bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Structure evolution, bandgap, and dielectric function in La-doped hafnium oxide thin layer subjected to swift Xe ion irradiation
Authors: Suvorova E. I. , Uvarov O. V. , Arkharova N. A. , Ibrayeva A. D. , Skuratov V. A. , Buffat P. A.
Published: October 2020

High-resolution transmission electron microscopy, electron diffraction, and electron energy-loss spectroscopy provide information on the structural evolution, dielectric function, and bandgap values of nanocrystalline 10 nm thick lanthanum doped hafnia (La:HfO2) layers in TiN/La:HfO2/TiN/SiO2/Si irradiated with 24, 46, 72, and 160 MeV (0.2–1.2 MeV/u) Xe ions. Swift heavy Xe ions were expected to create significant atomic rearrangements when passed through a solid losing energy mainly through electronic excitation and ionization of the target atoms. Local heating and subsequent rapid cooling in the region around the ion track can lead to re-solidification with the formation of a new stable crystalline phase, and direct crystal-to-crystal transformations are possible. The structure evolution of hafnia nanocrystals from the orthorhombic Pbcm in the pristine layer to the tetragonal P42/nmc phase in the 160 MeV Xe ion irradiated layer was observed. The mixture of tetragonal and orthorhombic phases was found in samples irradiated with ions of intermediate energies. Textured hafnia layers were formed as a result of ion irradiation. The changes in plasmon line shape and the blueshift of the plasmon energy-loss peak from 14.9 eV in the pristine layer to 15.4 eV in 46 MeV and 15.9 eV in 160 MeV Xe ion irradiated hafnia reflect structural transformations, the increase in the Hf coordination number, and crystal orientations. Valence-electron energy-loss spectroscopy measurements showed a slight increase in the bandgap value from 6.1 eV in the pristine sample to 6.2 eV and 6.3 eV in irradiated samples with 46 and 160 MeV Xe ions, respectively, and dielectric functions changed insignificantly in irradiated hafnia layers.
Application of self-healing property of partially coherent beams to ghost imaging
Authors: Zhou Yunqin , Wu Gaofeng , Cai Yangjian , Wang Fei , Hoenders Bernhard J.
Published: October 2020

The theoretical model for studying the self-healing of the spatial coherence of a light beam is constructed. Based on this model, the evolution of the degree of coherence for a partially coherent Gaussian Schell-model beam is studied in detail. This study shows the existence of the self-healing effect of the partial coherence for this beam. The self-healing process is determined by the disturbing strength of the turbid medium, the beam width, and the initial coherence. An example of the application of the self-healing property is provided in the case of ghost imaging, if the initial beam is blurred by certain turbid media.
Back-mapping augmented adaptive resolution simulation
Authors: Thaler S. , Praprotnik M. , Zavadlav J.
Published: October 2020

Concurrent multiscale techniques such as Adaptive Resolution Scheme (AdResS) can offer ample computational advantages over conventional atomistic (AT) molecular dynamics simulations. However, they typically rely on aphysical hybrid regions to maintain numerical stability when high-resolution degrees of freedom (DOFs) are randomly re-inserted at the resolution interface. We propose an Energy Minimized AT (DOF) Insertion (EMATI) method that uses an informed rather than random AT DOF insertion to tackle the root cause of the issue, i.e., overlapping AT potentials. EMATI enables us to directly couple AT and coarse-grained resolutions without any modifications of the interaction potentials. We exemplify AdResS-EMATI in a system of liquid butane and show that it yields improved structural and thermodynamic properties at the interface compared to competing AdResS approaches. Furthermore, our approach extends the applicability of the AdResS without a hybrid region to systems for which force capping is inadequate.
Stress, health and the welfare of laying hens
Authors: Tilbrook A. J. , Fisher A. D.
Published: October 2020

It is essential to understand responses to stress and the impact of stress on physiological and behavioural functioning of hens, so as to assess their welfare. The current understanding of stress in laying hens is comprehensively reviewed here. Most research on stress in hens has focussed on the activity of the adrenal glands, with the most common approach being to measure corticosterone, which is the predominant glucocorticoid produced by birds in response to stress. While these measures are useful, there is a need to understand how the brain regulates stress responses in hens. A greater understanding of the sympathoadrenal system and its interaction with the hypothalamo–pituitary–adrenal axis is required. There is also a lack of knowledge about the many other peptides and regulatory systems involved in stress responses in hens. The usefulness of understanding stress in hens in terms of assessing welfare depends on appreciating that different stressors elicit different responses and that there are often differences in responses to, and impacts of, acute and chronic stress. It is also important to establish the actions and fate of stress hormones within target tissues. It is the consequences of these actions that are important to welfare. A range of other measures has been used to assess stress in hens, including a ratio of heterophils to lymphocytes and haematocrit : packed cell-volume ratio and measures of corticosterone or its metabolites in eggs, excreta, feathers and the secretions of the uropygial gland. Measures in eggs have proffered varying results while measures in feathers may be useful to assess chronic stress. There are various studies in laying hens to indicate impacts of stress on the immune system, health, metabolism, appetite, and the quality of egg production, but, generally, these are limited, variable and are influenced by the management system, environment, genetic selection, type of stressor and whether or not the birds are subjected to acute or chronic stress. Further research to understand the regulation of stress responses and the impact of stress on normal functioning of hens will provide important advances in the assessment of stress and, in turn, the assessment of welfare of laying hens.
Intensive and extensive movements of feral camels in central Australia
Authors: Wells Cameron Ryan , Lethbridge Mark
Published: October 2020

A better understanding of the movement of feral dromedary camels (Camelus dromedarius) in Australia would be useful for planning removal operations (harvest or culling), because the pattern and scale of camel movement relates to the period they reside in a given area, and thus the search effort, timing and frequency of removal operations. From our results, we suspect that the dune direction influences how camels move across central Australia; particularly effects like the north–south longitudinal dune systems in the Simpson Desert, which appeared to elongate camel movement in the same direction as the dunes. We called this movement anisotropy. Research suggests camel movement in Australia is not migratory but partially cyclic, with two distinctive movement patterns. Our study investigated this further by using satellite tracking data from 54 camels in central Australia, recorded between 2007 and 2016. The mean tracking period for each animal was 363.9 days (s.e.m.=44.1 days). We used a method labelled multi-scale partitioning to test for changes in movement behaviour and partitioned more localised intensive movements within utilisation areas, from larger-scale movement, called ranging. This involved analysing the proximity of movement trajectories to other nearby trajectories of the same animal over time. We also used Dynamic Brownian Bridges Movement Models, which consider the relationship of consecutive locations to determine the areas of utilisation. The mean utilisation area and duration of a camel (n=658 areas) was found to be 342.6km2 (s.e.m.=33.2km2) over 23.5 days (s.e.m.=1.6 days), and the mean ranging distance (n=611 ranging paths) was a 45.1km (s.e.m.=2.0km) path over 3.1 days (s.e.m.=0.1 days).
COVID‐19 lockdown: Physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep in Italian medicine students
Authors: Luciano Francesco , Cenacchi Valentina , Vegro Valentina , Pavei Gaspare
Published: October 2020

COVID‐19 pandemic led many countries to implement lockdown measures. Italy declared lockdown from 9th March to 3rd May 2020, and universities shifted to online classes. Home confinement could prevent students from achieving the physical activity and sleep levels recommended for their psychophysical health, and medicine students are already known to be at risk of inactivity and reduced sleep due to their time‐consuming curricula. This study aimed at describing medicine students’ behaviours during lockdown and comparing them with pre‐lockdown data and current recommendations. A cross‐sectional questionnaire survey was conducted among 6th‐year Italian medicine students (n = 714; age=25 ± 2 y; female: 62%; male: 38%) in October–November 2019. The same survey was repeated in 6th‐year students during lockdown (n = 394; age=25 ± 2 y; female: 73%; male: 27%), and extended to 1st–5th year (total 1st–6th‐year sample during lockdown: n = 1471; age=23 ± 2 y; female: 70%; male: 30%). International Physical Activity Questionnaire Short Form (IPAQ) and selected questions from Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index were administered to evaluate physical activity, sitting and sleep time. Decreased physical activity, and increased sitting and sleep time were observed from pre‐ to during lockdown in 6th‐year students (p<0.01). 1st–6th‐year students featured 10 [8–12] hours sitting (median [Q1–Q3]) and an IPAQ score of 1170 [400–2348] MET‐min/week. Even participants with higher physical activity featured high sitting time. Sleeping less than recommended (<7 h/night) was associated with more sitting time and less energies to perform daily activities. Strategies fostering compliance with current guidelines for physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep should be implemented, especially in case of a repeated or intermittent lockdown.
Method for electromechanical modeling of Johnson noise in Advanced LIGO
Authors: Bonilla Edgard , Giuliani Pablo , Lantz Brian , Buikema Aaron
Published: October 2020

We develop a complete framework for modeling general electromechanical systems in the quasi-electrostatic regime. The equations are applicable to a broad range of electrostatic problems and offer the advantage of being theoretically tractable for scaling arguments. Additionally, we show how the formalism can be used together with finite element simulations to obtain estimates for non-stationary effects such as charge accumulation in insulators. As a demonstration, we combined the formalism with measurements from Advanced LIGO to give an updated estimate for the Johnson noise coupling to the gravitational-wave channel. The induced signal was determined to be 10 times lower than the instrument’s design sensitivity in the detection band and scaling as f
−2.
Novel approach to neutron electric dipole moment search using weak measurement
Authors: Ueda Daiki , Kitahara Teppei
Published: October 2020

