Biological effects of the hand-arm vibration syndrome: historical perspective and current research

The objective of this paper is to highlight gaps of information regarding mechanisms of vascular, neurological, and musculo-skeletal damage caused by vibration. Also addressed is evidence that high noise level may act synergistically to the development of vibration syndrome of the hand and arm. Areas of research currently active in psychophysical and neurophysiological investigations to increase our understanding of tactile and spatial discrimination are discussed. Although the importance of sensory loss or "fine touch" is understood, there is neither a proven objective scientific test with which the syndrome can be diagnosed nor is there a scale of damage assessment. Determining the exact role of the central nervous system in assessing damage from vibration is difficult in view of nonspecific symptoms reported from eastern Europe and from Japan. To complicate matters still further, there is the possibility that repeated, rapid mechanical movements of the hand and arm associated with handling heavy tools produce carpal tunnel syndrome but that the injury is not directly attributed to vibration. Therefore, it follows that there could exist an element of carpal tunnel syndrome in many vibration syndrome cases.     

Soliton Raman fibre-ring oscillators

Results are presented on the operation and optimization of soliton Raman fibre-ring lasers using a c.w. mode-locked Nd-YAG laser at 1.32m as the source of 100 ps pump pulses. Various lengths of standard single-mode silica fibre were used, and tunable pulses as short as 100 fs generated.On leave from Departamento de Fisica, Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Maceio, 57000-AL, Brazil     

A convenient synthesis of a selective gelatinase inhibitor as an antimetastatic agent

Compound 1, 2-(4-phenoxyphenylsulfonylmethyl)thiirane, is a potent and selective inhibitor for human gelatinases (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2000, 122, 6799-6800), enzymes implicated in a number of diseases, including cancer. This compound is showing excellent promise in animal trials in a number of disease models. Large quantities of this compound were necessary for these studies. A convenient four-step synthetic route for compound 1 is described herein. The synthesis is amenable to scale-up to tens of grams and gives an overall yield of 57% for this important compound.     

Preparation of highly branched poly(vinyl acetate) by transfer to allylic carbonate comonomers

Copolymerization of vinyl acetate with allyl carbonates that contain isopropyl groups yields highly branched poly(vinyl acetates).     

Strong, low-energy two-photon absorption in extended amine-terminated cyano-substituted phenylenevinylene oligomers

Three quadrupolar oligophenylenevinylenes with five rings in the conjugated backbone, terminal donor groups, and various acceptors and/or donors along the backbone were synthesized and their two-photon spectroscopic properties investigated. These chromophores exhibit large two-photon absorption cross sections over a wide wavelength range and two distinct peaks, the strongest of which (deltamax > 3600 GM) is observed at 960-970 nm, a wavelength close to twice the value of the linear absorption maximum (2lambda(1)max). The findings on these chromophores are compared with those for analogous molecules with shorter conjugation length, for which the main two-photon band is at significantly shorter wavelength than 2lambda(1)max.     

N-α-Benzyloxyacetyl derivatives of (S)-4-benzyl-5,5-dimethyloxazolidin-2-one for the asymmetric synthesis of differentially protected α,β-dihydroxyaldehydes

α-Dibenzylamino- and α-benzyloxy- derivatives of N-acetyl-(S)-4-benzyl-5,5-dimethyloxazolidin-2-one readily undergo highly stereoselective boron mediated syn-aldol reactions with a range of aromatic and aliphatic aldehydes, generating the syn-aldol products in good to excellent yields as single diastereoisomers after purification. In the α-dibenzylamino series, deprotection of the functionalised aldol fragments to the corresponding α-amino-β-hydroxy methyl ester or α-amino-β-hydroxyaldehyde proved problematic, with a range of N- and O-protecting groups giving mixtures of products arising from endocyclic and exocyclic cleavage pathways. However, in the α-benzyloxy series, O-silyl protection of the aldol products, and subsequent DIBAL reduction gives stereoselectively the corresponding N-1′-hydroxyalkyloxazolidin-2-ones, which undergo base promoted fragmentation to the desired highly functionalised and differentially protected α,β-dihydroxyaldehydes in good yields and without loss of stereochemical integrity.