Hexane dehydrogenation to hexenes: a general indicator for deactivation of Pt catalysts in “skeletal” reactions

The comparative evaluation of dehydrogenation yields and selectivities of skeletal reactions from n-hexane reactions on monofunctional Pt catalysts is a good universal indicator of catalyst deactivation, independently of the presence and the nature of the support. Four regions could be defined with increasing carbon accumulation, causing "beneficial", "selective", "nonselective" and "severe" deactivation.     

Vibrational analysis of 3-trifluoromethylphenol

The molecular geometry and molecular vibrations of 3-trifluoromethylphenol have been investigated by means of quantum chemical calculations and vibrational spectroscopy. The computations indicated the preference of the conformer with the OH hydrogen pointing in the direction of the trifluoromethyl group by 0.9 kJ/mol with respect to the anti conformer. FT-IR spectra of the vapour and CCl₄ solution as well as FT-IR and FT-Raman spectra of the pure liquid have been recorded in the range of 4000–150 cm⁻¹. The interpretation of the spectra was based on a scaled quantum mechanical (SQM) analysis for which the initial force field was calculated at the Becke3-Lee-Yang-Parr (B3LYP) DFT level supplemented with a 6-311++G** basis set. Using 11 scale factors refined in the present study an rms deviation of 7.6 cm⁻¹ between the experimental and SQM frequencies has been achieved. On the basis of the computations 40 of the total of 42 fundamentals of the title compound have been assigned.     

Determination of the single component and competitive adsorption isotherms of the 1-indanol enantiomers by the inverse method

The inverse method of isotherm determination consists in calculating the numerical values of the coefficients of an isotherm model that give a set of chromatographic profiles in best possible agreement with the set of experimental profiles available. This method was applied to determine the adsorption isotherms of the 1-indanol enantiomers on a cellulose tribenzoate chiral stationary phase. Both single-component and competitive isotherms were determined by using no more than one or two overloaded band profiles. The isotherms determined from the overloaded band profiles agreed extremely well with the isotherms determined by frontal analysis. Several isotherm models were used and tested. The best-fit isotherm was selected by means of statistical evaluation of the results. The results show that the adsorption is best characterized with a model describing heterogeneous adsorption with bimodal adsorption energy distribution.     

Toward direct determination of conformations of protein building units from multidimensional NMR experiments. V. NMR chemical shielding analysis of N-formyl-serinamide,a model for polar side-chain containing peptides

Knowledge of chemical shift-structure relationships could greatly facilitate the NMR chemical shift assignment and structure refinement processes that occur during peptide/protein structure determination via NMR spectroscopy. To determine whether such correlations exist for polar side chain containing amino acid residues the serine dipeptide model, For-L-Ser-NH(2), was studied. Using the GIAO-RHF/6-31+G(d) and GIAO-RHF/TZ2P levels of theory the NMR chemical shifts of all hydrogen ((1)H(N), (1)H(alpha), (1)H(beta1), (1)H(beta2)), carbon ((13)C(alpha), (13)C(beta), (13)C') and nitrogen ((15)N) atoms have been computed for all 44 stable conformers of For-L-Ser-NH(2). An attempt was made to establish correlation between chemical shift of each nucleus and the major conformational variables (omega(0), phi, psi, omega(1), chi,(1) and chi(2)). At both levels of theory a linear correlation can be observed between (1)H(alpha)/phi, (13)C(alpha)/phi, and (13)C(alpha)/psi. These results indicate that the backbone and side-chain structures of For-L-Ser-NH(2) have a strong influence on its chemical shifts.     

Ab initio torsional potential and transition frequencies of acetaldehyde

High-level ab initio electronic structure calculations, including extrapolations to the complete basis set limit as well as relativistic and diagonal Born-Oppenheimer corrections, resulted in a torsional potential of acetaldehyde in its electronic ground state. This benchmark-quality potential fully reflects the symmetry and internal rotation dynamics of this molecule in the energy range probed by spectroscopic experiments in the infrared and microwave regions. The torsional transition frequencies calculated from this potential and the ab initio torsional inverse effective mass function are within 2 cm(-1) of the available experimental values. Furthermore, the computed contortional parameter rho of the rho-axis system Hamiltonian is also in excellent agreement with that obtained from spectral analyses of acetaldehyde.     

