Traditional Owners of the Great Barrier Reef: the next generation of Reef 2050 actions

In short, this Report: Confirms that there are two options for progressing the integration of Traditional Owner interests in the Reef 2050 Plan. Option 1 (Business As Usual) represents a continuation of the current approach of Government-based review and refinement of the (now 23) Traditional Owner actions in the Reef 2050 Plan. Option 2 (Towards Genuine Co-governance) represents Government taking a far more negotiated approach at the GBR-wide level (and subsequently down to local scales) that applies the principles of Free Prior and Informed Consent. Based on extensive engagement concerning the aspirations of Traditional Owners and their support organisations across the GBR, the overwhelming stated desire and demand is for genuine partnership in the overarching governance of the Reef and far deeper ownership of, and participation in, its active day to day management (Option 2). There is an unambiguous view that the foundations set in the Reef 2050 Plan (Option 1), while a step in the right direction, simply reflect Traditional Owner aspirations in someone else’s planning. Meanwhile, a consistent message from Traditional Owners, fuelled by their existing and emerging rights in sea country, is that this more passive form of involvement cannot continue into the future; that a genuine form of agreement making and active implementation (from GBR to local scales) must emerge

Magnetocapacitance effect and magnetoelectric coupling in type-II multiferroic HoFeWO6

We have investigated the multiferroicity and magnetoelectric (ME) coupling in HoFeWO6. With a noncentrosymmetric polar structure (space group Pna21) at room temperature, this compound shows an onset of electric polarization with an antiferromagnetic ordering at the Néel temperature (TN ) of 17.8 K. The magnetic properties of the polycrystalline samples were studied by DC and AC magnetization and heat capacity measurements. The metamagnetic behavior at low temperatures was found to be directly related to the dielectric properties of the compound. In particular, field-dependent measurements of capacitance show a magnetocapacitance (MC) effect with double-hysteresis loop behavior in direct correspondence with the magnetization. Our x-ray diffraction results show the Pna21 structure down to 8 K and suggest the absence of a structural phase transition across TN . Soft x-ray absorption spectroscopy and soft x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) measurements at the Fe L2,3 and Ho M4,5 edges revealed the oxidation state of Fe and Ho cations to be 3+. Fe L2,3 XMCD further shows that Fe3+ cations are antiferromagnetically ordered in a noncollinear fashion with spins arranged 90◦ with respect to each other. Our findings show that HoFeWO6 is a type-II multiferroic exhibiting a MC effect. The observed MC effect and the change in polarization by the magnetic field, as well as their direct correspondence with magnetization, further support the strong ME coupling in this compound.The work at University of Houston (UH) is supported by U. S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research Grants FA9550-15-1-0236 and FA9550-20-1-0068, the T. L. L. Temple Foundation, the John J. and Rebecca Moores Endowment, and the State of Texas through the Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston. The XRD patterns were collected at the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center at Taiwan. The synchrotron XAS/XMCD experiments were performed at the BOREAS beamline of the ALBA Synchrotron Light Facility in collaboration with ALBA staff. Computational resources were provided by the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) [55] supported by the National Science Foundation (ACI-1548562) and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility supported by the Office of Science, U. S. Department of Energy, under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. Additional support for this work was provided through resources of the uHPC cluster managed by UH and acquired through NSF Award 1531814. The authors acknowledge the use of the Maxwell/Opuntia/Sabine Cluster and the advanced support from the Research Computing Data Core at UH. The work at National Sun Yat-Sen University was partially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan under Grant No. MOST 109-2112-M-110-019.Peer reviewe

Narrow Gap Semiconducting Germanium Allotrope from the Oxidation of a Layered Zintl Phase in Ionic Liquids

A metastable germanium allotrope, Ge­(oP32), was synthesized as polycrystalline powders and single crystals from the mild-oxidation/delithiation of Li₇Ge₁₂ in ionic liquids. Its crystal structure, from single crystal X-ray diffraction (<i>Pbcm</i>, <i>a</i> = 8.1527(4) Å, <i>b</i> = 11.7572(5) Å, <i>c</i> = 7.7617(4) Å), features a complex covalent network of 4-bonded Ge, resulting from a well-ordered topotactic oxidative condensation of [Ge₁₂]^7– layers. It is a diamagnetic semiconductor (<i>E</i>_g = 0.33 eV), and transforms exothermically and irreversibly to α-Ge at 363 °C. This demonstrates the potential of ionic liquids as reactive media in the mild oxidation of Zintl phases to new highly crystallized modifications of elements and simple compounds

Narrow Gap Semiconducting Germanium Allotrope from the Oxidation of a Layered Zintl Phase in Ionic Liquids

A metastable germanium allotrope, Ge­(oP32), was synthesized as polycrystalline powders and single crystals from the mild-oxidation/delithiation of Li₇Ge₁₂ in ionic liquids. Its crystal structure, from single crystal X-ray diffraction (<i>Pbcm</i>, <i>a</i> = 8.1527(4) Å, <i>b</i> = 11.7572(5) Å, <i>c</i> = 7.7617(4) Å), features a complex covalent network of 4-bonded Ge, resulting from a well-ordered topotactic oxidative condensation of [Ge₁₂]^7– layers. It is a diamagnetic semiconductor (<i>E</i>_g = 0.33 eV), and transforms exothermically and irreversibly to α-Ge at 363 °C. This demonstrates the potential of ionic liquids as reactive media in the mild oxidation of Zintl phases to new highly crystallized modifications of elements and simple compounds