We propose a novel approach in a search for the neutron electric dipole moment (EDM) by taking advantage of signal amplification in a weak measurement, known as weak value amplification. Considering an analogy to the weak measurement that can measure the spin magnetic moment interaction, we examine an experimental setup with a polarized neutron beam through an external electric field with spatial gradient, where the signal is sensitive to the EDM interaction. In particular, a dedicated analysis of effects from impurities in pre- and post-selections is performed. We show that the weak value amplification occurs where the signal is enhanced by up to two orders of magnitude, and demonstrate a potential sensitivity of the proposed setup to the neutron EDM.
Griffiths phase and spontaneous exchange bias in La1.5Sr0.5CoMn0.5Fe0.5O6
Authors: Silva A G , Salcedo Rodríguez K L , Contreras Medrano C P , Lourenço G S G , Boldrin M , Baggio-Saitovitch E , Bufaiçal L
Published: October 2020

La1.5Sr0.5CoMn0.5Fe0.5O6 (LSCMFO) compound was prepared by solid state reaction and its structural, electronic and magnetic properties were investigated. The material forms in rhombohedral

R

3

̄

c

structure, and the presence of distinct magnetic interactions leads to the formation of a Griffiths phase above its FM transition temperature (150 K), possibly related to the nucleation of small short-ranged ferromagnetic clusters. At low temperatures, a spin glass-like phase emerges and the system exhibits both the conventional and the spontaneous exchange bias (EB) effects. These results resemble those reported for La1.5Sr0.5CoMnO6 but are discrepant to those found when Fe partially substitutes Co in La1.5Sr0.5(Co1−x
Fe
x
)MnO6, for which the EB effect is observed in a much broader temperature range. The unidirectional anisotropy observed for LSCMFO is discussed and compared with those of resembling double-perovskite compounds, being plausibly explained in terms of its structural and electronic properties.
Real-time in vivo magnetic induction tomography in rabbits: a feasibility study
Authors: Chen Qihui , Liu Runsheng , Wang Cong , Liu Ruigang
Published: October 2020

As a noncontact, noninvasive medical imaging technique, magnetic induction tomography (MIT) can measure the conductivity distribution inside the human body. Moreover, animal testing is crucial before performing clinical trials. An abdominal subcutaneous injection rabbit model was used to simulate two local conductivity perturbations, that is, (1) injecting a 0.9% NaCl solution and (2) injecting in vitro heparinized blood. Using an improved MIT data acquisition system to record the data, a series of time-difference reconstructed images were obtained for every 3 ml of injection. The target with an increased conductivity distribution can clearly be observed in the reconstructed images. The maximum target value in all the images increased with the injection dosage. The slopes of the regression line for the mean of the maximum target value in the two groups were statistically different. This preliminary rabbit test shows the feasibility of the in vivo application for MIT and will be the basis for further animal tests.
Density functional theory study of Cu-doped BNNT as highly sensitive and selective gas sensor for carbon monoxide
Authors: Fan Guohong , Wang Xiaohua , Tu Xianxian , Xu Hong , Wang Qi , Chu Xiangfeng
Published: October 2020

The adsorption of CO, CO2, CH4, H2, N2 and N2O on armchair (5,5) boron nitride nanotube (BNNT) with and without the doping of transition metals (TM), i.e. Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu or Zn, was investigated using the density functional theory calculation. The results indicate all the considered gases are physically adsorbed by weak interaction on the pure BNNT, revealing that pure BNNT has poor sensing performance for these gases. TM are then doped in the B or N vacancy of BNNT to improve the sensitivity and selectivity. As a result, it was found that the gas adsorption performance of BNNT is obviously enhanced due to the introduction of TM dopant atom. In particularly, according to the results of adsorption energy, Cu doped BNNT (Cu-BNNT) system shows a high selectivity toward CO molecule compared with other metal doped systems. This is further confirmed by the density of state, energy gap and charge transfer analyses. Furthermore, based on the sensor performance analysis, it was found that Cu-BNNT also has favorable desorption characteristics for CO. Therefore, this study concluded that Cu-BNNT can be used as a superior sensor material with high sensitivity, selectivity and favorable recycle time for CO gas.
Nonlinear photoncurrent in transition metal dichalcogenide with warping term under illuminating of light*
Authors: Zhu Guo-Bao , Yang Hui-Min , Zhang Yun-Hai
Published: October 2020

We investigate the photoconductivities of injection current and the shift current in transition metal dichalcogenide with warping term in the presence of sublattice potential and spin orbit coupling. The system shows the valley photoconductivities of injection current and the photoconductivities of shift current. It is found that the warping term and the geometric tensor play a critical role in the system, which are responsible for the photoconductivities. Due to the interplay between the sublattice potential and the spin orbit coupling, the photoconductivities can be tuned. Furthermore, the effect of warping term on geometric tensor and the amplitude of the photoconductivities are also discussed.
Spin–orbit-coupled spin-1 Bose–Einstein condensates confined in radially periodic potential*
Authors: Li Ji , He Tianchen , Bai Jing , Liu Bin , Wang Huan-Yu
Published: October 2020

