Crossmodal effects of Guqin and piano music on selective attention: An event-related potential study (vol 466, pg 21, 2009)

Special thanks to Christopher Blair and Mumtaz Baig for their suggestions. This work was supported by National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, 2007CB411600), National Natural Science Foundation of China (30621092), and Bureau of Science and Technology of Yunnan Province.

Role of interface dipole in metal gate/high-k effective work function modulation by aluminum incorporation

The interface dipole and its role in the effective work function (EWF) modulation by Al incorporation are investigated. Our study shows that the interface dipole located at the high-k/SiO2 interface causes an electrostatic potential difference across the metal/high-k interface, which significantly shifts the band alignment between the metal and high-k, consequently modulating the EWF. The electrochemical potential equalization and electrostatic potential methods are used to evaluate the interface dipole and its contribution. The calculated EWF modulation agrees with experimental data and can provide insight to the control of EWF in future pMOS technology.

Enhancement of field emission of the ZnO film by the reduced work function and the increased conductivity via hydrogen plasma treatment

The ZnO films deposited by magnetron sputtering were treated by H/O plasma. It is found that the field emission (FE) characteristics of the ZnO film are considerably improved after H-plasma treatment and slightly deteriorated after O-plasma treatment. The improvement of FE characteristics is attributed to the reduced work function and the increased conductivity of the ZnO H films. Conductive atomic force microscopy was employed to investigate the effect of the plasma treatment on the nanoscale conductivity of ZnO, these findings correlate well with the FE data and facilitate a clearer description of electron emission from the ZnO H films.

Quantum critical phenomena in the XY spin chain with the Dzyaloshinski-Moriya interaction (Retracted article. See vol 80, artn 019903, 2009)

We study the effects of the Dzyaloshinski-Moriya (DM) anisotropic interaction on the ground-state properties of the Heisenberg XY spin chain by means of the fidelity susceptibility, order parameter, and entanglement entropy. Our results show that the DM interaction could influence the distribution of the regions of quantum phase transitions and cause different critical regions in the XY spin model. Meanwhile, the DM interaction has effective influence on the degree of entanglement of the system and could be used to increase the entanglement of the spin system.

Effect of the work function of gate electrode on hysteresis characteristics of organic thin-film transistors with Ta2O5/polymer as gate insulator

Organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) using high dielectric constant material tantalum pentoxide (Ta2O5) and benzocyclobutenone (BCBO) derivatives as double-layer insulator were fabricated. Three metals with different work function, including Al (4.3 eV), Cr (4.5 eV) and Au (5.1 eV), were employed as gate electrodes to study the correlation between work function of gate metals and hysteresis characteristics of OTFTs. The devices with low work function metal Al or Cr as gate electrode exhibited high hysteresis (about 2.5 V threshold voltage shift). However, low hysteresis (about 0.7 V threshold voltage shift) OTFTs were attained based on high work function metal Au as gate electrode.

G-Quadruplex Aptamers with Peroxidase-Like DNAzyme Functions: Which Is the Best and How Does it Work?

Some G-quadruplex DNA aptamers have been found to strongly bind hemin to form DNAzymes with peroxidase-like activity. To help determine the most suitable DNAzymes and to understand how they work, five previously reported G-quadruplex aptamers were compared for their binding affinity and then the potential catalytic mechanism of their corresponding hemin-G-quadruplex DNAzymes was explored. Among these aptamers, a G-quadruplex named AGRO100 was shown to possess the highest hemin-binding affinity and the best DNAzyme function. This means that AGRO100 is the most ideal candidate for DNAzyme-based analysis. Furthermore, we found the peroxidase-like activity of DNAzyme to be primarily dependent on the concentration of H2O2 and independent of that of the peroxidase substrate (that is, 2,2-azino-bis(3-ethytbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid)diammonium salt). Accordingly, a reaction mechanism for DNAzyme-catalyzed peroxidation is proposed. This study provides new insights into the G-quadruplex-based DNAzymes and will help us to further extend their applications in the analytical field.

The 1990 AI Fair

This year, as the finale to the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory's annual Winter Olympics, the Lab staged an AI Fair ??night devoted to displaying the wide variety of talents and interests within the laboratory. The Fair provided an outlet for creativity and fun in a carnival-like atmosphere. Students organized events from robot boat races to face-recognition vision contests. Research groups came together to make posters and booths explaining their work. The robots rolled down out of the labs, networks were turned over to aerial combat computer games and walls were decorated with posters of zany ideas for the future. Everyone pitched in, and this photograph album is a pictorial account of the fun that night at the AI Fair.

