Combining chiral elements in asymmetric phase-transfer catalysts: styrene oxide and chiral α,α-disubstituted pyrroline and piperidine derived structures

A new asymmetric phase-transfer catalyst, designed by combining the chiral building blocks styrene oxide and 2,5-dimethylpyrroline, is described. Catalytic testing using standard glycine imino ester alkylations shows good yields and moderate to good enantioselectivities with a surprising change in enantioselectivity over the course of the reaction. Alkylation of the β-hydroxyl group lead to catalysts with improved selectivity and a larger change in enantioselectivity during the reaction.     

Hypervalent Iodine Oxidation of Hydrazones of Some Nitrogen Heterocyclic Ketones and Aldehydes: An Efficient Synthesis of Fused 1,2,3-Triazoloheterocycles

Fused 1,2,3-triazoloheterocycles have been prepared by iodobenzene diacetate mediated oxidation of hydrazones of nitrogen heterocyclic ketones and aldehydes.     

Facile Reduction of Chalcones to Dihydrochalcones with NaBH4/Ni2+ System

Chalcones have been found to undergo facile reduction on treatment with sodium borohydride-nickel chloride system in dioxan-methanol medium to afford dihydrochalcones.     

Understanding artificial intelligence adoption in operations management: insights from the review of academic literature and social media discussions

In this digital era, data is new oil and artificial intelligence (AI) is new electricity, which is needed in different elements of operations management (OM) such as manufacturing, product development, services and supply chain. This study explores the feasibility of AI utilization within an organization on six factors such as job-fit, complexity, long-term consequences, affect towards use, social factors and facilitating conditions for different elements of OM by mining the collective intelligence of experts on Twitter and through academic literature. The study provides guidelines for managers for AI applications in different components of OM and concludes by presenting the limitations of the study along with future research directions.

     

Revisiting mechanistic studies on dinitrogen reduction to ammonia by an iron dinitrogen complex as nitrogenase mimic

Conversion of free nitrogen to ammonia is a required chemical reaction for both biologically and industrially but their mechanism, specifically the attachment of electron and proton transfer during the cycle, is still doubtful. In this view, a thorough knowledge of the mechanism is crucial. In this article, we employ a density functional method on [(TPB)FeN₂]⁻, the iron-dinitrogen complex carrying the tris(phosphine)borone (TPB) ligand, for the ammonia production with the inclusion of electrons and protons. The electronic structures, reactivity, and mechanistic possibilities have been extensively explored using the B3LYP functional. Both asymmetric and symmetric pathways in addition to the possible intermediates species and transition states are considered here. Our results conclude tremendously small energy barrier of 3.5 kJ/mol for the first protonation (S = 1/2) for the N─H bond activation by the [(TPB)FeN₂]⁻ species. However, high activation barrier for the third protonation was estimated to be 78.5 kJ/mol, which is explained by the high energy of the unoccupied δ_x²_-y² orbital in ¹ts4 species. The computed spectroscopic parameters such as absorption, electron paramagnetic resonance, and Mössbauer also established the electronic structure details of the species. The calculated parameters are compatible with the experimental results.     

Description of K-spaces by means of J-spaces and the reverse problem in the limiting real interpolation

We establish conditions under which K-spaces in the limiting real interpolation involving slowly varying functions can be described by means of J-spaces and we also solve the reverse problem. To this end, we prove several versions of the fundamental lemma of the real interpolation theory. We apply our results to obtain density theorems for the corresponding limiting interpolation spaces.     

Performance limits on three-dimensional particle localization in photon-limited microscopy

We present the performance limits on three-dimensional (3D) localization accuracy of currently used methods of wide-field superlocalization microscopy. The three methods investigated are double-helix microscopy, astigmatic imaging, and biplane detection. In the shot-noise limit, Cramer-Rao lower bound calculations show that, among these techniques, the double-helix microscope exhibits the best axial and 3D localization accuracy over short as well as long depth-of-field systems. The fundamental advantage of engineered point-spread function systems, like the double-helix, stems from the additional degrees of freedom available to control diffraction in three dimensions over variable regions of interest.     

Fluorescence resonance energy transfer between polyphenolic compounds and riboflavin indicates a possible accessory photoreceptor function for some polyphenolic compounds

The photoreceptive extreme tip of the wheat coleoptile exhibits intense green-yellow fluorescence under UV light, suggesting the presence of UV-absorbing materials. Fluorescence spectra of the intact coleoptile tip and tip homogenate showed the presence of the known photoreceptor pigments flavin and carotene, and a preponderance of phenolic compounds. Absorption spectra and fluorescence spectra of various phenolic compounds showed close overlap with the absorption and fluorescence spectra of the wheat coleoptile tip homogenate. Fluorescence spectra of several phenolic compounds showed close overlap with the absorption bands of flavin, carotene and pterine, suggesting possible energy transduction from phenols to these photoreceptors. Excitation of gentisic acid and ferulic acid with 340 nm light in the presence of flavin showed enhancement of flavin fluorescence in a concentration- and viscosity-dependent fashion, indicating fluorescence resonance energy transfer between them and riboflavin. Furthermore, several phenolic compounds tested generated superoxide anion on excitation at 340 nm, suggesting that superoxide-dependent signal cascades could operate in a polyphenol-mediated pathway. Phenolic compounds thus may act as accessory photoreceptors bringing about excitation energy transfer to the reactive photoreceptor molecules, or they may take over the function of the normal photoreceptor in genetic mutations lacking the system, or both processes may occur. The responses of plants to UV-B and UV-A light in mutants may be explained in terms of various phenolics acting as energy transducers in photoreceptor functioning.     

Achromatic optical vortex lens

A vortex lens is a useful optical device having applications ranging from astronomy to microscopy. Current vortex masks operate across a narrow bandwidth. Two design schemes are proposed for creating a vortex across a bandwidth exceeding 100 nm in the visible region of the spectrum.