The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, many have expressed concern about the effects of false stories (“fake news”), circulated largely through social media. We discuss the economics of fake news and present new data on its consumption prior to the election. Drawing on web browsing data, archives of fact-checking websites, and results from a new online survey, we find: (i) social media was an important but not dominant source of election news, with 14 percent of Americans calling social media their “most important” source; (ii) of the known false news stories that appeared in the three months before the election, those favoring Trump were shared a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Clinton were shared 8 million times; (iii) the average American adult saw on the order of one or perhaps several fake news stories in the months around the election, with just over half of those who recalled seeing them believing them; and (iv) people are much more likely to believe stories that favor their preferred candidate, especially if they have ideologically segregated social media networks.

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Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election

The talk with present the key results of the IPCC Working Group III 5th assessment report. Concluding four years of intense scientific collaboration by hundreds of authors from around the world, the report responds to the request of the world's governments for a comprehensive, objective and policy neutral assessment of the current scientific knowledge on mitigating climate change. The report has been extensively reviewed by experts and governments to ensure quality and comprehensiveness.

Climate change 2014 - Mitigation of climate change

Endogenous neuromodulatory molecules are commonly coupled to specific metabolic enzymes to ensure rapid signal inactivation. Thus, acetylcholine is hydrolysed by acetylcholine esterase and tryptamine neurotransmitters like serotonin are degraded by monoamine oxidases. Previously, we reported the structure and sleep-inducing properties of cis-9-octadecenamide, a lipid isolated from the cerebrospinal fluid of sleep-deprived cats. cis-9-Octadecenamide, or oleamide, has since been shown to affect serotonergic systems and block gap-junction communication in glial cells (our unpublished results). We also identified a membrane-bound enzyme activity that hydrolyses oleamide to its inactive acid, oleic acid. We now report the mechanism-based isolation, cloning and expression of this enzyme activity, originally named oleamide hydrolase, from rat liver plasma membranes. We also show that oleamide hydrolase converts anandamide, a fatty-acid amide identified as the endogenous ligand for the cannabinoid receptor, to arachidonic acid, indicating that oleamide hydrolase may serve as the general inactivating enzyme for a growing family of bioactive signalling molecules, the fatty-acid amides. Therefore we will hereafter refer to oleamide hydrolase as fatty-acid amide hydrolase, in recognition of the plurality of fatty-acid amides that the enzyme can accept as substrates.

Molecular characterization of an enzyme that degrades neuromodulatory fatty-acid amides

Uranium solution-mineral equilibria at low temperatures with applications to sedimentary ore deposits

Mobility Matters: Technology, Telework, and the (Un)sustainable Consumption of Distance

The kinetics and mechanisms of the reactions of 3-(4-X)-phenyl-1,5-diphenyl-verdazyl radicals where X = Cl, H, CH3 and CH3O with [Co(N–N)3]3+, N–N = 2,2′-bipyridyl (bpy), 1,10-phenanthroline (phen) and 4,7-dimethyl-1,10-phenanthroline (4,7-Me2phen), have been investigated in acetonitrile at 25 °C and ionic strength 0.05 mol dm−3
				(nC4H9)4NPF6 using stopped flow spectrophotometry. In all cases, transfer of one electron from the radical takes place resulting in the production of a Co(II) species and a verdazylium cation. The electron transfer occurs by an outer-sphere mechanism and the reactions appear to be consistent with Marcus theory. The self-exchange rate constants for the verdazyl–verdazylium cation have been estimated and are of the order of 3.4(±1.9)
				× 107 dm3 mol−1 s−1. This rate constant is consistent with the fact that the reactions of [Ru(bpy)3]3+ with verdazyl radicals are too rapid to be investigated by stopped flow spectrophotometry.

Michael J. Hynes

Papers

Mobility Matters: Technology, Telework, and the (Un)sustainable Consumption of Distance

Electron transfer reactions of tris(polypyridine)cobalt(III) complexes, [Co(N–N)3]3+, with verdazyl radicals in acetonitrile solution

Structural and functional analysis of the amdR regulatory gene of Aspergillus oryzae

Kinetics and mechanisms of the reactions of copper(II) and oxovanadium(IV) with heptane-3,5-dione in aqueous solution

31P nuclear magnetic resonance study of the interaction of multidentate amines with zinc(II) bis(O,O′-di-iso-butyldithiophosphate)