We investigate the ground states of spin-1 Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) with spin–orbit coupling in a radially periodic potential by numerically solving the coupled Gross–Pitaevskii equations. In the radially periodic potential, we first demonstrate that spin–orbit-coupled antiferromagnetic BECs support a multiring petal phase. Polar–core vortex can be observed from phase profiles, which is manifested as circularly symmetric distribution. We further show that spin–orbit coupling can induce multiring soliton structure in ferromagnetic BECs. It is confirmed especially that the wave-function phase of the ring corresponding to uniform distribution satisfies the rotational symmetry, and the wave-function phase of the ring corresponding to partial splitting breaks the rotational symmetry. Adjusting the spin–orbit coupling strength can control the number of petal in antiferromagnetic BECs and the winding numbers of wave-function in ferromagnetic BECs. Finally, we discuss effects of spin-independent and spin-dependent interactions on the ground states.
Estimation of biophysical properties of cell exposed to electric field
Authors: Zhang Hui , Wang Liyang , Zhang Peijie , Zhang Xiaodi , Ma Jun
Published: October 2020

Excitable media, such as cells, can be polarized and magnetized in the presence of an external electromagnetic field. In fact, distinct geometric deformation can be induced by the external electromagnetic field, and also the capacitance of the membrane of cell can be changed to pump the field energy. Furthermore, the distribution of ion concentration inside and outside the cell can also be greatly adjusted. Based on the theory of bio-electromagnetism, the distribution of field energy and intracellular and extracellular ion concentrations in a single shell cell can be estimated in the case with or without external electric field. Also, the dependence of shape of cell on the applied electronic field is calculated. From the viewpoint of physics, the involvement of external electric field will change the gradient distribution of field energy blocked by the membrane. And the intracellular and extracellular ion concentration show a certain difference in generating time-varying membrane potential in the presence of electric field. When a constant electric field is applied to the cell, distinct geometric deformation is induced, and the cell triggers a transition from prolate to spherical and then to oblate ellipsoid shape. It is found that the critical frequency in the applied electric field for triggering the distinct transition from prolate to oblate ellipsoid shape obtains smaller value when larger dielectric constant of the cell membrane and intracellular medium, and smaller conductivity for the intracellular medium are used. Furthermore, the effect of cell deformation is estimated by analyzing the capacitance per unit area, the density of field energy, and the change of ion concentration on one side of cell membrane. The intensity of external applied electric field is further increased to detect the change of ion concentration. And the biophysical effect in the cell is discussed. So the deformation effect of cells in electric field should be considered when regulating and preventing harm to normal neural activities occurs in a nervous system.
Stability and optoelectronic property of low-dimensional organic tin bromide perovskites*
Authors: Lei J H , Tang Q , He J , Cai M Q
Published: October 2020

The toxicity and degradation of hybrid lead-halide perovskites hinder their extensive applications. It is thus of great importance to explore non-toxic alternative materials with excellent stability and optoelectronic property. We investigate the atomic structures and optoelectronic properties of non-toxic organic tin bromide perovskites (OTBP) with one/zero-dimensional (1D/0D) structures by first-principles calculations. The calculated atomic structures show that the 1D/0D OTBPs are stable and the structure of inorganic octahedra in 0D is higher order than that in 1D. Moreover, the origination of exceptional purity emitting light in experiments is explained based on the calculated electronic structure.
TiO
x
-based self-rectifying memory device for crossbar WORM memory array applications*
Authors: Fu Li-Ping , Song Xiao-Qiang , Gao Xiao-Ping , Wu Ze-Wei , Chen Si-Kai , Li Ying-Tao
Published: October 2020

Resistive switching with a self-rectifying feature is one of the most effective solutions to overcome the crosstalk issue in a crossbar array. In this paper, a memory device based on Pt/TiO
x
/W structure with self-rectifying property is demonstrated for write-once-read-many-times (WORM) memory application. After programming, the devices exhibit excellent uniformity and keep in the low resistance state (LRS) permanently with a rectification ratio as high as 104 at ± 1 V. The self-rectifying resistive switching behavior can be attributed to the Ohmic contact at TiO
x
/W interface and the Schottky contact at Pt/TiO
x
interface. The results in this paper demonstrate the potential application of TiO
x
-based WORM memory device in crossbar arrays.
High temperature strain glass in Ti–Au and Ti–Pt based shape memory alloys*
Authors: Ren Shuai , Liu Chang , Wang Wei-Hua
Published: October 2020

Strain glass is a frozen short-range strain ordered state found in shape memory alloys recently, which exhibits novel properties around the ideal glass transition temperature T
0. However, the T
0 of current strain glass systems is still very low, limiting their potential applications and experimental studies. In this paper, we reported two new strain glass systems with relatively high T
0. In Ti50Au50−x
Cr
x
alloys, the strain glass appears at x = 25, and exhibits a T
0 of 251 K, while in Ti50Pt50−y
Fe
y
alloys, the strain glass takes place at y = 30, and shows a T
0 of 272 K. Both of them are comparable with the highest T
0 value reported so far. Moreover, the phase diagrams of main strain glass systems in Ti-based alloys were summarized. It is found that the influence of the martensitic transformation temperature of the host alloy on the T
0 of the strain glass is limited. This work may help to design new strain glass systems with higher T
0 above ambient temperature.
Multi-phase-field simulation of austenite peritectic solidification based on a ferrite grain*
Authors: Yang Chao , Wang Jing , Wang Junsheng , Liu Yu , Han Guomin , Song Haifeng , Huang Houbing
Published: October 2020

