2-(3-hydroxy-1-methylbut-2-enylideneamino)pyridine-3-ol

New complexes of Cu 2+ ,H g 2+ , and Cd 2+ with a recently synthesized Schiff base derived from 2-(3-hydroxy-1-methylbut-2-enylideneamino)pyridine- 3-ol were applied for their simultaneous determination withartificialneural networks. A new analyticalmethod using principal component-feed forward neural net- works (PC-FFNNs) and principal component-radial ba- sis function networks (PC-RBFNs) was used. Spectral data was reduced using principal component analysis and subjected to ANNs. The data obtained from syn- thetic mixtures of metal ions were processed by PC- FFNNs and PC-RBFNs. Performances of the proposed methods were tested with regard to relative standard error of prediction. Limit of detections and limit of quantifications were determined. The results obtained by PC-FFNNs and PC-RBFNs were compared to each other. Under the working conditions, the proposed methods were successfully applied to simultaneous de- termination of Hg 2+ ,C u 2+ ,a nd Cd 2+ in different water and soil samples. Concentrations of metal ions in the samples were also determined by flame atomic absorp- tion spectrometry (FAAS) and standard addition meth- od. The amounts of metal ions obtained by the proposed methodswereingoodagreement with thoseobtainedby FAAS and standard addition method.