Phonon anharmonicities in graphite and graphene

We determine from first-principles the finite-temperature properties--linewidths, line shifts, and lifetimes--of the key vibrational modes that dominate inelastic losses in graphitic materials. In graphite, the phonon linewidth of the Raman-active E2g mode is found to decrease with temperature; such anomalous behavior is driven entirely by electron-phonon interactions, and does not appear in the nearly-degenerate infrared-active E1u mode. In graphene, the phonon anharmonic lifetimes and decay channels of the A'1 mode at K dominate over E2g at G and couple strongly with acoustic phonons, highlighting how ballistic transport in carbon-based interconnects requires careful engineering of phonon decays and thermalization.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures; typos corrected and reference adde

Some Ontological Principles for Designing Upper Level Lexical Resources

The purpose of this paper is to explore some semantic problems related to the use of linguistic ontologies in information systems, and to suggest some organizing principles aimed to solve such problems. The taxonomic structure of current ontologies is unfortunately quite complicated and hard to understand, especially for what concerns the upper levels. I will focus here on the problem of ISA overloading, which I believe is the main responsible of these difficulties. To this purpose, I will carefully analyze the ontological nature of the categories used in current upper-level structures, considering the necessity of splitting them according to more subtle distinctions or the opportunity of excluding them because of their limited organizational role.Comment: 8 pages - gzipped postscript file - A4 forma

Silent witness, using video to record and transmit tacit knowledge in creative practices.

Over the last ten years, the duration of my ongoing practice-led design research work, video recording has developed from an expensive luxury to being ubiquitous. Whilst this opens up many opportunities for documenting and disseminating research projects, there are also potential drawbacks. I am a multimedia designer who makes extensive use of video both as an observational tool and as a means of helping covey tacit / experiential knowledge in creative practices. In this paper I discuss the use of video for such purposes, drawing on my own experiences and the research of others who use video in research. It builds on methods developed undertaking my own practice-led research described in output 1: Wood N, Rust C & Horne G (2009). A tacit understanding: the designer's role in capturing and passing on the skilled knowledge of master craftsmen. International Journal of Design, 3(3). It also builds on two earlier articles: Wood N (2010). A good record? The use of video in practice-led design research. Reflections 13, Sint Lucas School of Architecture, Brussels. ISSN 1784-7052. Wood N (2008). Unlocking the knowledge of others: knowledge elicitation in practice-led design research. Reflections 7, Sint Lucas School of Architecture, Brussels. ISSN 1784-7052. In my continuing research I have been working with a craftsmen, Ulrik Hjort Lassen a doctoral student at the Department of Conservation, Gothenburg University, who has been undertaking research into traditional methods for scribing the timbers for traditional wooden buildings. The methods described in these papers have formed the theoretical basis for Lassen’s research, developed and testing a multimedia learning resources to provide ‘bridges’ for new learners to this knowledge, the successful outcome of which validates the principles developed in my own research and demonstrates transferability of this technique.</p

Kūkupa, koro, and kai: The use of Māori vocabulary items in New Zealand English children's picture books

When a linguistic form from one language is used in another language, such words are known as borrowings or loan words (Crystal 2003: 56). The English language is renowned for its large capacity for borrowing and it has been suggested that the growth in internationalism in recent times has led to people seeking new words to indicate their local identity (Crystal 1995; Crystal 2003). Certainly this is the case of New Zealand English, the most distinctive aspect of which is borrowings from te reo Maori (Deverson 1991). In 1984 Deverson estimated that most New Zealanders have a passive knowledge of at least 40-50 borrowed Maori loan words (Deverson 1984). This figure has been recently revised by Macalister to 70-80 such words (20,-,63.). A study of the frequency of Maori loan words in New Zealand English in New Zealand School Journals of the 1960s and 1990s showed an incidence of around 6 words per 1,000 (Macalister 1999). Kennedy and Yamazaki (1999) also found borrowed Maori words at a rate of 6 per thousand words. Macalister (2006b) has examined the use of Maori loan words in New Zealand English across a 150 year period from 1850-2000. He examined a corpus of a little under five and a half million words from three sources: Newspapers, parliamentary debates and School Journals. Across the three sources there was an increase from 3.29 words per 1,000 in 1850 to 8.8 per thousand in 2000. Macalister lists the reasons for this change as including urbanisation of the Maori population between 1945 and 1975, which created more contact; the changing status of the Maori language with the kOhanga reo movement; the establishment of the Maori Language Commission (Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Maori) and legislation of Maori as an official language of New Zealand in 1987