Synthesis of the necine bases (±)-macronecine and (±)-supinidine via an aza-ene reaction and allylsilane induced ring closure

An aza-ene reaction has been used for the first time for the synthesis of two 5-membered lactam-hydrazides, each with a built-in allylsilane terminator for further elaboration. One of the lactam-hydrazides was transformed via an allylsilane-hydrazonium ion ring closure to a fused tetrahydropyrazole which may be considered as a mono-nitrogen analog of the biologically significant necine bases. A density functional theoretical study (B3LYP/6-21G*) was undertaken to provide insight into the factors that favor a synclinal transition structure of the hydrazonium ion intermediate leading to the tetrahydropyrazole. This stereocontrolled synthesis served as a model for the multi-step conversion of the other lactam-hydrazide, the substituted 2-pyrrolidinone, to necine bases (±)-supinidine and (±)-macronecine. An allylsilane-aldehyde ring closure formed the key step in the synthesis of these natural products.     

Fingerprint analysis of Shankhpushpi for species discrimination by HPLC coupled with chemometric methods

Abstract

Shankhpushpi, traded in the Indian market is having different controversial botanical sources, that is, Convolvulus pluricaulis Choisy (Convulvulaceae), Clitoria ternatea Linn. (Papilionaceae), and Evolvulus alsinoides Linn. (Convulvulaceae). Simple, accurate and precise RP-HPLC-PDA method was established for quality assessment and discrimination of Shankhpushpi samples using chromatographic profiling method. In distinction to the routine method of quality assessment which uses single or dual marker peaks, all chromatographic data (retention times/variables) were used. Fifteen shankhpushpi samples were purchased from the market including authenticated samples of all three C. pluricaulis, C. ternatea, E. alsinoides. A total of 18 samples were analyzed by HPLC and the dataset was then treated with multivariate analyses like PCA and HCA by using MINITAB software. Thus, the developed method was useful in discriminating the Shankhpushpi samples and for the perseverance of quality control.     

Revealing the bonding of solvated Ru complexes with valence-to-core resonant inelastic X-ray scattering

Ru-complexes are widely studied because of their use in biological applications and photoconversion technologies. We reveal novel insights into the chemical bonding of a series of Ru(ii)- and Ru(iii)-complexes by leveraging recent advances in high-energy-resolution tender X-ray spectroscopy and theoretical calculations. We perform Ru 2p4d resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) to probe the valence excitations in dilute solvated Ru-complexes. Combining these experiments with a newly developed theoretical approach based on time-dependent density functional theory, we assign the spectral features and quantify the metal–ligand bonding interactions. The valence-to-core RIXS features uniquely identify the metal-centered and charge transfer states and allow extracting the ligand-field splitting for all the complexes. The combined experimental and theoretical approach described here is shown to reliably characterize the ground and excited valence states of Ru complexes, and serve as a basis for future investigations of ruthenium, or other 4d metals active sites, in biological and chemical applications.

Combined experimental and theoretical Ru 2p4d resonant inelastic X-ray scattering study probes the chemical bonding and the valence excited states of solvated Ru complexes.     

Crystal structure and physical properties of a ruthenium(II) bipyridine dimethylsulfoxide complex

The complex [Ru(bpy)₂(DMSO)C1]PF₆, where bpy is 2,2-bipyridine and DMSO is dimethylsulfoxide, crystallizes in the triclinic space group P1¯ (#2) with a = 8.873 (2), b = 12.805 (4), c = 12.864 (4) Å, = 97.76(3), = 106.45(2), = 107.88(2); Z = 2, and d _calc = 1.75 mg/m³. The coordination geometry is that of a distorted octahedron with a cis –RuN₄SCl arrangement of coordinating atoms. The four Ru—N distances to the bpy ligands are 2.082(5), 2.092(4), 2.044(4), and 2.078(5) Å. The Ru—Cl distance is 2.421(2) Å and the Ru—S distance to DMSO is 2.260(1) Å. The Ru—N bond distance trans to Cl is the shortest; the Ru—N bond distance trans to S is the longest. The complex is oxidized and reduced reversibly at 1.13 and –1.37 V vs. SSCE, respectively. It displays electronic absorptions at 515, 480 (1.5 × 10⁴), 342 (1.5 × 10⁴), 292 (1.2 × 10⁵), and 240 nm (6.2 × 10⁴) and has a broad emission band centered at 607 nm at 77 K in a 4:1 ethanol/methanol glass. The emission lifetime at room temperature is less than the pulse width of the laser, < 20 ns.     

Forbidden configurations and Steiner designs

Let ${\mathcal{F}}$ be a (0, 1) matrix. A (0, 1) matrix ${\mathcal{M}}$ is said to have ${\mathcal{F}}$ as a configuration if there is a submatrix of ${\mathcal{M}}$ which is a row and column permutation of ${\mathcal{F}}$ . We say that a matrix ${\mathcal{M}}$ is simple if it has no repeated columns. For a given ${v \in \mathbb{N}}$ , we shall denote by forb ${(v, \mathcal{F})}$ the maximum number of columns in a simple (0, 1) matrix with v rows for which ${\mathcal{F}}$ does not occur as a configuration. We say that a matrix ${\mathcal{M}}$ is maximal for ${\mathcal{F}}$ if ${\mathcal{M}}$ has forb ${(v, \mathcal{F})}$ columns. In this paper we show that for certain natural choices of ${\mathcal{F}}$ , forb ${(v, \mathcal{F})\leq\frac{\binom{v}{t}}{t+1}}$ . In particular this gives an extremal characterization for Steiner t-designs as maximal (0, 1) matrices in terms of certain forbidden configurations.     

A novel content-based active contour model for brain tumor segmentation

Brain tumor segmentation is a crucial step in surgical and treatment planning. Intensity-based active contour models such as gradient vector flow (GVF), magneto static active contour (MAC) and fluid vector flow (FVF) have been proposed to segment homogeneous objects/tumors in medical images. In this study, extensive experiments are done to analyze the performance of intensity-based techniques for homogeneous tumors on brain magnetic resonance (MR) images. The analysis shows that the state-of-art methods fail to segment homogeneous tumors against similar background or when these tumors show partial diversity toward the background. They also have preconvergence problem in case of false edges/saddle points. However, the presence of weak edges and diffused edges (due to edema around the tumor) leads to oversegmentation by intensity-based techniques. Therefore, the proposed method content-based active contour (CBAC) uses both intensity and texture information present within the active contour to overcome above-stated problems capturing large range in an image. It also proposes a novel use of Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix to define texture space for tumor segmentation. The effectiveness of this method is tested on two different real data sets (55 patients - more than 600 images) containing five different types of homogeneous, heterogeneous, diffused tumors and synthetic images (non-MR benchmark images). Remarkable results are obtained in segmenting homogeneous tumors of uniform intensity, complex content heterogeneous, diffused tumors on MR images (T1-weighted, postcontrast T1-weighted and T2-weighted) and synthetic images (non-MR benchmark images of varying intensity, texture, noise content and false edges). Further, tumor volume is efficiently extracted from 2-dimensional slices and is named as 2.5-dimensional segmentation.     

On (N, p, q) summability factors of infinite series

In this paper a necessary and sufficient condition has been obtained for Σa_n∈_n to be summable |N, q| whenever Σa_n is bounded (N, p, q).