Theoretical Optimization of Metal Para-Normal Silicon Schottky-Barrier Solar-Cell

The theoretical optimization of the design parametersN A ,N D andW P has been done for efficient operation of Au-p-n Si solar cell including thermionic field emission, dependence of lifetime and mobility on impurity concentrations, dependence of absorption coefficient on wavelength, variation of barrier height and hence the optimum thickness ofp region with illumination. The optimized design parametersN D =5×1020 m−3,N A =3×1024 m−3 andW P =11.8 nm yield efficiencyη=17.1% (AM0) andη=19.6% (AM1). These are reduced to 14.9% and 17.1% respectively if the metal layer series resistance and transmittance with ZnS antireflection coating are included. A practical value ofW P =97.0 nm gives an efficiency of 12.2% (AM1).

Theoretical-Studies on the Modes of Binding of Some of the Beta-Glycosidically Linked Glucobioses to Concanavalin-A

The probable modes of binding for methyl-α-d-sophoroside, methyl-β-d-sophoroside, laminariboise and cellobiose to concanavalin A have been determined using theoretical methods. Methyl-d-sophorosides can bind to concanavalin A in two modes, i.e. by placing their reducing as well as non-reducing sugar units in the carbohydrate specific binding site, whereas laminaribiose and cellobiose can reach the binding site only with their non-reducing glucose units. However, the probability for methyl-α-d-sophoroside to bind to concanavalin A with its reducing sugar residue as the occupant of the binding site is much higher than it is with its non-reducing sugar residue as the occupant of the sugar binding site. A few of the probable conformers of methyl-β-d-sophoroside can bind to concanavalin A with either the reducing or non-reducing glucose unit. Higher energy conformers of cellobiose or laminaribiose can reach the binding site with their non-reducing residues alone. The relative differences in the binding affinities of these disaccharides are mainly due to the differences in the availability of proper conformers which can reach the binding site and to non-covalent interactions between the sugar and the protein. This study also suggests that though the sugar binding site of concanavalin A accommodates a single sugar residue, the residue outwards from the binding site also interacts with concanavalin A, indicating the existence of extended concanavalin A carbohydrate interactions.

Discussion of “Generalized estimating equations: Notes on the choice of the working correlation matrix”

Objective To discuss generalized estimating equations as an extension of generalized linear models by commenting on the paper of Ziegler and Vens "Generalized Estimating Equations. Notes on the Choice of the Working Correlation Matrix". Methods Inviting an international group of experts to comment on this paper. Results Several perspectives have been taken by the discussants. Econometricians have established parallels to the generalized method of moments (GMM). Statisticians discussed model assumptions and the aspect of missing data Applied statisticians; commented on practical aspects in data analysis. Conclusions In general, careful modeling correlation is encouraged when considering estimation efficiency and other implications, and a comparison of choosing instruments in GMM and generalized estimating equations, (GEE) would be worthwhile. Some theoretical drawbacks of GEE need to be further addressed and require careful analysis of data This particularly applies to the situation when data are missing at random.

Empire, Tourism, Nostalgia: Joseph Brodsky and Travel Writing

Joseph Brodsky, one of the most influential Russian intellectuals of the late Soviet period, was born in Leningrad in 1940, emigrated to the United States in 1972, received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987, and died in New York City in 1996. Brodsky was one of the leading public figures of Soviet emigration in the Cold War period, and his role as a model for the constructing of Russian cultural identities in the last years of the Soviet Union was, and still is, extremely important. One of Joseph Brodsky’s great contributions to Russian culture of the latter half of the twentieth century is the wide geographical scope of his poetic and prose works. Brodsky was not a travel writer, but he was a traveling writer who wrote a considerable number of poems and essays which relate to his trips and travels in the Soviet empire and outside it. Travel writing offered for Brodsky a discursive space for negotiating his own transculturation, while it also offered him a discursive space for making powerful statements about displacement, culture, history and geography, time and space—all major themes of his poetry. In this study of Joseph Brodsky’s travel writing I focus on his travel texts in poetry and prose, which relate to his post-1972 trips to Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, and Venice. Questions of empire, tourism, and nostalgia are foregrounded in one way or another in Brodsky’s travel writing performed in emigration. I explore these concepts through the study of tropes, strategies of identity construction, and the politics of representation. The theoretical premises of my work draw on the literary and cultural criticism which has evolved around the study of travel and travel writing in recent years. These approaches have gained much from the scholarly experience provided by postcolonial critique. Shifting the focus away from the concept of exile, the traditional framework for scholarly discussions of Brodsky’s works, I propose to review Brodsky’s travel poetry and prose as a response not only to his exilic condition but to the postmodern and postcolonial landscape, which initially shaped the writing of these texts. Discussing Brodsky’s travel writing in this context offers previously unexplored perspectives for analyzing the geopolitical, philosophical, and linguistic premises of his poetic imagination. By situating Brodsky’s travel writing in the geopolitical landscape of postcolonial postmodernity, I attempt to show how Brodsky’s engagement with his contemporary cultural practices in the West was incorporated into his Russian-language travel poetry and prose and how this engagement thus contributed to these texts’ status as exceptional and unique literary events within late Soviet Russian cultural practices.

