Patient- and parent-reported outcome measures of developmental adaptive abilities in visually impaired children: The Visual Impairment Developmental Autonomy (VIDA) scale

In the pediatric context, parents’ and patients’ engagement in the care process is strongly recommended and could be pursued using patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), which therefore become useful for planning and monitoring treatments. Nevertheless, few data are available from families of children with neurodevelopmental disorders such as visual impairment (VI). The Visual Impairment Developmental Autonomy (VIDA) project aims to develop and validate a patient- and parent-reported tool to measure the most relevant aspects concerning everyday adaptive abilities in children and adolescents with visual impairment: the VIDA scale. The present paper illustrates the Delphi process of item generation engaging parents and patients and presents a protocol for the validation of this new co-designed tool in an Italian visually impaired pediatric population. Twenty-three families and five adolescents provided a list of 192 items and assessed their relevance. Items were categorized in 5 areas of adaptive abilities (i.e., table manners, clothing, personal hygiene, orientation and mobility, and socio-affectivity) and into three age ranges based on the patient's age. The final 102-item Vida Scale will be administered to a minimum of 300 visually impaired children together with measures of quality of life and child adjustment to investigate its psychometric properties

Mild formation of cyclic carbonates using Zn(II) complexes based on N2S2-chelating ligands

We have prepared a series of Zn(II) complexes (1-3) based on a versatile N2S2-chelating ligand abbreviated as btsc [btsc = bis-(thiosemicarbazonato)] derived from simple and accessible building blocks. These complexes comprise a Lewis acidic Zn(II) center useful for substrate activation, and we have investigated the potential of these compounds in the cyclo-addition reaction of carbon dioxide to various epoxides yielding cyclic carbonate structures. Initial screening studies with complexes 1-3 showed that complex 3 is most suited for this CO2 fixation reaction under particularly mild conditions (45 °C, pCO2 = 10 bar) and low catalyst loadings (1 mol%). Furthermore, upon examination of the substrate scope, complex 3 shows appreciable catalytic turnover for a range of terminal epoxides, while for the sterically more challenging epoxides almost no conversion was achieved under comparable conditions. Additional experiments indicated that higher yields of cyclic carbonates may be realized by simply increasing the (co)catalyst loading up to 3%, while maintaining mild reaction conditions. The use of a relatively non-toxic and abundant metal and an environmentally benign solvent system (MEK, methyl ethyl ketone) mark this protocol as an attractive way for organic carbonate production

Coordination chemistry of N-aminopropyl pendant arm derivatives of mixed N/S-, and N/S/O-donor macrocycles, and construction of selective fluorimetric chemosensors for heavy metal ions

The coordination chemistry of the N-aminopropyl pendant arm derivatives (L 1c-4c) of the mixed donor macrocyclic ligands [12]aneNS 2O, [12]aneNS 3, [12]aneN 2SO, and [15]aneNS 2O 2 (L 1a-4a) towards Cu II, Zn II, Cd II, Hg II, and Pb II in aqueous solution has been investigated. The protonation and stability constants with the aforementioned metal ions were determined potentiometrically and compared, where possible, with those of the unfunctionalised macrocycles. The measured values show that Hg II and Cu II in water have the highest affinity for all ligands considered, with the N-aminopropyl pendant arm weakly coordinating the metal centres. Crystals suitable for X-ray diffraction analysis were grown for the perchlorate salt (H 2L 1c)(ClO 4) 2·dmf, and for the 1:1 complexes [Cd(L 3a)(NO 3) 2] (1), [Cu(L 4a)(dmf)](ClO 4) 2 (2), [Zn(L 1c)(ClO 4)]ClO 4 (3), [Cd(L 1c)(NO 3)]NO 3 (4), and [Hg(L 2c)](ClO 4) 2 (5). Their structures show the macrocyclic ligands adopting a folded conformation, which for the 12-membered systems can be either [2424] or [3333] depending on the nature of the metal ion. L 1c-4c were also functionalised at the primary amino pendant group with different fluorogenic subunits. In particular the N-dansylamidopropyl (L nd, n = 1-4), and the N-(9-anthracenylmethyl)aminopropyl (L ne, n = 1, 2, 4, Scheme 1) pendant arm derivatives of L 1a-4a were synthesised and their optical responses to the above mentioned metal ions were investigated in MeCN/H 2O (4: 1 v/v) solutions

A Powerful Aluminum Catalyst for the Synthesis of Highly Functional Organic Carbonates

An aluminum complex based on an amino triphenolate ligand scaffold shows unprecedented high activity (initial TOFs up to 36 000 h–1), broad substrate scope, and functional group tolerance in the formation of highly functional organic carbonates prepared from epoxides and CO2. The developed catalytic protocol is further characterized by low catalyst loadings and relative mild reaction conditions using a cheap, abundant, and nontoxic metal