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Nov 10, 2024 | 
nytimes.com | Ruben Andersson |David A. Keen
"Give war a chance," the maverick strategist Edward Luttwak implored at the tail end of the Clinton administration. The quest for durable peace, he thought, was habitually interrupted by those liberal do-gooders who refused to let wars " burn themselves out."Spool forward some 25 years and war is being given a whole lot of chances, from Israel's onslaught on Gaza and Lebanon to weaponized famine in Sudan to the long, grinding war in Ukraine.
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Jul 15, 2024 | 
nature.com | Jack Griffiths |Ana F. Suzana |Longlong Wu |Vincent J. Esposito |Paul Evans |J. F. Mitchell | +1 more
Correction to: Nature Materials https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-024-01927-8, published online 13 June 2024. Since the version of the article initially published, the Acknowledgments has been amended to state that grant no. DE-FG02-04ER46147, from the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, was given only to P.G.E. and grant nos.
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Jun 13, 2024 | 
nature.com | Jack Griffiths |Ana F. Suzana |Longlong Wu |Vincent J. Esposito |Paul Evans |J. F. Mitchell | +1 more
AbstractMaterial functionality can be strongly determined by structure extending only over nanoscale distances. The pair distribution function presents an opportunity for structural studies beyond idealized crystal models and to investigate structure over varying length scales. Applying this method with ultrafast time resolution has the potential to similarly disrupt the study of structural dynamics and phase transitions.
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Mar 1, 2024 | 
pubs.rsc.org | Celia Castillo-Blas |Ashleigh M Chester |David A. Keen |ISIS Facility
Thermally activated structural phase transitions and processes in metal–organic frameworks
The structural knowledge of metal–organic frameworks is crucial to the understanding and development of new efficient materials for industrial implementation. This review classifies and discusses recent advanced literature reports on phase transitions that occur during thermal treatments on metal–organic frameworks and their characterisation.
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Feb 24, 2024 | 
taipeitimes.com | David A. Keen |Ruben Andersson
By David Keen and Ruben Andersson In Constantine Cavafy’s poem Waiting for the Barbarians, the much-feared barbarians never turn up. “Now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?” the poem asks. “Those people were a kind of solution.”People seem to have become addicted to useful “barbarians.” From terrorists and drug lords to human smugglers and even refugees, politics increasingly revolves around simplified threats and facile solutions.
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Feb 15, 2024 | 
almendron.com | David A. Keen |Ruben Andersson
En el poema de Konstantinos Kavafis «Esperando a los bárbaros», los tan temidos bárbaros nunca llegan. «¿Qué será ahora de nosotros sin los bárbaros?», se pregunta el poema. «Eran una especie de solución». Parece que nos hemos vuelto adictos a tener «bárbaros» útiles. Terroristas, narcotraficantes, contrabandistas de personas, hasta los refugiados: la política gira cada vez más en torno de amenazas simplificadas y soluciones fáciles.
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Feb 14, 2024 | 
project-syndicate.org | David A. Keen
LONDON/OXFORD – In Constantine Cavafy’s poem “Waiting for the Barbarians,” the much-feared barbarians never turn up. “Now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?” the poem asks. “Those people were a kind of solution.”
The Lonesome Death of Alexei Navalny
What Was Capitalism?
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Feb 8, 2024 | 
psyche.co | David A. Keen
When passions run high so does the urge to shame wrongdoers. But if the goal is to change, shamers should think twice‘Shame on you!’ seems to come naturally for members of rival political groups these days. Shaming is also a common tactic among those who seek to promote change: it has long been a staple of human rights work, and people often hope that heaping shame in the direction of errant individuals, corporations and regimes will improve their behaviour. Will it, though?
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Jan 4, 2024 | 
pubs.rsc.org | Jiaxun Liu |Juan Du |Peter Wyatt |David A. Keen
Orientational order/disorder and network flexibility in deuterated methylammonium lead iodide perovskite by neutron total scattering†
The phase transitions and orientational order of the methylammonium molecular ion in a deuterated sample of [CH3NH3]PbI3 have been studied using neutron total scattering and Reverse Monte Carlo methods.
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Dec 22, 2023 | 
spectator.com.au | David A. Keen
War rhetoric is everywhere in our volatile politics: from Ukraine to the resurrection of the war on terror in Gaza, from the ‘wars’ on human smugglers, drugs and crime, through to more metaphorical culture wars, ‘war on motorists’, on a virus – even on climate change. Keir Starmer accuses Rishi Sunak of prosecuting a ‘one-man war on reality’ while ‘anti-woke’ campaigners decry a war on Christmas.
