Local Brawls and Global Confrontation: transnational political violence among the exiled Left in Mexico City during 1943

This article traces the local and global context of two incidents of political violence among the transnational community of left-wing political exiles in Mexico City during March and April 1943. On both occasions, violent clashes resulted from attempts to commemorate two Polish-Jewish socialists who had been convicted and executed in the Soviet Union as “fifth columnist spies”. A close reading of locations and chronological context relies on primary materials from Mexican, US-American, German, Austrian and Russian archives as well as the contemporary local press. The local logic of political practice (including violence) on the geographic and political periphery of world politics can be deciphered as an urban choreography of larger ideological conflicts among the Left and contributes to our understanding of the political meaning of the conflict as much as the overarching ideological debate that contributed to the global confrontation of the Cold War

Espacios del Exilio - la experiencia transnacional en la Ciudad de México 1934-60

Esta ponencia se dedica a la experiencia urbana de los exiliados políticos en la Ciudad de México desde la década de los años treinta hasta al final de los años cincuenta. Esta perspectiva requiere una comprensión adecuada de la lógica espacial del contexto urbano del exilio y de la localización de la experiencia transnacional. La metodología se centra en dos perspectivas analíticas: la primera se enfoca en ofrecer una comprensión más detallada de la geografía social a través de todo el Distrito Federal, y la segunda en la práctica social de la vida urbana de los exiliados

Cleaner Routes for Friedel-Crafts Acylation

Friedel-Crafts acylation is among the most fundamental and useful reactions to yield aromatic ketones but it is one of the less acceptable in terms of unwanted polluting by-products or atom economy because of the overconsumption of catalyst which is used in stoichiometric quantities in the conventional process. This route is nevertheless widely used in the fine chemical industry.In recent years, awareness of the impact of industrial activities on the environment has led chemists to work on new chemical routes, less dangerous and more environmentally friendly.We considered here the acylation of a benzofurane derivative by an acyl chloride, as an intermediary step for a pharmaceutical product. In this study, one of the first alternatives was to replace conventional catalysts (FeCl3 or AlCl3), by reusable solid catalysts. Indeed, a wide variety of new solid catalysts, more efficient and less polluting, has now emerged (zeolites, ion-exchange resins…). In this work, these catalysts were first tested in “conventional” conditions, i.e., using an organic solvent (1,2-dichlorobenzene in our case), to determine the best one, in terms of reactivity, lifetime and reusability. The zeolite Y was found the most appropriate.However, the use of an organic solvent still remains questionable and the use of supercritical carbon dioxide as the solvent was also considered. Its inherent properties include non-flammability, mild critical conditions, tuneable solubility near to the critical point and very low environmental impact. The reaction was operated using a continuous high pressure fixed bed. Results concerning yield and selectivity are presented

Co-existing psychiatric problems in ADHD in the ADORE cohort

Abstract : Objective : To study the impact of co-existing psychiatric problems with ADHD on behavioural features, psychosocial functioning and quality of life in subjects of the ADORE cohort (N=1,478). Methods : The following six groups of associated psychiatric problems with ADHD were compared: oppositional-defiant disorder or conduct disorder only (ODD/CD); anxiety or depressive disorder only (ANX/DEP); tic/Tourette's disorder only (TIC/ Tourette's); developmental co-ordination disorder only (DCD); two or more associated conditions; and none. Dependent variables included the ADHD Rating Scale-IV, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, the Clinical Global Impression-Severity scale, the Children's Global Assessment Scale and the Child Health Illness Profile-Child Edition. Results : Having multiple co-existing psychiatric problems increased the severity of ADHD in all domains, be it behavioural features, psychosocial impairment or deterioration of quality of life. A similar though less consistent pattern applied to subjects with co-existing ODD/CD. Conclusions : The ADORE study provides impressive evidence for the far-reaching consequences of co-existing psychiatric problems in children with ADHD that warrant intensive consideration in clinical assessment and treatmen

Transnational District. European poitical exile in Mexico City, 1939-59

This study traces and reconstructs the lived experience and political practice of exile in Mexico City between 1939 and 1959 by using a dual approach towards social topography as well as praxeological analysis: On the one hand, the social topography of the city must play an important part in reconstructing patterns of residence, sociability, and political association. On the other, the subjective experiences of European political refugees arriving in the Mexican capital, their encounter with the New World, and the lived reality of their social and political practice equally deserves full analytical attention in order to establish the processes of gradual appropriation of the urban environment by the European communities of exile. This study aims at presenting a coherent analysis of social and political practice in exile embedded in its urban topography, relating praxeological aspects of political ideology and nationality to their topographical manifestation, and establishing their historical meaning and significance out of the interplay of spaces and practices

Time-resolved diffuse optical tomography for non-invasive flap viability assessment: Pre-clinical tests on rats

We present a new setup for time-resolved diffuse optical tomography based on multiple source-detector acquisitions analysed by means of the Mellin-Laplace transform. The proposed setup has been used to perform pre-clinical measurements on rats in order to show its suitability for non-invasive assessment of flap viability

Reaction time performance in ADHD: improvement under fast-incentive condition and familial effects

ABSTRACT Background Reaction time (RT) variability is one of the strongest findings to emerge in cognitive-experimental research of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We set out to confirm the association between ADHD and slow and variable RTs and investigate the degree to which RT performance improves under fast event rate and incentives. Using a group familial correlation approach, we tested the hypothesis that there are shared familial effects on RT performance and ADHD. Method A total of 144 ADHD combined-type probands, 125 siblings of the ADHD probands and 60 control participants, ages 6-18, performed a four-choice RT task with baseline and fast-incentive conditions. Results ADHD was associated with slow and variable RTs, and with greater improvement in speed and RT variability from baseline to fast-incentive condition. RT performance showed shared familial influences with ADHD. Under the assumption that the familial effects represent genetic influences, the proportion of the phenotypic correlation due to shared familial influences was estimated as 60-70%. Conclusions The data are inconsistent with models that consider RT variability as reflecting a stable cognitive deficit in ADHD, but instead emphasize the extent to which energetic or motivational factors can have a greater effect on RT performance in ADHD. The findings support the role of RT variability as an endophenotype mediating the link between genes and ADH

Toward noninvasive assessment of flap viability with time-resolved diffuse optical tomography: a preclinical test on rats

The noninvasive assessment of flap viability in autologous reconstruction surgery is still an unmet clinical need. To cope with this problem, we developed a proof-of-principle fully automatized setup for fast time-gated diffuse optical tomography exploiting Mellin–Laplace transform to obtain three-dimensional tomographic reconstructions of oxy- and deoxy-hemoglobin concentrations. We applied this method to perform preclinical tests on rats inducing total venous occlusion in the cutaneous abdominal flaps. Notwithstanding the use of just four source-detector couples, we could detect a spatially localized increase of deoxyhemoglobin following the occlusion (up to 550 μM in 54 min). Such capability to image spatio-temporal evolution of blood perfusion is a key issue for the noninvasive monitoring of flap viability