Social Justice

In today’s society, poverty, corruption, sex trafficking, and drug abuse are just a few of the social and political issues that ravage our world today. It is hard to tell if people really care about one another and if anyone believes the biblical commandment, “Love your neighbor as your self.” As discussed in Evicted, there are serious housing issues in America due to high poverty rates. In Far From the Tree, we learned about different social hurdles that children and their families have to overcome to survive; such as autism or dealing with a child prodigy. In Just Mercy, we discovered the inequalities and injustices in the American justice system. The concept of social justice offers some relief and some possible solutions to some of these issues, but what does social justice mean? I believe that social justice is acts of relieving the less fortunate or victims of crimes of problems but I also believe that it is a human construct and it is fluid, changing with the circumstances

‘A publick benefite to the nation': the charitable and religious origins of the SSPCK, 1690-1715

The stated purpose of the Society in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge was the establishment of charity schools which were complementary to statutory parochial schools in the Highland parishes of Scotland. The parochial schools were demonstrably unsuited for these parishes due to terrain, weather, infrastructure, the nature of settlement, and their vulnerability to the Catholic mission. Historians and commentators have tended to see the society through a cultural and linguistic lens, imputing to it the weak condition in which Gaelic finds itself today. A ban on teaching Gaelic literacy, which was not lifted until the 1760s, has been considered part of an overall strategy to eliminate Gaelic in the hopes of greater civilization in the Highlands. This perspective overlooks a broader significance of the society, which, as a corporation, extended charity beyond the landed classes and nobility, to the rising professions and also common labourers and tenants, through its use of the parishes to collect donations. It was also a sustained effort at establishing a joint-stock company in the wake of the Bank of Scotland and the Company of Scotland, and instituted transparent business practices to foster a reputation for financial probity. The moral aspect of its mission required good and pious behaviour from its teachers, for them to serve as an example for the schools’ communities and to persuade, rather than coerce, children to attend. The society was also very much of its time, with a role in a completion of the Reformation which was a common theme in contemporary religious and social circles. This completion was structural, with the Church of Scotland trying to secure its presbyterian establishment throughout the country, but also moral, with the Societies for Reformation of Manners in England and Scotland, and the Society for Promotion of Christian Knowledge in England, building the legacy of the Reformation and the providential revolution through an encouragement of moral behaviour. These were private groups, however, and while the SPCK developed a channel for charitable activity for the rising professional and middle classes, the SSPCK worked to produce a national corporate effort to support reformation and education in the Highlands

On the homology of automorphism groups of free groups.

Following the work of Conant and Vogtmann on determining the homology of the group of outer automorphisms of a free group, a new nontrivial class in the rational homology of Outer space is established for the free group of rank eight. The methods started in [8] are heavily exploited and used to create a new graph complex called the space of good chord diagrams. This complex carries with it significant computational advantages in determining possible nontrivial homology classes.Next, we create a basepointed version of the Lie operad and explore some of it proper- ties. In particular, we prove a Kontsevich-type theorem that relates the Lie homology of a particular space to the cohomology of the group of automorphisms of the free group

