933 research outputs found
Fantine
Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transfigures the wretched. At that moment, Fantine had again become beautiful. -- Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
Graphite on pape
The resource curse without natural resources: expectations of resource booms and their impact
Many resource rich countries have experienced a range of negative economic and political effects from natural resource extraction, often lumped together as the ‘resource curse’. This article investigates to what extent future expectations of natural resource booms in São Tomé e PrÃncipe and Madagascar led to ‘resource curse’ effects even though these countries did not experience the expected natural resource booms. It finds that both countries did experience resource curse effects as a result of future expectations, including volatile economic growth and deteriorated governance. The article demonstrates that shared aspirations and expectations alone may make for material political and economic outcomes even when they become visibly divorced from reality. Thus, there is much more to resource curse effects than simply the product of the material extraction of natural endowments. At a time of extremely volatile prices for primary commodities, and the relatively easy availability of investment capital and credit to support speculative ventures that in turn incentivize resource hype, it is likely that a growing number of countries may suffer the malign effects of a resource curse without natural resource extraction
Probing the Phase Diagram of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+d with Tunneling Spectroscopy
Tunneling measurements are performed on Ca-rich single crystals of
Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+d (Bi2212), with various oxygen doping levels, using a novel
point contact method. At 4.2 K, SIN and SIS tunnel junctions are obtained with
well-defined quasiparticle peaks, robust dip and hump features and in some
cases Josephson currents. The doping dependence of tunneling conductances of
Ca-rich Bi2212 are analyzed and compared to stoichiometric Bi2212. A similar
profile of energy gap vs. doping concentration is found although the Ca-rich
samples have a slighly smaller optimum Tc and therefore smaller gap values for
any doping level. The evolution of tunneling conductance peak height to
background ratios with hole concentration are compared. For a given doping
level, the Ca-rich spectra showed more broadened features compared to the
stoichiometric counterparts, most likely due to increased disorder from the
excess Ca. Comparison of the dip and hump features has provided some potential
insights into their origins.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; presented at the Applied Superconductivity
Conference (August 4-9, 2002) in Houston, TX; to be published in IEEE Trans.
Appl. Supercon
Studies of superconductivity and structure for CaC6 to pressures above 15 GPa
The dependence of the superconducting transition temperature Tc of CaC6 has
been determined as a function of hydrostatic pressure in both helium-loaded gas
and diamond-anvil cells to 0.6 and 32 GPa, respectively. Following an initial
increase at the rate +0.39(1) K/GPa, Tc drops abruptly from 15 K to 4 K at 10
GPa. Synchrotron x-ray measurements to 15 GPa point to a structural transition
near 10 GPa from a rhombohedral to a higher symmetry phase
Rebuttal to "Comment by V.M. Krasnov on 'Counterintuitive consequence of heating in strongly-driven intrinsic junctions of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+d Mesas' "
In our article [1], we found that with increasing dissipation there is a
clear, systematic shift and sharpening of the conductance peak along with the
disappearance of the higher-bias dip/hump features (DHF), for a stack of
intrinsic Josephson junctions (IJJs) of intercalated Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+{\delta}
(Bi2212). Our work agrees with Zhu et al [2] on unintercalated, pristine
Bi2212, as both studies show the same systematic changes with dissipation. The
broader peaks found with reduced dissipation [1,2] are consistent with broad
peaks in the density-of-states (DOS) found among scanning tunneling
spectroscopy [3] (STS), mechanical contact tunneling [4] (MCT) and inferred
from angle (momentum) resolved photoemission spectroscopy [5] (ARPES); results
that could not be ignored. Thus, sharp peaks are extrinsic and cannot
correspond to the superconducting DOS. We suggested that the commonality of the
sharp peaks in our conductance data, which is demonstrably shown to be
heating-dominated, and the peaks of previous intrinsic tunneling spectroscopy
(ITS) data implies that these ITS reports might need reinterpretation.Comment: Rebuttal to Comment of Krasnov arXiv:1007.451
MgB2 tunnel junctions and 19 K low-noise dc superconducting quantum interference devices
Point contact junctions made from two pieces of MgB2 can be adjusted to
exhibit either superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) or
superconductor-normal metal-superconductor (SNS) current-voltage
characteristics. The SIS characteristics are in good agreement with the
standard tunneling model for s-wave superconductors, and yield an energy gap of
(2.02 +/- 0.08) meV. The SNS characteristics are in good agreement with the
predictions of the resistively-shunted junction model. DC Superconducting
QUantum Interference Devices made from two SNS junctions yield magnetic field
noise as low as 35 fT/Hz^{1/2} at 19 K.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
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