Co13O8—metalloxocubes: a new class of perovskite-like neutral clusters with cubic aromaticity

Exploring stable clusters to understand structural evolution from atoms to macroscopic matter and to construct new materials is interesting yet challenging in chemistry. Utilizing our newly developed deep-ultraviolet laser ionization mass spectrometry technique, here we observe the reactions of neutral cobalt clusters with oxygen and find a very stable cluster species of Co₁₃O₈ that dominates the mass distribution in the presence of a large flow rate of oxygen gas. The results of global-minimum structural search reveal a unique cubic structure and distinctive stability of the neutral Co₁₃O₈ cluster that forms a new class of metal oxides that we named as ‘metalloxocubes’. Thermodynamics and kinetics calculations illustrate the structural evolution from icosahedral Co₁₃ to the metalloxocube Co₁₃O₈ with decreased energy, enhanced stability and aromaticity. This class of neutral oxygen-passivated metal clusters may be an ideal candidate for genetic materials because of the cubic nature of the building blocks and the stability due to cubic aromaticity.     

化肥投入效率测度及归因——来自20个玉米生产省份的面板证据

在保障粮食安全的现实背景下,如何通过化肥的减量施用来保证粮食生产效率不变乃至有所提高是本文研究的目的。本文基于中国20个玉米生产省份2004—2015年的面板数据,运用超越对数函数模型测算出全国以及各省玉米生产中的化肥投入效率,并利用Tobit模型进一步对全国、东、中、西部地区化肥投入效率影响因素进行分析比较,研究结果表明：全国玉米生产效率为0.754,化肥投入效率均值为0.448,节肥潜力巨大;中国玉米种植规模、化肥价格、农业补贴与玉米化肥投入效率显著正相关,而农业保护政策与玉米化肥投入效率显著负相关。分区域而言,东部地区化肥价格与化肥投入效率正相关,玉米种植规模与化肥投入效率负相关;中部地区化肥价格、农业补贴与化肥投入效率正相关,非农劳动就业率与化肥投入效率负相关;西部地区化肥价格与玉米化肥投入效率正相关,农业保护政策与玉米化肥投入效率负相关。     

Patenting and US academic research in the 20th century: The world before and after Bayh-Dole

The dramatic growth of patenting and licensing of publicly funded research by American research universities in the closing quarter of the 20th century has stimulated some of the highest-profile debates in science and technology policy today. The issue of what aspects of academic research should be public - and what private - lies at the heart of each of these debates. The movement of academic scientists into commercialisation of discoveries and inventions has been extolled by some as a new model of academic research, one which facilitates economic and social returns from universities. At the same time, this trend has been criticised by others as representing a socially inefficient ‘privatisation’ of academic research and as a threat to the ethos of science itself. This paper places these debates in historical context, with a review of changes in American universities’ patenting policies, procedures and practices throughout the 20th century, an assessment of the logic underlying the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, and an overview of its effects on economic returns from university research.