National and international codes of research conduct have been established in most industrialized nations to ensure greater adherence to ethical research practices. Despite these safeguards, however, traditional research approaches often continue to stigmatize marginalized and vulnerable communities. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) has evolved as an effective new research paradigm that attempts to make research a more inclusive and democratic process by fostering the development of partnerships between communities and academics to address community-relevant research priorities. As such, it attempts to redress ethical concerns that have emerged out of more traditional paradigms. Nevertheless, new and emerging ethical dilemmas are commonly associated with CBPR and are rarely addressed in traditional ethical reviews. We conducted a content analysis of forms and guidelines commonly used by institutional review boards (IRBs) in the USA and research ethics boards (REBs) in Canada. Our intent was to see if the forms used by boards reflected common CBPR experience. We drew our sample from affiliated members of the US-based Association of Schools of Public Health and from Canadian universities that offered graduate public health training. This convenience sample (n = 30) was garnered from programs where application forms were available online for download between July and August, 2004. Results show that ethical review forms and guidelines overwhelmingly operate within a biomedical framework that rarely takes into account common CBPR experience. They are primarily focused on the principle of assessing risk to individuals and not to communities and continue to perpetuate the notion that the domain of "knowledge production" is the sole right of academic researchers. Consequently, IRBs and REBs may be unintentionally placing communities at risk by continuing to use procedures inappropriate or unsuitable for CBPR. IRB/REB procedures require a new framework more suitable for CBPR, and we propose alternative questions and procedures that may be utilized when assessing the ethical appropriateness of CBPR.

This article outlines our attempts to stabilize the Group 14 element dihydrides, GeH2 and SnH2, using commonly employed phosphine and pyridine donors; in each case, elemental Ge and Sn extrusion was noted. However, when these phosphorus and nitrogen donors were replaced with the ylidic Wittig ligand Ph3P═CMe2, stable inorganic methylene complexes (EH2) were obtained, demonstrating the utility of this under-explored ligand class in advancing main group element coordination chemistry.

(119)Sn Mössbauer spectroscopy was performed on a series of formal Sn(II) dichloride and dihydride adducts bound by either carbon- or phosphorus-based electron pair donors. Upon binding electron-withdrawing metal pentacarbonyl units to the tin centers in LB·SnCl2·M(CO)5 (LB = Lewis base; M = Cr or W), a significant decrease in isomer shift (IS) was noted relative to the unbound Sn(II) complexes, LB·SnCl2, consistent with removal of nonbonding s-electron density from tin upon forming Sn-M linkages (M = Cr and W). Interestingly, when the nature of the Lewis base in the series LB·SnCl2·W(CO)5 was altered, very little change in the IS values was noted, implying that the LB-Sn bonds were constructed with tin-based orbitals of large p-character (as supported by prior theoretical studies). In addition, variable temperature Mössbauer measurements were used to determine the mean displacement of the tin atoms in the solid state, a parameter that can be correlated with the degree of covalent bonding involving tin in these species.

The synthesis and coordination chemistry of a series of dianionic bis(amido)silyl and bis(amido)disilyl, [NSiN] and [NSiSiN], chelates with N-bound aryl or sterically modified triarylsilyl (SiAr(3)) groups is reported. In order to provide a consistent comparison of the steric coverage afforded by each ligand construct, various two-coordinate N-heterocyclic germylene complexes featuring each ligand set were prepared and oxidative S-atom transfer chemistry was explored. In the cases where clean oxidation transpired, sulfido-bridged centrosymmetric germanium(IV) dimers of the general form [LGe(μ-S)](2) (L = bis(amidosilyl) ligands) were obtained in lieu of the target monomeric germanethiones with discrete Ge═S double bonds. These results indicate that the reported chelates possess sufficient conformational flexibility to allow for the dimerization of LGe═S units to occur. Notably, the new triarylsilyl groups (4-RC(6)H(4))(3)Si- (R = (t)Bu and (i)Pr) still offer considerably expanded degrees of steric coverage relative to the parent congener, -SiPh(3,) and thus the use of substituted triarylsilyl groups within ligand design strategies should be a generally useful concept in advancing low-coordination main group and transition-metal chemistry.

NHC-B,N-heterocyclic compounds have been found to act as convenient precursors for obtaining either 1,3-azaborinine or 1H-imidazo[1,2-a]indole derivatives, which are two different and rare classes of compounds. The formation of these two classes of compounds from the NHC-B,N-heterocycles is highly selective depending on the external stimuli employed, and the resulting products have been studied for their interesting chemical and photophysical properties. The mechanism and possible reaction pathways of the unusual transformation are established by computational studies.