Tales of the Brick Age: Corruption and Bankruptcy in the late works of Rafael Chirbes

The subprime collapse, the Global Recession, and the Eurozone crisis have given rise to an entire subgenre of crisis narratives in literary and visual arts, attempting to make sense of the human aspect, causes and outcomes of the largest non-war economic commotion in the West since the Great Depression. In Spain, the last two novels of Rafael Chirbes (1949-2015), Crematorio (2007) and En la orilla (2013)1 have distinguished themselves for an insightful view and poignant reflections on the real estate boom and bust, which defined the economic and cultural parameters of Spain after the democratic transition. Here I will call this period the Brick Age.2 As a metonymy, the Brick refers here to a series of interrelated factors, economic developments, social changes, evolving cultural attitudes, and substantial alterations in visual landscape and the environment, which took place in Spain from the mid-1980s to approximately 2010. It takes after the so-called fiebre del ladrillo or Brick Fever, i.e. the construction boom starting approximately in the late 90s, defining an economy largely based on real estate development and related sectors, including tourism, along with the rapid, unsustainable economic growth it fostered, supported by the gradual imposition of neoliberal ideology and policy by the right and its implicit acceptance by the traditional left. In the following pages I will produce a brief account of the Brick Age as a historical process in two phases, underscoring the ties of the boom and bust economy with a culture of corruption. Having established this context, I will proceed to introduce Chirbes\u27 novels, justify the need for a joint analysis, [End Page 405] and discuss the concepts and imagery that seek to account for the political, cultural, and moral context intertwined with the economics of boom and bust during the Brick Age

The CAST experiment: status and perspectives

The status of the solar axion search with the CERN Axion Solar Telescope (CAST) will be discussed. Results from the first part of CAST phase II where the magnet bores were filled with \hefour gas at variable pressure in order to scan \ma up to 0.4 eV will be presented. From the absence of excess X-rays when the magnet was pointing to the Sun, we set a typical upper limit on the axion-photon coupling of \gag \lesssim 2.17 \times10^{-10}GeV$^{-1}$ at 95% CL for \ma$<0.4$ eV, the exact result depending on the pressure setting. Our search for axions with masses up to about 1.2 eV using \hethree as a buffer gas is, since last year, in progress in the second part of CAST phase II. Expectations for sensibilities will be given. Near future perspectives as well as more long term options for a new helioscope experiment will be evoked.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure to be publish in the proceedings of the 5th Patras Workshop on Axions, WIMPs and WISP

Radiation-pressure Waves and Multiphase Quasar Outflows

We report on quasar outflow properties revealed by analyzing more than 60 composite outflow spectra built from $\sim 60\,000$ CIV absorption troughs in the SDSS-III/BOSS DR12QBAL catalog. We assess the dependences of the equivalent widths of many outflow metal absorption features on outflow velocity, trough width and position, and quasar magnitude and redshift. The evolution of the equivalent widths of the OVI and NV lines with outflow velocity correlates with that of the mean absorption-line width, the outflow electron density, and the strength of lines arising from collisionally-excited meta-stable states. None of these correlations is found for the other high- or low-ionization species, and different behaviors with trough width are also suggested. We find no dependence on quasar magnitude or redshift in any case. All the observed trends can be reconciled by considering a multiphase stratified outflow structure, where inner regions are colder, denser and host lower-ionization species. Given the prevalence of radiative acceleration in quasar outflows found by Mas-Ribas & Mauland (2019), we suggest that radiation pressure sweeps up and compresses the outflowing gas outwards, creating waves or filaments where the multiphase stratified structure could take form. This scenario is supported by the suggested correlation between electron density and outflow velocity, and the similar behavior observed for the line and line-locking components of the absorption features. We show that this outflow structure is also consistent with other X-ray, radiative transfer, and polarization results, and discuss the implications of our findings for future observational and numerical quasar outflow studies.Comment: Main results Figs. 3 and 7. ApJ accepte

Anti-programmed cell death protein-1/ligand-1 therapy in different cancers.

Immunologic checkpoint blockade with antibodies against the programmed cell death protein-1 (PD-1) or its ligand (PD-L1) is an effective method for reversing cancer immunosuppression and thereby promoting immune responses against several cancer types. Anti-PD-1 and anti-PD-L1 antibodies have resulted in long-term responses with minimal side effects in significant numbers of patients with melanoma, lung, kidney, bladder and triple-negative breast cancer, as well as in chemotherapy-refractory Hodgkin disease. There is already evidence from at least one randomised trial that anti-PD-1 therapy is superior to chemotherapy in the treatment of patients with metastatic melanoma, and two anti-PD-1 antibodies, pembrolizumab and nivolumab, have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of patients previously treated for metastatic melanoma. It is anticipated that approvals by drug regulatory bodies will be forthcoming in several cancers in the next months