Beyond the consumerist-financial exchange: the sustainable-contributory exchange

The \u2018sustainable\u2013contributory exchange\u2019 is the possible new exchange arising after the 2008 crisis, towards new business models and citizens\u2019 contribution enabled by institutional innovations. Experiments in this exchange are taking place in different contexts: if spread, it can drive a new prosperity in OECD countries on both economic and social levels. This exchange between society, economy and politics involves both material and symbolic resources and enables ressources\u2019 sustainability. The previous neoliberal exchange (1989\u20132008), termed \u2018financial\u2013consumer- ist exchange\u2019 with its heavy social and economic consequences leading to the 2008 crisis, is also analysed from a historical perspective

Fluorescence Patterns from Supramolecular Polymer Assembly and Disassembly for Sensing Metallo- and Nonmetalloproteins

Critical aggregation concentration (CAC) of surfactants is lowered when polyelectrolytes act as counterions. At a concentration in between the CACs of the surfactant and the polymer−surfactant complex, protein-induced disassemblies can be achieved. This is because, when proteins competitively bind to the polyelectrolytes, the surfactants are not capable of sustaining a micelle-type assembly at this concentration. Since these amphiphilic aggregates are capable of noncovalently sequestering hydrophobic guest molecules, the protein binding induced disassembly process also results in a guest release from these assemblies. We show here that the change in fluorescence with different proteins is dependent not only on the nature of the polymer−surfactant complex, but also on the fluorescent transducer. Two processes can be responsible for the observed fluorescence change: fluorophore guest release from the hydrophobic interior of the assembly and excited state quenching due to complementary components in the analyte. The latter mechanism is especially possible with metalloproteins. We show here that an excited state quenching is possible at nanomolar concentrations of the proteins, while the disassembly based fluorescence reduction is the dominant pathway at micromolar concentrations