A multi-phase-field model is implemented to investigate the peritectic solidification of Fe-C alloy. The nucleation mode of austenite is based on the local driving force, and two different thicknesses of the primary austenite on the surface of the ferrite equiaxed crystal grain are used as the initial conditions. The simulation shows the multiple interactions of ferrite, austenite, and liquid phases, and the effects of carbon diffusion, which presents the non-equilibrium dynamic process during Fe-C peritectic solidification at the mesoscopic scale. This work not only reveals the influence of the austenite nucleation position, but also clarifies the formation mechanism of liquid phase channels and molten pools. Therefore, the present study contributes to the understanding of the micro-morphology and micro-segregation evolution mechanisms of Fe-C alloy during peritectic solidification.
Electric gating of the multichannel conduction in LaAlO3/SrTiO3 superlattices*
Authors: Qi Shao-Jin , Sun Xuan , Yan Xi , Zhang Hui , Zhang Hong-Rui , Zhang Jin-E , Huang Hai-Lin , Han Fu-Rong , Song Jing-Hua , Shen Bao-Gen , Chen Yuan-Sha
Published: October 2020

The electric gating on the transport properties of two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) at the interface of LaAlO3/SrTiO3 (LAO/STO) heterostructure has attracted great research interest due to its potential application in field-effect devices. Most of previous works of gate effect were focused on the LAO/STO heterostructure containing only one conductive interface. Here, we systematically investigated the gate effect on high-quality LAO/STO superlattices (SLs) fabricated on the TiO2-terminated (001) STO substrates. In addition to the good metallicity of all SLs, we found that there are two types of charge carriers, the majority carriers and the minority carriers, coexisting in the SLs. The sheet resistance of the SLs with a fixed thickness of the LAO layer increases monotonically as the thickness of the STO layer increases. This is derived from the dependence of the minority carrier density on the thickness of STO. Unlike the LAO/STO heterostructure in which minority and majority carriers are simultaneously modulated by the gate effect, the minority carriers in the SLs can be tuned more significantly by the electric gating while the density of majority carriers is almost invariable. Thus, we consider that the minority carriers may mainly exist in the first interface near the STO substrate that is more sensitive to the back-gate voltage, and the majority carriers exist in the post-deposited STO layers. The SL structure provides the space separation for the multichannel conduction in the 2DEG, which opens an avenue for the design of field-effect devices based on LAO/STO heterostructure.
Controlling the entropic uncertainty and quantum discord in two two-level systems by an ancilla in dissipative environments*
Authors: Wu Rong-Yu , Fang Mao-Fa
Published: October 2020

The uncertainty principle is a crucial aspect of quantum mechanics. It has been shown that the uncertainty principle can be tightened by quantum discord and classical correlation in the presence of quantum memory. We investigate the control of the entropic uncertainty and quantum discord in two two-level systems by an ancilla in dissipative environment. Our results show that the entropic uncertainty of an observed system can be reduced and the quantum discord between the observed system and the quantum memory system can be enhanced in the steady state of the system by adding an dissipative ancilla. Particularly, via preparing the state of the system to the highest excited state with hight fidelity, the entropic uncertainty can be reduced markedly and the quantum discord can be enhanced obviously. We explain these results using the definition of state fidelity. Furthermore, we present an effective strategy to further reduce the the entropic uncertainty and to enhance the the quantum discord via quantum-jump-based feedback control. Therefore, our results may be of importance in the context of quantum information technologies.
Grassy ELM regime at low pedestal collisionality in high-power tokamak plasma
Authors: Wang Y.F. , Wang H.Q. , Xu G.S. , Jia G.Z. , Turco F. , Petty C.C. , Chen J.L. , Yan N. , Yang Q.Q. , Wang L. , Chen R. , Hu G.H. , Osborne T.H. , Snyder P.B. , Garofalo A.M. , Gong X.Z. , Qian J.P. , Li G.Q. , Guo H.Y. , Wan B.N.
Published: October 2020

Spontaneous mitigation of giant ELMs and appearance of grassy ELMs have been observed repeatedly at low pedestal collisionality (

