Can city-to-city cooperation facilitate sustainable development governance in the Global South? Lessons gleaned from seven North-South partnerships in Latin America

The search for mechanisms that can bolster sustainable development governance is underway. Bilateral city-to-city partnerships (C2C) have been put forward as platform through which cities can strengthen sustainable development in urban landscapes. Here, we critically examine claims about the capacity of these international cooperative arrangements, originally designed and deployed as development aid delivery mechanisms, to promote sustainable development. Our systematic examination of the extant literature on bilateral North-South C2C in Latin America fails to provide sufficient evidence that C2C can deliver on its promise to promote robust governance, both generally and in the specific context of sustainable development. Instead, it seems that C2C is more likely to support than challenge entrenched practices which can weaken sustainable development governance. Identifying these tendencies is a first step in formulating strategies that may enhance C2Cs and other transnational partnerships aimed at improving urban sustainable development in the Global South

Universal sextic effective interaction at criticality

The renormalization group approach in three dimensions is used to estimate the universal critical value g_6^* of the dimensionless sextic effective coupling constant for the Ising model. The four-loop RG expansion for g_6 is calculated and resummed by means of the Pade-Borel and Pade-Borel-Leroy procedures resulting in g_6^* = 1.596, while the most accurate estimate for g_6^* is argued to be equal to 1.61.Comment: 6 pages, TeX, no figure

Stability of 3D Cubic Fixed Point in Two-Coupling-Constant \phi^4-Theory

For an anisotropic euclidean $\phi^4$-theory with two interactions [u (\sum_{i=1^M {\phi}_i^2)^2+v \sum_{i=1}^M \phi_i^4] the $\beta$-functions are calculated from five-loop perturbation expansions in $d=4-\varepsilon$ dimensions, using the knowledge of the large-order behavior and Borel transformations. For $\varepsilon=1$, an infrared stable cubic fixed point for $M \geq 3$ is found, implying that the critical exponents in the magnetic phase transition of real crystals are of the cubic universality class. There were previous indications of the stability based either on lower-loop expansions or on less reliable Pad\'{e approximations, but only the evidence presented in this work seems to be sufficently convincing to draw this conclusion.Comment: Author Information under http://www.physik.fu-berlin.de/~kleinert/institution.html . Paper also at http://www.physik.fu-berlin.de/~kleinert/kleiner_re250/preprint.htm

HD 152246 - a new high-mass triple system and its basic properties

Analyses of multi-epoch, high-resolution (R ~ 50.000) optical spectra of the O-type star HD 152246 (O9 IV according to the most recent classification), complemented by a limited number of earlier published radial velocities, led to the finding that the object is a hierarchical triple system, where a close inner pair (Ba-Bb) with a slightly eccentric orbit (e = 0.11) and a period of 6.0049 days revolves in a 470-day highly eccentric orbit (e = 0.865) with another massive and brighter component A. The mass ratio of the inner system must be low since we were unable to find any traces of the secondary spectrum. The mass ratio A/(Ba+Bb) is 0.89. The outer system has recently been resolved using long-baseline interferometry on three occasions. The interferometry confirms the spectroscopic results and specifies elements of the system. Our orbital solutions, including the combined radial-velocity and interferometric solution indicate an orbital inclination of the outer orbit of 112{\deg} and stellar masses of 20.4 and 22.8 solar masses. We also disentangled the spectra of components A and Ba and compare them to synthetic spectra from two independent programmes, TLUSTY and FASTWIND. In either case, the fit was not satisfactory and we postpone a better determination of the system properties for a future study, after obtaining observations during the periastron passage of the outer orbit (the nearest chance being March 2015). For the moment, we can only conclude that component A is an O9 IV star with v*sin(i) = 210 +\- 10 km/s and effective temperature of 33000 +\- 500 K, while component Ba is an O9 V object with v*sin(i) = 65 +/- 3 km/s and T_eff = 33600 +\- 600 K.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

La perception des enjeux économiques et sociaux, et leur influence sur le vote du 22 avril 2007

Tous les sondages précédant le scrutin, à commencer par les 4 vagues du Baromètre politique français ont montré la centralité des enjeux socio économiques dans la campagne présidentielle de 2007. C’est ce que confirme la première vague du Panel électoral français (PEF), terminée à la veille du scrutin du 22 avril : le chômage arrive largement en tête des problèmes cités comme les plus importants au moment de voter, suivi par les inégalités sociales et le pouvoir d’achat (classés en premier par respectivement 25, 12 et 10% de l’échantillon, et en premier ou en second par 39, 22 et 25%) (...)

