A novel protocol for the one-pot borylation/Suzuki reaction provides easy access to hinge-binding groups for kinase inhibitors

The one-pot borylation/Suzuki reaction is a very efficient means of accessing cross-coupling products of two aryl-halide partners that generally requires the use of specific catalysts or ligands and/or relatively long reaction times. This new microwave-assisted method provides a quick one-pot borylation/Suzuki reaction protocol that we applied to the synthesis of various bi- or poly-aryl scaffolds, including a variety of aryl and heteroaryl ring systems and the core frameworks of kinase inhibitors vemurafenib and GDC-0879

Nonadiabatic effects in the dynamics of atoms confined in a cylindric time-orbiting-potential magnetic trap

In a time-orbiting-potential magnetic trap the neutral atoms are confined by means of an inhomogeneous magnetic field superimposed to an uniform rotating one. We perform an analytic study of the atomic motion by taking into account the nonadiabatic effects arising from the spin dynamics about the local magnetic field. Geometric-like magnetic-fields determined by the Berry's phase appear within the quantum description. The application of a variational procedure on the original quantum equation leads to a set of dynamical evolution equations for the quantum average value of the position operator and of the spin variables. Within this approximation we derive the quantum-mechanical ground state configuration matching the classical adiabatic solution and perform some numerical simulations.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

Performance indicators for roadway bridges

Publicado em "Maintenance, monitoring, safety, risk and resilience of bridges and bridge networks". ISBN 978-1-138-02851-7The performance indicators should, by its definition, allow capturing the life-cycle degradation processes affecting maintenance plans or the remaining lifetime. The qualitative or quantitative performance indicators are obtained through visual inspections, non-destructive tests or monitoring systems. After their quantification and the comparison with the respective performance goals and thresholds, a Quality Control plan should be accomplished. The COST TU1406 Action aims to uniform the European performance indicators, systemize the knowledge on the Quality Control plans for bridges, establish quality specifications and finally to develop the guideline and recommendations for the assessment of performance indicators. This contribution focuses on the current work of the first Working Group, WG1, where the first step is a collection of the key performance indicators at a European level. First those key performance indicators which capture mechanical and technical properties and its degradation behavior are assessed, while the further consideration reflect on the natural aging, quality of the material, service life design methods, and sustainable, environmental, economic and social based indicators.COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology)Project “LeCIE – Life-cycle assessment for railway construction – strategies and methods

Spectrophotometric properties of dwarf planet Ceres from the VIR spectrometer on board the Dawn mission

We study the spectrophotometric properties of dwarf planet Ceres in the VIS-IR spectral range by means of hyper-spectral images acquired by the VIR imaging spectrometer on board the NASA Dawn mission. Disk-resolved observations with a phase angle within the $7^{\circ}<\alpha<132^{\circ}$ interval were used to characterize Ceres' phase curve in the 0.465-4.05 $\mu$m spectral range. Hapke's model was applied to perform the photometric correction of the dataset, allowing us to produce albedo and color maps of the surface. The $V$-band magnitude phase function of Ceres was fitted with both the classical linear model and H-G formalism. The single-scattering albedo and the asymmetry parameter at 0.55$\mu$m are $w=0.14\pm0.02$ and $\xi=-0.11\pm0.08$, respectively (two-lobe Henyey-Greenstein phase function); the modeled geometric albedo is $0.094\pm0.007$; the roughness parameter is $\bar{\theta}=29^{\circ}\pm6^{\circ}$. Albedo maps indicate small variability on a global scale with an average reflectance of $0.034 \pm 0.003$. Isolated areas such as the Occator bright spots, Haulani, and Oxo show an albedo much higher than average. We measure a significant spectral phase reddening, and the average spectral slope of Ceres' surface after photometric correction is $1.1\%k\AA^{-1}$ and $0.85\%k\AA^{-1}$ at VIS and IR wavelengths, respectively. Broadband color indices are $V-R=0.38\pm0.01$ and $R-I=0.33\pm0.02$. H-G modeling of the $V$-band magnitude phase curve for $\alpha<30^{\circ}$ gives $H=3.14\pm0.04$ and $G=0.10\pm0.04$, while the classical linear model provides $V(1,1,0^{\circ})=3.48\pm0.03$ and $\beta=0.036\pm0.002$. The comparison with spectrophotometric properties of other minor bodies indicates that Ceres has a less back-scattering phase function and a slightly higher albedo than comets and C-type objects. However, the latter represents the closest match in the usual asteroid taxonomy.Comment: 14 pages, 20 figures, published online on Astronomy and Astrophysics on 13 February 2017. Revised to reflect minor changes in text and figures made in proofs, updated value of V-R and R-

