17,312 research outputs found
Evaluation of the InDUCKtion project at UCL
Executive summary: There is evidence that a good induction to university life can help with student retention; however, there is also a danger of overwhelming students during the intense period of fresher’s week. Under the auspices of a small grant from the Higher Education Academy’s ‘Changing the Learning Landscape’ funding stream, staff at two universities (University College London and Southampton Solent University) collaborated to produce an innovative and engaging induction project entitled ‘InDUCKtion’, based on the idea of an induction duck being a fun character for students to interact with. At UCL, the InDUCKtion duck existed in the form of a physical plastic duck included in international postgraduate student induction packs, and they were encouraged to take photos of themselves in and around UCL and London as part of a photo challenge using social media. It was anticipated that this would enable students to familiarise themselves with the locale, make friends and have fun at the same time. The InDUCKtion duck was also evident on flyers and posters with QR codes advertising an online tour to enable students to gain an accelerated familiarisation with the campus and its facilities. Within UCL, the project was a collaborative, cross-departmental venture instigated by members of UCL’s E-Learning Environments (ELE) working in partnership with the Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching (CALT) and Student Support and Wellbeing (SSW). The logistics of the project meant that the team members also had to liaise with a number of other individuals and departments around UCL, to help promote and implement the project. Despite a rapid following on Twitter in a relatively short period, a reasonable hit rate on the QR code for the main page of the online tour resource, and some engagement with the photo challenges using social media, participation in the project was lower than anticipated. Lessons learned from an evaluation perspective revealed that adding another activity to an already overwhelming fresher’s week was problematic, despite its innovative and interactive nature. The use of QR codes was problematic for a number of reasons, and the project needed more buy-in from student representatives and academics to provide institutional endorsement. Recommendations for future instances of the project include securing student representation and academic endorsement, integrating the activity with parallel induction activities – particularly with academic departments, replacing QR codes with an alternative technology-enhanced learning approach and optimising the learning design to better motivate students and promote groupwork
Third type of domain wall in soft magnetic nanostrips
Magnetic domain walls (DWs) in nanostructures are low-dimensional objects
that separate regions with uniform magnetisation. Since they can have different
shapes and widths, DWs are an exciting playground for fundamental research, and
became in the past years the subject of intense works, mainly focused on
controlling, manipulating, and moving their internal magnetic configuration. In
nanostrips with in-plane magnetisation, two DWs have been identified: in thin
and narrow strips, transverse walls are energetically favored, while in thicker
and wider strips vortex walls have lower energy. The associated phase diagram
is now well established and often used to predict the low-energy magnetic
configuration in a given magnetic nanostructure. However, besides the
transverse and vortex walls, we find numerically that another type of wall
exists in permalloy nanostrips. This third type of DW is characterised by a
three-dimensional, flux closure micromagnetic structure with an unusual length
and three internal degrees of freedom. Magnetic imaging on
lithographically-patterned permalloy nanostrips confirms these predictions and
shows that these DWs can be moved with an external magnetic field of about 1mT.
An extended phase diagram describing the regions of stability of all known
types of DWs in permalloy nanostrips is provided.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figure
Phase diagram of magnetic domain walls in spin valve nano-stripes
We investigate numerically the transverse versus vortex phase diagram of
head-to-head domain walls in Co/Cu/Py spin valve nano-stripes (Py: Permalloy),
in which the Co layer is mostly single domain while the Py layer hosts the
domain wall. The range of stability of the transverse wall is shifted towards
larger thickness compared to single Py layers, due to a magnetostatic screening
effect between the two layers. An approached analytical scaling law is derived,
which reproduces faithfully the phase diagram.Comment: 4 page
Convex ordering and quantification of quantumness
The characterization of physical systems requires a comprehensive
understanding of quantum effects. One aspect is a proper quantification of the
strength of such quantum phenomena. Here, a general convex ordering of quantum
states will be introduced which is based on the algebraic definition of
classical states. This definition resolves the ambiguity of the quantumness
quantification using topological distance measures. Classical operations on
quantum states will be considered to further generalize the ordering
prescription. Our technique can be used for a natural and unambiguous
quantification of general quantum properties whose classical reference has a
convex structure. We apply this method to typical scenarios in quantum optics
and quantum information theory to study measures which are based on the
fundamental quantum superposition principle.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, revised version; published in special issue "150
years of Margarita and Vladimir Man'ko
Experimental determination of a nonclassical Glauber-Sudarshan P function
A quantum state is nonclassical if its Glauber-Sudarshan P function fails to
be interpreted as a probability density. This quantity is often highly
singular, so that its reconstruction is a demanding task. Here we present the
experimental determination of a well-behaved P function showing negativities
for a single-photon-added thermal state. This is a direct visualization of the
original definition of nonclassicality. The method can be useful under
conditions for which many other signatures of nonclassicality would not
persist.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Magnetic Moments of Dirac Neutrinos
The existence of a neutrino magnetic moment implies contributions to the
neutrino mass via radiative corrections. We derive model-independent
"naturalness" upper bounds on the magnetic moments of Dirac neutrinos,
generated by physics above the electroweak scale. The neutrino mass receives a
contribution from higher order operators, which are renormalized by operators
responsible for the neutrino magnetic moment. This contribution can be
calculated in a model independent way. In the absence of fine-tuning, we find
that current neutrino mass limits imply that Bohr
magnetons. This bound is several orders of magnitude stronger than those
obtained from solar and reactor neutrino data and astrophysical observations.Comment: 3 pages. Talk given at PANIC'0
Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay and Lepton Flavor Violation
We point out that extensions of the Standard Model with low scale (~TeV)
lepton number violation (LNV) generally lead to a pattern of lepton flavor
violation (LFV) experimentally distinguishable from the one implied by models
with GUT scale LNV. As a consequence, muon LFV processes provide a powerful
diagnostic tool to determine whether or not the effective neutrino mass can be
deduced from the rate of neutrinoless double beta decay. We discuss the role of
\mu -> e \gamma and \mu -> e conversion in nuclei, which will be studied with
high sensitivity in forthcoming experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Caldirola-Kanai Oscillator in Classical Formulation of Quantum Mechanics
The quadrature distribution for the quantum damped oscillator is introduced
in the framework of the formulation of quantum mechanics based on the
tomography scheme. The probability distribution for the coherent and Fock
states of the damped oscillator is expressed explicitly in terms of Gaussian
and Hermite polynomials, correspondingly.Comment: LaTeX, 5 pages, 1 Postscript figure, Contribution to the VIII
International Conference on Symmetry Methods in Physics, Dubna 1997, to be
published in the Proceedings of the Conferenc
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