Quantification of the Electrophilicities of Diazoalkanes: Kinetics and Mechanism of Azo Couplings with Enamines and Sulfonium Ylides

Kinetics and mechanism of the reactions of methyl diazoacetate, dimethyl diazomalonate, 4-nitrophenyldiazomethane, and diphenyldiazomethane with sulfonium ylides and enamines were investigated by UV-Vis and NMR spectroscopy. Ordinary alkenes undergo 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions with these diazo compounds. In contrast, sulfonium ylides and enamines attack at the terminal nitrogen of the diazo alkanes to give zwitterions, which undergo various subsequent reactions. As only one new bond is formed in the rate-determining step of these reactions, the correlation lg k(2)(20 degrees C)=s(N)(N+E) could be used to determine the one-bond electrophilicities E of the diazo compounds from the measured second-order rate constants and the known reactivity indices N and s(N) of the sulfonium ylides and enamines. The resulting electrophilicity parameters (-21<E<-18), which are 11-14 orders of magnitude smaller than that of the benzenediazonium ion, are used to define the scope of one-bond nucleophiles which may react with these diazoalkanes

An Overlooked Pathway in 1,3-Dipolar Cycloadditions of Diazoalkanes with Enamines

Methyl diazoacetate reacts with 1-(N-pyrrolidino)cycloalkenes to give products of 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions and azo couplings. The kinetics and mechanisms of these reactions were investigated by NMR spectroscopy and DFT calculations. Orthogonal pi-systems in the 1,3-dipoles of the propargyl-allenyl type allow for two separate reaction pathways for the (3+2)-cycloadditions. The commonly considered concerted pathway is rationalized by the interaction of the enamine HOMO with LUMO+1, the lowest unoccupied orbital of the heteropropargyl anion fragment of methyl diazoacetate. We show that HOMO/LUMO(pi*(N=N)) interactions between enamines and methyl diazoacetate open a previously unrecognized reaction path for stepwise cycloadditions through zwitterionic intermediates with barriers approximately 40 kJ mol(-1) lower in energy in CHCl3 (DFT calculations) than for the concerted path

Cyclobutane Formation by the Reaction of Ethenesulfonyl Fluoride with Dimethyl Diazomalonate

Attempts to synthesize fluorosulfonyl-substituted pyrazolines by Huisgen reactions (1,3-dipolar cycloadditions) of dimethyl diazomalonate with ethenesulfonyl fluoride led to the formation of dimethyl (2R*,3S*,4R*)-2-(1,3-dimethoxy-1,3-dioxopropan-2-yl)-3-(fluorosulfonyl)-4-((fluorosulfonyl)methyl)cyclobutane-1,1-dicarboxylate, a highly substituted cyclobutane derivative, which was characterized by NMR spectroscopy and single crystal X-ray crystallography. The mechanism of its formation was elucidated by carrying out the reaction at different temperatures and workup conditions. It is shown that an initial 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition yields a pyrazoline which extrudes nitrogen with formation of 1-fluorosulfonyl-2,2-bis(methoxycarbonyl)cyclopropane and dimethyl 2-(2-(fluorosulfonyl)ethylidene)malonate, the latter of which dimerized during chromatography on silica gel with formation of the isolated cyclobutane

The Three body system delta Circini

Delta Cir is known as an O7.5 III eclipsing and spectroscopic binary with an eccentric orbit. Penny et al. discovered the presence of a third component in the IUE spectra. The eclipsing binary and the third body revolve around a common centre of gravity with a period of 1644 days in an eccentric orbit with the semimajor axis of 10 AU. We demonstrate the presence of the apsidal-line rotation with a period of about 141 years, which is considerably longer than its theoretically predicted value, based on the published radii of the binary components derived from the Hipparchos Hp light curve. However, our new solution of the same light curve resulted in smaller radii and a better agreement between the observed and predicted period of the apsidal- line advance. There are indications that the third body is a binary. The object was resolved by VLTI with the PIONIER combiner; in June 2012 the separation was 3.78 mas, magnitude difference in the H region 1.75 mag. This result means that (assuming the distance 770 pc) the inclination of the long orbit is 87.7 degrees.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journa