A useful savagery: The invention of violence in nineteenth-century England

‘A Useful Savagery: The Invention of Violence in Nineteenth-Century England’ considers a particular configuration of attitudes toward violence that emerged in the early decades of the nineteenth century. As part of a longer-term process of emerging ‘sensibilities,’ violence was, seemingly paradoxically, ‘invented’ as a social issue while concurrently relocated in the ‘civilised’ imagination as an anti-social feature mainly of ‘savage’ working-class life. The dominant way this discourse evolved was through the creation of a narrative that defined ‘civilisation’ in opposition to the presumed ‘savagery’ of the working classes. Although the refined classes were often distanced from the physical experience of violence, concern with violence and brutality became significant parts of social commentary aimed at a middle-class readership. While stridently redefining themselves in opposition to ‘brutality,’ one of the purposes of this literature was to create a new middle class and justify the expansion of state power. By the closing decades of the nineteenth century, as the working classes adopted tenets of Victorian respectability, a proliferating number of social and psychological ‘others’ were identified against which ‘civilised’ thought could define itself

Exact analytical formulas for mean coordination numbers in clusters

Rigorous analytical formulae for mean nearest-neighbour coordination numbers in clusters as a function of cluster size have been derived for a range of geometries: the tetrahedron, octahedron, cuboctahedron, icosahedron and bcc rhombic dodecahedron. Formulae for outer-neighbour coordination numbers are also reported, including a complete analysis of interatomic distances and mean coordination numbers in icosahedra. The formulae will find application in studies of electronic structure and interpretation of EXAFS data

Structural characterisation of the giant organometallic platinum cluster Pt-309(phen*)(36)O-30 using EXAFS

The structure of the high-nuclearity organometallic platinum cluster material Pt-309(phen*)(36)O-30 has been investigated by X-ray absorption spectroscopy. Analysis of Pt L-3-edge EXAFS data, using platinum foil as a reference, shows that the platinum clusters have cubic close packed geometry. A slight contraction of the Pt-Pt bond length from the bulk was observed. XANES analysis shows that the platinum atoms in the clusters have a low mean oxidation state, very close to that in metallic platinum. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved

Chloromethylation of poly(methylphenylsilane)

The chloromethylation of poly(methylsilane) is readily achieved using chloromethyl methyl ether in a tin(IV) chloride-catalysed reaction in chloroform solution at 0 degrees C. A convenient, less hazardous reaction, in which chloromethyl methyl ether is prepared in situ, is also reported. The accompanying variations of the polymer molecular-weight parameters are recorded for chloromethylations extending to 95% of the substituent phenyl groups, and discussed in terms of chain scissions arising at isolated siloxane linkages formed adventitiously during the isolation of the parent polymer

The ligand polyhedral model and its application to the fluxional behavior of m(4)(co)(12-n) (m=co, rh, ir n=1, 2, 4) clusters

A number of mechanisms have been previously proposed to explain the observed fluxional behaviour of related cluster species of the general type M(4)(CO)(12-n)L(n) (M = Co, Rh, Ir; n = 1, 2, 4). Here, a combination of metal core libration and an icosahedral-anticubeoctahedral-icosahedral ligand polyhedral rearrangement, arising from the ligand polyhedral model, is used to account for this observed behaviour. The ideas proposed are general and may be applied to all systems containing icosahedral, cubeoctahedral or anticubeoctahedral ligand shells