Constituting monetary conservatives via the 'savings habit': New Labour and the British housing market bubble

The ongoing world credit crunch might well kill off the most recent bubble dynamics in the British housing market by driving prices systematically downwards from their 2007 peak. Nonetheless, the experience of that bubble still warrants analytical attention. The Labour Government might not have been responsible for consciously creating it, but it has certainly grasped the opportunities the bubble has provided in an attempt to enforce a process of agential change at the heart of the British economy. The key issue in this respect is the way in which the Government has challenged the legitimacy of passive welfare receipts in favour of establishing a welfare system based on incorporating the individual into an active asset-holding society. The housing market has taken on new political significance as a means for individuals first to acquire assets and then to accumulate wealth on the back of asset ownership. The ensuing integration of the housing market into an increasingly reconfigured welfare system has permeated into the politics of everyday life. It has been consistent with individuals remaking their political subjectivities in line with preferences for the type of conservative monetary policies that typically keep house price bubbles inflated

Organoiridium complexes : anticancer agents and catalysts

Iridium is a relatively rare precious heavy metal, only slightly less dense than osmium. Researchers have long recognized the catalytic properties of square-planar Ir(I) complexes, such as Crabtree's hydrogenation catalyst, an organometallic complex with cyclooctadiene, phosphane, and pyridine ligands. More recently, chemists have developed half-sandwich pseudo-octahedral pentamethylcyclopentadienyl Ir(III) complexes containing diamine ligands that efficiently catalyze transfer hydrogenation reactions of ketones and aldehydes in water using H2 or formate as the hydrogen source. Although sometimes assumed to be chemically inert, the reactivity of low-spin 5d(6) Ir(III) centers is highly dependent on the set of ligands. Cp* complexes with strong σ-donor C^C-chelating ligands can even stabilize Ir(IV) and catalyze the oxidation of water. In comparison with well developed Ir catalysts, Ir-based pharmaceuticals are still in their infancy. In this Account, we review recent developments in organoiridium complexes as both catalysts and anticancer agents. Initial studies of anticancer activity with organoiridium complexes focused on square-planar Ir(I) complexes because of their structural and electronic similarity to Pt(II) anticancer complexes such as cisplatin. Recently, researchers have studied half-sandwich Ir(III) anticancer complexes. These complexes with the formula [(Cp(x))Ir(L^L')Z](0/n+) (with Cp* or extended Cp* and L^L' = chelated C^N or N^N ligands) have a much greater potency (nanomolar) toward a range of cancer cells (especially leukemia, colon cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, and melanoma) than cisplatin. Their mechanism of action may involve both an attack on DNA and a perturbation of the redox status of cells. Some of these complexes can form Ir(III)-hydride complexes using coenzyme NAD(P)H as a source of hydride to catalyze the generation of H2 or the reduction of quinones to semiquinones. Intriguingly, relatively unreactive organoiridium complexes containing an imine as a monodentate ligand have prooxidant activity, which appears to involve catalytic hydride transfer to oxygen and the generation of hydrogen peroxide in cells. In addition, researchers have designed inert Ir(III) complexes as potent kinase inhibitors. Octahedral cyclometalated Ir(III) complexes not only serve as cell imaging agents, but can also inhibit tumor necrosis factor α, promote DNA oxidation, generate singlet oxygen when photoactivated, and exhibit good anticancer activity. Although relatively unexplored, organoiridium chemistry offers unique features that researchers can exploit to generate novel diagnostic agents and drugs with new mechanisms of action

Spring-Block Model Reveals Region-Like Structures

A mechanical spring-block model is used for realizing an objective space partition of settlements from a geographic territory in region-like structures. The method is based on the relaxation-dynamics of the spring-block system and reveals in a hierarchical manner region-like entities at different spatial scales. It takes into account in an elegant manner both the spatiality of the elements and the connectivity relations among them. Spatiality is taken into account by using the geographic coordinates of the settlements, and by detecting the neighbors with the help of a Delaunay triangulation. Connectivity between neighboring settlements are quantified using a Pearson-like correlation for the relative variation of a relevant socio-economic parameter (population size, GDP, tax payed per inhabitant, etc.). The method is implemented in an interactive JAVA application and it is applied with success for an artificially generated society and for the case of USA, Hungary and Transylvania

Cultural economy and the creative field of the city

I begin with a rough sketch of the incidence of the cultural economy in US cities today. I then offer a brief review of some theoretical approaches to the question of creativity, with special reference to issues of social and geographic context. The city is a powerful fountainhead of creativity, and an attempt is made to show how this can be understood in terms of a series of localized field effects. The creative field of the city is broken down (relative to the cultural economy) into four major components, namely, (a) intra-urban webs of specialized and complementary producers, (b) the local labor market and the social networks that bind workers together in urban space, (c) the wider urban environment, including various sites of memory, leisure, and social reproduction, and (d) institutions of governance and collective action. I also briefly describe some of the path-dependent dynamics of the creative field. The paper ends with a reference to some issues of geographic scale. Here, I argue that the urban is but one (albeit important) spatial articulation of an overall creative field whose extent is ultimately nothing less than global

Bifunctional organorhodium solid acid catalysts for methanol carbonylation

Robust, bifunctional catalysts comprising Rh(CO)(Xantphos) exchanged phosphotungstic acids of general formulas [Rh(CO)(Xantphos)](n)(+)[H3-nPW12O40](n-) have been synthesized over :silica supports which exhibit tunable activity and selectivity toward direct vapor phase methanol carbonylation. The Optimal Rh acid ratio = 0.5, with higher, rhodium concentrations increasing the selectivity to methyl acetate over dimethyl ether at the expense of lower acidity and poor activity. On stream deactivation above 200 degrees C reflects Rh decomplexation and reduction to RE metal, in conjunction with catalyst dehydration and loss of solid acidity because of undesired methyl acetate hydrolysis, but can be alleviated by water addition and lower temperature operation