Poverty and Inequality in the UK: 2008

In this Commentary, we assess the changes to average incomes, inequality and poverty that have occurred under the first 10 years of the Labour government, with a particular focus on the changes that have occurred in the latest year of data. This analysis is based upon the latest figures from the DWP's Households Below Average Income (HBAI) series, published on 10 June 2008 (Department for Work and Pensions, 2008c). The HBAI series takes household income as its measure of living standards and is derived from the Family Resources Survey, a survey of around 28,000 households in the United Kingdom that asks detailed questions about income from a range of sources

Poverty and inequality in the UK: 2009

In this Commentary, we assess the changes to average incomes, inequality and poverty that have occurred since Labour came to power in 1997, with a particular focus on the changes that have occurred in the latest year of data. This analysis is based upon the latest figures from the DWP's Households Below Average Income (HBAI) series, published on 7 May 2009 (Department for Work and Pensions, 2009). The HBAI series takes household income as its measure of living standards, and is derived from the Family Resources Survey, a survey of around 25,000 households in the United Kingdom that asks detailed questions about income from a range of sources

Discovery of Water Vapor in the High-redshift Quasar APM 08279+5255 at z = 3.91

We report a detection of the excited 2_(20)-2_(11) rotational transition of para-H_2O in APM 08279+5255 using the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer. At z = 3.91, this is the highest-redshift detection of interstellar water to date. From large velocity gradient modeling, we conclude that this transition is predominantly radiatively pumped and on its own does not provide a good estimate of the water abundance. However, additional water transitions are predicted to be detectable in this source, which would lead to an improved excitation model. We also present a sensitive upper limit for the hydrogen fluoride (HF) J = 1-0 absorption toward APM 08279+5255. While the face-on geometry of this source is not favorable for absorption studies, the lack of HF absorption is still puzzling and may be indicative of a lower fluorine abundance at z = 3.91 compared with the Galactic interstellar medium

Mottness: Identifying the Propagating Charge Modes in doped Mott Insulators

High-temperature superconductivity in the copper-oxide ceramics remains an unsolved problem because we do not know what the propagating degrees of freedom are in the normal state. As a result, we do not know what are the weakly interacting degrees of freedom which pair up to form the superconducting condensate. That the electrons are not the propagating degrees of freedom in the cuprates is seen most directly from experiments that show spectral weight redistributions over all energy scales. Of course, the actual propagating degrees of freedom minimize such spectral rearrangements. This review focuses on the range of epxerimental consequences such UV-IR mixings have on the normal state of the cuprates, such as the pseudogap, mid-infrared band, temperature dependence of the Hall number, the superfluid density, and a recent theoretical advance which permits the identification of the weakly interacting degrees of freedom in a doped Mott insulator. Within this theory, we show how the wide range of phenomena which typify the normal state of the cuprates arises including $T-$linear resistivity.Comment: To appear as a Colloquium in the April issue of Rev. Mod. Phys Updated version contains new references and a clarification concerning Fig. 8

Modification of Coulomb's law in closed spaces

We obtain a modified version of Coulomb's law in two- and three-dimensional closed spaces. We demonstrate that in a closed space the total electric charge must be zero. We also discuss the relation between total charge neutrality of a isotropic and homogenous universe to whether or not its spatial sector is closed.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

Relative stability of zincblende and wurtzite structure in CdX(X = S, Se, Te) series - A NMTO study

Using NMTO-downfolding technique we have revisited the issue of relative stability between zincblende (ZB) and wurtzite (WZ) symmetries in case of CdS, CdSe and CdTe semiconductors. Our computed ionicity factors using accurate NMTO-downfolding successfully brings out the right trend within the CdX series - CdS being most ionic stabilizes in WZ symmetry while CdSe and CdTe being more covalent stabilizes in ZB symmetry. Our NMTO constructed Wannier functions corresponding to only valence bands provide a nice demonstration of this fact. The tendency towards ZB stability is governed by the covalency which prefers isotropic nature of the tetrahedral bonds.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, 4 table