ν

e
,
p
e
d

*

∼
0.15

) in the high-power (P
inj > 13 MW) hybrid scenario in DIII-D. Higher β
p and higher q
95 appear to be beneficial to achieving the grassy ELM regime. The grassy ELM H-mode plasma shows high energy confinement performance (H
98y2 up to over 1.5) under the conditions of high neutral beam torque and high core rotation. The pedestal width appears to exceed the EPED1.0 model prediction by more than 50%. Pedestal stability analysis performed with the ELITE code indicates that the stability against low-n kink/peeling modes is improved with increased auxiliary heating power and the operational point in the grassy ELM regime is located near the ballooning boundary. The pedestal stability characteristics during the grassy ELM crashes have been investigated in comparison with the giant ELM crashes based on plasma profiles experimentally measured with high resolution and accuracy. It has been found that the underlying mechanism for the observed small-amplitude ELM crashes is mainly the expansion of the ballooning stability boundary induced by an initial radially localized collapse in the pedestal, which helps to stop the growth of instabilities and further collapse of the pedestal. The effect of electron density pedestal on mitigating edge localized instabilities has been analyzed by numerical simulation, suggesting that the electron density pedestal characterized by high n
e,sep/n
e,ped and low density gradient helps to stabilize peeling-ballooning modes because of a low pressure pedestal gradient and to lower the ballooning boundary mainly because of a low ion diamagnetic frequency in the pedestal region, thus triggering ballooning instabilities and producing the intrinsic grassy ELMs. Numerical simulation of the Chinese fusion engineering test reactor (CFETR) with the SOLPS code indicates that the separatrix density might be insensitive to the electron diffusivity in the pedestal region and increase with the power flowing from the core region to the edge region. Pedestal stability analysis suggests that the flat density pedestal with high separatrix density obtained in the high-power plasma in CFETR would make the operational point close to the ballooning boundary, which is considered to help destabilize ballooning instabilities and facilitate the access to the grassy ELM regime.
Sublime
Authors: Balfour Ian
Published: October 2020

The sublime as an aesthetic category has an extraordinarily discontinuous history in Western criticism and theory, though the phenomena it points to in art and nature are without historical limit, or virtually so. The sublime as a concept and phenomenon is harder to define than many aesthetic concepts, partly because of its content and partly because of the absence of a definition in the first great surviving text on the subject, Longinus’s On the Sublime. The sublime is inflected differently in the major theorists: in Longinus it produces ecstasy or transport in the reader or listener; in Burke its main ingredient is terror (but supplemented by infinity and obscurity); and in Kant’s bifurcated system of the mathematical and dynamic sublime, the former entails a cognitive overload, a breakdown of the imagination, and the ability to represent, whereas in the latter, the subject, after first being threatened, virtually, by powerful nature outside her or him, turns inward to discover a power of reason able to think beyond the realm of the senses. Many theorists testify to the effect of transcendence or exaltation of the self on the far side of a disturbing, disorienting experience that at least momentarily suspends or even annihilates the self.

A great deal in the theoretical-critical texts turns on the force of singularly impressive examples, which may or may not exceed the designs of the theoretical axioms they are meant to exemplify. Examples of sublimity are by no means limited to nature and art but spill over into numerous domains of cultural and social life. The singular force of the individual examples, it is argued, nonetheless tends to work out similarly in certain genres conducive to the sublime (epic, tragedy) but somewhat differently from one genre to another.

The heyday of the theory and critical engagement with the sublime lasts, in Western Europe and a little beyond, from the late 17th century to the early 19th century. But it does not simply go away, with sublime aesthetic production and critical reflection on the sublime present in the likes of Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and—to Adorno’s mind—in the art of modernism generally, in its critical swerve from the canons of what had counted as beauty.

The sublime flourished as a topic in theory of criticism of the poststructuralist era, in figures such as Lyotard and Paul de Man but also in Fredric Jameson’s analysis of the cultural logic of late capitalism. The then current drive to critique the principle and some protocols of representation found an almost tailor-made topic in Enlightenment and Romantic theory of the sublime where, within philosophy, representation had been rendered problematic in robust fashion.
Ecocriticism
Authors: Lousley Cheryl
Published: October 2020

Ecocriticism describes and confronts the socially uneven encounters and entanglements of earthly living. As a political mode of literary and cultural analysis, it aims to understand and intervene in the destruction and diminishment of living worlds. A core premise is that environmental crises have social, cultural, affective, imaginative, and material dimensions. Although ranging in its critical engagements across historical periods, cultural texts, and cultural formations, ecocriticism focuses on the aesthetic modes, social meanings, contexts, genealogies, and counterpoints of cultural practices that contribute to ecological ruination and resilience. These include myths about frontiers, progress, and human mastery over animality and nature; capitalist modes of valuing, devaluing, and radically transforming lifeworlds; and biopolitical and racialized inequalities in health, risk, development, and disposability. Ecocriticism also involves broad theoretical engagement with discursive formations and semiotic significations, including the interrogation of crisis frameworks and apocalyptic representations, considering their histories, scales, and temporalities, while also asking how any particular socioecological arrangement comes to count as a matter of concern, for whom, and in which contexts.

