20 research outputs found
Activation and Deactivation of a Robust Immobilized Cp*Ir-Transfer Hydrogenation Catalyst: A Multielement in Situ X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy Study
A highly robust immobilized [Cp*IrCl2]2 precatalyst on Wang resin for transfer hydrogenation, which can be recycled up to 30 times, was studied using a novel combination of X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) at Ir L3-edge, Cl K-edge, and K K-edge. These culminate in in situ XAS experiments that link structural changes of the Ir complex with its catalytic activity and its deactivation. Mercury poisoning and âhot filtrationâ experiments ruled out leached Ir as the active catalyst. Spectroscopic evidence indicates the exchange of one chloride ligand with an alkoxide to generate the active precatalyst. The exchange of the second chloride ligand, however, leads to a potassium alkoxideâiridate species as the deactivated form of this immobilized catalyst. These findings could be widely applicable to the many homogeneous transfer hydrogenation catalysts with Cp*IrCl substructure
Unworking Milton: Steps to a Georgics of the Mind
Traditionally read as a poem about laboring subjects who gain power through abstract and abstracting forms of bodily discipline, John Miltonâs Paradise Lost (1667, 1674) more compellingly foregrounds the erotics of the Garden as a space where humans and nonhumans intra-act materially and sexually. Following Christopher Hill, who long ago pointed to not one but two revolutions in the history of seventeenth-century English radicalismâthe first, âthe one which succeeded[,] . . . the protestant ethicâ; and the second, âthe revolution which never happened,â which sought âcommunal property, a far wider democracy[,] and rejected the protestant ethicââI show how Miltonâs Paradise Lost gives substance to âthe revolution which never happenedâ by imagining a commons, indeed a communism, in which human beings are not at the center of things, but rather constitute one part of the greater ecology of mind within Miltonâs poem. In the space created by this ecological reimagining, plants assume a new agency. I call this reimagining âecology to come.
Gardens of happiness: Sir William Temple, temperance and China
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this recordSir William Temple, an English statesman and humanist, wrote âUpon the
Gardens of Epicurusâ in 1685, taking a neo-epicurean approach to happiness
and temperance. In accord with Pierre Gassendiâs epicureanism, âhappinessâ is
characterised as freedom from disturbance and pain in mind and body, whereas
âtemperanceâ means following nature (Providence and oneâs physiopsychological constitution). For Temple, cultivating fruit trees in his garden was
analogous to the threefold cultivation of temperance as a virtue in the humoral
body (as food), the mind (as freedom from the passions), and the bodyeconomic (as circulating goods) in order to attain happiness. A regimen that was
supposed to cure the malaise of Restoration amidst a crisis of unbridled
passions, this threefold cultivation of temperance underlines Templeâs reception
of China and Confucianism wherein happiness and temperance are highlighted.
Thus Templeâs âgardens of happinessâ represent not only a reinterpretation of
classical ideas, but also his dialogue with China.European CommissionLeverhulme Trus