Constructing Space for Science at the Royal Institution of Great Britain

Those who have worked in the Royal Institution of Great Britain have, since its foundation in 1799, made significant contributions to scientific knowledge, to its practical application, and to its communication to a wide variety of audiences. Such work cannot be carried out in an architectural vacuum, and in this paper we examine how the buildings of the Royal Institution, 20 and 21 Albemarle Street in central London, have shaped the work undertaken within its walls and how, on a number of occasions, the buildings have been reconfigured to take account of the evolving needs of scientific research and communication. This paper is based on the Conservation Plan of the Royal Institution that we wrote during 2003. The Conservation Plan did not examine the land owned by the Royal Institution to the north (i.e., 22 and 23 Albemarle Street; for this area see Richard Garnier, “Grafton Street, Mayfair,” Georgian Group Journal 13 (2003), 210–272), but it did discuss 18 and 19 Albemarle Street. In this paper we concentrate on the core Royal Institution buildings at 20 and 21 Albemarle Street. Other studies of the relationship of architecture,space, and science include Crosbie Smith and Jon Agar, ed., Making Space for Science: Territorial Themes in the Shaping of Knowledge (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997); Peter Galison and Emily Thompson, ed., The Architecture of Science (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999); and Sophie Forgan,“The architecture of science and the idea of a university,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 20 (1989), 405–434. Frank A.J.L. James is Professor of the History of Science at the Royal Institution; he has written widely on the history of nineteenth-century science in its social and cultural contexts and is editor of the Correspondence of Michael Faraday. He is President of the British Society for the History of Science. Anthony Peers is an Associate of Rodney Melville and Partners where he works in the field of building conservation as an architectural historian. He is a Council member of the Ancient Monument Society.     

Loss without recovery of Gibbsianness during diffusion of continuous spins

We consider a specific continuous-spin Gibbs distribution μ_t=0 for a double-well potential that allows for ferromagnetic ordering. We study the time-evolution of this initial measure under independent diffusions. For `high temperature' initial measures we prove that the time-evoved measure μ<sub>t</sub> is Gibbsian for all t. For `low temperature' initial measures we prove that μ_t stays Gibbsian for small enough times t, but loses its Gibbsian character for large enough t. In contrast to the analogous situation for discrete-spin Gibbs measures, there is no recovery of the Gibbs property for large t in the presence of a non-vanishing external magnetic field. All of our results hold for any dimension d≥2. This example suggests more generally that time-evolved continuous-spin models tend to be non-Gibbsian more easily than their discrete-spin counterparts. Research carried out at EURANDOM and supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft     

A short synthesis of 3,3-di(hetero)arylpropylamines obtained from bis-(hetero)aryl ketones via palladium catalysis

A palladium-catalyzed parallel synthesis of bis-hetero(aryl) ketones is described with two further synthetic steps allowing easy entry to 3,3-di(hetero)arylpropylamines.     

A locally computed suboptimal control strategy for a class of interconnected systems

In this paper, a locally computed suboptimal control strategy for a class of interconnected systems is introduced. First, optimal statefeedback control equations are derived for a finite-horizon quadratic cost. Then, the control for each subsystem is separated into two portions. The first portion stabilizes the isolated subsystem, and the second portion corresponds to the interactions. To achieve a locally calculable control, an approximation to the optimal control equations is introduced, and two iterative suboptimal control algorithms are developed. In the first algorithm, the initial conditions of subsystems are assumed to be known; in the second algorithm, this information is replaced by statistical distributions. The orders of errors in the iterations of the algorithm and in the suboptimality are given in terms of interconnections. An example with comparisons is also included to show the performance of the approach.     

Influence of trans-cis photoisomerizations of solubilized compounds on transition temperatures in the system cetyltrimethylammonium bromide-water: Light-induced phase transitions

Transition temperatures (TN1) from the nematic lyotropic liquid-crystalline phase to the isotropic phase were measured for the system cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) water in the presence of small amounts of 3-stilbene carboxylic acid (3SC), 4-stilbene carboxylic acid (4SC) and Δ2/2'-bi-(2H-l,4-benzothiazine) (BT). TNI, increases as a function of trans-3SC or trans-4SC concentration, ranging from 01 to 08 wt %, by up to 12°C. A further increase in TNI between 2 and 5°C can be achieved by photochemically converting the solubilized trans stilbene derivatives to the cis isomers. Irradiation of a trans-3SC containing sample at a temperature just above TNl leads to a light-induced phase transition to the lyotropic liquid-crystalline phase. Solubilization of trans-BT causes a slight decrease of TNI while photoisomerization to cis-BT increases T_NI by 1°C.