1,326 research outputs found
Pursuing positionality in design
In the context of a complex social matrix that we find ourselves in, described by the continuous flux of power relations and asymmetries; design as a practice, their practitioners and researchers carry the responsibility in the mindful shaping of the future. As mediators within the design system, designers carry the conversation between the design program, a hypothesis, the stakeholders, and the effects of the resulting conclusions. Within their practice and the reflexive process upon it, designers can question, critique, and dismantle oppressive systems of status quo perpetuation. A first approach to a critical dialogue in design suggests reviewing one’s identity to discover possible privileges and biases. This is done through the revision of positionality as a conscious way of understanding who we are regarding an other; identity remains fundamental in the axiological description of our ethical values, preconceptions, and the essence of our being, modifying and steering our ways of knowing and doing. Defining positionality impacts the design process and research, affecting methodologies and findings. This manuscript searches to display the nuances of design and the relevance of achieving the situated conception of our identity, i.e. positionality, through reflexivity. Intersecting designerly research and critical social studies to analyse the role of the self enables reflexivity. Giving a comprehensive overview of how to achieve this by overlapping Decolonial theory and Pluriverse, Thirdwave feminist theories such as Intersectionality, Standpoint theory, and Critical race theory; research methodologies such as Autoethnography and Participatory action research are presented under this theoretical framework
Ethical Implications in AI-Powered Trend Research Platforms
The manuscript discusses the limitations of applying AI in trend research platforms for the fashion system. This analysis intends to take a position within the emergent research topic of AI. Considering its ethical implications, we explore the opportunities of implementing AI to support trend research from a design-oriented perspective, realising the relationship between fashion and trends, which is central in shaping the future. Examples of AI-powered trend platforms evidence how valuable their insights are for strategic innovation. The analysis focuses on platforms that provide tailored services using AI and expert interpretation. Virtue ethics of technology serves as a useful framework to examine this topic, proposing a new set of virtues that respond to technology’s shaping of behaviour and its disadvantages. The risks of applying AI are many-fold; the consequences perpetuate power imbalances and social inequality. Proposing guidelines for enabling a responsible practice explores how to forge ethics into AI, creating a pluralised practice
Stabilizing Superconductivity in Nanowires by Coupling to Dissipative Environments
We present a theory for a finite-length superconducting nanowire coupled to
an environment. We show that in the absence of dissipation quantum phase slips
always destroy superconductivity, even at zero temperature. Dissipation
stabilizes the superconducting phase. We apply this theory to explain the
"anti-proximity effect" recently seen by Tian et. al. in Zinc nanowires.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Bulk viscosity of the massive Gross-Neveu model
A calculation of the bulk viscosity for the massive Gross-Neveu model at zero
fermion chemical potential is presented in the large- limit. This model
resembles QCD in many important aspects: it is asymptotically free, has a
dynamically generated mass gap, and for zero bare fermion mass it is scale
invariant at the classical level (broken through the trace anomaly at the
quantum level). For our purposes, the introduction of a bare fermion mass is
necessary to break the integrability of the model, and thus to be able to study
momentum transport. The main motivation is, by decreasing the bare mass, to
analyze whether there is a correlation between the maximum in the trace anomaly
and a possible maximum in the bulk viscosity, as recently conjectured. After
numerical analysis, I find that there is no direct correlation between these
two quantities: the bulk viscosity of the model is a monotonously decreasing
function of the temperature. I also comment on the sum rule for the spectral
density in the bulk channel, as well as on implications of this analysis for
other systems.Comment: v2: 3->3 processes included, conclusions unchanged. Comments and
references added. Typos corrected. To appear in Phys. Rev.
Strong Electron Tunneling through a Small Metallic Grain
Electron tunneling through mesoscopic metallic grains can be treated
perturbatively only provided the tunnel junction conductances are sufficiently
small. If it is not the case, fluctuations of the grain charge become strong.
As a result (i) contributions of all -- including high energy -- charge states
become important and (ii) excited charge states become broadened and
essentially overlap. At the same time the grain charge remains discrete and the
system conductance -periodically depends on the gate charge. We develop a
nonperturbative approach which accounts for all these features and calculate
the temperature dependent conductance of the system in the strong tunneling
regime at different values of the gate charge.Comment: revtex, 8 pages, 2 .ps figure
Fracton pairing mechanism for "strange" superconductors: Self-assembling organic polymers and copper-oxide compounds
Self-assembling organic polymers and copper-oxide compounds are two classes
of "strange" superconductors, whose challenging behavior does not comply with
the traditional picture of Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer (BCS)
superconductivity in regular crystals. In this paper, we propose a theoretical
model that accounts for the strange superconducting properties of either class
of the materials. These properties are considered as interconnected
manifestations of the same phenomenon: We argue that superconductivity occurs
in the both cases because the charge carriers (i.e., electrons or holes)
exchange {\it fracton excitations}, quantum oscillations of fractal lattices
that mimic the complex microscopic organization of the strange superconductors.
