Vibrational studies of amino acids experimentally and theoretically have been performed. The Semi-empirical methods optimization by PM6 and RM1 on the l-and d-amino acids (alanine, phenylalanine, aspartic and glutamic acid), showed no difference in energy between l-and d-isomers. The vibrational frequencies were calculated by semi-emprical methods (PM6 and RM1) and ab initio methods (B3LYP/6-31+G(d) and were scaled down by factors of 0.925 (RM1), 1.09 (PM6) and 0.89 (B3LYP/6-31+G(d)). The calculated and experimental vibrational frequencies have shown good general agreement.

The surname of one of the authors and the affiliation of that author in the paper by Mohamed et al. [Acta Cryst. (2009), E66, m193-m194] are corrected. In the paper by Mohamed et al. (2009), the surname of one of the authors is incorrect, viz. Venugopal should appear as Venugopala, and the affiliation of the same author should be

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Brass as an alloy composed mainly of copper is great industrial uses such as heat exchangers and similar other facility due to its good thermal properties. Due to the presence of the considerable ratio of zinc the alloy suffers from zinc dissolution or dezincification. Dezincification rate increases with the increase in the ratio of zinc in the alloy. In this study benzothiazole (BTH) and its substituent's 2-methylbenzothiazole (MeBTH), 2-aminobenzothiazole (ABTH), 2-mercaptobenzothiazole (MBTH) and 2-phenylbenzothiazole (PhBTH) have been used as corrosion inhibitors for α-brass in stirred 0.1 M HClO 4 . The methods of investigation include weight loss, Tafel and linear polarizations and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The order of inhibition efficiency (% E) was calculated and the values obtained has indicated the sequence of inhibition efficiency was found to be BTH < MeBTH < ABTH < PhBTH < MBTH. The calculated values of thermodynamic parameters support this order. The inhibitors were found to suppress the corrosion rate by the formation of films which were identified by IR, SEM and EDAX techniques.

The complexes between l-aspartic acid and metals of lanthanide series (La 3+ , Pr 3+ , Eu 3+ , Gd 3+ ) have been prepared and characterized using a variety of techniques including, infrared spectroscopy, 1 H NMR, 13C NMR, elemental analysis and metal contents. The sought metal effect on the electronic environment of the chiral carbon and its neighbouring atoms was observed in case of Europium and Praseodymium. The 13 C downfield shift indicates a lower electron density at the carbon with consequent downfield shift observed on the α-H attached to it increasing its acidity.