VCD helps others in molecular aggregates

Molecular self-assembly is the driving force of a great number of physical, chemical and biological processes in Nature.1 The properties of the molecular aggregates are markedly dependent on the intermolecular forces which hold together the building blocks, but also on the chemical and structural features of these building blocks. The transference of properties from the individual molecules to the bulk aggregate can be summarized in three main behaviours: disappearance (dipole moment), direct sum (weight) and enhancement (resilience). A nice example of the last group is the optical activity. The presence of a chiral seed in the molecules modulates their folding by favouring one among the available macrostructures. As a consequence, new forms of supramolecular chirality are triggered, such as helical, spiral or chiral sheets, which usually give rise to a noticeable increasing of the chiral signal of the aggregates. Vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) is the chiral version of infrared spectroscopy. It combines the intramolecular view provided by the molecular vibrations with the selective capability of a chiral analysis. It is also a suitable technique to observe the aggregation-induced signal enhancement in any type of condensed phase (solid, liquid, gel, etc). Here we present a series of studies on supramolecular systems, Figure 1, in which VCD helps and improves the analysis obtained by other techniques of chiral analysis as electron microscopy (SEM, AFM), electronic circular dichroism (ECD), Raman optical activity (ROA) or circularly polarized luminescence (CPL). These studies are aimed to obtain structural information of the macromolecular scaffolding useful to control the features and applications of the aggregates.Universidad de Málaga, Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Sentido e indeterminación en la cinta blanca, de Michael Haneke

_La cinta blanca narra una serie de acontecimientos inconexos e inexplicables, actos terribles que van generando una impresión de sinsentido, hechos violentos perpetrados contra víctimas inocentes o miembros "positivos". El análisi cinematográfico de esta película revela la importancia de la exclusión social de los niños en la sociedad austriaca de entreguerras como elemento que logra despejar el enigma del filme

Comparing New Keynesian models in the Euro area: a Bayesian approach

This paper estimates and compares four versions of the sticky price New Keynesian model for the Euro area, using a Bayesian approach as described in Rabanal and Rubio-Ramírez (2003). We find that the average duration of price contracts is between four and eight quarters, similar to the one estimated in the United States, while price indexation is found to be smaller. On the other hand, average duration of wage contracts is estimated to between one and two quarters, lower than the one found for the United States, while wage indexation is higher. Finally, the marginal likelihood indicates that the sticky price and sticky wage model of Erceg, Henderson, and Levin (2002), its wage indexation variant, and the baseline sticky price model with price indexation have similar data explanation power, while it positions the baseline sticky price model of Calvo at a lower level.

Breaking the Cycle for a Better Life: Understanding the Decision-Making Process That First-Generation, Community College Students Experienced When Making College Major and Career Choices

Choosing a college major and career are the most critical decisions that college students make and students are expected to make these impactful decisions early in their academic careers. First-generation, community college students are a group that are especially affected by this early decision process as they require the knowledge and experience to make informed decisions. Their parents often lack the experience to guide them through this process since they are unfamiliar with being a college student and providing the necessary support in this area. These barriers cause stress among these students and inefficiencies in the decisions that they make. Nevertheless, first-generation, community college students are a group that possess a tremendous amount of motivation and determination for reaching their goals regardless of the barriers they encounter. Community colleges and high schools are in a position to create intervention programs that help promote career development at a time when it’s most critical. The aim of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to understand the decision-making process that first-generation, community college students experienced as they made college major and career choices. The study focused on understanding the factors that influenced students’ college major and career choices. This study found that the factors that influenced students’ college major and career choices were: a desire to break the cycle of poverty for a better life; the desire to set a good example; the desire to become something real; the exposure to knowledge, engaging instructors, and to authentic careers during their educational experience; knowing there is a future; and the support and guidance students received while pursuing their education. Furthermore, students reported that their exposure to knowledge, engaging instructors, and to their authentic careers during their educational experience, as well as the support and guidance they received, helped bolster their level of confidence about reaching their career goals, thus, providing students with a heightened sense of career self-efficacy. Results of this study indicated that having the proper support and guidance, both moral and financial, influenced the choices that they made related to their college majors and careers. Being confident about reaching a career goal gave students the determination and resiliency to keep moving forward in their academic path. Participants described their major and career choice process as confronting unclear futures with determination and resilience; encountering and overcoming financial barriers; being stressful; and as a process of searching. This new knowledge that emerged as a result of this study will assist counselors in utilizing effective counseling approaches in order to maximize the assistance provided to first-generation, community college students based on their actual career development needs. The study results will also help in directing the development of intervention programs focused on career development at community colleges and pre-collegiate institutions

Using the Kalman filter to smooth the shocks of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model

This paper shows how to use the Kalman filter (Kalman 1960) to back out the shocks of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. In particular, we use the smoothing algorithm as described in Hamilton (1994) to estimate the shocks of a sticky-prices and sticky-wages model using all the information up to the end of the sample.

Oxidized Forms of Antiaromatic Oligomers of Biphenylene

Rsumen de la comunicaciónThe importance of antiaromatic molecules in Chemistry and more recently in material science is rising. In the particular case of applications in electronics, the antiaromatic skeleton offers the favorable situation of high energy (i.e., destabilized) occupied molecular orbitals allowing to ease oxidation, doping or electron transfer to form conductive and photo-active substrates.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Is the Precession of Mercury\u27s Perihelion a Natural (Non-Relativistic) Phenomenon?

The general theory of relativity claims that the excess of precession of the planetary orbits has its origin in the curvature of space-time produced by the Sun in its near vicinity. In general relativity, gravity is thought to be a measure of the curvature of spacetime when matter is present. By arguing that free falling particles follow geodesies inside gravitational fields, Schwarzschild\u27s solution to Einstein\u27s field equations explains that when space-time is approximately flat (weak aravitational pull of the Sun), the planetary orbits describe minute precessions which, for Mercury, agrees well with observation. This brief paper explains, first by elaborating on pure special relativity arguments, and second, by considering another solution to Newton\u27s gravitational law, that Mercury\u27s orbital precession does not necessarily demonstrate the unique validity of general relativity

Comparing solution methods for dynamic equilibrium economies

This paper compares solution methods for dynamic equilibrium economies. The authors compute and simulate the stochastic neoclassical growth model with leisure choice using Undetermined Coefficients in levels and in logs, Finite Elements, Chebyshev Polynomials, Second and Fifth Order Perturbations and Value Function Iteration for several calibrations. The authors document the performance of the methods in terms of computing time, implementation complexity and accuracy and they present some conclusions about their preferred approaches based on the reported evidence.