Conformational analysis of small disulfide loops. Spectroscopic and theoretical studies on a synthetic cyclic tetrapeptide containing cystine

The conformational analysis of the synthetic peptide Boc-Cys-Pro-Val-Cys-NHMe has been carried out, as a model for small disulfide loops, in biologically active polypeptides. 'H NMR studies (270 MHz) establish that the Val(3) and Cys(4) NH groups are solvent shielded, while 13C studies establish an all-trans peptide backbone. Circular dichroism and Raman spectroscopy provide evidence for a right-handed twist of the disulfide bond. Analysis of the vicinal (JaB)c oupling constants for the two Cys residues establishes that XI - *60° for Cys(4), while some flexibility is suggested at Cys( 1). Conformational energy calculations, imposing intramolecular hydrogen bonding constraints, favor a P-turn (type I) structure with Pro(2)-Va1(3) as the corner residues. Theoretical and spectroscopic results are consistent with the presence of a transannular 4 - 1 hydrogen bond between Cys( 1) CO and Cys(4) NH groups, with the Val NH being sterically shielded from the solvent environment.

Análisis de la preposición hacia y establecimiento de sus equivalentes en finés

Title of the Master's thesis: Análisis de la preposición hacia y establecimiento de sus equivalentes en finés (trans. Analysis of the Spanish preposition hacia and the finding of its equivalents in Finnish) Abstracts: The aim of this Master thesis is to provide a detailed analysis of the Spanish preposition hacia from a cognitive perspective and to establish its equivalents in Finnish language. In this sense, my purpose is to demonstrate the suitability of both cognitive perspectives and Contrastive Linguistics for semantic analysis. This thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter includes a presentation and a critical review of the monolingual lexical processing and semantic analysis of the Spanish preposition hacia in major reference works. Through this chapter it is possible to see both the inadequacies and omissions that are present in all the given definitions. In this sense, this chapter shows that these problems are not but the upper stage of an ontological (and therefore methodological) problem in the treatment of prepositions. The second chapter covers the presentation of the methodological and theoretical perspective adopted for this thesis for the monolingual analysis and definition of the Spanish preposition hacia, following mainly the guidelines established by G. Lakoff (1987) and R. Langacker (2008) in his Cognitive grammar. Taken together, and within the same paradigm, recent analytical and methodological contributions are discussed critically for the treatment of polysemy in language (cf. Tyler ja Evans 2003). In the third chapter, and in accordance with the requirements regarding the use of empirical data from corpora, is my aim to set out a monolingual original analysis of the Spanish preposition hacia in observance of the principles and the methodology spelled out in the second chapter. The main objective of this chapter is to build a full fledged semantic representation of the polysemy of this preposition in order to understand and articulate its meanings with Finnish language (and other possible languages). The fourth chapter, in accordance with the results of chapter 3, examines and describes and establishes the corresponding equivalents in Finnish for this preposition. The results obtained in this chapter are also contrasted with the current bilingual lexicographical definitions found in the most important dictionaries and grammars. Finally, in the fifth chapter of this thesis, the results of this work are discussed critically. In this way, some observations are given regarding both the ontological and theoretical assumptions as well regarding the methodological perspective adopted. I also present some notes for the construction of a general methodology for the semantic analysis of Spanish prepositions to be carried out in further investigations. El objetivo de este trabajo, que caracterizamos como una tarea de carácter comparativo-analítico, es brindar un análisis detallado de la preposición castellana hacia desde una perspectiva cognitiva en tanto y a través del establecimiento de sus equivalentes en finés. Se procura, de esta forma, demostrar la adecuación de una perspectiva cognitiva tanto para el examen como para el establecimiento y articulación de la serie de equivalentes que una partícula, en nuestro caso una preposición, encuentra en otra lengua. De esta forma, y frente a definiciones canónicas que advierten sobre la imposibilidad de una caracterización acabada del conjunto de usos de una preposición, se observa como posible, a través de la aplicación de una metodología teórica-analítica adecuada, la construcción de una definición viable tanto en un nivel jerárquico como descriptivo. La presente tesis se encuentra dividida en cinco capítulos. El primer capítulo comprende una exposición y revisión critica del tratamiento monolingüe lexicográfico y analítico que la preposición hacia ha recibido en las principales obras de referencia, donde se observa que las inadecuaciones y omisiones presentes en la totalidad de las definiciones analizadas representan tan sólo el estadio superior de una problemática de carácter ontológico y, por tanto, metodológico, en el tratamiento de las preposiciones. El capítulo segundo comprende la presentación de la perspectiva teórica metodológica adoptada en esta tesis para el análisis y definición monolingüe de la preposición hacia, teniendo por líneas directrices las propuestas realizadas por G. Lakoff , así como a los fundamentos establecidos por R. Langacker en su propuesta cognitiva para una nueva gramática. En forma conjunta y complementaria, y dentro del mismo paradigma, empleamos, discutimos críticamente y desarrollamos diferentes aportes analítico-metodológicos para el tratamiento de la polisemia en unidades lingüísticas locativas. En el capítulo tercero, y en acuerdo con las exigencias respecto a la utilización de datos empíricos obtenidos a partir de corpus textuales, se expone un análisis original monolingüe de la preposición hacia en observancia de los principios y la metodología explicitada en el capítulo segundo, teniendo por principal objetivo la construcción de una representación semántica de la polisemia de la preposición que comprenda y articule los sentidos prototípicos para ésta especificados. El capítulo cuarto, y en acuerdo con los resultados de nuestro análisis monolingual de la preposición, se examinan, describen y establecen los equivalentes correspondientes en finés para hacia; asimismo, se contrastan en este capítulo los resultados obtenidos con las definiciones lexicográficas bilingües vigentes. Se recogen en el último y quinto capítulo de esta tesis algunas observaciones tanto respecto a los postulados ontológicos y teórico-metodológicos de la perspectiva adoptada, así como algunas notas para la construcción de una metodología general para el análisis semántico preposicional.

