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The future of homegrown teaching artists? Negotiating contradictions of professionalization in the youth arts and humanities fields
Youth arts and humanities programs are providing invaluable learning opportunities for youth participants to become what we term “homegrown teaching artists.” After several years of artistic and pedagogic development, these alumni teach youth in the same programs where they were once participants. This phenomenon has emerged at the same time that the teaching artist field has become professionalized with new credentialed pathways through higher education. This simultaneity presents a paradox. Professionalization introduces formal standards and barriers to entry into the teaching artist field at the same time that teaching artists train youth who are racialized and low-income to become teaching artists through informal pathways in youth arts and humanities programs. In other words, the professionalization of the field is at odds with its aspiration to expand and sustain youth’s right to cultural self-determination. We address this contradiction by investigating the pathways and practices of three homegrown teaching artists before turning to implications for policy and practice
Compact strain-sensitive flexible photonic crystals for sensors
A promising fabrication route to produce absorbing flexible photonic crystals is presented, which exploits self-assembly during the shear processing of multi-shelled polymer spheres. When absorbing material is incorporated in the interstitial space surrounding high-refractive-index spheres, a dramatic enhancement in the transmission edge on the short-wavelength side of the band gap is observed. This effect originates from the shifting optical field spatial distribution as the incident wavelength is tuned around the band gap, and results in a contrast up to 100 times better than similar but nonabsorbing photonic crystals. An order-of-magnitude improvement in strain sensitivity is shown, suggesting the use of these thin films in photonic sensors
Quantum resolution of black hole singularities
We study the classical and quantum theory of spherically symmetric spacetimes
with scalar field coupling in general relativity. We utilise the canonical
formalism of geometrodynamics adapted to the Painleve-Gullstrand coordinates,
and present a new quantisation of the resulting field theory. We give an
explicit construction of operators that capture curvature properties of the
spacetime and use these to show that the black hole curvature singularity is
avoided in the quantum theory.Comment: 5 pages, version to appear in CQ
On (Cosmological) Singularity Avoidance in Loop Quantum Gravity
Loop Quantum Cosmology (LQC), mainly due to Bojowald, is not the cosmological
sector of Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG). Rather, LQC consists of a truncation of
the phase space of classical General Relativity to spatially homogeneous
situations which is then quantized by the methods of LQG. Thus, LQC is a
quantum mechanical toy model (finite number of degrees of freedom) for LQG(a
genuine QFT with an infinite number of degrees of freedom) which provides
important consistency checks. However, it is a non trivial question whether the
predictions of LQC are robust after switching on the inhomogeneous fluctuations
present in full LQG. Two of the most spectacular findings of LQC are that 1.
the inverse scale factor is bounded from above on zero volume eigenstates which
hints at the avoidance of the local curvature singularity and 2. that the
Quantum Einstein Equations are non -- singular which hints at the avoidance of
the global initial singularity. We display the result of a calculation for LQG
which proves that the (analogon of the) inverse scale factor, while densely
defined, is {\it not} bounded from above on zero volume eigenstates. Thus, in
full LQG, if curvature singularity avoidance is realized, then not in this
simple way. In fact, it turns out that the boundedness of the inverse scale
factor is neither necessary nor sufficient for curvature singularity avoidance
and that non -- singular evolution equations are neither necessary nor
sufficient for initial singularity avoidance because none of these criteria are
formulated in terms of observable quantities.After outlining what would be
required, we present the results of a calculation for LQG which could be a
first indication that our criteria at least for curvature singularity avoidance
are satisfied in LQG.Comment: 34 pages, 16 figure
Mid-infrared dust in two nearby radio galaxies, NGC 1316 (Fornax A) and NGC 612 (PKS 0131-36)
Context. Most radio galaxies are hosted by giant gas-poor ellipticals, but some contain significant amounts of dust, which is likely to be of external origin
Real space first-principles derived semiempirical pseudopotentials applied to tunneling magnetoresistance
In this letter we present a real space density functional theory (DFT)
localized basis set semi-empirical pseudopotential (SEP) approach. The method
is applied to iron and magnesium oxide, where bulk SEP and local spin density
approximation (LSDA) band structure calculations are shown to agree within
approximately 0.1 eV. Subsequently we investigate the qualitative
transferability of bulk derived SEPs to Fe/MgO/Fe tunnel junctions. We find
that the SEP method is particularly well suited to address the tight binding
transferability problem because the transferability error at the interface can
be characterized not only in orbital space (via the interface local density of
states) but also in real space (via the system potential). To achieve a
quantitative parameterization, we introduce the notion of ghost semi-empirical
pseudopotentials extracted from the first-principles calculated Fe/MgO bonding
interface. Such interface corrections are shown to be particularly necessary
for barrier widths in the range of 1 nm, where interface states on opposite
sides of the barrier couple effectively and play a important role in the
transmission characteristics. In general the results underscore the need for
separate tight binding interface and bulk parameter sets when modeling
conduction through thin heterojunctions on the nanoscale.Comment: Submitted to Journal of Applied Physic
Spatial correlations in chaotic nanoscale systems with spin-orbit coupling
We investigate the statistical properties of wave functions in chaotic
nanostructures with spin-orbit coupling (SOC), focussing in particular on
spatial correlations of eigenfunctions. Numerical results from a microscopic
model are compared with results from random matrix theory in the crossover from
the gaussian orthogonal to the gaussian symplectic ensembles (with increasing
SOC); one- and two-point distribution functions were computed to understand the
properties of eigenfunctions in this crossover. It is found that correlations
of wave function amplitudes are suppressed with SOC; nevertheless,
eigenfunction correlations play a more important role in the two-point
distribution function(s), compared to the case with vanishing SOC. Experimental
consequences of our results are discussed.Comment: Submitted to PR
Stress Tensors of Multiparticle Collision Dynamics Fluids
Stress tensors are derived for the multiparticle collision dynamics
algorithm, a particle-based mesoscale simulation method for fluctuating fluids,
resembling those of atomistic or molecular systems. Systems with periodic
boundary conditions as well as fluids confined in a slit are considered. For
every case, two equivalent expressions for the tensor are provided, the
internal stress tensor, which involves all degrees of freedom of a system, and
the external stress, which only includes the interactions with the confining
surfaces. In addition, stress tensors for a system with embedded particles are
determined. Based on the derived stress tensors, analytical expressions are
calculated for the shear viscosity. Simulations illustrate the difference in
fluctuations between the various derived expressions and yield very good
agreement between the numerical results and the analytically derived expression
for the viscosity
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