1,549 research outputs found
Cultural Policy in Leeds
Bradford raised a few eyebrows with its bid to be City of Culture in 2008, but then demonstrated that its claim could not be so easily dismissed. In recent years, several of the region’s towns and cities have put cultural policies at the heart of their corporate visions and strategies in an effort to unite, develop and promote. This article reports on recent research on cultural policy making in Leeds, a city that clearly has a considerable 'cultural offer', but which has been making rather less of it than several of its northern rivals
Relating pseudospin and spin symmetries through charge conjugation and chiral transformations: the case of the relativistic harmonic oscillator
We solve the generalized relativistic harmonic oscillator in 1+1 dimensions,
i.e., including a linear pseudoscalar potential and quadratic scalar and vector
potentials which have equal or opposite signs. We consider positive and
negative quadratic potentials and discuss in detail their bound-state solutions
for fermions and antifermions. The main features of these bound states are the
same as the ones of the generalized three-dimensional relativistic harmonic
oscillator bound states. The solutions found for zero pseudoscalar potential
are related to the spin and pseudospin symmetry of the Dirac equation in 3+1
dimensions. We show how the charge conjugation and chiral
transformations relate the several spectra obtained and find that for massless
particles the spin and pseudospin symmetry related problems have the same
spectrum, but different spinor solutions. Finally, we establish a relation of
the solutions found with single-particle states of nuclei described by
relativistic mean-field theories with scalar, vector and isoscalar tensor
interactions and discuss the conditions in which one may have both nucleon and
antinucleon bound states.Comment: 33 pages, 10 figures, uses revtex macro
An embedding scheme for the Dirac equation
An embedding scheme is developed for the Dirac Hamiltonian H. Dividing space
into regions I and II separated by surface S, an expression is derived for the
expectation value of H which makes explicit reference to a trial function
defined in I alone, with all details of region II replaced by an effective
potential acting on S and which is related to the Green function of region II.
Stationary solutions provide approximations to the eigenstates of H within I.
The Green function for the embedded Hamiltonian is equal to the Green function
for the entire system in region I. Application of the method is illustrated for
the problem of a hydrogen atom in a spherical cavity and an Au(001)/Ag/Au(001)
sandwich structure using basis sets that satisfy kinetic balance.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure
Factoring attitudes towards conflict risk into selection of protected areas for conservation
The high incidence of armed conflicts in biodiverse regions poses significant challenges in achieving international conservation targets. Because attitudes towards risk vary, we assessed different strategies for protected area planning that reflected alternative attitudes towards the risk of armed conflicts. We find that ignoring conflict risk will deliver the lowest return on investment. Opting to completely avoid conflict-prone areas offers limited improvements and could lead to species receiving no protection. Accounting for conflict by protecting additional areas to offset the impacts of armed conflicts would not only increase the return on investment (an effect that is enhanced when high-risk areas are excluded) but also increase upfront conservation costs. Our results also demonstrate that fine-scale estimations of conflict risk could enhance the cost-effectiveness of investments. We conclude that achieving biodiversity targets in volatile regions will require greater initial investment and benefit from fine-resolution estimates of conflict risk
Landscape-level effects of forest on pollinators and fruit set of guava (<i>Psidium guajava</i> L.) in orchards across Southern Thailand
Pollination by wild pollinators is a key ecosystem service threatened by anthropogenic-induced land-use change. The proximity to natural habitat has previously been shown to positively affect pollinator communities and improve crop yield and quality but empirical evidence is limited from most parts of the World. Here, across six farms in Southern Thailand, we investigated the significance of landscape-level effects of natural habitat (proportion of and distance to evergreen forest) on both visitation rate and richness of pollinators as well as fruit set of guava (Psidium guajava L.), a local economically-important crop in the tropics. Overall, the most abundant pollinator was the Asian honey bee Apis cerana (39% of all visits) and different species of stingless bees (37%). We found that pollinator richness was unrelated to the proportion and distance to evergreen forest, however, the proportion of forest within a 1, 5 and 10 km radius had a significant positive impact on visitation rate of wild pollinators. Still, neither the various forest parameters nor pollinator visitation rate showed a significant impact on fruit set of guava, perhaps because guava self-pollinates. This illustrates that landscape-level degradation of natural habitat may negatively impact pollinator communities without diminishing the crop yield of the farmers
The EU and Asia within an evolving global order: what is Europe? Where is Asia?
The papers in this special edition are a very small selection from those presented at the EU-NESCA (Network of European Studies Centres in Asia) conference on "the EU and East Asia within an Evolving Global Order: Ideas, Actors and Processes" in November 2008 in Brussels. The conference was the culmination of three years of research activity involving workshops and conferences bringing together scholars from both regions primarily to discuss relations between Europe and Asia, perceptions of Europe in Asia, and the relationship between the European regional project and emerging regional forms in Asia. But although this was the last of the three major conferences organised by the consortium, it in many ways represented a starting point rather than the end; an opportunity to reflect on the conclusions of the first phase of collaboration and point towards new and continuing research agendas for the future
Relativistic confinement of neutral fermions with a trigonometric tangent potential
The problem of neutral fermions subject to a pseudoscalar potential is
investigated. Apart from the solutions for , the problem is
mapped into the Sturm-Liouville equation. The case of a singular trigonometric
tangent potential () is exactly solved and the
complete set of solutions is discussed in some detail. It is revealed that this
intrinsically relativistic and true confining potential is able to localize
fermions into a region of space arbitrarily small without the menace of
particle-antiparticle production.Comment: 12 page
Application of relativistic scattering theory of x rays to diffraction anomalous fine structure in Cu
We apply our recent first-principles formalism of magnetic scattering of circularly polarized x rays to a single Cu crystal. We demonstrate the ability of our formalism to interpret the crystalline environment related near-edge fine structure features in the resonant x-ray scattering spectra at the Cu K absorption edge. We find good agreement between the computed and measured diffraction anomalous fine structure features of the x-ray scattering spectra
Correlation of interfacial bonding mechanism and equilibrium conductance of molecular junctions
We report theoretical investigations on the role of interfacial bonding
mechanism and its resulting structures to quantum transport in molecular wires.
Two bonding mechanisms for the Au-S bond in an
Au(111)/1,4-benzenedithiol(BDT)/Au(111) junction were identified by ab initio
calculation, confirmed by a recent experiment, which, we showed, critically
control charge conduction. It was found, for Au/ BDT/Au junctions, the hydrogen
atom, bound by a dative bond to the Sulfur, is energetically non-dissociative
after the interface formation. The calculated conductance and junction
breakdown forces of H-non-dissociative Au/BDT/Au devices are consistent with
the experimental values, while the H-dissociated devices, with the interface
governed by typical covalent bonding, give conductance more than an order of
magnitude larger. By examining the scattering states that traverse the
junctions, we have revealed that mechanical and electric properties of a
junction have strong correlation with the bonding configuration. This work
clearly demonstrates that the interfacial details, rather than previously
believed many-body effects, is of vital importance for correctly predicting
equilibrium conductance of molecular junctions; and manifests that the
interfacial contact must be carefully understood for investigating quantum
transport properties of molecular nanoelectronics.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables, to be appeared in Frontiers of Physics
9(6), 780 (2014
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