Theoretical evidence and chemical origin of the magnetism-dependent electrostructural coupling in La2NiMnO6

Using first-principles density-functional calculations, we determine and analyze the Born effective charges Z(*) that describe the coupling between electric field and atomic displacements for ferromagnetic double-perovskite compound, La2NiMnO6. We find that th Born effective charge matrix of Ni in La2NiMnO6, has an anomalously large antisymmetric component, whose magnitude reduces substantially upon change in the magnetic ordering between Ni and Mn, showing it to be a magnetism-dependent electrostructural coupling. We use a local picture of the electronic structure obtained with Wannier functions, along with its band-by-band decomposition to determine its electronic origin.

The introduction of an Inter-professional learning unit: staff and student perspectives

Background The School of Clinical Sciences comprises a number of health disciplines including podiatry, paramedic science, pharmacy, medical imaging and radiation therapy. A new inter-professional unit was introduced in 2014, which covered key introductory learnings applicable for future health practitioners. This study examined teaching staff and student perspectives about their experience with the new unit for first year students. Methods Qualitative interviews with teaching staff (n=9) and focus group interviews with students (5 groups which ranged in size from 4-30) were conducted. Extensive notes were taken during the interviews Issues emerging from the interviews were identified and organised according to themes and subthemes. Results Four major themes were identified namely: Something new; To be or not to be that is the question; Advantages of the new unit; and Areas for improvement. Previous staff experience with inter-professional learning (IPL) had been ad-hoc, whereas the new unit brought together several disciplines in a planned and deliberate way. There was strong philosophical agreement about the value of IPL but some debate about the extent to which the unit provided IPL experience. The unit was seen as assisting students’ social and academic adjustment to university and provided opportunity for professional socialisation, exposure to macro and micro aspects of the Australian health care system and various types of communication. For podiatry students it was their first opportunity to formally meet and work with other podiatry students and moved their identity from ‘university student’ to ‘podiatry student’. Other positives included providing the opportunity for staff and students to interact at an early stage with the perceived benefit of reducing attrition. Areas for unit improvement included institutional arrangements, unit administration aspects and assessment. Conclusion The unit was seen as beneficial by staff and students however, students were more polarised in their views than staff. There was a tension between feeling apart of and learning about one's own profession and feeling apart of and learning about the roles of other health professionals in relation to patient care and the health care system.