The concept of nature is a long-standing theoretical topic in ecocriticism. While nature may seem, rather straightforwardly, to be the domain environmentalism seeks to protect, it is a concept on which hinge crucial and contested claims about ontology (the nature of something, such as assertions about human nature as an inherent, often determining set of shared qualities) and epistemology (how we know what is real, such as the scientific practices through which credible assertions can be made that the planetary climate is changing), claims whose modern authority has rested on positioning nature as a domain outside culture. While structuralist and poststructuralist theorists have destabilized the binary opposition of nature to culture, the political and epistemological imperative to engage with nature as simultaneously material and semiotic has spawned an array of theoretical developments, from Donna Haraway’s cyborg figure and other “natureculture” assemblages to new materialisms. Meanwhile, nature circulates as a commodity form and spectacle animating digital, film, and television screens as well as many other consumer products and experiences. Cultural studies approaches to ecocriticism raise questions about the relationships of visual, narrative, and sound representations to economic power, media technologies, and the material and social ecologies through which they are produced and which they form and transform.
Business Research Process
Authors: Muncy James A. , Muncy Alice M.
Published: October 2020

Business research is conducted by both businesspeople, who have informational needs, and scholars, whose field of study is business. Though some of the specifics as to how research is conducted differs between scholarly research and applied research, the general process they follow is the same. Business research is conducted in five stages. The first stage is problem formation where the objectives of the research are established. The second stage is research design. In this stage, the researcher identifies the variables of interest and possible relationships among those variables, decides on the appropriate data source and measurement approach, and plans the sampling methodology. It is also within the research design stage that the role that time will play in the study is determined. The third stage is data collection. Researchers must decide whether to outsource the data collection process or collect the data themselves. Also, data quality issues must be addressed in the collection of the data. The fourth stage is data analysis. The data must be prepared and cleaned. Statistical packages or programs such as SAS, SPSS, STATA, and R are used to analyze quantitative data. In the cases of qualitative data, coding, artificial intelligence, and/or interpretive analysis is employed. The fifth stage is the presentation of results. In applied business research, the results are typically limited in their distribution and they must be addressed to the immediate problem at hand. In scholarly business research, the results are intended to be widely distributed through journals, books, and conferences. As a means of quality control, scholarly research usually goes through a double-blind review process before it is published.
Social Network Analysis: People and Places
Authors: Duxbury Scott
Published: October 2020

Network analysis is increasingly applied throughout the social sciences. Networks have been at the core of criminological thinking since its inception. As early as Sutherland and Shaw and McKay, networks have been regarded as important causes of delinquent behavior. Networks, by definition, reflect patterns of relationships between observations. Observations are typically human actors, but can represent any criminologically relevant entity, such as gangs, grocery stores, or street corners. Networks can even represent connections between actors that occupy distinct roles (e.g., connections between people and places). This flexibility in how networks can be defined and analyzed presents innumerable promising opportunities in the analysis of crime. Networks can influence criminal behavior by influencing selection into delinquent peer networks and by transmitting delinquent values and behaviors. While some of the earliest adopters of network methods turned to analyses of peer group context and delinquency, more recent applications examine the generative forces driving criminal organization dynamics, gang violence, and even social order among prison inmates. Some other visionary research examines how networks in physical space affect the distribution of crime, and some studies now suggest that networks act as an important mechanism linking formal sanctioning to recidivism. This body of recent evidence stands in contrast to general theories of crime, which argue that networks have little causal influence on criminal behavior. In contrast, selection into delinquent peer networks amplifies criminal behavior through both learning and opportunity.
New Approaches to Designing and Administering Inclusive Assessments
Authors: Karvonen Meagan , Kingston Neal M. , Wehmeyer Michael L. , Thompson W. Jake
Published: October 2020

Historically pervasive models of disability as a deficit negatively impacted thinking about the accessibility of educational assessments and how this issue should be addressed. In a deficit-based model, assessments are designed without consideration of individual differences and students with disabilities receive accommodations as an exception to the typical administration. With the shift to social models of disability, the assessment field has concomitantly adopted new approaches to designing and administering assessments that recognize variability in how individuals interact with assessments. Inclusive assessment requires that conditions are in place to support the validity of score inferences for their intended uses—for all students. Inclusive assessment requires moving past a deficit-based model and designing for examinee variability. An inclusive model requires knowledge of student characteristics and new ways of thinking about student-item interactions. Computer-based testing and other technologies such as alternative or augmentative communication devices provide support for flexible assessment administration. One way to ensure inclusive assessments meet professional standards for quality is to blend evidence-centered design and universal design principles. Evidence-centered design has five stages that span from construct definition to inferences made from test scores: domain analysis, domain modeling, conceptual assessment framework, assessment implementation, and assessment delivery. Assessment developers can use universal design principles to minimize construct-irrelevant variance by attending to the student’s engagement when presented with assessment stimuli and items, articulating the information the student needs to know in order to respond correctly, and providing multiple means to communicate responses. When evidence-centered design and universal design are blended, these approaches support inclusive assessment design, administration, and scoring, as well as evidence for validity and technical adequacy. Shifts in policy and educational practice are also necessary to support inclusive assessment.
Assessment to Incite and Reconceptualize Learning
Authors: Bourke Roseanna
Published: October 2020

