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para‐Quinone methides (p‐QMs) are naturally occurring molecules that have been finding increasing synthetic applications in the last few years. The presence of two electronically different exocyclic conjugate substituents in their structure, carbonyl and methylidene, leads to a pronounced reactivity owing to the polarization of the molecule. In this sense, those are prone to undergo the attack of nucleophiles in the terminal carbon exocyclic double bond, behaving as vinylogous electrophiles and generating 1,6‐addition products. In this context, in the last few years the development of catalytic approaches for 1,6‐nucleophilic addition reactions involving p‐QMs has attracted considerable attention. Considering the extensive applications that such molecules have found in the last decades in 1,6‐addition reactions, in this review we comprehensively discuss the historical development of this field, starting with early approaches on natural product synthesis, going through seminal non‐stereoselective processes and progressing to cutting‐edge asymmetric‐catalyzed approaches.

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A Cu(ii) heptanuclear complex, Cu7atac, synthesized from an amino acid ligand showed to be an antiferromagnetic spin-frustrated bis-triangular system. Cu7atac might be a promising qubit candidate for quantum information storage.

Naphthoquinones are important natural or synthetic compounds belonging to the general class of quinones. Many compounds in this class have become drugs that are on the pharmaceutical market for the treatment of various diseases. A special naphthoquinone derivative is menadione, a synthetic naphthoquinone belonging to the vitamin K group. This compound can be synthesized by different methods and it has a broad range of biological and synthetic applications, which will be highlighted in this review.

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The tetramic acids are pyrrolidine-2,4-dione heterocycles found in nature mainly in its 3-acylated form and is present in the main structure of many natural products related to a variety of biological activities, namely antibacterial, antiprotozoal, antitumor and antiviral. Despite their biological importance, a scarce number of efficient synthetic methodologies for the preparation of 3-acyl-tetramic acids is described in the literature, being the direct C-acylation reaction of tetramic acids with carboxylic acids the most reported one.