6,441 research outputs found
Voting at 16 – lessons for the future from the Scottish Referendum
The 2014 Referendum on Scottish independence raised many issues about the
future of Scotland. It also produced an innovation as regards the electoral
process by making 16 years the minimum age of participation. This article
examines issues surrounding the voting age and draws on a schools-based
study, which shed light on teacher and pupil opinion about this lower than
usual threshold for voting. It is also concerned with how schools cover the
teaching of politics and prepared students for the Referendum debate within a
context of expected neutrality on a highly divisive matter. Some implications of
extending the lower voting age for future elections are discussed
Incommensurate chirality density wave transition in a hybrid molecular framework
Using single-crystal X-ray diffraction we characterise the 235\,K
incommensurate phase transition in the hybrid molecular framework
tetraethylammonium silver(I) dicyanoargentate, [NEt]Ag(CN). We
demonstrate the transition to involve spontaneous resolution of chiral
[NEt] conformations, giving rise to a state in which molecular
chirality is incommensurately modulated throughout the crystal lattice. We
refer to this state as an incommensurate chirality density wave (XDW) phase,
which represents a fundamentally new type of chiral symmetry breaking in the
solid state. Drawing on parallels to the incommensurate ferroelectric
transition of NaNO we suggest the XDW state arises through coupling between
acoustic (shear) and molecular rotoinversion modes. Such coupling is
symmetry-forbidden at the Brillouin zone centre but symmetry-allowed for small
but finite modulation vectors . The importance of
long-wavelength chirality modulations in the physics of this hybrid framework
may have implications for the generation of mesoscale chiral textures, as
required for advanced photonic materials.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Hot off the press
A personal selection of 32 recent papers is presented covering various aspects of current developments in bioorganic chemistry and novel natural products such as huperphlegmine A from Huperzia phlegmaria
Hot off the press
A personal selection of 32 recent papers is presented covering various aspects of current developments in bioorganic chemistry and novel natural products such as mollebenzylanol A from Rhododendron molle
Defect-dependent colossal negative thermal expansion in UiO-66(Hf) metal-organic framework
Thermally-densified hafnium terephthalate UiO-66(Hf) is shown to exhibit the
strongest isotropic negative thermal expansion (NTE) effect yet reported for a
metal-organic framework (MOF). Incorporation of correlated vacancy defects
within the framework affects both the extent of thermal densification and the
magnitude of NTE observed in the densified product. We thus demonstrate that
defect inclusion can be used to tune systematically the physical behaviour of a
MOF.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, revise
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