On the properties of superconducting planar resonators at mK temperatures

Planar superconducting resonators are now being increasingly used at mK temperatures in a number of novel applications. They are also interesting devices in their own right since they allow us to probe the properties of both the superconductor and its environment. We have experimentally investigated three types of niobium resonators - including a lumped element design - fabricated on sapphire and SiO_2/Si substrates. They all exhibit a non-trivial temperature dependence of their centre frequency and quality factor. Our results shed new light on the interaction between the electromagnetic waves in the resonator and two-level fluctuators in the substrate.Comment: V2 includes some minor corrections/changes. Submitted to PR

Magnetic field tuning of coplanar waveguide resonators

We describe measurements on microwave coplanar resonators designed for quantum bit experiments. Resonators have been patterned onto sapphire and silicon substrates, and quality factors in excess of a million have been observed. The resonant frequency shows a high sensitivity to magnetic field applied perpendicular to the plane of the film, with a quadratic dependence for the fundamental, second and third harmonics. Frequency shift of hundreds of linewidths can be obtained.Comment: Accepted for publication in AP

Circuit QED with a Flux Qubit Strongly Coupled to a Coplanar Transmission Line Resonator

We propose a scheme for circuit quantum electrodynamics with a superconducting flux-qubit coupled to a high-Q coplanar resonator. Assuming realistic circuit parameters we predict that it is possible to reach the strong coupling regime. Routes to metrological applications, such as single photon generation and quantum non-demolition measurements are discussed.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Morphology of Graphene on SiC(000-1) Surfaces

Graphene is formed on SiC(000-1) surfaces (the so-called C-face of the crystal) by annealing in vacuum, with the resulting films characterized by atomic force microscopy, Auger electron spectroscopy, scanning Auger microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. Morphology of these films is compared with the graphene films grown on SiC(0001) surfaces (the Si-face). Graphene forms a terraced morphology on the C-face, whereas it forms with a flatter morphology on the Si-face. It is argued that this difference occurs because of differing interface structures in the two cases. For certain SiC wafers, nanocrystalline graphite is found to form on top of the graphene.Comment: Submitted to Applied Physics Letters; 9 pages, 3 figures; corrected the stated location of Raman G line for NCG spectrum, to 1596 cm^-

Mixed income housing (MIH)

Mixed Income Housing (MIH) is the outcome of a deliberate effort to build a mixed-income development, usually including a variety of housing typologies, sometime combined with the goal of creating a mixed-tenure development. International consensus on a more specific definition of MIH does not exist; instead, multiple expressions can be equally used, with similar meaning. The expression MIH is mainly used within the USA context where it is sometime replaced by mixed-income neighborhood. In Europe, MIH tend to fall within initiatives on (sustainable) urban regeneration, neighborhood restructuring, urban renewal, while the UK legislation often refers to “pepper-potting” with respect to different tenures in the same neighborhood aimed to achieve MIH. Non-English-speaking countries tend to use different terms. The MIH policies are challenged by a specific connotation, i.e., in the United States it is the combination between urban poverty and black or Latinos ghettoes; hence, spatial segregation is combined with racial considerations which are less present in other countries, except for South Africa. In the USA, desegregation in public housing estates became a legal obligation following the famous 1969 Gautreaux case, because of the application of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibiting racial discrimination in federally funded activities

Quantized Scaling of Growing Surfaces

The Kardar-Parisi-Zhang universality class of stochastic surface growth is studied by exact field-theoretic methods. From previous numerical results, a few qualitative assumptions are inferred. In particular, height correlations should satisfy an operator product expansion and, unlike the correlations in a turbulent fluid, exhibit no multiscaling. These properties impose a quantization condition on the roughness exponent $\chi$ and the dynamic exponent $z$. Hence the exact values $\chi = 2/5, z = 8/5$ for two-dimensional and $\chi = 2/7, z = 12/7$ for three-dimensional surfaces are derived.Comment: 4 pages, revtex, no figure

LONTalk as a Standard Protocol For Underwater Sensor Platforms

Proceedings IEEE, Oceans 97, Halifax, Oct. 1997 IEEE CD-ROM 0-7803-4111-

Transforming Health Care in Remote Communities: report on an international conference

An international conference titled “Transforming Health Care in Remote Communities” was held at the Chateau Lacombe Hotel in Edmonton, Canada, April 28–30, 2016. The event was organized by the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health, in partnership with the Institute for Circumpolar Health Research in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, and the Qaujigiartiit Health Research Centre in Iqaluit, Nunavut. There were 150 registrants from 7 countries: Canada (7 provinces and 3 territories), United States, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Australia. They included representatives of academic institutions, health care agencies, government ministries, community organizations, and private industry. The Conference focused on developing solutions to address health care in remote regions. It enabled new networks to be established and existing ones consolidated

The Effect of Differing Fluid Replacement Strategies on Running Performance

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Super-roughening versus intrinsic anomalous scaling of surfaces

In this paper we study kinetically rough surfaces which display anomalous scaling in their local properties such as roughness, or height-height correlation function. By studying the power spectrum of the surface and its relation to the height-height correlation, we distinguish two independent causes for anomalous scaling. One is super-roughening (global roughness exponent larger than or equal to one), even if the spectrum behaves non anomalously. Another cause is what we term an intrinsically anomalous spectrum, in whose scaling an independent exponent exists, which induces different scaling properties for small and large length scales (that is, the surface is not self-affine). In this case, the surface does not need to be super-rough in order to display anomalous scaling. In both cases, we show how to extract the independent exponents and scaling relations from the correlation functions, and we illustrate our analysis with two exactly solvable examples. One is the simplest linear equation for molecular beam epitaxy , well known to display anomalous scaling due to super-roughening. The second example is a random diffusion equation, which features anomalous scaling independent of the value of the global roughness exponent below or above one.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, Revtex (uses epsfig), Phys. Rev. E, submitte