Asymmetric Diels-Alder reaction catalyzed by chiral bases

Anthrone has been found to react with N-methyl maleimide in the presence of catalytic amounts of various chiral β-amino alcohols. The optically active cycloadduct 3a has been obtained in excellent yield. Several features of the reaction have been studied.     

Optimizing vehicle routes in a bakery company allowing flexibility in delivery dates

The work addressed in this paper is motivated from a real problem proposed to the authors by a bakery company in Northern Spain. The objective is to minimize the total distance travelled for the daily routes over the week. In order to reduce this total distance, some flexibility in the dates of delivery is introduced. A mixed-integer linear model for the problem is formulated. In addition, a two-phase method based in GRASP and path-relinking metaheuristic strategies is proposed. Computational experiments show that the method performs very well, obtaining high-quality solutions in short computational times. Moreover, when it is applied to real-data-based instances, the obtained solutions considerably reduce transportation costs over the planning horizon.     

A review of: “Optical technology and wideband local area networks”

London: The Royal Society,     

Palladium‐catalyzed selective decarboxylative coupling reaction versus direct C―H arylation for arylation of heteroaromatics

Conditions for selective palladium‐catalyzed decarboxylative 2‐arylation of 3‐substituted thiophene and furan derivatives bearing an ester at C2 position have been established. By using 2 mol% phosphine‐free Pd(OAc)₂ as the catalyst and a mixture of KOH and K₂CO₃ as the bases, in dimethylacetamide, moderate to good yields of the desired 2‐arylated products were obtained. A range of functional groups such as nitrile, nitro, formyl or acetyl on the aryl bromides was tolerated. This method allows us to employ in some cases more convenient reactants in terms of cost or physical properties (boiling point) for arylations. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reconstruction of physics objects at the Circular Electron Positron Collider with Arbor

After the Higgs discovery, precise measurements of the Higgs properties and the electroweak observables become vital for the experimental particle physics. A powerful Higgs/Z factory, the Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) is proposed. The Particle Flow oriented detector design is proposed to the CEPC and a Particle Flow algorithm, Arbor is optimized accordingly. We summarize the physics object reconstruction performance of the Particle Flow oriented detector design with Arbor algorithm and conclude that this combination fulfills the physics requirement of CEPC.