Impact of SST and surface waves on Hurricane Florence (2018): a coupled modeling investigation

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society , 2021. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Zambon, J. B., He, R., Warner, J. C., & Hegermiller, C. A. Impact of SST and surface waves on Hurricane Florence (2018): a coupled modeling investigation. Weather and Forecasting, 36(5), (2021): 1713–1734, https://doi.org/10.1175/WAF-D-20-0171.1.Hurricane Florence (2018) devastated the coastal communities of the Carolinas through heavy rainfall that resulted in massive flooding. Florence was characterized by an abrupt reduction in intensity (Saffir–Simpson category 4 to category 1) just prior to landfall and synoptic-scale interactions that stalled the storm over the Carolinas for several days. We conducted a series of numerical modeling experiments in coupled and uncoupled configurations to examine the impact of sea surface temperature (SST) and ocean waves on storm characteristics. In addition to experiments using a fully coupled atmosphere–ocean–wave model, we introduced the capability of the atmospheric model to modulate wind stress and surface fluxes by ocean waves through data from an uncoupled wave model. We examined these experiments by comparing track, intensity, strength, SST, storm structure, wave height, surface roughness, heat fluxes, and precipitation in order to determine the impacts of resolving ocean conditions with varying degrees of coupling. We found differences in the storm’s intensity and strength, with the best correlation coefficient of intensity (r = 0.89) and strength (r = 0.95) coming from the fully coupled simulations. Further analysis into surface roughness parameterizations added to the atmospheric model revealed differences in the spatial distribution and magnitude of the largest roughness lengths. Adding ocean and wave features to the model further modified the fluxes due to more realistic cooling beneath the storm, which in turn modified the precipitation field. Our experiments highlight significant differences in how air–sea processes impact hurricane modeling. The storm characteristics of track, intensity, strength, and precipitation at landfall are crucial to predictability and forecasting of future landfalling hurricanes.This work has been supported by the U.S. Geological Survey Coastal/Marine Hazards and Resources Program, and by Congressional appropriations through the Additional Supplemental Appropriations for Disaster Relief Act of 2019 (H.R. 2157). The authors also wish to acknowledge research support through NSF Grant OCE-1559178 and NOAA Grant NA16NOS0120028. We also wish to thank Chris Sherwood from the U.S. Geological Survey for his help in deriving wave length from WAVEWATCH III data

The valuation of European financial firms

We extend the recent literature concerning accounting based valuation models to investigate financial firms from six European countries with substantial financial sectors: France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK. Not only are these crucial industries worthy of study in their own right, but unusual accounting practices, and inter-country differences in those accounting practices, provide valuable insights into the accounting-value relationship. Our sample consists of 7,714 financial firm/years observations from 1,140 companies drawn from 1989-2000. Sub-samples include 1,309 firm/years for banks, 650 for insurance companies, 1,705 for real estate firms, and 3,239 for investment companies. In most countries we find that the valuation models work as well or better in explaining cross-sectional variations in the market-to-book ratio for financial firms as they do for industrial and commercial firms in the same countries, although Switzerland is an exception to this generalization. As expected, the results are sensitive to industrial differences, accounting regulation and accounting practices. In particular, marking assets to market value reduces the relevance of earnings figures and increases that of equity

Integration of Dirac-Jacobi structures

We study precontact groupoids whose infinitesimal counterparts are Dirac-Jacobi structures. These geometric objects generalize contact groupoids. We also explain the relationship between precontact groupoids and homogeneous presymplectic groupoids. Finally, we present some examples of precontact groupoids.Comment: 10 pages. Brief changes in the introduction. References update

A supergeometric approach to Poisson reduction

This work introduces a unified approach to the reduction of Poisson manifolds using their description by graded symplectic manifolds. This yields a generalization of the classical Poisson reduction by distributions (Marsden-Ratiu reduction). Further it allows one to construct actions of strict Lie 2-groups and to describe the corresponding reductions.Comment: 40 pages. Final version accepted for publicatio

The quantum non-linear Schrodinger model with point-like defect

We establish a family of point-like impurities which preserve the quantum integrability of the non-linear Schrodinger model in 1+1 space-time dimensions. We briefly describe the construction of the exact second quantized solution of this model in terms of an appropriate reflection-transmission algebra. The basic physical properties of the solution, including the space-time symmetry of the bulk scattering matrix, are also discussed.Comment: Comments on the integrability and the impurity free limit adde