For the copper oxides, the superconducting transition temperature as
predicted by the fracton mechanism is of the order of K. We suggest
that the marginal ingredient of the high-temperature superconducting phase is
provided by fracton coupled holes that condensate in the conducting
copper-oxygen planes owing to the intrinsic field-effect-transistor
configuration of the cuprate compounds. For the gate-induced superconducting
phase in the electron-doped polymers, we simultaneously find a rather modest
transition temperature of K owing to the limitations imposed by
the electron tunneling processes on a fractal geometry. We speculate that
hole-type superconductivity observes larger onset temperatures when compared to
its electron-type counterpart. This promises an intriguing possibility of the
high-temperature superconducting states in hole-doped complex materials. A
specific prediction of the present study is universality of ac conduction for
.Comment: 12 pages (including separate abstract page), no figure
Cooper pairing and finite-size effects in a NJL-type four-fermion model
Starting from a NJL-type model with N fermion species fermion and difermion
condensates and their associated phase structures are considered at nonzero
chemical potential and zero temperature in spaces with nontrivial
topology of the form and . Special
attention is devoted to the generation of the superconducting phase. In
particular, for the cases of antiperiodic and periodic boundary conditions we
have found that the critical curve of the phase transitions between the chiral
symmetry breaking and superconducting phases as well as the corresponding
condensates and particle densities strongly oscillate vs ,
where is the length of the circumference . Moreover, it is shown that
at some finite values of the superconducting phase transition is shifted to
smaller values both of and particle density in comparison with the case
of .Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures; minor changes; new references added; version
accepted to PR
Enriching the values of micro and small business research projects: co-creation service provision as perceived by academic, business and student
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Studies in Higher Education, first published online 3 September 2014, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03075079.2014.942273.The National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (1996) chaired by Lord Dearing envisioned a university sector central to the UK’s knowledge-based economy. With successive government support the university-business partnership ideology has been put into practice. Widening participation has increased in emphasis over recent years, providing key innovations and skills to support business growth. Yet business schools activities in business growth is marginal against other university schools. The paper reports on an empirical study analyzing the university/business values derived from one small business engagement project. Data collected through semi-structured interviews, observations, memos, and discussions were coupled with critical evaluation of work and action-based learning (ABL) literature. Analysis reveals evidence of multiple value adding factors; it emerged that the existence of knowledge, present or generated through blended learning techniques, was a key value adding element. The findings enabled the construction of a universal process model providing a project framework, detailing areas of collaborative efforts and associated recompenses; this included ease in project advancements and a noticeably advanced project outcome. The study highlights these values in terms of individual and organizational learning, originality and quality of outputs. Given the growing importance of Small to Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) to the UK economy, understanding the value co-created by collaborative projects in delivering both work-based and ABL for graduates/students, academics and enterprise management is important.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio
Chiral helix in AdS/CFT with flavor
The D3/D7 holographic model aims at a better approximation to QCD by adding
to N=4 SYM theory N_f of N=2 supersymmetric hypermultiplets in the fundamental
representation of SU(N_c) -- the "flavor fields" representing the quarks.
Motivated by a recent observation of the importance of the Wess-Zumino-like
(WZ) term for realizing the chiral magnetic effect within this model, we
revisit the phase diagram of the finite temperature, massless D3/D7 model in
the presence of external electric/magnetic fields and at finite chemical
potential. We point out that the A-V-V triangle anomaly represented by the WZ
term in the D7 brane probe action implies the existence of new phases that have
been overlooked in the previous studies. In the case of an external magnetic
field and at finite chemical potential, we find a "chiral helix" phase in which
the U(1)_A angle of D7 brane embedding increases monotonically along the
direction of the magnetic field -- this is a geometric realization of the
chiral spiral phase in QCD. We also show that in the case of parallel electric
and magnetic fields (E,B) there exists a phase in which the D7 brane
spontaneously begins to rotate, so that the U(1)_A angle changes as a function
of time -- this may be called the "spontaneous rotation" phase; it is a
geometrical realization of a phase with non-zero chiral chemical potential. Our
results call for a more thorough study of the (T,B,E,\mu) phase diagram of the
massless D3/D7 model taking a complete account of the WZ term.
We also speculate about the possible phase diagram in the massive case.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figure
Optical absorption and photoluminescence spectroscopy of the growth of silver nanoparticles
Results obtained from the optical absorption and photoluminescence (PL)
spectroscopy experiments have shown the formation of excitons in the
silver-exchanged glass samples. These findings are reported here for the first
time. Further, we investigate the dramatic changes in the photoemission
properties of the silver-exchanged glass samples as a function of postannealing
temperature. Observed changes are thought to be due to the structural
rearrangements of silver and oxygen bonding during the heat treatments of the
glass matrix. In fact, photoelectron spectroscopy does reveal these chemical
transformations of silver-exchanged soda glass samples caused by the thermal
effects of annealing in a high vacuum atmosphere. An important correlation
between temperature-induced changes of the PL intensity and thermal growth of
the silver nanoparticles has been established in this Letter through precise
spectroscopic studies.Comment: 15 pages,4 figures,PDF fil
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