Comparative genomics and systems biology of environmental stress responses relevant to fungal virulence

Imperial Users onl

Plasmon resonance and electric field amplification of crossed gold nanorods

Here we explore the unusual plasmon resonances of crossed gold nanorod structures of varying geometries. Using numerical simulations, we show that the resonances of simple rods are hybridized and blue-shifted in the composite structures and that these structures are surrounded by spatially extended and high intensity electric fields. This attribute suggests several potential uses for these shapes, for example as a nano-antenna for the generation of two-photon fluorescence. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

How to frame a bank bailout: Lessons from Ireland during the Global Financial Crisis

This paper presents an analysis of framing strategy deployed in public discourse across two leading daily mass news media in the neoliberal economy of Ireland, during the Global Financial Crisis. Framing is a technique for shaping perceptions of an event by discursively constructing it in a particular way so as to highlight some elements but not others. During Ireland's crisis, as elsewhere, financial institutions were framed as 'too big to fail' as a way to present a political choice as an unavoidable necessity, making opposition to the policy appear irrational. However, a successful framing strategy is one which is most applicable to the local conditions to which it refers, in this case Ireland's political economy. This study finds that Irish Government actors strategically favoured a second frame of financial institutions as being of 'systemic importance'. This frame implies the same policy outcome as 'too big to fail' but without referring to the specific criteria of size. It is found that this strategy is driven by local political economic considerations, namely that many politically-connected financial institutions that received bailouts were small. Framing such institutions as 'too big to fail' would have foregrounded this fact, making opposition more likely. Thus, this study highlights that successful framing strategies must adapt to local socio-spatial conditions of applicability.Naoise McDonag

Jane Kelsey (2015) The FIRE Economy: New Zealand's Reckoning. Wellington, New Zealand. Bridget Williams Books with the New Zealand Law Society

Book reviewNot applicableNaoise McDonag

Laser-induced assembly of gold nanoparticles into colloidal crystals

Micron-sized colloidal crystals comprised of gold nanospheres have been synthesized directly from a gold nanoparticle/methyl methacrylate colloid by application of a 514 nm laser at 500 mW. An array of colloidal crystals can be created by translation of the glass substrate under the laser beam, after 2 min of irradiation at each site. We demonstrate through a series of control experiments and calculations that plasmon-induced, localized heating of the gold nanoparticles contributes to the mechanism responsible for the formation of these colloidal crystals. © IOP Publishing Ltd

Credit Guidance for a Desired Economy: An Original Institutional Economics Critique of Financialization

Financialization describes the turn to speculative asset trading that has become increasingly central to economic life in recent decades. Critics argue this has occurred at the expense of the “real economy,” referring to production and trade. Critics further argue that finance’s normal role is to serve the needs of the productive sector. Financialization, which diverts capital from production to speculation, is viewed as a deviant form of capitalist development. Drawing on original institutionalist insights, this article argues that such a juxtaposition of the so-called real economy versus deviant financialization is misleading. Financial speculation is a logical outcome of capitalism’s actual real economy—capital accumulation. Firms within a capitalist economy must continually engage profit-seeking practices, which in turn produces psychological habituation in agents. The latter makes profit-seeking, not production-seeking, the psychological foundation of capitalist agency, such that all legal profit-making activity is an instance of capitalism’s real economy. Prioritizing productive investment is a desired economy, an outcome that requires regulatory intervention. This paper proposes that credit guidance is a regulatory solution to financialization, one that can increase economic welfare.Naoise McDonag

In/sight: The art of creating self-reflexive spaces. An investigation of transdisciplinary practitioner/practice

At a time when, arguably more than ever before in human history, the human mind needs to become more adaptive, and adapting, to meet the increasingly complex, ambiguous, uncertain conditions of the world in which we live, any practices that can effect lasting expansion of our ways of seeing, thinking and acting in relation to self, others, and the world may be considered a useful and valuable contribution to human knowledge and practices. This practice-led research conducted over a span of eight years demonstrates the capacity of an arts-based system of knowing and knowledge production to give rise to just such effects. Creative contemplation® is a methodology of material meditation originated and evolved within an experimental, transdisciplinary, commercial design practice - a methodology that proves able to generate self-reflexive spaces for myself, and for others who are neither trained nor practised in creative arts, and it is able to do so within the context of everyday practices. This bricolage system of knowing and knowledge production primarily derives from the arts but also variously derives from Australian Indigenous cultural practices as well as psychology, somatic therapy, Western and Eastern philosophy, and traditions of meditation - most particularly Japanese forms of Zen. As such, the transdisciplinary nature of Creative contemplation® accesses and activates a continuum of somatic and intellectual ways of knowing that at once both transcend and extend habitual ontological and epistemological frameworks. This investigation draws on the experience and knowledge gained in a highly successful, five year collaboration with a courageous organisation that risks engaging me to create and conduct extensive learning fora in which Creative contemplation® is used to increase individual and collective capacity of environmental scientists, and other staff, grappling with the complex matter of sustainability, and the uncertain future of the natural environment and humanity’s prospect inextricably interwoven within it. In situating my work in relation to the orthodoxy of investigating and cultivating mind in the area of business known as organisational learning and development, and in relation to the emerging field of arts in business, its significant contribution to knowledge and practices in this arena come clearly into view, but, by its very nature, such transdisciplinary practice-research transcends boundaries of any single field allowing contributions to knowledge and practices to be far more broadly inferred. Through studio inquiry, and practice-led and literature-based research the philosophical, theoretical, methodological and practical frameworks are created that support, and make explicit, the ontology and operations of Creative contemplation® methodology, the learning fora with others that I conceive as a species of performative installation, and my agency and role as practitioner within these fora that I cast as being (an) Attendant - a specialised model and mode of facilitation commensurate with the potency of arts-based knowing to investigate and cultivate workings of mind and heart

Multimode plasmon resonances on double- and triple-decker stacks of silver nanotriangles

© 2014 IEEE. Nanotriangles of silver may be readily synthesized by wet chemical techniques and exhibit a strong localized surface plasmon resonance with light. Here we examine the complex resonances of nanotriangles in double- and triple-decker sandwich configurations

Exploring the performance of molecular rectifiers: Limitations and factors affecting molecular rectification

There has been significant work investigating the use of molecules as nanoscale rectifiers in so-called "molecular electronics". However, less attention has been paid to optimizing the design parameters of molecular rectifiers or to their inherent limitations. Here we use a barrier tunneling model to examine the degree of rectification that can be achieved and to provide insight for the design and development of molecules with optimum rectification responses. © 2007 American Chemical Society