OPEN DOORS AND OPEN MINDS: WHAT FACULTY AUTHORS CAN DO TO ENSURE OPEN ACCESS TO THEIR WORK THROUGH THEIR INSTITUTION

The Internet has brought unparalleled opportunities for expanding availability of research by bringing down economic and physical barriers to sharing. The digitally networked environment promises to democratize access, carry knowledge beyond traditional research niches, accelerate discovery, encourage new and interdisciplinary approaches to ever more complex research challenges, and enable new computational research strategies. However, despite these opportunities for increasing access to knowledge, the prices of scholarly journals have risen sharply over the past two decades, often forcing libraries to cancel subscriptions. Today even the wealthiest institutions cannot afford to sustain all of the journals needed by their faculties and students. To take advantage of the opportunities created by the Internet and to further their mission of creating, preserving, and disseminating knowledge, many academic institutions are taking steps to capture the benefits of more open research sharing. Colleges and universities have built digital repositories to preserve and distribute faculty scholarly articles and other research outputs. Many individual authors have taken steps to retain the rights they need, under copyright law, to allow their work to be made freely available on the Internet and in their institutionâ s repository. And, faculties at some institutions have adopted resolutions endorsing more open access to scholarly articles. Most recently, on February 12, 2008, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) at Harvard University took a landmark step. The faculty voted to adopt a policy requiring that faculty authors send an electronic copy of their scholarly articles to the universityâ s digital repository and that faculty authors automatically grant copyright permission to the university to archive and to distribute these articles unless a faculty member has waived the policy for a particular article. Essentially, the faculty voted to make open access to the results of their published journal articles the default policy for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University. As of March 2008, a proposal is also under consideration in the University of California system by which faculty authors would commit routinely to grant copyright permission to the university to make copies of the facultyâ s scholarly work openly accessible over the Internet. Inspired by the example set by the Harvard faculty, this White Paper is addressed to the faculty and administrators of academic institutions who support equitable access to scholarly research and knowledge, and who believe that the institution can play an important role as steward of the scholarly literature produced by its faculty. This paper discusses both the motivation and the process for establishing a binding institutional policy that automatically grants a copyright license from each faculty member to permit deposit of his or her peer-reviewed scholarly articles in institutional repositories, from which the works become available for others to read and cite.

Practice links [Issue 33, April 2009]

Practice Links is a free e-publication for practitioners working in Irish social services, voluntary and nongovernmental sectors. Practice Links was created to enable practitioners to keep up-to-date with new publications, electronic resources and conference opportunities. Issue 33 features the Biennial child protection and welfare social work conference.

Practice Links [Issue 34, October 2009]

Practice Links is a free e-publication for practitioners working in Irish social services, voluntary and nongovernmental sectors. Practice Links was created to enable practitioners to keep up-to-date with new publications, electronic resources and conference opportunities. Issue 34 includes notifications of Barnardos training sessions and details regarding a domestic violence research project.

Practice links [Issue 35, December, 2009]

Practice Links is a free e-publication for practitioners working in Irish social services, voluntary and nongovernmental sectors. Practice Links was created to enable practitioners to keep up-to-date with new publications, electronic resources and conference opportunities. Issue 35 examines the work of Positive Behaviour Ireland and the new pre-school Curriculum framework; Aistear

Global fire emissions and the contribution of deforestation, savanna, forest, agricultural, and peat fires (1997-2009)

