An iron-catalyzed oxidative coupling/cyclization reaction for the synthesis of benzoxazoles at room temperature is reported. This reaction was enabled by an inexpensive iron(iii) catalyst by treating readily available phenol derivatives with benzoyl aldehyde oximes. Mechanistic studies show that benzoyl aldehyde oxime is not only used as a substrate, but also serves as an ancillary ligand to support the iron salt in the promotion of the transformation.

No abstract

In recent years, climate change has been aggravated in many regions of the world. The Hexi Corridor is located in the semiarid climate zone of Northwest China, which is particularly affected by climate change. Climate change has led to the spatial and temporal variations of temperature and precipitation, which may result in hydrological drought and water shortage. Thus, it is necessary to explore and assess the drought characteristics of river systems in this area. The patterns of hydrological drought in the Hexi Corridor were identified using the streamflow drought index (SDI) and standardized precipitation index at 12-month timescale (SPI12) from 1960 to 2013. The evolution of drought was obtained by the Mann-Kendall test and wavelet transform method. The results showed that both the mean annual SDI and SPI12 series in the Hexi Corridor exhibited an increasing trend during the study period. According to the results of wavelet analysis, we divided the study period into two segments, i.e. before and after 1990. Before 1990, the occurrence of droughts showing decreased SDI and SPI12 was concentrated in the northern part of the corridor and shifted to the eastern part of the corridor after 1990. The probability of drought after 1990 in Shule River basin decreased while increased in Shiyang River basin. The wavelet analysis results showed that Shiyang River basin will be the first area to go through the next drought period. Additionally, the relationships between drought pattern and climate indices were analyzed. The enhanced westerly winds and increased precipitation and glacier runoff were the main reasons of wet trend in the Hexi Corridor. However, the uneven spatial variations of precipitation, temperature and glacier runoff led to the difference of hydrological drought variations between the Shule, Heihe and Shiyang River basins.

No abstract

Due to the light precipitation and strong wind in the cold season, it is hard to get credible solid precipitation on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau (QTP). To address this issue, two kinds of optical instruments, the Thies Laser Precipitation Monitor (LPM) and OTT laser-optical Particle Size Velocity (Parsivel), were used on QTP. The measured precipitation was compared with the precipitation derived from Geonor T-200B precipitation gauge (Geonor). The results showed that Geonor was hard to catch light precipitation (precipitation amount was less than 1 mm during a single event) when the wind speeds were higher than 3.5 m/s. Even when the wind speeds were smaller than 3.5 m/s, about 44% of such light precipitation events were not recorded by Geonor. The optical instruments had much better performance in recording light precipitation. Three methods were used to correct Geonor measurements of daily solid precipitation and the corrected values were set as reference for assessing the performance of LPM and Parsivel; the results showed that LPM had good performance in measuring the solid precipitation but Parsivel overestimated the precipitation amount. Methods for correcting Geonor’s hourly solid precipitation and recalculating Parsivel’s solid precipitation amount were also proposed in this paper.

No abstract

To search for pharmacologically and structurally interesting substances from traditional Chinese medicines, we investigated the chemical compounds of Aconitum spicatum Stapf. Two new norditerpenoid alkaloids, namely spicatine A (compound 1) and spicatine B (compound 2), as well as 11 known norditerpenoid alkaloids were isolated from the CHCl 3 portion of the 90% ethanol extract of the roots of A. spicatum. The structures of the alkaloids were characterized on the basis of their spectral data. One of the isolated compounds showed significant cytotoxic activities (IC 50 values < 200 µ µ µ µ µmol/L) against the HL-60 cell line.

No abstract