פרסומים

Halide perovskite semiconductors are poised to revitalize the field of ionizing radiation detection as they have done to solar photovoltaics. We show that all-inorganic perovskite CsPbBr₃ devices resolve ¹³⁷Cs 662-keV γ-rays with 1.4% energy resolution, as well as other X- and γ-rays with energies ranging from tens of keV to over 1 MeV in ambipolar sensing and unipolar hole-only sensing modes with crystal volumes of 6.65 mm³ and 297 mm³, respectively. We report the scale-up of CsPbBr₃ ingots to up to 1.5 inches in diameter with an excellent hole mobility–lifetime product of 8 × 10⁻³ cm² V⁻¹ and a long hole lifetime of up to 296 μs. CsPbBr₃ detectors demonstrate a wide temperature region from ~2 °C to ~70 °C for stable operation. Detectors protected with suitable encapsulants show a uniform response for over 18 months. Consequently, we identify perovskite CsPbBr₃ semiconductor as an exceptional candidate for new-generation high-energy γ-ray detection.

In Heshel’s Kingdom, Dan Jacobson explores the impact of the British Empire’s expansion on Lithuanian Jewry. His memoir constructs a “mattering map” of the experience of his family, after the death of his grandfather, Heshel. Like more than thirty thousand other Jews, the bereaved family moved to a welcoming South Africa.

            Heshel’s Kingdom is a split/screen account, alternating between Kimberley, South Africa, and Varniai, Lithuania. Their juxtaposition leads Dan Jacobson to chart the experiences of two Jewish communities, and construct a narrative map of familial and communal life. This split/screen account is not symmetrical. For the South Africa narrative, the narrator relies on familial and personal history. But for Lithuania he must tease out information from absence, seeking bits and remnants of the murdered Lithuanian Jewish community in order to find a purchase on which to reconstruct life in his grandfather’s Varniai, a small, Nazi-destroyed Lithuanian town.

            The narrator interrogates the images of the two communities: Jacobson addresses the jacket-cover photograph of grandfather Heshel as if it might speak to him, and thus help him discover details of the life of his Lithuanian grandfather, whom he never knew. Asking questions, Jacobson invites the reader to engage with him as if they were looking together at a family-album: familial-networks begin to emerge, and kinship relationships elaborate the family’s life in South Africa; once activated the narrator can tease it into continuing the search for family experience. But the questions about Lithuania do not elicit much in the way of answers, for that Jewish community was destroyed by the Nazis and their Lithuanian helpers. Following the narrator’s lead, the reader’s imagination works to construct a comparative account both of the Jewish immigration to South Africa and the Jewish catastrophe in Lithuania, defining a “mattering map” of modern Jewish experience.

Murray Baumgarten is Research Professor of Literature and Distinguished Emeritus Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Founding Director of the Dickens Project of the University of California, and Emeritus Editor of Judaism. He is the author of Carlyle and His Era (1975), Carlyle: Books & Margins (1980), City Scriptures: Modern Jewish Writing (1982), and numerous articles on nineteenth-century English literature as well as on American-Jewish writers. With Barbara Gottfried he has co-authored Understanding Philip Roth (1990). He has served as Editor in Chief of the California Strouse Carlyle Edition and has co-edited Homes and Homelessness in the Victorian Imagination (1999, with H. M. Daleski) and Jewish Culture and the Hispanic World:  Essays in Memory of Joseph H. Silverman (2001, with Samuel G. Armistead, Mishael M. Caspi, and Juan de la Cuesta). He is a Founding Board Member of the Venice Center for International Jewish Studies.

(Updated on March 20, 2016)

Researchers are increasingly using online audiences to conduct studies and surveys, but there is still considerable uncertainty about the quality of the available audience options. We first engage with the research community to explore which attributes of data quality are most critical to researchers: comprehension, attention, honesty, and reliability. We then explore differences in these data quality aspects between online platforms (where participants choose tasks) and online panels (where respondents are assigned surveys). We find that most audiences suffer concerning deficits, especially in comprehension and attention, except for Prolific, which appears superior to the other options on these and other parameters. The disappointing results from the other platforms and panels should alarm researchers who may be aggregating over serious noise in the quality of their results. Additionally, we provide a framework for ongoing investigation into the ever-changing nature of what aspects of data quality are important to researchers, and how the evolving set of audiences performs on these key aspects.