New burned area datasets and top-down constraints from atmospheric concentration measurements of pyrogenic gases have decreased the large uncertainty in fire emissions estimates. However, significant gaps remain in our understanding of the contribution of deforestation, savanna, forest, agricultural waste, and peat fires to total global fire emissions. Here we used a revised version of the Carnegie-Ames-Stanford-Approach (CASA) biogeochemical model and improved satellite-derived estimates of area burned, fire activity, and plant productivity to calculate fire emissions for the 1997-2009 period on a 0.5° spatial resolution with a monthly time step. For November 2000 onwards, estimates were based on burned area, active fire detections, and plant productivity from the MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor. For the partitioning we focused on the MODIS era. We used maps of burned area derived from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Visible and Infrared Scanner (VIRS) and Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) active fire data prior to MODIS (1997-2000) and estimates of plant productivity derived from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) observations during the same period. Average global fire carbon emissions according to this version 3 of the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED3) were 2.0 PgC year-1 with significant interannual variability during 1997-2001 (2.8 Pg Cyear-1 in 1998 and 1.6 PgC year-1 in 2001). Globally, emissions during 2002-2007 were rela-tively constant (around 2.1 Pg C year-1) before declining in 2008 (1.7 Pg Cyear-1) and 2009 (1.5 PgC year-1) partly due to lower deforestation fire emissions in South America and tropical Asia. On a regional basis, emissions were highly variable during 2002-2007 (e.g., boreal Asia, South America, and Indonesia), but these regional differences canceled out at a global level. During the MODIS era (2001-2009), most carbon emissions were from fires in grasslands and savannas (44%) with smaller contributions from tropical deforestation and degradation fires (20%), woodland fires (mostly confined to the tropics, 16%), forest fires (mostly in the extratropics, 15%), agricultural waste burning (3%), and tropical peat fires (3%). The contribution from agricultural waste fires was likely a lower bound because our approach for measuring burned area could not detect all of these relatively small fires. Total carbon emissions were on average 13% lower than in our previous (GFED2) work. For reduced trace gases such as CO and CH4, deforestation, degradation, and peat fires were more important contributors because of higher emissions of reduced trace gases per unit carbon combusted compared to savanna fires. Carbon emissions from tropical deforestation, degradation, and peatland fires were on average 0.5 PgC year-1. The carbon emissions from these fires may not be balanced by regrowth following fire. Our results provide the first global assessment of the contribution of different sources to total global fire emissions for the past decade, and supply the community with an improved 13-year fire emissions time series. © 2010 Author(s).

SELECTED VARIATIONS BY COMPOSERS IN GERMANY AND FRANCE

The Haward of Dictionary of Music (1983), defines variation as "a technique modifying a given musical idea." From the Baroque period on, the form and the techniques of variation were developed and enriched in Germany and France. Therefore, I presented the works of composers from these two nations. Even though there was a vast number of possibilities, I wanted to be scholastically fair and interesting in making my selections by choosing well-known pieces along with lesser-known ones. Haydn's well-known Variations in F minor consist of two sets of double variations which break into an improvisation fantasy. The first movement of Beethoven Sonata in A flat major, Op. 26, is a set of five variations on the composer's original theme. The variations are positioned in the first movement instead of Sonata-Allegro form. In 1861 Brahrns composed the Variations and Fugue, Op. 24, on the theme of Handel. Brahms displays a wealth of rhythmic, harmonic and textural contrasts in the variations. Chopin's E Major Variations without opus number are written on a Swiss influenced German folksong. Faure's Theme and Variations in C sharp minor, Op. 73, includes eleven variations. The work displays the composer's subtlety, grace and reticence. 12 Variationen iiber ein eigenes Thema were written by Alban Berg as a composition study with Schonberg. The Finale of Dutilleux's Piano Sonata, titled "Chorale with Variations", is written in an impressionistic style. A rich expressiveness is well blended in a classical form. In 1742, the remarkable Aria and thirty variations known as the Goldberg Variations were composed by J. S. Bach. The thirty Variations are unified by the bass line, which forms the foundation of the Aria. The pieces discussed above were presented in three recitals. Compact disc recordings of these recitals are available in the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland.

A price worth paying?: Women and work – choice, constraint or satisficing

Purpose – Are women held back or holding back? Do women choose their jobs/careers or are they structurally or normatively constrained? The purpose of this paper is to shed fresh light on these questions and contribute to an on-going debate that has essentially focused on the extent to which part-time work is women’s choice, the role of structural and organisational constraints and the role of men in excluding women. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses data from interviews with 80 working women – both full-time and part-time – performing diverse work roles in a range of organisations in the south east of England. Findings – It was found that many women do not make strategic job choices, rather they often ‘‘fall into’’ jobs that happen to be available to them. Some would not have aspired to their present jobs without male encouragement; many report incidents of male exclusion; and virtually all either know or suspect that they are paid less than comparable men. Those working reduced hours enjoy that facility, yet they are aware that reduced hours and senior roles are seen as incompatible. In short, they recognise both the positive and negative aspects of their jobs, whether they work full or part-time, whether they work in male-dominated or female-dominated occupations, and whatever their position in the organisational hierarchy. Accordingly, the paper argues that the concept of ‘‘satisficing’’, i.e. a decision which is good enough but not optimal, is a more appropriate way to view women’s working lives than are either choice or constraint theories. Originality/value – There is an ongoing, and often polarised, debate between those who maintain that women choose whether to give preference to work or home/family and others who maintain that women, far from being self-determining actors, are constrained structurally and normatively. Rather than supporting these choice or constraint theories, this paper argues that ‘‘satisficing’’ is a more appropriate and nuanced concept to explain women’s working lives.