CONFIDENCE CRISIS AND EXITING NAIVE REALISM THROUGH INTEGRATIVE THINKING

The confidence crisis invites increasing emphasis on social responsibility as a corporate marketing strategy, adopted by management which cannot choose ethical indifference. We need better rules and people, the virtue that follows science heading us down the right path towards overcoming the paralyzing insecurity of economic blood flow and shaping the complexity of current affairs drastically but correctly, in order to develop social virtues and responsibilities. Since globalization is no longer what it used to be, and unfair competition is considered to be one of the causes of distrust in the corporate sector, being on the way towards the knowledge society, we are forced to become integrative thinkers and to identify solutions to the crisis, in a context in which economic concentration resulted in changing the nature of competition, and economists and politicians live in different worlds, it is imperative to harmonize in the identification of good measures of welfare research, understanding what must be adjusted and what mustn’t. Travelling through time to the destination where our judges are the future generations, we owe it to them to find appropriate answers in relation to what is authentic in addressing the crisis of faith, who sells what and who is buying it, with the adequate mental model to break the cobweb of this confidence and regain trust. This is all based on an overriding need to produce knowledge for wisdom, maturing interdisciplinary dialogue, becoming architects of conversations generating responsible action, cultivating the ability to work with others with a similar vision.confidence crisis, courage, corporate social responsibility, economist, politician, conversation architect, clash model

On the persistence of polar domains in ultrathin ferroelectric capacitors

The instability of ferroelectric ordering in ultra-thin films is one of the most important fundamental issues pertaining realization of a number of electronic devices with enhanced functionality, such as ferroelectric and multiferroic tunnel junctions or ferroelectric field effect transistors. In this paper, we investigate the polarization state of archetypal ultrathin (several nanometres) ferroelectric heterostructures: epitaxial single-crystalline BaTiO$_3$ films sandwiched between the most habitual perovskite electrodes, SrRuO$_3$, on top of the most used perovskite substrate, SrTiO$_3$. We use a combination of piezoresponse force microscopy, dielectric measurements and structural characterization to provide conclusive evidence for the ferroelectric nature of the relaxed polarization state in ultrathin BaTiO$_3$ capacitors. We show that even the high screening efficiency of SrRuO$_3$ electrodes is still insufficient to stabilize polarization in SrRuO$_3$/BaTiO$_3$/SrRuO$_3$ heterostructures at room temperature. We identify the key role of domain wall motion in determining the macroscopic electrical properties of ultrathin capacitors and discuss their dielectric response in the light of the recent interest in negative capacitance behaviour.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

Judaica Americana: A Bibliography of Publications to 1900

Judaica Americana: A Bibliography of Publications to 1900, with an estimated total of 9,500 entries, chronicles the decades prior to the twentieth century, a formative era for Jewish institutional development at a time when the Jewish community grew from 1,350 persons in 1790 to 1,050,000 in 1900. Taken as a whole, the bibliogra­phy provides extensive documentation of American Jewish communal activity. Equally important for the study of Jewish-Christian relations, hundreds of titles, many of them prophetic and proto-Zionist in nature, are included as relevant primary sources for assessing Christian attitudes on the development, history and testimony of the Jew­ish religion and the Jewish nation from early times to the close of the nineteenth century. Adventism and millenarian speculation, so pervasive in nineteenth-century America, are well documented in these pages; the same is true of conversionist activity. Creative writing (novels, short stories, dramas, poets) with Jewish themes or charac­ters forms yet another subject emphasis and one that will prove to be exceedingly valuable for any extended study of stereotypes and the negative portrayal of the Jew in literature. For the purposes of this bibliography, annual gift books are approached as monographs. This edition is divided into three sections. The first section contains the chronological file of 1890 to 1900. A second section, “Union List of Nineteenth-Century Jewish Serials Published in the United States,” lists all known Jewish newspapers, serials, yearbooks, and annual reports in the United States with an inception date prior to 1901, re­gardless of language, and even if issues of these serials no longer exist, or if the serials were merely projected for publication by their would-be sponsors. Included in this section are relevant periodicals with a conversionist or antisemitic focus. A third section, a supplement, adds to the first edition of Judaica Americana, expanding the project with additional materials identified by Singerman in the years since the first publication. Judaica Americana has been enlarged by more than 3,000 entries drawn from a broad range of genres, including creative writing, the Wandering Jew theme, foreign literature in translation, stereotype-laden dime novels, foreign travel accounts, city and county histories, American memoirs and biographies, phrenology and racial “science,” urban sociology, children’s literature and school readers, humor books, music scores and songsters, missionary accounts, also prophetic millenarian texts of which there is no shortage. Additional success with identifying Jewish-interest material embedded in sermon collections, federal documents, almanacs, and annual gift books has been made; other researchers are invited to continue probing in these potentially-rich target areas. Areas for further investigation include broadsides, Jewish social clubs, fraternal orders, and benevolent societies, playbills and event programs, penny songs and song collections, state, county, and city documents, also Masonic lodge histories and biography

Typification and authorship of Drosera intermedia (Droseraceae)

Drosera intermedia is lectotypified with the herbarium specimen on which the type drawing in the 1798 protologue was based. The collection history of the specimen, the history of the botanical drawing as original material, and the correct nomenclatural author and publication date of the name are presented based on historical notes and literature. Additionally, the global distribution of the species is given, including the first record from Africa

Proposal to conserve the name Xiphion vulgare against Iris xiphium (Iridaceae, Iridoideae)

This research was partly supported by Flora iberica project, parts VIII and IX (CGL2008-02982-C03 and CGL2011-28613-C03-01), from the Spanish Government