Insight into the solvation and isomerization of 3-halo-1-azaallylic anions from ab initio metadynamics calculations and NMR experiments.
In organic synthesis, it is observed experimentally that the nature of the solvent can influence tremendously the reactivity and overall product selectivity. In this communication, we report on the E/Z isomerization of a typical solvated species, that is, the stable lithiated 3-chloro-3-methyl-1azaallylic anion readily accessible from the N-isopropylACHTUNGTRENNUNGimine of a-chloropropiophenone, from a theoretical and a subsequent NMR study. To date, the configurational properties of these 3-chloro-3-methyl-1-azaallylic anions are poorly understood. Our main emphasis is devoted to the monomeric species as these are believed to be the most important for further reactivity studies (see below). It will be shown that the investigated species is a particular example in which the inclusion of the solvent in the modeling study is of the utmost importance to determine the proper chemical ACHTUNGTRENNUNGbehavior. The 3-chloro-3-methyl-1-azaallylic anion was chosen as a model compound to obtain a deeper insight into the structural features of 3-halo-1-azaallylic anions and to get a better understanding, and eventually a better control, of the stereochemical outcome of the reactions in which these anions are involved. Since their first use in the early 1960s, non-halogenated 1-azaallylic anions have gained a predominant role in organic synthesis due to their ability to form new C C bonds with a lack of side products. The chemistry of 1-azaallylic anions leads to basic heterocyclic systems such as aziridines, azetidines, pyrrolidines, pyrroles, piperidines, oxiranes, oxolanes, and higher functionalized ring systems, currently of interest for pharmaceutical chemistry and agrochemistry. The application of certain halogenated counterparts, that is, the 3-chloro-3-methyl-1azaallylic anions, in particular by the group of De Kimpe and more general by the group of Florio, which incorporated the 3-chloro-3-methyl-1-azaallylic moiety into heterocyclic structures, has led to the synthesis of various important classes of compounds such as cyclopropanes, tetrahydrofurans, tetrahydropyrans, oxiranes, aziridines, chloroimines, pyrroles and pyridines, steroids, alkenylheterocycles, and oxazetidines. As mentioned, 3-chloro3-methyl-1-azaallylic anions can be used for the synthesis of functionalized oxiranes and aziridines since the former anions behave as nucleophiles in Darzensand aza-Darzenstype reactions with carbonyl compounds and imines. One of the determining factors in the stereochemical outcome of these Darzens-type reactions is the E/Z stereochemistry of the starting 1-azaallylic anion. Therefore, it is important to know and understand the configurational properties of 3chloro-3-methyl-1-azaallylic anions in order to perform aldoland Mannich-type reactions with these intermediates in a stereocontrolled manner. NMR investigation and semiempirical calculations on the stereochemistry of (2-(a-chloroethyl)benzothiazolyl)lithium and (4,4-dimethyl-2-(a-chloroethyl)oxazolinyl)lithium have demonstrated that internal coordination between lithium and chlorine stabilizes the corresponding isomer with nitrogen and chlorine at the same side of the C=C double bond. The lack of such structural investigations on 3chloro-3-methyl-1-azaallylic anions in sensu stricto urged us to study their stereochemical properties. The E/Z isomerism for non-halogenated 1-azaallylic anions has been observed and investigated quite frequently. The facile carbon carbon bond rotation in simple lithiated 1-azaallylic anions was investigated using H NMR spectros[a] Dr. R. Declerck, B. De Sterck, T. Verstraelen, Prof. Dr. M. Waroquier, Prof. Dr. V. Van Speybroeck Center for Molecular Modeling, Ghent University Proeftuinstraat 86, 9000 Gent (Belgium) Fax: (+32) 9-264-6697 E-mail : Veronique.VanSpeybroeck@UGent.be [b] Dr. G. Verniest, Dr. S. Mangelinckx, J. Jacobs, Prof. Dr. N. De Kimpe Department of Organic Chemistry, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering Ghent University, Coupure links 653, 9000 Gent (Belgium) Fax: (+32) 9-264-6243 E-mail : Norbert.DeKimpe@UGent.be Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW under http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/chem.200800948.
Lithium enolates of simple ketones: structure determination using the method of continuous variation.
The method of continuous variation in conjunction with 6Li NMR spectroscopy was used to characterize lithium enolates derived from 1-indanone, cyclohexanone, and cyclopentanone in solution. The strategy relies on forming ensembles of homo- and heteroaggregated enolates. The enolates form exclusively chelated dimers in N,N,N',N'-tetramethylethylenediamine and cubic tetramers in tetrahydrofuran and 1,2-dimethoxyethane.
Hedy: A Gradual Language for Programming Education
One of the aspects of programming that learners often struggle with is the syntax of programming languages: remembering the right commands to use and combining those into a working program. Prior research demonstrated that students submit source code with syntax errors in 73% of cases and even the best students do so in 50% of cases. An analysis of 37 million compilations by 250.000 students found that the most common error was a syntax error, which occurred in almost 800.000 compilations. It was also found that Java and Perl are not easier to understand than a programming language with randomly generated keywords, stressing the difficulties that novices face in understanding syntax. This paper presents Hedy: a new way of teaching the syntax of a programming language to novices, inspired by educational methods by which punctuation is taught to children. Hedy starts as a simple programming language without any syntactic elements such as brackets, colons or indentation. The rules slowly and gradually change until the novices are programming in Python. Hedy is evaluated on 9714 programs.