Assessment needs to be a positive experience that can incite learners to progress their learning, understand themselves as learners, become excited about what they learn, and acknowledge that learning is more than the specified and often prescribed curriculum. Educational assessment typically requires students to demonstrate their knowledge, understanding, or application of their skills as a way to demonstrate their learning or, more specifically, their learning outcomes. Often this is to attract an external grade or mark related to an externally identified “standard,” or to show their level of “need” and thereby access additional resources. Students generally have little say in when or what is assessed, and their experiences have largely not been taken into account. There is a distinct difference between what a student learns and how the assessment results reflect their learning. To incite learning, assessment practices and processes need to celebrate learning and provide learners with positive, encouraging messages that their efforts contribute to their own growth. When the assessment process enables learners to see their own culture and identity valued, and allows opportunities to showcase diversity of learning, it becomes a meaningful and authentic process. In educational contexts, the process of assessment is typically an approach to support, measure, initiate, monitor, and explain the learning of self or others. Assessment of student learning has complex social, emotional, and academic influences on learners and on their lives more generally. A key unintended consequence of these practices has been well documented with regards to negative social and emotional consequences for the student, and these must be weighed against the “good” any assessment will do in terms of knowing the student and their learning aspirations. However, while there are distracting elements associated with the assessment of students, there is also value in using appropriate methods and processes to enhance and incite learning. Ultimately the rights of the learner to be included in their own assessment practices is key, and therefore it is argued the young person must be an agentic and capable assessor of their own learning for any assessment to be educational, culturally relevant, and authentic.
Students with Special Needs Who Are Gifted and Talented (Twice Exceptional)
Authors: Yssel Nina , Speirs Neumeister Kristie , Burney Virginia
Published: October 2020

Twice-exceptional (2e) students demonstrate both high ability and a disability. With their unique combination of advanced abilities and academic challenges, 2e learners do not fit neatly into a single category and often tend to get lost in the system. In spite of the fact that 2e students have been estimated to make up 2–9% of students with disabilities, they often remain unidentified due to the masking effect, in which one exceptionality masks the other, as well as their remarkable ability to compensate for areas of weakness. Once identified, programming presents challenges; for example, remediation may become the focus and the learner’s strengths ignored. In addition to providing enrichment and remediation, teachers have to consider the social-emotional needs of 2e students and how they learn. Problems with time management, organizational, and study skills not only result in frustration for students, parents, and teachers but also have a direct effect on 2e students’ academic performance. These students are characterized by a pattern of strengths and weaknesses, and programming should include support in their areas of need and validation of their strengths. When both exceptionalities are addressed successfully, 2e learners can reach their full potential.
Effective Strategies for Improving Reading Comprehension
Authors: Gajria Meenakshi , McAlenney Athena Lentini
Published: October 2020

Reading comprehension, or the ability to extract information accurately from reading narrative or content area textbooks, is critical for school success. Many students identified with learning disabilities struggle with comprehending or acquiring knowledge from text despite adequate word-recognition skills. These students experience greater difficulty as they move from elementary to middle school where the focus shifts from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” Although the group of students with learning disabilities vary with respect to their challenges in reading, some general characteristics of this group include problems identifying central ideas of a text, including its relationship to supporting ideas, differentiating between important and unimportant details, asking questions, drawing inferences, creating a summary, and recalling textual ideas. Typically, these students are passive readers that do not spontaneously employ task appropriate cognitive strategies nor monitor their ongoing understanding of the text, resulting in limited understanding of both narrative and expository texts. An evidence-based approach to comprehension instruction is centered on teaching students the cognitive strategies used by proficient readers. Within the framework of reading comprehension, the goal of cognitive strategies is to teach students to actively engage with the text, to make connections with it and their prior knowledge, so that learning becomes more purposeful, deliberate, and self-regulated.

Texts differ in the level of challenge that they present to students. Narrative texts are generally simpler to read as these are based on a temporal sequence of events and have a predictable story structure. In contrast, expository texts, such as social studies and science, can be particularly demanding as there are multiple and complex text structures based on the relationship of ideas about a particular concept or topic. Using principles of explicit instruction, all learners, including students with learning disabilities and English language learners, can be taught cognitive strategies that have been proven effective for increasing reading comprehension. Early research focused on the instruction in a single cognitive strategy to promote reading comprehension such as identifying story grammar elements and story mapping for narrative texts and identifying the main idea, summarizing, and text structure for expository texts. Later researchers embedded a metacognitive component, such as self-monitoring with a specific cognitive strategy, and also developed multicomponent reading packages, such as reciprocal teaching, that integrated the use of several cognitive strategies. Instruction in cognitive and metacognitive strategies is a promising approach for students with learning disabilities to support their independent use of reading comprehension strategies and for promoting academic achievement across content areas and grade levels.