167 research outputs found
Researching the Occupations and Lives of Women in 19th Century Baltimore
This blog post focuses on the process and output of the 3 research projects I completed this summer; 2 of which focused on compiling historical data on the occupations and lives of women in 19th century Baltimore. In the document, I walk through the multi-faceted process of sorting an 1858 scanned archival document into an organized Excel spreadsheet that solely represents women. As well, I describe the process of using, compiling, and presenting historic American census data from the 1800s from the Social Explorer Database. In both of these cases, I show how the forces of race, class, and gender played out in the lives of women in the port city. The research completed on Baltimore contributes to Dr. Shire’s upcoming monograph The Women at 44 Queen Street: Gender and Labor in Early Baltimore, which will be focused on the women who lived and worked in the household of Mary Young Pickersgill—the woman who sewed the first American flag.
Additionally, the blog post describes the research I completed to assist in building a flourishing alumni network for Western’s History Department. An important building block in creating such a network is the collection of data such as contact information and current employment thus, I compiled information on over 20 years of both Masters and PhD graduates from LinkedIn and university webpages. Some of the information I collected will be creatively presented and disseminated to present History students at Western as a way to share the plethora of ways in which they may use their degrees
Fermiology and electronic homogeneity of the superconducting overdoped cuprate Tl-2201 revealed by quantum oscillations
We report an angular quantum oscillation study of Tl_2Ba_2CuO_{6+delta} for
two different doping levels (Tc = 10K and 26 K) and determine the Fermi surface
size and topology in considerable detail. Our results show that Fermi liquid
behavior is not confined to the edge of the superconducting dome and is robust
up to at least T_c^{max}/3.5. Superconductivity is found to survive up to a
larger doping p_c = 0.31 than in La_{2-x}Sr_xCuO_4. Our data imply that
electronic inhomogeneity does not play a significant role in the loss of
superconductivity and superfluid density in overdoped cuprates, and point
towards a purely magnetic or electronic pairing mechanismComment: 4 page
Lighting conditions in home office and occupant's perception: Exploring drivers of satisfaction
This paper depicts lighting home office conditions within different countries and continents, emphasizing the user's satisfaction with the visual environment. The scope of this article is to investigate the drivers of participants' satisfaction with the lighting conditions at the home office. The study was developed by a team of international experts working together on Subtask A: User perspective and requirements, Task 61 IEA (International Energy Agency): Solutions for daylighting and electric lighting. An online survey was launched in December 2020 and closed on March 2021. The survey was implemented in the native languages of six participant countries (Brazil, Colombia, Denmark, Italy, Poland, and Japan) using Google Forms, and its dissemination was via various social media platforms. Measures of association between variables and predictive tests were run to explore which investigated aspects drove participants' satisfaction with the lighting conditions at the home office. We found some differences in satisfaction due to participants' sex, occupation, and participants' continent of residence. Females were more satisfied with daylight than males. Associations between the perception of seven light descriptors and satisfaction showed differences between East Asians and the rest of the participants, which might be related to the high dependence of the formers on electric lighting even when daylight is available. Design features as southern facades, the distance from the working area to the window, type of internal sun shading were related to daylighting satisfaction. Moreover, satisfaction with the general light level and the electric light was higher for those participants who did not need to switch on the ceiling, floor, or desk lamp when daylight was available. We found that an external view composed of 3 layers and the sky's visibility afforded a higher satisfaction with the window view. Having an independent room for the home office appeared to be related to a higher willingness to continue in the home office. Likewise, higher satisfaction with the overall visual environment and window view appeared to increase the willingness to continue working from home. Bridging the gap amid cultural differences and daylighting and lighting satisfaction is needed, particularly, relational studies between design features –as a response of cultural, climatic, and local practices- and occupants' preferences and acceptability. Thus, our understanding of occupants' responses will be more comprehensive. Engaging further research and measures to improve the visual environment and overall indoor environmental quality in dwellings is now a necessary step
Pseudogap phase of cuprate superconductors confined by Fermi surface topology
The properties of cuprate high-temperature superconductors are largely shaped
by competing phases whose nature is often a mystery. Chiefly among them is the
pseudogap phase, which sets in at a doping that is material-dependent.
What determines is currently an open question. Here we show that the
pseudogap cannot open on an electron-like Fermi surface, and can only exist
below the doping at which the large Fermi surface goes from hole-like
to electron-like, so that . We derive this result from
high-magnetic-field transport measurements in
LaNdSrCuO under pressure, which reveal a large and
unexpected shift of with pressure, driven by a corresponding shift in
. This necessary condition for pseudogap formation, imposed by details
of the Fermi surface, is a strong constraint for theories of the pseudogap
phase. Our finding that can be tuned with a modest pressure opens a new
route for experimental studies of the pseudogap.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, 7 supplemental figure
Influence of carbon on intraband scattering in Mg(B1-xCx)2
We report data on the Hall coefficient (RH) of the carbon substituted
Mg(B1-xCx)2 single crystals with x in the range from 0 to 0.1. The temperature
dependences of RH obtained for the substituted crystals differ systematically
at low temperatures, but all of them converge to the value of 1.8 x 10^-10
m^3/C at room temperature. The RH(T) data together with results of the
thermoelectric power and electrical resistivity measurements are interpreted
within a quasi-classical transport approach, where the presence of four
different conducting sheets is considered. The main influence of the carbon
substitution on the transport properties in the normal state is associated with
enhanced scattering rates, rather than modified concentration of charge
carriers. Presumably the carbon substitution increases the electron-impurity
scattering mainly in the pi band.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure
Evidence of spin-density-wave order in RFeAsO from measurements of thermoelectric power
Data on the magneto-thermopower and specific heat of three compounds
belonging to '1111' oxypnictides family are reported. One specimen
(SmAsFeO0.8F0.2) is a superconductor with Tc = 53 K, while two others (SmAsFeO
and NdAsFeO) are nonsuperconducting parent compounds. Our results confirm that
spin density wave (SDW) order is present in SmAsFeO and NdAsFeO. In these two
samples a strict connection between the thermoelectric power and electronic
specific heat is found in the vicinity of SDW transition, what indicates that
the chemical potential of charge carriers strongly depends on temperature in
this region. Low temperature data suggest presence of significant contribution
magnon-drag to the thermoelectric power.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures; adjusted to referees' suggestions; to appear in
Phys. Rev.
