Total synthesis of the marine alkaloid halitulin

The structure of the strongly cytotoxic marine alkaloid halitulin (1) has been confirmed by total synthesis and its absolute configuration determined as (15S). The synthesis follows a strategy previously reported by one of us and uses an efficient preparation of the quinoline-7,8-diol unit by modified Baeyer-Villiger and Skraup reactions. The O-benzyl protecting groups were removed in the last step of the synthesis by transfer hydrogenolysis without concomitant reduction of the quinoline ring. The method can be applied for the synthesis of halitulin analogues.     

Pattern-specific neural network design

We present evidence that the performance of the traditional fully connected Hopfield model can be dramatically improved by carefully selecting an information-specific connectivity structure, while the synaptic weights of the selected connections are the same as in the Hopfield model. Starting from a completely disconnected network we let genuine Hebbian synaptic connections grow, one by one, until a desired degree of stability is achieved. Neural pathways are thus fixed notbefore, butduring the learning phase.     

Codings of graphs with binary edge labels

LetG(V,E) be a graph. A mappingf:E{0,1} ^m is called a (binary) coding ofG, if the induced mapping , assigns different vectors to the vertices. For the Boolean sum,f is called aB-code, and for the mod 2 sum anM-code. Letm _B (G) resp.m _M (G) be the smallest lengthm for whichB-codes resp.M-codes are possible. Trivially,m _B (G),m _M (G) log₂|V|. Improving results of Z. Tuza we showm _B (G)log₂|V| + 1,m _M (G)log₂|V|+4.