2-Methylenecyclobutanones (2-MCBones), used to be difficult to access, but can now be easily achieved by a green and stereospecific Ca(OH) 2 -catalyzed direct and simple aldol condensation of cyclobutanone and aldehydes under mild conditions. The obtained (E)-2-MCBones should be a class of potentially useful building blocks in synthesis as they could readily undergo an interesting (PhSe) 2 -catalyzed Baeyer-Villiger (BV) oxidation with H 2 O 2 at room temperature to give the versatile 4-methylenebutanolides. Mechanistic studies revealed that the BV reaction most possibly proceeded via the initial formation of benzeneseleninoperoxoic anhydride [PhSe(O)O] 2 O, which then converted to benzeneseleninoperoxoic acid PhSe(O)OOH as the active oxidant, followed by its selective addition to the CvO bond of 2-MCBones and then a selective C-C bond cleavage and rearrangement to give 4-methylenebutanolides.Scheme 1 Three structurally-related building blocks. † Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available: Detailed experimental procedures, condition screening tables, characterization data, 1 H, 13 C NMR and NOESY spectra of the products, and 77 Se NMR spectroscopic studies on the involved organoselenium species. See

A visible light-induced synthesis of nitrogen-containing arenes from O-2,4-dinitrophenyl oximes has been reported. This photochemical strategy is photocatalyst-free and enabled by electron-donor–acceptor (EDA) complexes of O-2,4-dinitrophenyl oximes and Et3N.

Micro/meso-porous carbon nanofibers have been successfully prepared and directly adopted as a supercapacitor electrode material with high specific capacitance, area normalized capacitance and excellent cycling stability.

Fabrication of Se/C catalyst from glucose as the biomass starting materials was reported for the first time, affording an efficient and regiospecific epoxidation of β-ionone.