This article is concerned with the impact of late modernity on patterns of solidarity in friend and family relationships. It takes as its starting point the transformations in partnership, family, and household formation and dissolution that have been occurring in Western societies since the 1970s. Accepting these shifts as indicative of the greater freedoms people now have over the construction of their personal relationships and social networks, the article examines the degree to which the domains of family and friendship are merging. Its principal argument is that despite increased flexibility in the construction of personal life, including diversity in the prioritization of different relationships, at a cultural level clear boundaries exist between family and friendship ties.

No abstract

The conventional wisdom is that improving energy efficiency will lower energy use. However, there is an extensive debate in the energy economics/policy literature concerning "rebound" effects. These occur because an improvement in energy efficiency produces a fall in the effective price of energy services. The response of the economic system to this price fall at least partially offsets the expected beneficial impact of the energy efficiency gain. In this paper we use of an economyenergy-environment Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model for the UK to measure the impact of a 5% across the board improvement in the efficiency of energy use in all production sectors. We identify rebound effects of the order of 30% -50%, but no backfire (no increase in energy use). However, these results are sensitive to the assumed structure of the labour market, key production elasticities, the time-period under consideration and the mechanism through which increased government revenues are recycled back to the economy. 3Section 1:

No abstract

No abstract

The estrogen receptor (ER) is a strong hormone-inducible transcription factor that regulates the expression of many genes. It was shown for the human progesterone receptor that the binding of hormone causes distinct conformational changes in the ligand binding domain (LBD) and that these changes in LBD conformation are crucial for events after DNA binding. We now show that conformational changes in the LBD of the human ER are a prerequisite for trans-activation. Under the appropriate conditions ER binds to its response element and activates transcription only in the presence of ligand. Binding of the ligand causes changes in the conformation of the LBD. Antihormones induce distinct conformational changes, the differences between the conformations lying in the carboxy-terminal end of the receptor. Changing the experimental conditions results in a receptor that can bind to DNA and activate transcription in a ligand-independent manner. Under these conditions the LBD has a transcriptionally active conformation in the absence of ligand. Taken together, our data indicate that the conformational change induced by ligand is required for converting a receptor to the transcriptionally active form.

The UK electricity system is likely to face dramatic technical and institutional changes in the near future. Current UK energy policy focuses on the need for a clean, affordable and secure energy supply. Decentralisation of the electricity system is recognised as one means of achieving efficient and renewable energy provision, as well as addressing concerns over ageing electricity infrastructure and capacity constraints. In this paper we provide a critical literature review of the economics of increased penetration of distributed energy generation. We find that there exists a large volume of research considering the financial viability of individual distributed generation technologies (and we are necessarily selective in our review of these studies, given the wide variety of technologies that the definition of distributed generation encompasses). However, there are few studies that focus on the pure economics of individual or groups of distributed energy generators, and even fewer still based on the economy-wide aspects of distributed generation. In view of this gap in the literature, we provide suggestions for future research which are likely to be necessary in order adequately to inform public policy on distributed generation and its role in the future of UK energy supply.

This article is concerned with the contribution that sociology has made to our understanding of the ways in which friendships are socially patterned. Rather than treating these ties as individual or dyadic constructions, it examines how the social and economic contexts in which they develop influence their form. It focuses particularly on the impact that social location has on friendship, arguing that both class and status divisions are important for understanding the character of informal solidarities. However, both of these must be seen as dynamic, for neither class nor status characteristics are fixed; both alter biographically and historically, and as they alter they pattern the friendships individuals sustain. The final section of the article attempts to explicate how structural change at the end of the 20th century will affect friendship. While some theories of privatization imply that informal relationships are becoming less significant socially, the argument developed here is that the transformations of late modernity are likely to result in informal solidarities of friendship becoming more central.