Theoretical description of time-resolved pump/probe photoemission in TaS2: a single-band DFT+DMFT(NRG) study within the quasiequilibrium approximation

In this work, we theoretically examine recent pump/probe photoemission experiments on the strongly correlated charge-density-wave insulator TaS2.We describe the general nonequilibrium many-body formulation of time-resolved photoemission in the sudden approximation, and then solve the problem using dynamical mean-field theory with the numerical renormalization group and a bare density of states calculated from density functional theory including the charge-density-wave distortion of the ion cores and spin-orbit coupling. We find a number of interesting results: (i) the bare band structure actually has more dispersion in the perpendicular direction than in the two-dimensional planes; (ii) the DMFT approach can produce upper and lower Hubbard bands that resemble those in the experiment, but the upper bands will overlap in energy with other higher energy bands; (iii) the effect of the finite width of the probe pulse is minimal on the shape of the photoemission spectra; and (iv) the quasiequilibrium approximation does not fully describe the behavior in this system.

Australia’s first Allied Health Prescribing Program - exploring participants' perspectives on the study program's learning objectives

BACKGROUND The Queensland University of Technology in collaboration with Queensland Health pioneered development of the Allied Health Prescribing Training Program to assist allied health professionals (AHPs) to competently prescribe medicines within their scope of practice. The study program consisted of two modules: Introduction to Clinical Therapeutics for Prescribers and Prescribing and Quality Use of Medicines. METHODS Pre- and post- surveys were developed for both modules. Key themes explored were understanding and confidence in selecting therapeutic choices for patients. For module 2 the learning objectives for safe and effective prescribing were investigated. Data were collected from participants in weeks one and thirteen of the modules via online surveys. RESULTS In the pre-module survey for the first module, participants had a limited degree of understanding and confidence regarding safe and effective use of medicines and appropriate therapeutic choices for managing patients, particularly for complex patients. This improved significantly in the post-module survey. In the pre-module survey for module 2, participants had a moderate degree of understanding and confidence regarding various prescribing learning objectives (including safe and effective prescribing, professional, legal and ethical aspects, communicating medication orders, prescribing safely in their select areas of practice, prescribing safely for complex patients in their area of practice). This increased significantly in the post-module survey. DISCUSSION This training program was implemented to develop a framework of knowledge and skills for AHPs to undertake a prescribing role. The program delivered an increase in participants’ knowledge in the key prescribing areas; and increased participants’ confidence in prescribing safely for patients and for complex patients in their select practice areas. An important aspect of this program was inclusion of prescribing–related activities under supervision of a designated medical practitioner. In conclusion, this educational program for Queensland Health AHP prescribers was successfully developed and is in the final stages of delivery.

New Perspectives on the Roman Coinage on the Eastern Limes in the Late Republican and Roman Imperial Period

The Ph.D. thesis discusses the monetary development in Roman Syria and Judaea in the Late Republican and the Early Imperial Period, from a numismatic, archaeological and historical point of view. In effect, the work focuses on the 1st century B.C. to the 1st century A.D., that is, the assumed time of introduction of Roman denarii to the region. The work benefits from the silver coin hoards of Khirbet Qumran recently published by the author. Though discovered as early as 1955 at Qumran, where the famous Dead Sea Scrolls had been found prior to that in 1947, most hoards remained unpublished until 2007. A second important source utilized is the so-called Tax Law from Palmyra in Syria. Its significance lies in the fact that Palmyra used to be one of the most important cities on the Silk Road, along which luxury goods were transported into the Roman Empire and Rome itself. During the research conducted, studies of the provincial coinage of Judaea (A.D. 6-66) shed new light on the authority of the Roman governors in economic and monetary matters in eastern Mediterranean regions. Furthermore, a new suggestion as to the length of the mandate period of Pontius Pilate is made. The extent of Emperor Augustus monetary reforms as well as the military history of Judaea are discussed in the light of new analytical studies, which show that the production of Roman base metal coins appears to have been a highly controlled process, contrary to popular opinion. Statistical calculations related to the coin alloy revealed striking similarities with Roman and other local metalwork found in Israel; a fact previously unknown. Results indicate that both Roman and local metalwork consisted of outstandingly systematized practises and may have exploited the same metal sources. Information: Kenneth Lönnqvist (*25.7.1962) has studied at the University of Helsinki since 1981. Furthermore, Lönnqvist has lived in the Mediterranean countries and the Near East, and made research there at various scientific institutions and universities for ca. 7 years. Contact and sales of thesis: kenneth.lonnqvist@helsinki.fi

