Mild and Efficient Deoxygenation of Sulfoxides with a WCl6/Indium System

Dialkyl, diaryl, and aryl alkyl sulfoxides can be rapidly converted to the corresponding sulfides with a WCl₆/In system in excellent yields under mild conditions.     

Synthesis and characterisation of photopolymerisable liquid crystals based on the π-extended fluorene core and their corresponding non-reactive analogues

We have synthesised a series of new reactive mesogens with photopolymerisable di-acrylates and their corresponding non-reactive analogues based on the π-conjugated aromatic core, fluorene (F)-di-[thiophene (T)-benzene (B)], using the Stille and Suzuki coupling reaction. The effect of lateral alkyl chains on the 9-position of the central fluorene moiety as well as α, ω- side alkyl chains attached to the π-conjugated aromatic core on the mesomorphism was investigated by utilising differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and polarising optical microscopy (POM). A wide angle X-ray scattering (WAXS) study at the various temperatures was also carried out to reveal phase structures. Photopolymerisable di-acrylates connected directly to the rigid aromatic core showed higher phase transition temperatures, probably due to the induced dipole moment in comparison with those of a non-reactive methyl–ether counterpart.     

Heritability of Stroop and flanker performance in 12-year old children

Background  

There is great interest in appropriate phenotypes that serve as indicator of genetically transmitted frontal (dys)function, such as ADHD. Here we investigate the ability to deal with response conflict, and we ask to what extent performance variation on response interference tasks is caused by genetic variation. We tested a large sample of 12-year old monozygotic and dizygotic twins on two well-known and closely related response interference tasks; the color Stroop task and the Eriksen flanker task. Using structural equation modelling we assessed the heritability of several performance indices derived from those tasks.     

The contribution of high frequencies to human brain activity underlying horizontal localization of natural spatial sounds

Background  

In the field of auditory neuroscience, much research has focused on the neural processes underlying human sound localization. A recent magnetoencephalography (MEG) study investigated localization-related brain activity by measuring the N1m event-related response originating in the auditory cortex. It was found that the dynamic range of the right-hemispheric N1m response, defined as the mean difference in response magnitude between contralateral and ipsilateral stimulation, reflects cortical activity related to the discrimination of horizontal sound direction. Interestingly, the results also suggested that the presence of realistic spectral information within horizontally located spatial sounds resulted in a larger right-hemispheric N1m dynamic range. Spectral cues being predominant at high frequencies, the present study further investigated the issue by removing frequencies from the spatial stimuli with low-pass filtering. This resulted in a stepwise elimination of direction-specific spectral information. Interaural time and level differences were kept constant. The original, unfiltered stimuli were broadband noise signals presented from five frontal horizontal directions and binaurally recorded for eight human subjects with miniature microphones placed in each subject's ear canals. Stimuli were presented to the subjects during MEG registration and in a behavioral listening experiment.     

Thermogelling behaviors of poly(caprolactone‐b‐ethylene glycol‐b‐caprolactone) triblock copolymer in the presence of hyaluronic acid

In this article, we studied the effect of hyaluronic acid (HA) on thermogelation of poly(caprolactone‐b‐ethylene glycol‐b‐caprolactone) (PCL‐PEG‐PCL) aqueous solution designed as an injectable system for prevention of postsurgical tissue adhesion. The PCL‐PEG‐PCL triblock copolymers were simply synthesized by ring‐opening polymerization of ε‐caprolactone (CL) in the presence of PEG as a polymeric initiator. The synthesized copolymers were confirmed by proton nuclear magnetic resonance (¹H‐NMR) spectroscopy. Possible interactions between HA and PCL‐PEG‐PCL triblock copolymers in the blend were evaluated by Fourier‐transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The effect of HA on the micellization of PCL‐PEG‐PCL aqueous solution was investigated by dye solubilization method and electrophoretic lighting scattering (ELS) spectrophotometer. Also, the thermogelling behaviors of the PCL‐PEG‐PCL triblock copolymers in the presence of HA and their mechanism were investigated by test tube inverting method, ¹³C‐NMR, ¹H‐NMR, Advanced Rheometic Expansion System (ARES), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The PCL‐PEG‐PCL/HA blend aqueous solutions undergo the sol‐gel‐sol transition in response to an increase in temperature (10–60 °C) and the gelation of the PCL‐PEG‐PCL was rather accelerated by HA. Presumably, this accelerated gelation seems to arise from the attractive interactions between them and the effect of chain confinement in the micelle corona region. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 46: 3629–3637, 2008