Naphtho[1,2-c:5,6-c]difuran has been isolated in a 9-step synthesis from 2,6-dimethylnaphthalene. It is a highly reactive diene similar in nature to the related isobenzofuran. In Diels-Alder reactions, its intermediate monoadducts are actually less reactive that the parent difuran making possible sequential Diels-Alder reactions with different dienophiles. Reaction with a tethered bis(dienophile) leads to the production of a naphthalenic cyclophane.

Many natural and technological systems have on/off switches. For instance, mitosis can be halted by biochemical switches which act through the phosphorylation state of a complex called mitosis promoting factor. If switching between the on and off states is periodic, chaos is observed over a substantial portion of the on/off time parameter plane. However, we have discovered that the chaotic state is fragile with respect to random fluctuations in the on time. In the presence of such fluctuations, two uncoupled copies of the system (e.g., two cells) controlled by the same switch rapidly synchronize.

H2cb‐te2pa, a cross‐bridged cyclam functionalized by two picolinate arms, was used for the formation of an incredible inert InIII chelate. The inertness of the complex was evaluated by UV/Vis experiments in several competitive media and was highlighted by the comparison with [In(dota)]− and [In(dtpa)]2− (H4dota = 1,4,7,10‐tetraazacyclododecane‐1,4,7,10‐tetraacetic acid, H5dtpa = diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid), which are currently used in biological applications. For the first time, a bifunctional analogue of H2cb‐te2pa was prepared by C‐functionalization to keep its coordination properties intact. However, this strategy leads to the formation of two diastereoisomers as evidenced and studied by NMR experiments and DFT calculations. Kinetic studies proved nevertheless that both isomers of the complex are equally inert. They were therefore used without distinction for their covalent grafting on polystyrene beads. The so‐called metal‐encoded beads were tested for imaging mass cytometry. The detection of 115In allows the generation of images with high quality, proving the great potential of the bifunctional [In(cb‐te2pa)]+ derivatives for single‐cell analysis by mass cytometry.

We demonstrate the performance of a novel LA-ICP-MS system using a metal-doped PMMA film.