Borohydride Reduction of Fluorenone

A simple experiment to demonstrate nucleophilic addition to a carbonyl. Sodium borohydride-mediated reduction of fluorenone is a fast and high-yielding reaction that is suitable for beginning students. Students isolate their fluorenol product by recrystallization and characterize it by NMR and IR.

Deformable Prototypes for Encoding Shape Categories in Image Databases

We describe a method for shape-based image database search that uses deformable prototypes to represent categories. Rather than directly comparing a candidate shape with all shape entries in the database, shapes are compared in terms of the types of nonrigid deformations (differences) that relate them to a small subset of representative prototypes. To solve the shape correspondence and alignment problem, we employ the technique of modal matching, an information-preserving shape decomposition for matching, describing, and comparing shapes despite sensor variations and nonrigid deformations. In modal matching, shape is decomposed into an ordered basis of orthogonal principal components. We demonstrate the utility of this approach for shape comparison in 2-D image databases.