The mole is not an ordinary measurement unit

In this paper, it is argued that the SI system has not carefully enough taken into account the differences that exist between stoichiometry and physics, and because of this neglect forced the kind-of-quantity amount of substance into a false form. The mole is not a unit such as the metre, the kilogram, and the second. It is a ??unit?? only in the sense in which purely mathematical scaling factors can be called units.     

The mole is an Avogadro number of entities,the macroscopic unit for chemical amount

Just as the gram is an Avogadro number of daltons, g = (g/Da) Da, the current definition of the mole can be interpreted as an Avogadro number of entities, as it is often thought of by chemists—and it should be explicitly redefined this way. By introducing a hitherto missing atomic-scale unit for the amount of any substance, the entity (symbol ent), analogous to the dalton for mass, we can then define the mole as: mol = (g/Da) ent—i.e., an Avogadro number of entities. It is argued that the name for the base quantity should be “chemical amount,” by analogy with “electric current.” Recent proposals and counterproposals for redefining the mole (and renaming “amount of substance”) are critically discussed in light of the above intuitively obvious definition.     

Principles for constructing notation in unit systems and their application to the SI

The SI is the world’s premier scientific instrument and, like all instruments, must be updated as science and technology advance. The CIPM is planning to redefine four SI base units in terms of invariants of nature and has already dubbed this revision the ‘New SI’. This title will confuse most SI users, who are impacted only by the structure and notation of the SI, and neither of these has changed. A truly ‘New SI’, to be practical in the information age, would have at minimum an unambiguous, and preferably a machine- and user-friendly, notation. These and other principles for constructing a notation are proposed, and the SI historical and current notations are examined against these. Several levels of remediation are suggested.     

Some reflections on the proposed redefinition of the unit for the amount of substance and of other SI units

Proposals on the floor at CIPM are aiming at defining basic units by stipulating a consensus value for a number of fundamental constants. The paper indicates the author’s viewpoint about a number of issues that, in his view, should be better understood before such a choice becomes indisputable. They include the count nature of the Avogadro number; the correct expression of its stipulated numerical value; the check for the consistency of the SI system; the shift to the unit of the experimental uncertainty; the loss of the concept of base unit; the possibility of checking the correctness of the future standards; implications for the future reductions in uncertainty; the meaning of ‘fundamental’ related to the constants; and some lexical problems.     

The changing role of base units within the revised SI: an opportunity to take dimensional analysis back to its roots

The role of base units, base quantities and dimensions in the proposed revision of the SI is discussed. Although the primary role of the seven current base units would be lost when the SI is fixed by seven defining constants, we suggest that there would still be seven base units, but with some flexibility in how they are selected. We agree with the proposal that the current set of seven SI base quantities and associated units should retain special status, but point out that this would become a convention and would not be a direct consequence of the set of defined constants. Although dimensional analysis is currently described within the SI brochure as directly linked to the SI base units, we suggest that this is not necessary and that the flexibility introduced by the revised SI should be seen as an opportunity to allow different sets of dimensions to be chosen in different circumstances. This would bring dimensional analysis closer to its original form.     

Marine bioorganic chemistry as the base of marine biotechnology

Studies carried out at the Pacific Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Far-Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and at other centers of structural investigation of marine organism metabolites were used as examples to consider some features of the biochemistry of marine natural products and the achievements of marine bioorganic chemistry, which open up ways to the development of new drugs and biological preparations.     

Congeners of Troeger's base as chiral ligands

(S)-(+)-Troeger's base can be deprotonated and alkylated without loss of stereochemical integrity. An examination of the ability of Troeger's base and several derivatives prepared in this fashion to effect asymmetric induction in the addition of diethylzinc to aromatic aldehydes was conducted. Enantiomeric excesses as high as 86% were achieved, providing evidence that Troeger's base represents a chiral framework which can be modified to produce ligands for catalytic asymmetric synthesis.     

