An Outline of a Progressive Resolution to the Euro-area Sovereign Debt Overhang: How a Five year Suspension of the Debt Burden Could Overthrow Austerity

The present study puts forward a plan for solving the sovereign debt crisis in the euro area (EA) in line with the interests of the working classes and the social majority. Our main strategy is for the European Central Bank (ECB) to acquire a significant part of the outstanding sovereign debt (at market prices) of the countries in the EA and convert it to zero-coupon bonds. No transfers will take place between individual states; taxpayers in any EA country will not be involved in the debt restructuring of any foreign eurozone country. Debt will not be forgiven: individual states will agree to buy it back from the ECB in the future when the ratio of sovereign debt to GDP has fallen to 20 percent. The sterilization costs for the ECB are manageable. This model of an unconventional monetary intervention would give progressive governments in the EA the necessary basis for developing social and welfare policies to the benefit of the working classes. It would reverse present-day policy priorities and replace the neoliberal agenda with a program of social and economic reconstruction, with the elites paying for the crisis. The perspective taken here favors social justice and coherence, having as its priority the social needs and the interests of the working majority

Building 1D lanthanide chains and non-symmetrical [Ln2] “triple-decker” clusters using salen-type ligands: magnetic cooling and relaxation phenomena

et al.A solvothermal reaction between Ln(NO)·6HO (Ln: Gd, Tb and Dy), 2-hydroxy-1-naphthaldehyde, 2-OH-naphth, and ethylenediamine, en, in MeOH in the presence of a base, NEt, led to the formation of the 1D coordination polymers [Ln(L)(MeO)(MeOH)]·MeOH (Ln = Gd (1·MeOH), Tb(2), Dy (3·MeOH); HL = 1,1′-((1E,1′E)-(ethane-1,2-diylbis(azanylylidene))bis(methanylylidene))bis(naphthalen-2-ol), the Schiff-base ligand derived from the condensation of 2-OH-naphth and en), while a similar reaction in an excess of NaN yielded 1D coordination polymers [Ln(L)(N)(MeO)(MeOH)] (Ln = Gd (4), Tb (5), Dy (6)). Finally, upon replacing ethylenediamine with o-phenylenediamine, o-phen, we managed to isolate the discrete dimers [Dy(L′)(MeOH)]·2MeOH (7·2MeOH) and [Gd(L′)(MeOH)]·2MeOH (8·2MeOH) (HL′ = 1,1′-((1E,1′E)-(1,2-phenylenebis(azanylylidene))bis(methanylylidene))bis (naphthalen-2-ol), the Schiff-base ligand from the condensation of 2-OH-naphth and o-phen). Polymers 1-3 describe one-dimensional chains, containing alternating seven- and eight-coordinate Ln metal centers, polymers 4-6 contain eight-coordinate lanthanide ions, while in both 7 and 8 the two Ln centers are eight- and seven-coordinate, adopting square antiprismatic and “piano-stool” geometry, respectively. The magnetocaloric properties of the three Gd analogues were determined from magnetic measurements, yielding the magnetic entropy change-ΔS = 21.8, 23.0 and 16.0 J kg K at T = 3.0 K on demagnetization of 7 T to 0, for 1, 4 and 8, respectively. The study of the magnetic properties also revealed that all three Dy analogues (3, 6 and 7) display out-of-phase signals, therefore suggesting slow magnetic relaxation, while such behaviour was not established in the Tb analogues.The research fund for CJM and ABC has been co-financed by the European Union (European Social Fund – ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program “Education and Lifelong Learning” of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) – Research Funding Program: THALES. Investing in knowledge society through the European Social Fund. GL and ME thank Spanish MINECO (MAT2015-68204-R). MS, MO and TL: “Project partially supported by Wroclaw Centre of Biotechnology, programme The Leading National Research Centre (KNOW) for years 2014–2018”Peer Reviewe

Influence of antisymmetric exchange interaction on quantum tunneling of magnetization in a dimeric molecular magnet Mn6

We present magnetization measurements on the single molecule magnet Mn6, revealing various tunnel transitions inconsistent with a giant-spin description. We propose a dimeric model of the molecule with two coupled spins S=6, which involves crystal-field anisotropy, symmetric Heisenberg exchange interaction, and antisymmetric Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya exchange interaction. We show that this simplified model of the molecule explains the experimentally observed tunnel transitions and that the antisymmetric exchange interaction between the spins gives rise to tunneling processes between spin states belonging to different spin multiplets.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Pseudopeptidic ligands: exploring the self-assembly of isopthaloylbisglycine (H2IBG) and divalent metal ions

No description supplie

Using Molecular Embeddings in QSAR Modeling: Does it Make a Difference?