Nernst effect of iron pnictide and cuprate superconductors: signatures of spin density wave and stripe order
The Nernst effect has recently proven a sensitive probe for detecting unusual
normal state properties of unconventional superconductors. In particular, it
may sensitively detect Fermi surface reconstructions which are connected to a
charge or spin density wave (SDW) ordered state, and even fluctuating forms of
such a state. Here we summarize recent results for the Nernst effect of the
iron pnictide superconductor , whose ground state evolves
upon doping from an itinerant SDW to a superconducting state, and the cuprate
superconductor which exhibits static stripe
order as a ground state competing with the superconductivity. In , the SDW order leads to a huge Nernst response, which allows
to detect even fluctuating SDW precursors at superconducting doping levels
where long range SDW order is suppressed. This is in contrast to the impact of
stripe order on the normal state Nernst effect in . Here, though signatures of the stripe order are
detectable in the temperature dependence of the Nernst coefficient, its overall
temperature dependence is very similar to that of ,
where stripe order is absent. The anomalies which are induced by the stripe
order are very subtle and the enhancement of the Nernst response due to static
stripe order in as compared to that of the
pseudogap phase in , if any, is very small.Comment: To appear in: 'Properties and applications of thermoelectric
materials - II', V. Zlatic and A. Hewson, editors, Proceedings of NATO
Advanced Research Workshop, Hvar, Croatia, September 19 -25, 2011, NATO
Science for Peace and Security Series B: Physics and Biophysics, (Springer
Science+Business Media B.V. 2012
Daylight: What Makes a Difference
Light is necessary for vision; it enables us to sense and perceive our surroundings and in many direct and indirect ways, via eye and skin, affects our physiological and psychological health. The use of light in built environments has comfort, behavioural, economic and environmental consequences. Daylight has many particular benefits including excellent visual performance, permitting good eyesight, effective entrainment of the circadian system as well as a number of acute non-image forming effects and the important role of vitamin D production. Some human responses to daylight seem to be well defined whilst others require more research to be adequately understood. This paper presents an overview of current knowledge on how the characteristics of daylight play a role in fulfilling these and other functions often better than electric lighting as conventionally delivered
Broken rotational symmetry in the pseudogap phase of a high-Tc superconductor
The nature of the pseudogap phase is a central problem in the quest to
understand high-Tc cuprate superconductors. A fundamental question is what
symmetries are broken when that phase sets in below a temperature T*. There is
evidence from both polarized neutron diffraction and polar Kerr effect
measurements that time- reversal symmetry is broken, but at temperatures that
differ significantly. Broken rotational symmetry was detected by both
resistivity and inelastic neutron scattering at low doping and by scanning
tunnelling spectroscopy at low temperature, but with no clear connection to T*.
Here we report the observation of a large in-plane anisotropy of the Nernst
effect in YBa2Cu3Oy that sets in precisely at T*, throughout the doping phase
diagram. We show that the CuO chains of the orthorhombic lattice are not
responsible for this anisotropy, which is therefore an intrinsic property of
the CuO2 planes. We conclude that the pseudogap phase is an electronic state
which strongly breaks four-fold rotational symmetry. This narrows the range of
possible states considerably, pointing to stripe or nematic orders.Comment: Published version. Journal reference and DOI adde
Bose-Einstein condensation of strongly correlated electrons and phonons in cuprate superconductors
The long-range Froehlich electron-phonon interaction has been identified as
the most essential for pairing in high-temperature superconductors owing to
poor screening, as is now confirmed by optical, isotope substitution, recent
photoemission and some other measurements. I argue that low energy physics in
cuprate superconductors is that of superlight small bipolarons, which are
real-space hole pairs dressed by phonons in doped charge-transfer Mott
insulators. They are itinerant quasiparticles existing in the Bloch states at
low temperatures as also confirmed by continuous-time quantum Monte-Carlo
algorithm (CTQMC) fully taking into account realistic Coulomb and long-range
Froehlich interactions. Here I suggest that a parameter-free evaluation of Tc,
unusual upper critical fields, the normal state Nernst effect, diamagnetism,
the Hall-Lorenz numbers and giant proximity effects strongly support the
three-dimensional (3D) Bose-Einstein condensation of mobile small bipolarons
with zero off-diagonal order parameter above the resistive critical temperature
Tc at variance with phase fluctuation scenarios of cuprates.Comment: 35 pages, 10 figures, to appear in the special volume of Journal of
Physics: Condensed Matte
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