Reaction of pyridine N-oxides with Grignard reagents: a stereodefined synthesis of substituted dienal oximes

Rapid addition of Grignard reagents to pyridine N-oxides under mild conditions gave stereodefined dienal oximes in good to excellent yields. This reaction provides an efficient access to substituted olefins with defined stereochemistry that are potentially of interest as bioactives themselves or as versatile synthetic intermediates.     

Improved quantification limits in chiral capillary electrochromatography by peak compression effects

The peak compression effect has been applied to improve quantification limits in chiral capillary electrochromatography (CEC). A stationary phase based on the chiral selector vancomycin (Chirobiotic V) was used for separations of the enantiomers of mianserin. By adding solvents with a low dielectric constant, e.g. 2-propanol or tetrahydrofuran, to the sample solution, peak compression could be induced. The plate numbers for the minor enantiomer increased from approximately 100,000 to 1.4-1.6 million plates/m, when the composition of the mobile phase was adjusted so that the analyte eluted within either one of two system zones originating from the sample solution. A 10-fold improvement in the quantification limit for the minor enantiomer was obtained compared to elution under non-focused conditions.     

High-pressure phase transition in LiBH4

The high-pressure phase transition from ambient pressure α-LiBH₄ to high-pressure β-LiBH₄ was observed by Raman spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction between 0.8 and 1.1 GPa. The phase boundary between these two phases was mapped over a large range of temperatures using thermal conductivity studies and differential thermal analysis. The structure of the high-pressure phase could not be identified due to small number of experimentally observed reflections, but it was shown that it is different from previously reported theoretical predictions.     

Boundary and Lens Rigidity of Lorentzian Surfaces

Let be a Lorentzian metric on the plane that agrees with the standard metric outside a compact set and so that there are no conjugate points along any time-like geodesic of . Then and are isometric. Further, if and are two dimensional compact time oriented Lorentzian manifolds with space--like boundaries and so that all time-like geodesics of maximize the distances between their points and and are ``boundary isometric', then there is a conformal diffeomorphism between and and they have the same areas. Similar results hold in higher dimensions under an extra assumption on the volumes of the manifolds.