Hydroxide as general base in the saponification of ethyl acetate

The second-order rate constant for the saponification of ethyl acetate at 30.0 degrees C in H(2)O/D(2)O mixtures of deuterium atom fraction n (a proton inventory experiment) obeys the relation k(2)(n) = 0.122 s(-1) M(-1) (1 - n + 1.2n) (1 - n + 0.48n)/(1 - n + 1.4n) (1 - n + 0.68n)(3). This result is interpreted as a process where formation of the tetrahedral intermediate is the rate-determining step and the transition-state complex is formed via nucleophilic interaction of a water molecule with general-base assistance from hydroxide ion, opposite to the direct nucleophilic collision commonly accepted. This mechanistic picture agrees with previous heavy-atom kinetic isotope effect data of Marlier on the alkaline hydrolysis of methyl formate.     

Biosynthesis of phoslactomycins: cyclohexanecarboxylic acid as the starter unit

Phoslactomycins (PLMs) A-F, produced by actinomycetes are polyketide-type antibiotics derived from a hydroxycyclohexanecarboxylic acid or a cyclohexanecarboxylic acid starter unit. Feeding experiments with [2-¹³C]shikimic acid indicated that the C-18 carbon of PLMs comes from C-5 of shikimate. Further feeding studies of cis and trans-3-hydroxy[7-¹³C]cyclohexanecarboxylic acid, [7-¹³C]- and [²H₁₁]cyclohexanecarboxylic acid have suggested that the starter unit in the PLM biosynthesis is not cis-3-hydroxycyclohexanecarboxylate but cyclohexanecarboxylate and that PLM-B is produced initially, and subsequently converted to other analogs by hydroxylation and acylation.     

Glucose,not cellobiose,is the repeating unit of cellulose and why that is important

Despite nomenclature conventions of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the repeating unit of cellulose is often said to be cellobiose instead of glucose. This review covers arguments regarding the repeating unit in cellulose molecules and crystals based on biosynthesis, shape, crystallographic symmetry, and linkage position. It is concluded that there is no good reason to disagree with the official nomenclature. Statements that cellobiose is the repeating unit add confusion and limit thinking on the range of possible shapes of cellulose. Other frequent flaws in drawings with cellobiose as the repeating unit include incorporation of O-1 as the linkage oxygen atom instead of O-4 (the O-1 hydroxyl is the leaving group in glycoside synthesis). Also, n often erroneously represents the number of cellobiose units when n should denote the degree of polymerization i.e., the number of glucose residues in the polysaccharide.     

Calculating the number of spanning trees in a labeled planar molecular graph whose inner dual is a tree

The quantum mechanical relevance of the concept of a spanning tree extant within a given molecular graph—specifically, one that may be considered to represent the carbon-atom connectivity of a particular (planar) conjugated system—was first explicitly pointed out by Professor Roy McWeeny in his now-classic 1958 memoire entitled “Ring Currents and Proton Magnetic Resonance in Aromatic Molecules.” In a recent work, Gutman and one of the present authors proposed a scheme for calculating the number of spanning trees in the graph associated with catacondensed, benzenoid molecules which, by definition, contain rings of just the one size (six-membered); here, we present an algorithmic approach that enables the determination of the number of spanning trees in the molecular graph of any catacondensed system (which, in general, has rings of more than one size, and these may be of any size). An illustrative example is given, in which the algorithm devised is applied to a (hypothetical) pentacyclic catacondensed structure comprising a five-membered ring, a six-membered ring, a seven-membered ring, and two four-membered rings. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Electropherograms in capillary zone electrophoresis plotted as a function of the quantity of electric charge

We have plotted electropherograms in capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) as a function of the quantity of electric charge (Q) in order to eliminate the dependency of the analyte peak areas, as well as that of the migration times, upon both the capillary temperature and the applied voltage. The procedure is based on an idea of a migration index (MI) and an adjusted migration index (AMI) which were originally proposed by Lee and Yeung. The value of Q is measured accurately and calculated easily because it is given by a product of the electrophoretic current and the migration times, where the index MI is derived by dividing the value of Q by the effective volume of the capillary. By calculating the CZE peak area from the newly plotted electropherogram, improvement in precision in quantitative analysis is expected. Concerning AMI, careful treatment is required in its application to analyte peaks whose migration time is close to that of the neutral marker. Experimental data and discussions concerning the migration indices are presented.     

