Lagrangian Cobordisms via Generating Families: Constructions and Geography

Embedded Lagrangian cobordisms between Legendrian submanifolds are produced from isotopy, spinning, and handle attachment constructions that employ the technique of generating families. Moreover, any Legendrian with a generating family has an immersed Lagrangian filling with a compatible generating family. These constructions are applied in several directions, in particular to a non-classical geography question: any graded group satisfying a duality condition can be realized as the generating family homology of a connected Legendrian submanifold in R^{2n+1} or in the 1-jet space of any compact n-manifold with n at least 2.Comment: 34 pages, 11 figures. v2: corrected a referenc

Two-dimensional Jeff{J}_{\rm eff} = 1/2 antiferromagnetic insulator unraveled from interlayer exchange coupling in artificial perovskite iridate superlattices

We report an experimental investigation of the two-dimensional ${J}_{\rm eff}$ = 1/2 antiferromagnetic Mott insulator by varying the interlayer exchange coupling in [(SrIrO$_3$)$_1$, (SrTiO$_3$)$_m$] ($m$ = 1, 2 and 3) superlattices. Although all samples exhibited an insulating ground state with long-range magnetic order, temperature-dependent resistivity measurements showed a stronger insulating behavior in the $m$ = 2 and $m$ = 3 samples than the $m$ = 1 sample which displayed a clear kink at the magnetic transition. This difference indicates that the blocking effect of the excessive SrTiO$_3$ layer enhances the effective electron-electron correlation and strengthens the Mott phase. The significant reduction of the Neel temperature from 150 K for $m$ = 1 to 40 K for $m$ = 2 demonstrates that the long-range order stability in the former is boosted by a substantial interlayer exchange coupling. Resonant x-ray magnetic scattering revealed that the interlayer exchange coupling has a switchable sign, depending on the SrTiO$_3$ layer number $m$, for maintaining canting-induced weak ferromagnetism. The nearly unaltered transition temperature between the $m$ = 2 and the $m$ = 3 demonstrated that we have realized a two-dimensional antiferromagnet at finite temperatures with diminishing interlayer exchange coupling.Comment: 4 figure

Resilience: part of the problem or part of the solution?

The article gives a summary of where notions of resilience in health first came from, how discussion of resilience has proliferated across widely different sectors, how it has been taken up by individualising tendencies in culture and finally how it is the perfect neoliberal tool. I want to also argue that if you understand something of the political and policy context of today’s healthcare it can allow you to avoid taking on personal responsibility for situations that have been brought about by others – by politicians and policy makers for example. This awareness can give you and your colleagues what I will call ‘critical resilience’

Resonant Raman scattering off neutral quantum dots

Resonant inelastic (Raman) light scattering off neutral GaAs quantum dots which contain a mean number, N=42, of electron-hole pairs is computed. We find Raman amplitudes corresponding to strongly collective final states (charge-density excitations) of similar magnitude as the amplitudes related to weakly collective or single-particle excitations. As a function of the incident laser frequency or the magnetic field, they are rapidly varying amplitudes. It is argued that strong Raman peaks should come out in the spin-density channels, not related to valence-band mixing effects in the intermediate states.Comment: Accepted in Physical Review

Who wants a radical nursing curriculum?

At the time when the dialogue that forms the substance of this chapter took place, the early 2020s, a pandemic had forced many to carry out their activities by means of distant computer links rather than in person on either side of a table, real or metaphorical. Dialogues such as this relied upon not always reliable devices and systems—microphones, network connections and software. In addition, human factors often injected an element of unpredictability into encounters and discussion, prominent among these the tendency of some to forget to ‘unmute’ their microphone. Our interlocutors revisit some basic and deceptively simple questions about nurses, nursing work, the training and education of nurses, and the work of those who educate and research nurses. Underlying their discussion are the twin concepts of values and complexity. Their main focus was on nurse education in the United Kingdom but occasionally they looked to the education of nurses in other countries and regions for comparison. Their intention, or to be more accurate, the intention of one of the interlocutors, was that the asking and answering of a series of questions might stimulate critical thinking and draw out underlying presuppositions regarding this topic. How far this aim was achieved is a matter for the reader to decide. The subheadings were introduced in an attempt to give structure to a sometimes wide-ranging discussion

Autonomy and caring: towards a Marxist understanding of nursing work

The aim of this paper is to re‐examine nursing work from a Marxist perspective by means of a critique of two key concepts within nursing: autonomy and caring. Although Marx wrote over 150 years ago, many see continuing relevance to his theories. His concepts of capital, ideology and class antagonism are employed in this paper. Nursing's historical insertion into the developing hospital system is seen in terms of a loss of autonomy covered over by the development of cults of loyalty toward those institutions, while the concept of emotional labour is used to re‐examine nursing's high valuing of “caring” and to understand it as potentially exploitative of nurses. Raising awareness of this alternative way of understanding nursing work can become a first step toward change

Empathy, caring and compassion: toward a Freudian critique of nursing work

The aim of this paper is to summarise key psychoanalytic concepts first developed by Sigmund Freud and apply them to a critical exploration of three terms that are central to nursing’s self-image—empathy, caring and compassion. Looking to Menzies-Lyth’s work I suggest that the nurse’s strong identification as carer can be understood as a fantasy of being the one who is cared for; critiques by Freud and others of empathy point to the possibility of it being, in reality, a form of projective identification; reading Lacan and Žižek I propose that repeated research into caring and repeated complaint about barriers to caring can be understood as manifestations of the death drive first posited by Freud. I conclude that psychoanalytic insights suggest that caring roles can raise profoundly ambivalent issues for those who care but they can also point the way to freedom from painful and self-destructive symptoms inherent in such work

Guest editorial: What's wrong with resilience

Editoria