The final blog assignment for this semester is to visit the web page of Christina White of University of Illinois Urbana: Champaign and find an article of interest and relate it to topics discussed in recent chapters. A publication that I found that interest me was titled "A General and Highly Selective Chelate-Controlled Intermolecular Oxidative Heck Reaction". The general reaction scheme is illustrated below.

In this cross coupling heck reaction, palladium/sulfide is used as a catalyzed to react
organoboron and olefins which resulted in a wide range of selectivites. This publication described the observed benefits of using a Heck reaction for complex molecular synthesis.

The general description of the reaction, as described in the in text publication found on the website, was fairly difficult to understand. Though many aspects were familiar, such as the use of palladium as a catalyst and the description of the general Heck reaction. I enjoyed reading this article, it brought what I have learned in organic 2 and took it a few steps further. 

Resources:
http://www.scs.illinois.edu/white/pubs/pub11.pdf