max{d_G(u),d_G(v)}(?)n/2,则G有分数k-因子．并指出该结果在一定意义上是最好可能的。