Book review: the militant muse: love, war and the women of surrealism by Whitney Chadwick

In The Militant Muse: Love, War and the Women of Surrealism, Whitney Chadwick explores how a number of women within the Surrealist movement fought to move beyond the confining role of muse to establish themselves as groundbreaking artists in their own right. Covering the lives of figures including Frida Kahlo, Claude Cahun and Valentine Penrose, this immersive and captivating account challenges the marginalisation of these women within the Surrealist movement and offers insight into the formative power of female friendship, determination and support, writes Vanessa Longden. The Militant Muse: Love, War and the Women of Surrealism. Whitney Chadwick. Thames & Hudson. 2017

The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa

Review of: "The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa," edited by David Hudson, Marvin Bergman, and Loren Horton

Book review: how to write a thesis by Umberto Eco

Now in its twenty-third edition in Italy and translated into seventeen languages, How to Write a Thesis has become a classic. This is its first, long overdue publication in English. Vanessa Longden thinks that in addition to its witty one-liners, Eco’s book contains the bare bones on which to build research

Development of superconducting thin film travelling wave parametric amplifiers

Ultra low-noise amplification is crucial for various fundamental physics platforms, including microwave/mm/sub-mm astronomy, dark matter search experiments, neutrino mass experiments, and qubit readout. Superconducting kinetic inductance travelling-wave parametric amplifiers (KITWPAs) are a recent development in amplifier technology, which are able to achieve high gain over broad bandwidth by efficiently transferring power from a strong ‘pump’ wave to a detected weak ‘signal’ wave via the wave mixing mechanisms in a non-linear medium comprising a high kinetic inductance wire. They have been experimentally verified to achieve high gain over broad bandwidth and quantum-limited noise performance with negligible heat dissipation, making them a natural successor to the current generation of semiconductor-based high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) amplifiers, which are the current standard in low-noise amplification. The elimination of the resonant architecture associated with earlier parametric amplifiers removes the narrow-band restrictions on these KITWPAs, which combined with their low heat dissipation and power requirements makes them readily scalable to arrays for large pixel count applications, such as the readout of astronomical detector arrays or qubit arrays. This thesis focuses on the development of microwave KITWPAs in the frequency range of 2-18 GHz, made from titanium nitride (TiN) superconducting transmission lines, a material chosen as it displays many of the desired characteristics for KITWPA operation, namely high resistivity, high kinetic inductance, and mechanical robustness, as well as being a commonly used material in the field of microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs). The choice in material and topology for a KITWPA device, however, is not typically discussed in the literature, hence to understand the design considerations for a KITWPA device, we commence an investigation into KITWPA material and topology choice. Based on this analysis, we present an optimised TiN KITWPA design, which was designed using a commercial 3-D electromagnetic simulator (HFSS) and a complementary python package (SuperTWPA). Although measurements of our KITWPA devices revealed unexpected losses, we were able to achieve a peak averaged gain of 5 dB with a bandwidth of ∼ 3 − 13 GHz when operating in a three-wave mixing (3WM) mode, making this, to the best of our knowledge, the first broadband gain measurement of a TiN KITWPA reported in the literature. The behaviour of the TiN film additionally points to physics beyond standard BCS theory, which could form the basis of future analysis of the microphysics of the material. We conclude our experimental work with a number of design improvements, which we believe could ultimately lead to a high-gain TiN KITWPA device. At time of writing this thesis, KITWPAs are yet to be widely used in large-scale experiments due to a number of operational obstacles. We, therefore, conclude this thesis with a number of design concepts that could provide solutions to these operational obstacles, beginning with a dual-pump KITWPA to provide wideband amplification at millimetre (mm) frequencies, before introducing a balanced KITWPA concept; a novel parallel TWPA architecture, which we demonstrate to be able solve the signal-idler contamination problem in KITWPAs and to simplify the pump injection and cancellation schemes, paving the way for the widespread operation of KITWPAs in ultra-sensitive experimental setups

Book review: photography and the art market by Juliet Hacking

In Photography and the Art Market, Juliet Hacking combines business analysis of the art market with the historical emergence of the photograph as a collectable art object and a fundamental component of the international fine art scene. This is an essential handbook for students, curators and dealers, writes Vanessa Longden, as well as those wishing to enter the market as a private or institutional buyer

Measuring temperature-related mortality using endogenously determined thresholds

© 2018, Springer Nature B.V. Heat-related mortality tends to be associated with heatwaves that do not allow for sufficient acclimatisation to hot temperatures. In contrast, damage functions and most heatwave emergency response plans do not account for acclimatisation. Using an excess heat measure that accounts for acclimatisation, this paper produces estimates of temperature-related mortality for the five largest Australian capital cities. Fixed effects panel threshold regressions are applied to establish the thresholds that coincide with heightened mortality during extreme temperature events. The estimated parameters associated with these thresholds are then used to develop hindcast estimates for cold temperatures, moderate temperatures, hot temperatures and extreme heat. The estimated thresholds coincide with a notable impact of hot temperatures on mortality, but a limited cold temperature impact. This shows that the burden of risk associated with mortality related to future temperatures and climate change within Australia coincides with heatwaves rather than coldwaves. This is in contrast to recent studies that found that cold temperature-related mortality within Australian capital cities has and will continue to be notable. These studies also found a net benefit from climate change in Australia due to reduced cold temperature deaths