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationRealization of next generation spintronic devices will require the use of design and engineering of new materials. In order to reach the performance requirements for spintronic transistor devices to become a reality, spin injection must be extremely efficient at room temperature. Understanding new materials and combinations of materials will enable the injection efficiency required for next-generation devices. Rare earth oxides are explored to determine the feasibility of doping magnetic elements to make new dilute magnetic dielectric materials for spin tunneling injection applications. Samarium Oxide (Sm2O3) doped with a small amount of cobalt (Co) is shown to exhibit a magnetic phenomenon which cannot be accounted for by conventional models. Though the observed magnetic properties appear quite similar to those observed in superparamagnetic systems, the origin of these properties is entirely different. A model, based on the widely accepted bound polaron theory for insulating ferromagnets, is proposed to explain the magnetic behavior of Co doped Sm2O3 films. We have also explored the growth and properties of high quality Tb2O3 thin films with on a variety of substrates in preparation for magnetic doping. We show enhanced dielectric constant related to improved crystal quality compared with previous reports, which makes this material of interest in high-k applications as well. Furthermore, we report room-temperature, all-electrical injection and detection of spin-polarized carriers in silicon using NiFe/MgO tunnel-barrier-contacts. From the magnetic-field dependence of the spin-accumulation voltage, spin-lifetime and diffusion-length of the carriers were determined to be 276 ps and 328 nm, respectively. Attaining spin diffusion lengths of >320 nm in Si channels is a ground breaking step and opens tremendous opportunities for integrating spin functionality into post-Moore-era electronic devices. We have carried out similar research with ZnO channels. We report all-electrical injection and detection of spin-polarized carriers in ZnO using NiFe/MgO tunnel-barrier-contacts. The three-terminal Hanle effect is used to study spin transport in single crystal thin film ZnO grown on sapphire. The results show that spin injection persists up to and above room temperature, with a measured lifetime τs=174 ps at 340K. These results underscore the importance of ZnO as a material for future active spintronics devices

Introductory Chemistry

Teaching and Learning resources for the 1st Year Introductory Chemistry course (Forensic Science). 30 credits. These are Open Educational Resources (OER), made available for re-use under a Creative Commons license

Tb2O3 thin films: An alternative candidate for high-k dielectric applications

pre-printWe are reporting the growth and structural, optical, and dielectric properties of Tb2O3, a relatively unexplored high-k dielectric material. A pulsed-laser deposition technique was used to grow Tb2O3 thin-films on four different substrates: Si(100), SrTiO3(100), LaAlO3(100), and MgO(100). High resolution X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy results confirmed that film growth in an oxygen-rich (101 Torr) environment yields nearly single-crystal C-phase films, while a low-oxygen (106 Torr) environment growth results in the formation of monoclinic polycrystalline B-phase films. Optical transmission measurements showed that the bandgap of Tb2O3 is direct in nature with a value of 2.8 eV and 3.4 eV for the cubic and monoclinic phases, respectively. By measuring the capacitance of test devices, quite high dielectric constants of 13.5 and 24.9 were obtained for the B- and C-phase Tb2O3 films, respectively

Fluid-Induced Propulsion of Rigid Particles in Wormlike Micellar Solutions

In the absence of inertia, a reciprocal swimmer achieves no net motion in a viscous Newtonian fluid. Here, we investigate the ability of a reciprocally actuated particle to translate through a complex fluid that possesses a network using tracking methods and birefringence imaging. A geometrically polar particle, a rod with a bead on one end, is reciprocally rotated using magnetic fields. The particle is immersed in a wormlike micellar (WLM) solution that is known to be susceptible to the formation of shear bands and other localized structures due to shear-induced remodeling of its microstructure. Results show that the nonlinearities present in this WLM solution break time-reversal symmetry under certain conditions, and enable propulsion of an artificial "swimmer." We find three regimes dependent on the Deborah number (De): net motion towards the bead-end of the particle at low De, net motion towards the rod-end of the particle at intermediate De, and no appreciable propulsion at high De. At low De, where the particle time-scale is longer then the fluid relaxation time, we believe that propulsion is caused by an imbalance in the fluid first normal stress differences between the two ends of the particle (bead and rod). At De~1, however, we observe the emergence of a region of network anisotropy near the rod using birefringence imaging. This anisotropy suggests alignment of the micellar network, which is "locked in" due to the shorter time-scale of the particle relative to the fluid

JME 4110 Mechanical Engineering Design Project:Stir It Up

We are designing and building a working prototype that will be able to mix a separated beverage back to a fully integrated state. This will allow for mixing in a beverage that was separated and would possibly just be thrown away because it doesn’t taste right anymore. This will save food waste from separated beverages being thrown away as well as be environmentally friendly since it would reduce the use of single use cups and straws