Children’s perspectives of play and learning for educational practice

Play as a learning practice increasingly is under challenge as a valued component of early childhood education. Views held in parallel include confirmation of the place of play in early childhood education and, at the same time, a denigration of the role of play in favor for more teacher-structured and formal activities. As a consequence, pedagogical approaches towards play, the curriculum activities that constitute play, and the appropriateness of play in educational settings, have come under scrutiny in recent years. In this context, this study investigates children’s perspectives of play and how they understand the role of play and learning in their everyday activities. This article reports on an Australian study where teacher-researchers investigated child-led insights into what counts as play in their everyday classroom activities. Children (aged 3–4 years) described play as an activity that involved their active participation in “doing” something, being with peers, and having agency and ownership of ideas. Children did not always characterize their activities as “play”, and not all activities in the preschool program were described as play. The article highlights that play and learning are complex concepts that may be easily dismissed as separate, when rather they are deeply intertwined. The findings of this study generate opportunities for educators and academics to consider what counts as “play” for children, and to prompt further consideration of the role of play as an antidote to adult centric views of play.

Luce Irigaray's Philosophy of Feminine Being : Body, Desire and Wisdom

Luce Irigaray is a Belgian-born philosopher, psychoanalyst and linguist. Irigaray s concept of woman is crucial for understanding her own work but also for examining and developing the theoretical and methodological basis of feminist theory. This thesis argues that, ultimately, Irigaray s exploration of woman s being challenges our traditional notion of philosophy as a neutral discourse and the traditional notion of ourselves as philosophizing persons or human beings. However, despite its crucial role, Irigaray s idea of woman still lacks a comprehensive explication. This is because the discourse of sexual difference is blurred by the ideas of essentialism and biologism. --- Irigaray s concept of woman has been interpreted and criticized from the perspectives of metaphysical essentialism, strategic essentialism, realist essentialism and deconstructionism. This thesis argues that a reinterpretation is necessary to account for Irigaray s claims about the the traditional woman , mimesis, the specificity of the feminine body, feminine expression and sexual difference. Moreover, any reading should account for the differences between women and avoid giving a prescriptive function to the essence of woman. --- My thesis develops a new interpretation of Irigaray s concept of woman on the basis of the phenomenology of the body. It argues that Irigaray s discourse on woman can and must be understood by an idea of existential style. Existential style is embodied, affective and spiritual and it is constituted in relation to oneself, to others and to the world. It is temporal, it evolves and changes but preserves its open unity in its transformations. Stylistic unities, such as femininity or philosophy, are constituted in and by the singulars. -- This study discusses and analyses feminine existential style as a central theme and topic of Irigaray s works and shows how her work operates as a primary and paradigmatic example of the feminine style. These tasks are performed by studying the mimetic positions available for women and by explicating the phenomenological background of Irigaray s conceptions of the philosophical method, and the lived, expressive and affective body. The critical occupation and transformation of these mimetic positions, the inquiry into the first-person pre-discursive experience, and the cultivation of feminine expressivity open up the possibility of becoming a woman writer, a woman lover and a woman philosopher. The appearance of these new feminine figures is a precondition for the realization of sexual difference. So Irigaray opens up the possibility of sexual difference by instituting and constituting a feminine subject of love and wisdom, and by problematizing the idea of a neutral and absolute subject.

Constructive Perspectives on Inductive Logic

Constructive (intuitionist, anti-realist) semantics has thus far been lacking an adequate concept of truth in infinity concerning factual (i.e., empirical, non-mathematical) sentences. One consequence of this problem is the difficulty of incorporating inductive reasoning in constructive semantics. It is not possible to formulate a notion for probable truth in infinity if there is no adequate notion of what truth in infinity is. One needs a notion of a constructive possible world based on sensory experience. Moreover, a constructive probability measure must be defined over these constructively possible empirical worlds. This study defines a particular kind of approach to the concept of truth in infinity for Rudolf Carnap's inductive logic. The new approach is based on truth in the consecutive finite domains of individuals. This concept will be given a constructive interpretation. What can be verifiably said about an empirical statement with respect to this concept of truth, will be explained, for which purpose a constructive notion of epistemic probability will be introduced. The aim of this study is also to improve Carnap's inductive logic. The study addresses the problem of justifying the use of an "inductivist" method in Carnap's lambda-continuum. A correction rule for adjusting the inductive method itself in the course of obtaining evidence will be introduced. Together with the constructive interpretation of probability, the correction rule yields positive prior probabilities for universal generalizations in infinite domains.