Focus of current research

Alkyne hydrosilylation continues as a focus of current research. Despite the relative simplicity of the transformation, it is becoming increasingly clear that different catalysts often utilize unique mechanisms. In addition, the demands placed by the need to access vinylsilanes of differing substitution patterns, stereochemistries, and functional groups require a diverse, complementary set of methodologies. This discussion covers hydrosilylation reactions... 

Unraveling the individual molecular interactions in these very complex photosystems is a challenging focus of current research, particularly since the demand for alternative energy sources has become critical in the past few years. Progress in this area is hampered, however, due to the extreme complexity of the natural systems coupled with the fact that the synthesis of biomimetic porphyrin models is quite challenging. Experimental... 

Bioactive peptides as products of hydrolysis of diverse marine invertebrate (shellfish, crustacean, rotifer, etc.) proteins are the focus of current research. After much research on these muscles and byproducts, some biologically active peptides were identified and applied to useful compounds for human utilization. This chapter reviews bioactive peptides from marine invertebrates in regarding to their bioactivities. Additionally, specific characteristics of antihypertensive, anti-Alzheimer, antioxidant, antimicrobial peptide enzymatic production, methods to evaluate bioactivity capacity, bioavailability, and safety concerns of peptides are reviewed. 

Characterization of the underwater UV regime is not extensive, although documentation of UV penetration to ecologically significant depths has been known since at least the 1950s.24 The importance of daily and seasonal variations in UV or the role of vertical mixing in the temporal variability of exposure have not yet been comprehensively studied or evaluated but are the focus of current research efforts. 

Advanced delivery systems include transdermal patches, which are now well established and accepted by patients. Technologies under development include, for example, iontophoresis, which uses a small electric current to propel the drag through the skin. Drag delivery via iontophoresis occurs at enhanced rates and amounts in comparison to patch technology, which uses simple passive diffusion. The development of safe, non-toxic absorption enhancers to facilitate transdermal absorption is a further focus of current research. 

As generation of oils and fats from of natural products is inexpensive, the investigation of these oils as educts in chemical processes is the focus of current research. 

The interfacial phenomena of phase coexistence and segregation are described as observed in thin polymer films. This work also considers related issues in the focus of current research such as wetting phenomena, finite size effects expected in very thin films, surface (and bulk) properties of mixtures with stiffness disparity, and conformational properties of end-segregated macromolecules forming polymer brushes. 

In this chapter, we will describe the make-up of just three textile materials, all natural fibres, and will further present the mechanisms of degradation of their principal components. Our selection of two of them is somewhat indulgent as they are each the focus of current research projects. However, since all three compose the fabric of key historic textiles which were recently the subjects of commissions completed by Conservation Services at the Textile Conservation Centre, our choice was all the more easily made. Here we are keen to place the science in context, and so use these artefacts to introduce the fibres and their chemistry of ageing through a conservation science perspective. 

Phospholipids are of paramount interest as they make out a significant moiety of the lipids of the cellular membrane and are of high relevance as second messenger molecules, for instance, phosphoinositides, lysophospholipids and phosphatidic acids (Exton et al. 1994). Therefore, these molecules are in the focus of current research (Schiller et al. 2007b) as well as Lipidomic studies (Wenk 2005). 

Protein and peptide antigen-based vaccines are safe. The search for safe, singleshot vaccines against infectious and other diseases is a major focus of current research. Several peptide-and protein-based antigens are at different stages of development. 

Experience has shown that these films must have a high glass transition temperature, Qrpically > 180 C, to insure thermal stability for many years. An important focus of current research is therefore directed to the enhancement of the thermal and temporal stability of x X The stability of polar order in the thermodynamically non-equilibrium glassy state varies from polymer to polymer. Chemical attachment of the chromophore to the polymer as a sidechain (2), as part of the mainchain (J), orinacrosslinkedstructure(4), has been found to retard the relaxaticm of alignment... 

The output of the HMM synthesis process is a sequence of cepstral vectors and FO values, and so the final task is to convert these into a speech waveform. This can be accomplished in a number of ways, see for example Section 14.6. In general though the approach is to use the generated cepstral output to create a spectral envelope, and use the generated FO output to create an impulse train. The impulses are then fed into a filter with the coefficients derived from the cepstral parameters. While reasonably effective, this vocoder style approach is essentially the same as that used in first generation systems and so can suffer from the buzz or metallic sound characteristic of those systems (see Section 13.3.5). A major focus of current research is to improve on this. 

Synthesis of biaryls using arylsilanes is apparently the focus of current research, and is going to be an important, environmental friendly, and valuable alternative to the Suzuki-Miyaura and Negishi reactions. 

The incident radiation is provided by a laser pulse (wavelength 360-760 nm, duration 1-15 ns, pulse rate 1-100 Hz, energy 15-30 pJ). The illuminated area is typically 0.5 mm in diameter and the final temperature decay curve is accumulated following up to 10 000 laser pulses. This technique is suitable for the in situ non-destructive study of surfaces, and has been used to measure the thermal diffusivity of polyester films [13] and pigments [14]. More recently OTTER has been extended to the in vivo study of water concentration gradients in the stratum comeum [15]. The principle drawback of OTTER is that the values of the estimated parameters are entirely model dependent and improving the quality of experimental models is the major focus of current research in this field. 

The computation described above is completely classical the nuclear motion is assumed to be well described by Newton s equations. The extent to which classical mechanics provides a useful description of intramolecular energy flow is another focus of current research in this area. As one example of the validity of classical mechanics, consider the bound-state dynamics of a three-atom system confined to a line, that is. A—B—C. Computations on the case where the A—B and B—C bonds are anharmonic have been performed using both classical and quantum... 

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