Information seeking in the Humanities: physicality and digitality

This paper presents a brief overview of a research project that is examining the information seeking practices of humanities scholars. The results of this project are being used to develop digital resources to better support these work activities. Initial findings from a recent set of interviews is offered, revealing the importance of physical artefacts in the humanities scholars’ research processes and the limitations of digital resources. Finally, further work that is soon to be undertaken is summarised, and it is hoped that after participation in this workshop these ideas will be refined

Viget Certe Viget Adhuc: The Invention of the Eternal City in Flavio Biondo\u27s Roma Instaurata

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College

Monitoring RXTE Observations of Markarian 348: the origin of the column density variations

We analyze 37 RXTE observations of the type 2 Seyfert galaxy Mrk348 obtained during a period of 14 months. We confirm the spectral variability previous reported by Smith et al., in the sense that thecolumn density decreases by a factor of ~3 as the count rate increases. Column density variations could possibly originate either due to the random drift of clouds within the absorption screen, or due to photoionization processes. Our modeling of the observed variations implies that the first scenario is more likely. These clouds should lie in a distance of >2 light years from the source, having a diameter of a few light days and a density of >10^7 cm^(-3), hence probably residing outside the Broad Line Region.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, to appear in MNRA

An evaluation of the Department of Health’s Health and Social Care Volunteering Fund

The Health and Social Care Volunteering Fund (HSCVF) is an innovative programme that was established in 2009 by the Department of Health (DH) to build organisational and community capacity for volunteering through a national and local grant scheme. The HSCVF has offered both funds and tailored support to health and social care projects delivered by Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations. The HSCVF is managed by a partnership led by Ecorys and with expertise from leading national voluntary sector organisations: Attend, Community Service Volunteers (CSV) and Primetimers. To date the HSCVF has funded a total of 157 local and national projects, of which 114 are currently live. This report presents findings from an evaluation of the HSCVF with a specific focus on the 2010/2011 national and local projects, conducted by a team from the Institute for Health & Wellbeing at Leeds Metropolitan University. It presents evidence on the extent to which, how and in what ways the HSCVF programme has built organisational and community capacity across the national and local HSCVF projects, as well as on the health and social outcomes that resulted

Thin film superfluid optomechanics

Excitations in superfluid helium represent attractive mechanical degrees of freedom for cavity optomechanics schemes. Here we numerically and analytically investigate the properties of optomechanical resonators formed by thin films of superfluid $^4$He covering micrometer-scale whispering gallery mode cavities. We predict that through proper optimization of the interaction between film and optical field, large optomechanical coupling rates $g_0>2\pi \times 100$ kHz and single photon cooperativities $C_0>10$ are achievable. Our analytical model reveals the unconventional behaviour of these thin films, such as thicker and heavier films exhibiting smaller effective mass and larger zero point motion. The optomechanical system outlined here provides access to unusual regimes such as $g_0>\Omega_M$ and opens the prospect of laser cooling a liquid into its quantum ground state.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figure

Cavity optoelectromechanical regenerative amplification

Cavity optoelectromechanical regenerative amplification is demonstrated. An optical cavity enhances mechanical transduction, allowing sensitive measurement even for heavy oscillators. A 27.3 MHz mechanical mode of a microtoroid was linewidth narrowed to 6.6\pm1.4 mHz, 30 times smaller than previously achieved with radiation pressure driving in such a system. These results may have applications in areas such as ultrasensitive optomechanical mass spectroscopy

Near threshold all-optical backaction amplifier

A near threshold all-optical backaction amplifier is realized. Operating near threshold in an integrated micronscale architecture allows a nearly three orders of magnitude improvement in both gain and optical power requirements over the only previous all-optical implementation, with 37 dB of gain achieved for only 12 uW of input power. Minor adjustments to parameters allows optical filtering with narrow bandwidth dictated by the mechanical quality factor. Operation at cryogenic temperatures may enable standard quantum limit surpassing measurements and ponderomotive squeezing.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure