Cationic Cobalt(II) Bisphosphine Hydroformylation Catalysis: In Situ Spectroscopic and Reaction Studies.

[HCo(CO)x(bisphosphine)](BF4), x = 1-3, is a highly active hydroformylation catalyst system, especially for internal branched alkenes. In situ infrared spectroscopy (IR), electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), and nuclear magnetic resonance studies support the proposed catalyst formulation. IR studies reveal the formation of a dicationic Co(I) paramagnetic CO-bridged dimer, [Co2(µ-CO)2(CO)(bisphosphine)2]2+, at lower temperatures formed from the reaction of two catalyst complexes via the elimination of H2. DFT studies indicate a dimer structure with square-pyramidal and tetrahedral cobalt centers. This monomer-dimer equilibrium is analogous to that seen for HCo(CO)4, reacting to eliminate H2 and form Co2(CO)8. EPR studies on the catalyst show a high-spin (S = 3/2) Co(II) complex. Reaction studies are presented that support the cationic Co(II) bisphosphine catalyst as the catalyst species present in this system and minimize the possible role of neutral Co(I) species, HCo(CO)4 or HCo(CO)3(phosphine), as catalysts.

Does including violent crime rates in ecological regression models of sexually transmissible infection rates improve model quality? Insights from spatial regression analyses.

Background Violent crime rates are often correlated with the hard-to-measure social determinants of sexually transmissible infections (STIs). In this study, we examined whether including violent crime rate as an independent variable can improve the quality of ecological regression models of STIs. METHODS: We obtained multiyear (2008-12) cross-sectional county-level data on violent crime and three STIs (chlamydia, gonorrhoea, and primary and secondary (P&S) syphilis) from counties in all the contiguous states in the US (except Illinois and Florida, due to lack of data). We used two measures of STI morbidity (one categorical and one continuous) and applied spatial regression with the spatial error model for each STI, with and without violent crime rate as an independent variable. We computed the associated Akaike's information criterion (AIC) and Bayesian information criterion (BIC) as our measure of the relative goodness of fit of the models. RESULTS: Including the violent crime rate as an independent variable improved the quality of the regression models after controlling for several sociodemographic factors. We found that the lower calculated AICs and BICs indicated more favourable goodness of fit in all the models that included violent crime rates, except for the categorical P&S syphilis model, in which the violent crime variable was not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: Because violent crime rates can account for the hard-to-measure social determinants of STIs, including violent crime rate as an independent variable can improve ecological regression models of STIs.

Highly active cationic cobalt(II) hydroformylation catalysts.

The cobalt complexes HCo(CO)4 and HCo(CO)3(PR3) were the original industrial catalysts used for the hydroformylation of alkenes through reaction with hydrogen and carbon monoxide to produce aldehydes. More recent and expensive rhodium-phosphine catalysts are hundreds of times more active and operate under considerably lower pressures. Cationic cobalt(II) bisphosphine hydrido-carbonyl catalysts that are far more active than traditional neutral cobalt(I) catalysts and approach rhodium catalysts in activity are reported here. These catalysts have low linear-to-branched (L:B) regioselectivity for simple linear alkenes. However, owing to their high alkene isomerization activity and increased steric effects due to the bisphosphine ligand, they have high L:B selectivities for internal alkenes with alkyl branches. These catalysts exhibit long lifetimes and substantial resistance to degradation reactions.

The dynamic nature of language lateralization: effects of lexical and prosodic factors.

In dichotic listening, a right ear advantage for linguistic tasks reflects left hemisphere specialization, and a left ear advantage for prosodic tasks reflects right hemisphere specialization. Three experiments used a response hand manipulation with a dichotic listening task to distinguish between direct access (relative specialization) and callosal relay (absolute specialization) explanations of perceptual asymmetries for linguistic and prosodic processing. Experiment 1 found evidence for direct access in linguistic processing and callosal relay in prosodic processing. Direct access for linguistic processing was found to depend on lexical status (Experiment 2) and affective prosody (Experiment 3). Results are interpreted in terms of a dynamic model of hemispheric specialization in which right hemisphere contributions to linguistic processing emerge when stimuli are words, and when they are spoken with affective prosody.