A Total Synthesis of (±)-Trichodiene

Trichodiene (1), a sesquiterpene hydrocarbon, was isolated from the extract of mycelium of Trichothecium roseum. The structure of trichodiene (1) was elucidated by Nozoe and Machida in 1970 via degradation and spectroscopy.¹ Trichodiene (1) has been shown to be the biogenetic precursor of the trichothecane family of sesquiterpenoids as characterized by the cytotoxic fungal metabolite (-)-trichodermin (2).^2,3 The structure and absolute stereochemistry of (-)-trichodermin (2) were determined by X-ray diffraction and, therefore, the structure and absolute stereochemistry of trichodiene (1) are now firmly established.⁴ We wish to report a total synthesis of (±)-trichodiene (1) via previously reported lactone 3.^5,6     

Sterically congested macrobicycles with heteroatomic bridgehead functionality

A series of cyclophanes composed of two triarylelement caps linked by two-atom bridges has been synthesized. The bridgehead functional groups include phosphines in combination with amines, hydrosilanes, methylsilanes, and ethoxysilanes. Computational studies accurately predicted that when the bridgehead substituents are small (lone pairs or protons), an in_,in bridgehead stereochemistry is strongly favored, but larger bridgehead substituents favor the formations of in_,out stereoisomers. The X-ray structures, spectra, and reactivity of these compounds are discussed, as well as the resolution of one of the cyclophanes into pure enantiomers.     

Synthesis and X-Ray Crystal Structure of Methyl D,L-Desmeihyl-Holantosaminide

4-Acetamido-2,4,6-trideoxy-D,L-arabino-hexopyranose, a desmethyl analog of N-acetyl-L-hoTantosamine, the glycosidic residue of the cardenolide HoTarosine A and holantosines C and D, has been prepared via a novel intramolecular rearrangement of an amino alcohol and has been characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction.     

Catalyst free,base free microwave irradiated synthesis of aryl nitrites from potassium aryltrifluoroborates and bismuth nitrate

A mixture of bismuth nitrate pentahydrate and potassium aryltrifluoroborate in toluene under microwave heating at 120 °C for 20 min provides an interesting and mild reaction protocol for the synthesis of aryl nitrite. The conversion to aryl nitrites from aryltrifluoroborates without transition metal catalyst and base in high yields is remarkable.     

Effect of Shear Displacement and Stress Changes on Fracture Hydraulic Aperture and Flow Anisotropy

Transport in Porous Media - Fluid flow in fractures has the potential to drastically change the economic, environmental, and safety risks associated with a subsurface operation. This work focuses...     

Mass Activated Droplet Sorting (MADS) Enables High‐Throughput Screening of Enzymatic Reactions at Nanoliter Scale

Microfluidic droplet sorting enables the high‐throughput screening and selection of water‐in‐oil microreactors at speeds and volumes unparalleled by traditional well‐plate approaches. Most such systems sort using fluorescent reporters on modified substrates or reactions that are rarely industrially relevant. We describe a microfluidic system for high‐throughput sorting of nanoliter droplets based on direct detection using electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI‐MS). Droplets are split, one portion is analyzed by ESI‐MS, and the second portion is sorted based on the MS result. Throughput of 0.7 samples s^?1 is achieved with 98 % accuracy using a self‐correcting and adaptive sorting algorithm. We use the system to screen ≈15 000 samples in 6 h and demonstrate its utility by sorting 25 nL droplets containing transaminase expressed in vitro. Label‐free ESI‐MS droplet screening expands the toolbox for droplet detection and recovery, improving the applicability of droplet sorting to protein engineering, drug discovery, and diagnostic workflows.     

Viscoelastic characterization of compacted pharmaceutical excipient materials by analysis of frequency-dependent mechanical relaxation processes

A newly developed method for determining the frequency-dependent complex Young's modulus was employed to analyze the mechanical response of compacted microcrystalline cellulose, sorbitol, ethyl cellulose and starch for frequencies up to 20 kHz. A Debye-like relaxation was observed in all the studied pharmaceutical excipient materials and a comparison with corresponding dielectric spectroscopy data was made. The location in frequency of the relaxation peak was shown to correlate to the measured tensile strength of the tablets, and the relaxation was interpreted as the vibrational response of the interparticle hydrogen and van der Waals bindings in the tablets. Further, the measured relaxation strength, holding information about the energy loss involved in the relaxation processes, showed that the weakest material in terms of tensile strength, starch, is the material among the four tested ones that is able to absorb the most energy within its structure when exposed to external perturbations inducing vibrations in the studied frequency range. The results indicate that mechanical relaxation analysis performed over relatively broad frequency ranges should be useful for predicting material properties of importance for the functionality of a material in applications such as, e.g., drug delivery, drug storage and handling, and also for clarifying the origin of hitherto unexplained molecular processes.     

Enhancement of Kerr nonlinearity by multiphoton coherence

We propose a new method of resonant enhancement of optical Kerr nonlinearity that uses multilevel atomic coherence. The enhancement is accompanied by suppression of the other linear and nonlinear susceptibility terms of the medium. We show that the effect results in a modification of the nonlinear Faraday rotation of light propagating in an 87Rb vapor cell by changing the ellipticity of the light.