Electrical transport properties of 0.5Li2O-0.5M2O-2B2O3 (M=Li, Na and K) glasses

Transparent glasses in the system 0.5Li2O-0.5M2O-2B2O3 (M=Li, Na and K) were fabricated via the conventional melt quenching technique. Amorphous and glassy nature of the samples were confirmed via the X-ray powder diffraction and the differential scanning calorimetry, respectively. The frequency and temperature dependent characteristics of the dielectric relaxation and the electrical conductivity were investigated in the 100 Hz - 10 MHz frequency range. The imaginary part of the electric modulus spectra was modeled using an approximate solution of Kohrausch-Williams-Watts relation. The stretching exponent, {\beta}, was found to be temperature independent for 0.5Li2O-0.5Na2O-2B2O3 (LNBO) glasses. The activation energy associated with DC conductivity was found to be higher (1.25eV) for 0.5Li2O-0.5K2O-2B2O3 (LKBO) glasses than that of the other glass systems under study. This could be attributed to the mixed cationic effect.Comment: 22 page

Towards Identifying Core Computational Literacy Concepts for Inclusion in a First-year General Engineering Course

In this paper, we describe an exploratory study to support efforts in revising first-year courses required for engineering students. It is common to include some form of introductory programming or spreadsheet computation topics in first-year courses. The inclusions of these topics is ostensibly to provide foundational computational skills needed in later courses. However, there are many challenges associated with teaching and learning these skills, the least of which is selecting which skills to include in the finite time allotted for a first-year introductory course that may also be tasked with teaching foundational problem solving and professional skills. This study is the first stage towards identifying a core set of skills for inclusion that would be relevant for most first-year students

Katyn ou l’histoire exhumée

La contribution d’Ewa Maczka met en perspective le texte d’Alexey Pamyatnykh qu’elle a traduit pour Écrire l’histoire, en rappelant ce que fut Katyn et en soulignant l’impact du travail de Pamyatnykh dans le débat mémoriel de la Pologne contemporaine

Review: Eric Fournier, La « belle Juive » d’Ivanhoé à la Shoah

Review: Eric Fournier, La « belle Juive » d’Ivanhoé à la Shoa

La « belle Juive » dans La Comédie humaine d’Honoré de Balzac. Ambivalences d’une représentation

There are many Jewish female figures in French literature. In the 19th century, this fictional, polymorphic character flourished as the ‘beautiful Jewess’, who had a number of permanent traits that reveal her outsider’s relationship with French society, whether as a woman, a Jewess, or an Oriental figure. Within this literary construction, there is a moment when Balzac takes this character to its extreme. The Jewess, possessing great physical beauty and always depicted in contrast with Jewish men’s appearance, becomes a courtesan and, as such, experiences tremendous joy and suffering. Seeking to escape her twin fate as a Jewess and a prostitute, she remains a victim and never finds happiness. Even though Balzac gives her a richly human character capable of becoming integrated in society, his ‘beautiful Jewess’ stays a prisoner of the limitations of her Jewishness and the established order. She not only reflects the fantasy of the ‘other’ as a symbol of desire and the forbidden, but also reveals the degree of interdependence and interaction between non-Jewish and Jewish societies. One can therefore legitimately question the meaning of these representations and their subsequent functioning. Rather than anti-Jewish or pro-Semitic, they are primarily ambivalent and do not prejudge their social or even political use. In fact, Balzac’s work, while expressing its author’s unconscious view of Jews in general, is first of all inspired by and borrows from the collective consciousness of his contemporaries

Towards Identifying Core Computational Literacy Concepts for Inclusion in a First-year General Engineering Course

In this paper, we describe an exploratory study to support efforts in revising first-year courses required for engineering students. It is common to include some form of introductory programming or spreadsheet computation topics in first-year courses. The inclusions of these topics is ostensibly to provide foundational computational skills needed in later courses. However, there are many challenges associated with teaching and learning these skills, the least of which is selecting which skills to include in the finite time allotted for a first-year introductory course that may also be tasked with teaching foundational problem solving and professional skills. This study is the first stage towards identifying a core set of skills for inclusion that would be relevant for most first-year students

Temperature dependent Raman and x-ray studies of spin-ice pyrochlore Dy2Ti2O7Dy_2Ti_2O_7 and non-magnetic pyrochlore Lu2Ti2O7Lu_2Ti_2O_7

We present here temperature-dependent Raman, x-ray diffraction and specific heat studies between room temperature and 12 K on single crystals of spin-ice pyrochlore compound $Dy_2Ti_2O_7$ and its non-magnetic analogue $Lu_2Ti_2O_7$. Raman data show a "new" band not predicted by factor group analysis of Raman-active modes for the pyrochlore structure in $Dy_2Ti_2O_7$, appearing below a temperature of $T_c=$110 K with a concomitant contraction of the cubic unit cell volume as determined from the powder x-ray diffraction analysis. Low temperature Raman experiments on O$^{18}$-isotope substituted $Dy_2Ti_2O_7$ confirm the phonon origin of the "new" mode. These findings, absent in $Lu_2Ti_2O_7$, suggest that the room temperature cubic lattice of the pyrochlore $Dy_2Ti_2O_7$ undergoes a "subtle" structural transformation near $T_c$. We find anomalous \textit{red-shift} of some of the phonon modes in both the $Dy_2Ti_2O_7$ and the $Lu_2Ti_2O_7$ as the temperature decreases, which is attributed to strong phonon-phonon anharmonic interactions.Comment: 28 pages, 9 figures (Accepted for publication in Physical Review B

Overview of USDA Homeland Security Efforts - Current and Future Initiatives to Protect the Agriculture and Food Sectors

Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Propagation of uncertainty through the hazard chain

DSTL wish to explore methods for propagating uncertainty through a succession of linked models. The Study Group have looked at the particular example of casualty estimation from airbourne dispersion and suggested two different potential solutions. If the structure of the models is sufficiently simple, and the number of degrees of freedom relatively small, a semi-analytical approach based on Bayes’ theorem can be used. In the more general case, intelligent sampling methods can be used to gradually build a picture of likely outcomes