1,721,055 research outputs found
Quest: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research
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Who needs reasons when you've got heroin? This is the main question that a Scottish drug addict struggles with throughout Trainspotting. Based on the novel by Irvine Walsh, the 1996 British film Trainspotting captures the lives of a group of young heroin addicts during the late 1980s in Edinburgh, Scotland. In a pivotal scene of the movie, Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" plays in the background as protagonist Mark Renton slips peacefully into a heroin overdose shortly after escaping rehab. Renton returns to consciousness bluelipped and gasping for air in the ER after receiving a Naloxone injection. The pleasure depicted in the overdose scene juxtaposes the vile consequences of using heroin. I argue that the narratives within Trainspotting normalize extreme forms of pleasure and disgust through the portrayals of drug use and sex.161-72
Stabilization of 1T ' phase WTe2 by scalar relativistic effect
No full textAmong semiconducting hexagonal (1H), metallic octahedral (1T), and semimetallic distorted octahedral (1T') phases that group-VIB transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) may have, the thermodynamically stable structure is known to be the 1H phase. The exception is WTe2, for which it is 1T' phase. However, the origin of the stable 1T' phase WTe2 is unknown. Here, we study the electronic property of group-VIB TMDCs using first-principles calculations to find the origin of the 1T' phase of WTe2. We find that the scalar relativistic effect in W stabilizes the 1T' phase WTe2 against 1H-WTe2. The Fermi surface of the electron pocket of WTe2 is sensitively changed as the relativistic effect is turned on and off in W pseudopotentials. Calculated phonon dispersion exhibits drastic softening in the phonon mode at the M point, which corresponds to the nesting vector q(M) on the Fermi surface. We show that difference in occupation of s-and d-orbitals is a key parameter that determines the shape and size of the electron pocket, and thus the stable phase of group-VIB TMDCs between 1H or 1T' phases. Published by AIP Publishing.11Nsciescopu
Super low work function of alkali-metal-adsorbed transition metal dichalcogenides
No full textDiscovering the materials that have work functions less than 1 eV is essential for efficient thermionic energy converter (TEC). The lowest work function of materials reported so far is in a range of about 1 eV. Here, to design low work function materials, we perform first-principles calculations on selected materials of transition metal dichalcogenide as substrates and alkali metals as adsorbates. The work function of our selected materials has a dip ubiquitously independent of the true binding distances of the adsorbates and exhibits contrasting behavior between empty d-shell elements (K, Rb, and Cs) and the others (Li and Na). We show that the interaction of empty d-orbitals of alkali metals and lone pair electrons of chalcogen is a key to the behavior of the work function. From calculated key parameters that determine the work function, we find that, regardless of the amount of charge transfer, K on WTe2 induces the largest surface dipole moment, which consequently makes the surface work function of as small as 0.8 eV, the smallest reported to date, and that the work function is lowered further to 0.7 eV by lattice strains. We demonstrate that the thermal efficiency of TEC using the low work function material exceeds that of thermoelectric materials with figure of merit of 5-10 in temperature range of 880-1200 K.111Nsciescopu
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Deep Reinforcement Learning in Continuous Action Spaces: a Case Study in the Game of Simulated Curling
No full textMany real-world applications of reinforcement learning require an agent to select optimal actions from continuous spaces. Recently, deep neural networks have successfully been applied to games with discrete actions spaces. However, deep neural networks for discrete actions are not suitable for devising strategies for games where a very small change in an action can dramatically affect the outcome. In this paper, we present a new selfplay reinforcement learning framework which equips a continuous search algorithm which enables to search in continuous action spaces with a kernel regression method. Without any handcrafted features, our network is trained by supervised learning followed by self-play reinforcement learning with a high-fidelity simulator for the Olympic sport of curling. The program trained under our framework outperforms existing programs equipped with several hand-crafted features and won an international digital curling competition
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