In an abundance of the previous papers formic acid has been exhibited as a versatile reducing agent for diverse organic compounds. This article is an attempt to review its reduction reactions, but does not exhaustively cover every paper in the literature. Attention has been made, in the main, to a consideration of studies in the reduction induced by formic acid or formate itself. Therefore, the reductions which seem likely to depend upon its prior decomposition are left out of consideration. Particularly, emphasis in this article is laid upon the works in recent decade on the reductions by the use of the formic acid-trialkylamine azeotropes as reducing agents, which have been devoted to developing several fields of the reduction.

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In organic mass spectrometry, field desorption (FD) is a novel technique, which has been developed by Drs. H.D. Beckey and H.-R. Schulten of University of Bonn, West Germany.
Most specific profile of this technique is that the FD enable mass-spectrometric investigation of large organic molecules without their vaporization by the action of activated emitter.
This review article introduces basic applications of field desorption mass spectrometry (FDMS) on analytical studies in biochemical and biomedical fields.
The method is particularly suitable for the detection and identification of underivatized polar substances present in complex mixtures from biological materials.

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2, 5, 9-Trimethyl-6, 7-benzomorphan (1a) was prepared from phenylalanine (Ph) via several steps.
Ph was converted to 3- (N-benzyl-N-methyl) amino-4-phenyl-2-butanone (2) via Dakin-West reaction, deacetylation, acetalization, alkylation (benzylation and methylation) and deacetalization.
Reaction of (2) with 3-ethoxy-1-methylpropylmagnesium bromide afforded 2- (N-benzyl-N-methyl) amino-6-ethoxy-3, 4-dimethyl-1-phenyl-3-hexanol (4).
This intermediate was led to 2- (N-benzyl-N-methyl) amino-4- (2-ethoxyethyl) -3, 4-dimethyl-1, 2, 3, 4- tetrahydronaphthalene (6) by H₂SO₄ catalyzed dehydration followed by cyclization with AlBr₃. Debenzylation of (6) followed by cyclization with HBr gave (1).

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It was found that equimolecular reaction of 2- (4'-diethyl-amino-2'-hydroxybenzoyl) benzoic acid (DHBB) and 4-hydroxy-N-methyldiphenylamine (HMDA) gave not only 3-diethylamino-7- (N-methylanilino) fluorane (1) but also a bis-lactone compound (2) which was given by further reaction of (1) with DHBB. The chemical structure of this bis-lactone compound (2) was determined and this was synthesized in good yield from 2 moles of DHBB and 1 mole of HMDA. Several compounds having the bis-lactone structure were synthesized and some of them were found to be useful in industrial application, such as pressure or heat sensitive copying paper.

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Phenol (1a), o- (1b), m- (1c) and p-nitrophenols (1d), o- (1e) and p-cresols (1f), 1, 3, 4- (1g) and 1, 3, 5- xylenols (1h) were allowed to react with bis (chloromethyl) ether using sodium hydroxide as a base in DMSO as a solvent in a noncatalytic heterogeneous reaction, when the cocentrations of the materials (1a-h) were regulated to low by using an apparatus and procedure devised by the present authors.
Then the corresponding bis (phenoxymethyl) ethers were obtained in comparatively good yields with high purity in a short period.

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New kinds of non-woven-fabrics and the developing course there of are presented.
On applying cross-laminating techniques, already developed for producing cross-laminated fabrics of warp and weft structure from wide split-fiber webs, to produce new kinds of non-woven-fabrics from yarns, “Method for continuously fixing arrangement of a number of elongated stocks” was invented for producing webs suitable for cross-lamination and consisted of parallel yarns arranged longitudinally and melt-spun filaments adhered laterally to the yarns, the production speed of cross-lamination is about 100 times faster than that of conventional weaving.
A composite material consisted of a fleece layer sandwiched between two webs above mentioned can be produced by said cross-lamination.
The web above-mentioned itself can be, however, used as an adhesive in a form of cloth for bonding a material with another. Moreover, as the webs which can be wound up on straight pipe-shaped cores in place of heavy conventional beams without yarn-falling at the side-edges of the wound-up rolls, the method for producing these webs can be regarded as a hopefull substitutional method for preliminary warping and will bring about an innovation in textile industries, when this method is applied at artificial fiber-maker's plants by driving out an enormous nnmber of bobbins on which individual yarns are wound.

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Heterohelicenes refer to ortho-condensed aromatic compounds in which heteroaromatic and benzene rings are angularly annulated such as to give helically shaped molecules. Since the first heterohelicene, dithia [6] heterohelicene, was synthesized by means of oxidative photocyclization of diarylethylene in 1968, its homologues up to [11] heterohelicene have been already reported. These molecules are asymmetric chromophores themselves and manifest the interesting structural, spectral and optical behaviors.
This paper describes the studies of heterohelicenes on their preparations, reactions, structures, optical resolutions, racemizations and spectroscopies (NMR, UV, ORD, CD and MS).

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The Prévost reaction, cis-hydroxylation of olefins with silver acetate and iodine or bromine in acetic acid. containing water, is sometimes more advantage than the reaction with osmium tetroxide. With steroidal olefins the Prévost reaction has been carried out for several positions. It has been indicated that the reactions depend on the position and type of olefin bond in steroids. These reactions and some applications of the Prévost reaction to steroid syntheses are summarized.

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