Reductive electron transfer in phenothiazine-modified DNA is dependent on the base sequence

A new DNA assay has been designed, prepared and applied for the chemical investigation of reductive electron transfer through the DNA. It consists of 5-(10-methyl-phenothiazin-3-yl)-2'-deoxyuridine (Ptz-dU, 1) as the photoexcitable electron injector and 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine (Br-dU) as the electron trap. The Ptz-dU-modified oligonucleotides were synthesised by means of a Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling protocol and subsequent automated phosphoramidite chemistry. Br-dU represents a kinetic electron trap, since it undergoes a chemical modification after its one-electron reduction that can be analysed by piperidine-induced strand cleavage. The quantification of the strand cleavage yields from irradiation experiments reveals important information about the electron-transfer efficiency. The performed DNA studies focused on the base sequence dependence of the electron-transfer efficiency with respect to the proposal that C*- and T*- act as intermediate electron carriers during electron hopping. From our observations it became evident that excess-electron transfer is highly sequence dependent and occurs more efficiently over T-A base pairs than over C-G base pairs.     

Alternative interpretations of the mole and the ideal gas equation

The fundamental concept of the mole stems from the idea of the gram-atom (or gram-molecule): that an amount of one mole of a given substance has an associated mass, in grams, numerically exactly equal to the relative atomic (or molecular) mass of the substance. This means that the particular number of entities comprising one mole, Avogadro’s number, must be exactly equal to the gram-to-dalton mass ratio. Various interpretations of what a mole actually means and how this affects the ideal gas equation depend on how the amount of a given substance, n, is related to the corresponding number of entities, N. We look at three alternatives: (1) the conventional interpretation in which n is directly proportional to N, where the proportionality factor is the reciprocal of the (evidently poorly understood) Avogadro constant; (2) a more easily comprehended alternative in which n is equal to N entities; and (3) an interpretation in which n and N both represent the number of entities, but expressed in different ways. Regardless of these different interpretations, the form of the stoichiometric equations (relating N, n and the total sample mass) and the form of the relationship between the universal gas constant and the Boltzmann constant remain the same.     

Nicke(II) complexes of half unit,symmetric and unsymmetric Schiff base ligands

Summary The template reaction of isonitrosoacetylacetone (Hina) witho-phenylenediamine (o-phenen) in the presence of (MeCO₂)₂Ni·4H₂O in EtOH yielded three types of nickel(II) complexes (depending on the molar ratio of the reactants) formulated as L¹Ni(O₂CMe)·2H₂O (1), (L¹)₂Ni (2), and L²Ni·H₂O (3). HL¹ and H₂L² are the half unit and symmetric Schiff base ligands obtained from the (11) and (21) condensation of (Hina) with (o-phenen) respectively. The (11) molar ratio reaction of (1) with either acetylacetone (Hacac) or (Hina) in CHCl₃ led to the formation of mixed ligand complexes L¹Ni(acac)·H₂O (4) and L¹Ni(ina)·H₂O (5) whereas a similar reaction with salicylaldehyde (Hsal) produced L³Ni (6); H₂L³ is the unsymmetric Schiff base formed by the (11) condensation of the amino group in (1) with (Hsal). Analytical, spectral and magnetic moment evidence are compatible with the suggested structures of the metal complexes.This paper is a summary of the M.Sc. thesis of S. M. Imam.