Treatment of Pea Seeds with Plasma Activated Water to Enhance Germination,Plant Growth,and Plant Composition

Plasma Chemistry and Plasma Processing - The present study has been carried to investigate the interaction and effect of plasma activated water (PAW) on pea seeds. PAW is produced with the...     

Thermally Crosslinkable and Chemically Modifiable Aromatic Polyesters Possessing Pendant Propargyloxy Groups

New aromatic (co)polyesters containing pendant propargyloxy groups were synthesized by phase transfer‐catalyzed interfacial polycondensation of 5‐(propargyloxy)isophthaloyl chloride (P‐IPC) and various compositions of P‐IPC and isophthaloyl chloride with bisphenol A. FTIR and NMR spectroscopic data, respectively, revealed successful incorporation of pendant propargyloxy groups into (co)polyesters and formation of (co)polyesters with desired compositions. (Co)polyesters exhibited good solubility in common organic solvents such as chloroform, dichloromethane, and tetrahydrofuran and could be cast into transparent, flexible, and tough films from chloroform solution. Inherent viscosities and number average molecular weights of (co)polyesters were in the range 0.77–1.33 dL/g and 43,600–118,000 g/mol, respectively, indicating the achievement of reasonably high‐molecular weights. The 10% weight loss temperatures of (co)polyesters were in the range 390–420 °C, demonstrating their good thermal stability. (Co)polyesters exhibited T_g in the range 146–170 °C and T_g values decreased with increase in mol % incorporation of P‐IPC. The study of non‐isothermal curing by DSC indicated thermal crosslinking of (co)polyesters via propargyloxy groups. The utility of pendant propargyloxy group was demonstrated by post‐modification of the selected copolyester with 1‐(4‐azidobutyl)pyrene, 9‐(azidomethyl)anthracene, and azido‐terminated poly(ethyleneglycol) monomethyl ether via copper(I)‐catalyzed Huisgen 1,3‐dipolar cycloaddition reaction. FTIR and ¹H NMR spectra confirmed that click reaction was quantitative. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2019 , 57, 588–597     

Microstructure dependent dynamic fracture analyses of trabecular bone based on nascent bone atomistic simulations

Trabecular bone fracture is closely related to the trabecular architecture, microdamage accumulation, and bone tissue properties. Primary constituents of trabecular tissue are hydroxyapatite (HA) mineralized type-I collagen fibers. In this research, dynamic fracture in two dimensional (2-D) micrographs of ovine (sheep) trabecular bone is modeled using the mesoscale cohesive finite element method (CFEM). The bone tissue fracture properties are obtained based on the atomistic strength analyses of a type-I collagen + HA interfacial arrangement using molecular dynamics (MD). Analyses show that the presented framework is capable of analyzing the architecture dependent fracture in 2-D micrographs of trabecular bone.     

Properties of nonparametric estimators of autocovariance for stationary random fields

Summary We introduce nonparametric estimators of the autocovariance of a stationary random field. One of our estimators has the property that it is itself an autocovatiance. This feature enables the estimator to be used as the basis of simulation studies such as those which are necessary when constructing bootstrap confidence intervals for unknown parameters. Unlike estimators proposed recently by other authors, our own do not require assumptions such as isotropy or monotonicity. Indeed, like nonparametric function estimators considered more widely in the context of curve estimation, our approach demands only smoothness and tail conditions on the underlying curve or surface (here, the autocovariance), and moment and mixing conditions on the random field. We show that by imposing the condition that the estimator be a covariance function we actually reduce the numerical value of integrated squared error.     

Working group report: Quantum chromodynamics

This is the report of the subgroup QCD of Working Group-4 at WHEPP-9. We present the activities that had taken place in the subgroup and report some of the partial results arrived at following the discussion at the working group meetings.     

Recent radiochemical studies of the fission process

This article summarizes the recent radiochemical investigations on mass, charge kinetic energy and fragment angular distributions in low energy fission of actinides.     

Mechanism of DNA-drug interactions

Over the last two decades many strategies have been planned to design specific drugs for rare diseases to target their action at the DNA level. Advancements in our understanding of the interactions of small nonpeptide molecules with DNA have opened the doors for “rational” drug design. Special methods have now been developed to give accurate account of the precise location of ligand-DNA adducts on target DNA. We are now in a position to think of designing ligands that recognize particular sequences of base pairs. This work will allow us to enter into a new era of gene therapy for diseases like Cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer’s disease and many related disorders at genetic level. These ligands can also be employed in the treatment of various types of cancers. They may also be useful as highly specific probes to locate particular sequences in the genomic DNA.     

Why chaos is rarely observed in natural populations

An attempt has been made to understand why chaotic dynamics have received poor evidential support from field studies. Our study opens up the possibility that the cause of failure might not be poor quality of data, as pointed out by earlier authors, but an ecological reality. We have designed two model food chains to examine whether there is a biological basis for the crisis. This investigation is effected with the help of a new method which we introduce at an appropriate place in the text. The fact that chaos exists in a narrow range of parametric values in both the model systems suggests that the crisis indeed has a biological origin.     

Simple vertices of maximal minor polytopes

Themaximal minor polytope Π _{m, n} is the Newton polytope of the product of all maximal minors of anm×n matrix of indeterminates. The family of polytopes {Π _{m, n} } interpolates between the symmetric transportation polytope (form=n−1) and the permutohedron (form=2). Both transportation polytope and the permutohedron aresimple polytopes but in general Π _{m, n} is not simple. The main result of this paper is an explicit construction of a class of simple vertices of Π _{m, n} for generalm andn. We call themvertices of diagonal type. For every such vertexv we explicitly describe all the edges and facets of Π _{m, n} which containv. Simple vertices of Π _{m, n} have an interesting algebro-geometric application: they correspond tononsingular extreme toric degenerations of the determinantal variety ofm×n matrices not of full rank. Andrei Zelevinsky was partially supported by the NSF under Grant DMS-9104867.