Excavations at the Longtan Cave, Hexian, Anhui Province of Eastern China, have yielded several hominin fossils including crania, mandibular fragments, and teeth currently dated to 412±25 ka. While previous studies have focused on the cranial remains, there are no detailed analyses of the dental evidence. In this study, we provide metric and morphological descriptions and comparisons of ten teeth recovered from Hexian, including microcomputed tomography analyses. Our results indicate that the Hexian teeth are metrically and morphologically primitive and overlap with H. ergaster and East Asian Early and mid-Middle Pleistocene hominins in their large dimensions and occlusal complexities. However, the Hexian teeth differ from H. ergaster in features such as conspicuous vertical grooves on the labial/buccal surfaces of the central incisor and the upper premolar, the crown outline shapes of upper and lower molars and the numbers, shapes, and divergences of the roots. Despite their close geological ages, the Hexian teeth are also more primitive than Zhoukoudian specimens, and resemble Sangiran Early Pleistocene teeth. In addition, no typical Neanderthal features have been identified in the Hexian sample. Our study highlights the metrical and morphological primitive status of the Hexian sample in comparison to contemporaneous or even earlier populations of Asia. Based on this finding, we suggest that the primitive-derived gradients of the Asian hominins cannot be satisfactorily fitted along a chronological sequence, suggesting complex evolutionary scenarios with the coexistence and/or survival of different lineages in Eurasia. Hexian could represent the persistence in time of a H. erectus group that would have retained primitive features that were lost in other Asian populations such as Zhoukoudian or Panxian Dadong. Our study expands the metrical and morphological variations known for the East Asian hominins before the mid-Middle Pleistocene and warns about the possibility that the Asian hominin variability may have been taxonomically oversimplified.

The branching copolymerization of styrene with triethylene glycol dimethacrylate (tri-EGDMA) as the branching agent was carried out using atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) in anisole at 90 °C. The resulting copolymers were analyzed using 1H NMR and triple detection size exclusion chromatography (TD-SEC). The NMR analysis shows that the pendent vinyl groups react even in the early stages of the polymerization. Analysis of the changes in the molecular weight and polydispersity of the copolymers suggests that the reaction system contains three components: the primary chains, the slightly branched chains comprising of two primary chains, and the highly branched chains consisting of more than three primary chains. The coupling reaction mainly takes place between the primary chains, resulting in the slightly branched chains in the early stages of the reaction, the weight fraction of the branched chains and the degree of branching increase gradually with monomer conversion, highly branched chains mainly form at relatively high monomer conversions.

An approach to branched vinyl polymers through radical polymerization in the presence of 3mercaptohexyl methacrylate (MHM) as the chain transfer monomer is reported in this paper. In the case of polymerization at styrene 100 −MHM 5.0 −AIBN 2.0 , the molecular weight increased with conversion and reached a value of >7.3 × 10 5 g/mol at 99% conversion; in addition, the Zimm branching factor, g′, was less than 1 and decreased with conversion, when the formation of the branched chain and development of branching was supposed. The bridging units in the obtained polymer, generating from MHM, were cleaved to yield the primary chains. These results have confirmed the formation of branched polymers. Moreover, this study successful prepared branched poly(methyl methacrylate) and poly(vinyl acetate). This methodology proposes good prospects for scaling-up and thereby offers a wide range of branched vinyl polymers at low cost.

This paper reports a new type of click chemistry via a phosphazene bases-catalyzed oxa-Michael addition of an alcohol to an acrylate.

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Hyperbranched polymers with high molecular weights were synthesized by t-BuP2-catalyzed oxa-Michael addition polymerization of trifunctional hydroxyl and diacrylate monomers.

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