Hydrogen bonding in the urea dimers and adenine–thymine DNA base pair: anharmonic effects in the intermolecular H-bond and intramolecular H-stretching vibrations

The equilibrium structures, binding energies, vibrational harmonic frequencies, and the anharmonic corrections for two different (cyclic and asymmetric) urea dimers and for the adenine–thymine DNA base pair system have been studied using the second-order Møller–Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) method and different density functional theory (DFT) exchange–correlation (XC) functionals (BLYP, B3LYP, PBE, HCTH407, KMLYP, and BH and HLYP) with the D95V, D95V**, and D95V++** basis sets. The widely used a posteriori Boys–Bernardi or counterpoise correction scheme for basis set superposition error (BSSE) has been included in the calculations to take into account the BSSE effects during geometry optimization (on structure), on binding energies and on the different levels of approximation used for calculating the vibrational frequencies. The results obtained with the ab initio MP2 method are compared with those calculated with different DFT XC functionals; and finally the suitability of these DFT XC functionals to describe intermolecular hydrogen bonds as well as harmonic frequencies and the anharmonic corrections is assessed and discussed.     

Induced secondary metabolites from the endophytic fungus Aspergillus versicolor through bacterial co-culture and OSMAC approaches

Two new cryptic 3,4-dihydronaphthalen-(2H)-1-one (1-tetralone) derivatives, aspvanicin A (1) and its epimer aspvanicin B (2), as well as several known cryptic metabolites (3–8), were obtained from the ethyl acetate extract of the co-culture of the endophytic fungus Aspergillus versicolor KU258497 with the bacterium Bacillus subtilis 168 trpC2 on solid rice medium. When A. versicolor was cultured axenically in liquid Wickerham medium supplemented with 3.5% DMSO, an additional three known secondary metabolites (9–11) were isolated that were lacking when the fungus was fermented on rice medium. The structures of the new compounds were elucidated using one- and two-dimensional NMR spectroscopy as well as HRESIMS. The relative and absolute configurations of 1 and 2 were determined by the combination of NMR and electronic circular dichroism (ECD) analysis aided by DFT conformational analysis and TDDFT-ECD calculations. The ECD calculations revealed that although the sign of the blue-shifted overlapping n-π¹ ECD transition follows the helicity rule of cyclic aryl ketones, the calculation of low-energy conformers and ECD spectra was necessary to determine the stereochemistry. All metabolites were assessed for their antibacterial and cytotoxic activities; one of the new diastereomers, compound 2, showed moderate cytotoxic activity against the mouse lymphoma cell line L5178Y.     

Fluorophore-quencher distance correlation functions from single-molecule photon arrival trajectories

We generalize and simplify the method of Yang and Xie (J. Chem. Phys. 2002, 117, 10965) to obtain distance correlation functions from photon arrival trajectories of single fluorophores whose lifetime, [k(r)](-1), depends on the distance to a quencher. It is assumed that this distance does not change during the fluorescence lifetime. The experimental trajectory is first transformed by replacing the delay time (i.e., the interval between the photon arrival and the nearest laser pulse) by a certain function of this delay time. This function is the inverse Laplace transform of r(k), which is the solution of k(r) = 1. The correlation function of the transformed data then directly gives the distance correlation function. Illustrative examples include F?rster energy transfer and quenching due to electron transfer.     

Density functional study of the conformational space of 4C1 D-glucuronic acid

The conformational space of (4)C(1) alpha- and beta-d-glucuronic acid was scanned by HF/3-21G(p) calculations followed by optimization of the 15 most stable structures for each, using the B3LYP density functional theory method in conjunction with a diffuse polarized valence triple-zeta basis set. We found a general preference of the alpha anomers in the isolated molecules in agreement with the large endo-anomeric hyperconjugation effects in these structures. From the other intramolecular interactions (exo-anomeric hyperconjugation, hydrogen-bonding, dipole-dipole, and steric interactions), the effect of the hydrogen bonding is the most pronounced and plays a major role in determining the stability order within the alpha and beta series. The most stable conformer of both alpha and beta (4)C(1) d-glucuronic acid is the structure with the maximum number (5) of intramolecular hydrogen bonds. Introduction of solvent (water) effects by the SCI-PCM model resulted in two characteristic changes of the energetic properties: the gas-phase stability order changed considerably, and the energy range of the 15 most stable conformers decreased from 30 to 15 kJ/mol. The geometrical parameters reflect well the superimposed effects of hyperconjugation and hydrogen-bonding interactions. Most characteristics are the variations of the C-O bond distances (within a range of 0.04 A) upon the combined intramolecular effects.