With the consolidation of deep learning in drug discovery, several novel algorithms for learning molecular representations have been proposed. Despite the interest of the community in developing new methods for learning molecular embeddings and their theoretical benefits, comparing molecular embeddings with each other and with traditional representations is not straightforward, which in turn hinders the process of choosing a suitable representation for QSAR modeling. A reason behind this issue is the difficulty of conducting a fair and thorough comparison of the different existing embedding approaches, which requires numerous experiments on various datasets and training scenarios. To close this gap, we reviewed the literature on methods for molecular embeddings and reproduced three unsupervised and two supervised molecular embedding techniques recently proposed in the literature. We compared these five methods concerning their performance in QSAR scenarios using different classification and regression datasets. We also compared these representations to traditional molecular representations, namely molecular descriptors and fingerprints. As opposed to the expected outcome, our experimental setup consisting of over 25,000 trained models and statistical tests revealed that the predictive performance using molecular embeddings did not significantly surpass that of traditional representations. While supervised embeddings yielded competitive results compared to those using traditional molecular representations, unsupervised embeddings tended to perform worse than traditional representations. Our results highlight the need for conducting a careful comparison and analysis of the different embedding techniques prior to using them in drug design tasks, and motivate a discussion about the potential of molecular embeddings in computer-aided drug design

Moving away from the throwaway society. Five policy instruments for extending the life of consumer durables

The majority of all environmental impacts can be linked to our consumption. As real wages increase, so does consumption levels – more holiday trips, more clothing purchases, faster replacement of products for newer versions,etc. This trend poses a threat to the state of our planet. While the Nordic countries are high in the overall rankings of achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, they stand outwith unsustainable levels of resource consumption and waste generation, this is an issue when it comes to Goal 12 – Sustainable consumption and production patterns. The environmental impact from consumption in high-income countries, like Sweden, primarily arise in other countries wheret he manufacturing of products typically takes place. This presents challenges for the fulfilment of Sweden’s generational goal, which emphasises that environmental problems in Sweden must be solved without increasing environmental impact outsideS weden

A Mononuclear and a Mixed-Valence Chain Polymer Arising from Copper(II) Halide Chemistry and the Use of 2,2′-Pyridil

Reactions of 2,2′-pyridil (pyCOCOpy) with CuCl2 · 2H2O and CuBr2 in EtOH yielded the mononuclear complex [Cu(pyCOOEt)2Cl2] · H2O (1) and the one-dimensional, mixed-valence complex [Cu2ICuII(pyCOOEt)2Br4]n (2), respectively. Both complexes crystallize in the triclinic space group P 1¯. The lattice constants are a = 8.382(2), b = 9.778(2), c = 7.814(2), α = 101.17(1), β = 114.55(1), γ = 94.14(1)° for 1 and a = 8.738(1), b = 9.375(2), c = 7.966(1), α = 79.09(1), β = 64.25(1), γ = 81.78(1)° for 2. 2,2′-pyridil undergoes a metal-assisted alcoholysis and oxidation leading to decomposition and yielding the ethyl picolinate (pyCOOEt) ligand. The autoredox process associated with the reduction of copper(II) to copper(I) in the case of complex 2 is discussed in terms of the increased redox activity of the copper(II) bromide system relative to the copper(II) chloride system

Assembling hexagonal‐bipyramidal {Mn8Zn2} and {Mn8Zn4} clusters

Reaction between Mn(NO3)2 ⋅ 6H2O, Zn(NO3)2 ⋅ 6H2O, 1,3,5-tri(2-hydroxyethyl)-1,3,5-triazacyclohexane (H3L) and pyrazole in MeOH under basic conditions leads to the formation of the decanuclear complex [MnIII6MnII2ZnII2(L)2(pyr)4O4(OH)4(NO3)2 (MeOH)2(H2O)4](NO3)2 ⋅ Η2Ο (1 ⋅ Η2Ο). The metallic core of the cationic cluster consists of a central hexagonal-bipyramidal {MnIII4MnII2ZnII2} unit connected to two peripheral trivalent Mn centers arranged in a “trans” fashion, with one MnIII center lying above and one MnIII center below the hexagonal plane. Replacing Mn(NO3)2 ⋅ 6H2O with MnBr2 ⋅ 4H2O and repeating the same reaction leads to the formation of the related, neutral decanuclear complex [MnIII6MnII2ZnII2(L)2(pyr)4O4(OH)4Br4(H2O)2] (2), displaying the same metallic core as 1. Addition of THF to the reaction mixture that produces (2) affords the neutral dodecanuclear complex [MnIII6MnII2ZnII4(L)2(pyr)6O4(OH)4Br6(H2O)4] ⋅ 8THF (3 ⋅ 8THF), whose metallic skeleton retains the central hexagonal-bipyramidal {MnIII4MnII2ZnII2} unit found in 1 and 2 but is now connected to two peripheral {MnIIIZnII} units. Magnetic susceptibility and magnetization measurements carried out in the T=2–300 K temperature range and in fields up to B=7.0 T for all three complexes reveal dominant antiferromagnetic exchange interactions

Attempting to understand (and control) the relationship between structure and magnetism in an extended family of Mn-6 single-molecule magnets

International audienceThe synthesis and characterisation of a large family of hexametallic [Mn-6(III)] Single-Molecule Magnets of general formula [(Mn6O2)-O-III(R-sao)(6)(X)(2)(Sol)(4-6)] (where R = H, Me, Et; X = -O2CR'(R' = H, Me, Ph etc) or Hal(-); sol = EtOH, MeOH and/or H2O) are presented. We show how deliberate structural distortions of the [Mn3O] trinuclear moieties within the [Mn-6] complexes are used to tune their magnetic properties. These findings highlight a qualitative magneto-structural correlation whereby the type (anti- or ferromagnetic) of each Mn-2 pairwise magnetic exchange is dominated by the magnitude of each individual Mn-N-O-Mn torsion angle. The observation of magneto-structural correlations on Such large polymetallic complexes is rare and represents one of the largest studies of this kind