The structure of a model intermediate for the nickel-catalyzed cyclodimerization of allene

The stoichiometric reaction between allene, zerovalent nickel and a chelating diphosphane leads to the formation of a bis-methylenenickelacyclopentane derivative whose structure has been established by X-ray crystallography.     

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.     

(Pentaphenyl)aluminacyclopentadiene as a complexing ligand. The molecular structure of (pentaphenyl)aluminacyclopentadiene and its complex with 1,5-cyclooctadienenickel

The molecular conformations of a (pentaphenyl)aluminacyclopentadiene ligand (I) and its complex with 1,5-cycloactadienenickel (II) have been determined from single crystal X-ray data collected at room temperature with counter methods. The free ligand crystallizes in the monoclinic space group Cc with 4 molecules in a unit cell of dimensions a 10.5598(5), b 22.7089(12), c 13.3417(4) Å, β 98.064(3)°; its (COD)Ni complex Crystallizes in the monoclinic space group P2₁/n with 4 molecules in a unit cell of the dimensions a 11.9948(8), b 16.9758 (13), c 18.7721(14) Å. β 97.958(3)°. Both structures have been refined anisotropically to R values of 0.0577 and 0.0493, respectively. Upon complexation of I to the nickel atom the planarity of the ring system is distorted, with the aluminum being bent away from the nickel. A direct metal—metal interaction in II (NiAl: 2.748(1) Å) cannot be ruled out.