Chiral organochlorosilanes derived from terpenes: diastereoselective hydrosilylation of methylene bicyclo[2.2.1]heptanes with HSiMenCln-2 (n=0-2)

The H₂PtCl₆ catalysed hydrosilylation of the terpenes (+)-α-fenchene (XI), (−)-2-methylene bornane (XII), (+)-camphene (XIII) and (−)-3-methylene fenchane (XIV) using HSiMe₂Cl or HSiMeCl₂ proceeds with high regioselectively and in some cases, with high diastereoselectivity. KF-assisted oxidation of the hydrosilylation products gives predominately endo-terpene alcohols. The alcohols have inverted endo/exo ratios to those formed by oxidative hydroboration. Reaction of XIV with HSiMe₂Cl or HSiMeCl₂ is accompanied by a clean rearrangement of the isocamphane skeleton into (+)-2-methylene bornane (XII) prior to hydrosilylation.

The hydrosilylation of α-fenchene, 2-methylene bornane, camphene and 3-methylene fenchane with chlorosilanes HSiMe_nCl_n − 2 (n=0–2) occurred with varying degrees of diastereoselectivity providing anti-Markovnikov product mixtures, in which the endo-isomers dominate over the exo-isomers. These mixtures were oxidized to give the corresponding terpene alcohols. 3-Methylene fenchane undergoes a rearrangement into 2-methylene bornane prior to hydrosilylation.

Review of John D. Caputo : On religion, London and New York : Routledge, 2001, paperback 0-415-23332-1, 147 pages lncluding lndex

This is a review of John Caputo’s recent Routledge book on religion. Caputo’s central idea is captured by the phrase ‘religion without religion’, by which he means a religious stance or attitude that is not circumscribed by allegiance to any specific creed.

A GA-PSO layered encoding evolutionary approach to 0/1 knapsack optimization

This paper presents a layered encoding cascade evolutionary approach to solve a 0/1 knapsack optimization problem. A layered encoding structure is proposed and developed based on the schema theorem and the concepts of cascade correlation and multi-population evolutionary algorithms. Genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) are combined with the proposed layered encoding structure to form a generic optimization model denoted as LGAPSO. In order to enhance the finding of both local and global optimum in the evolutionary search, the model adopts hill climbing evaluation criteria, feature of strength Pareto evolutionary approach (SPEA) as well as nondominated spread lengthen criteria. Four different sizes benchmark knapsack problems are studied using the proposed LGAPSO model. The performance of LGAPSO is compared to that of the ordinary multi-objective optimizers such as VEGA, NSGA, NPGA and SPEA. The proposed LGAPSO model is shown to be efficient in improving the search of knapsack’s optimum, capable of gaining better Pareto trade-off front.

The 0-1 Knapsack polytope – a starting point for cryptanalysis of Knapsack ciphers?

The Knapsack Cryptosystem of Merkle and Hellman, 1978, is one of the earliest public-key cryptography schemes. The security of the method relies on the difficulty in solving Subset Sum Problems (also known as Knapsack Problems). In this paper, we first provide a brief history of knapsack-based cryptosystems and their cryptanalysis attacks. Following that, we review the advances in integer programming approaches to 0 − 1 Knapsack Problems, with a focus on the polyhedral studies of the convex hull of the integer set. Last of all, we discuss potential future research directions in applying integer programming in the cryptanalysis of knapsack ciphers.