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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (7 results)

  • Article
Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, Issue 21 (2016)
Although relations between China and Mongolia are good, with no outstanding territorial disputes, Mongolia continues to view its southern neighbor with considerable anxiety. Numerous paranoid narratives circulate, hinting at China’s alleged malevolent intentions, and many Mongols are convinced that China is intent on a takeover. This article argues that this anxiety is located in two particular cartographic gaps. The first is the misalignment between People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Republic of China (ROC) maps, namely the fact that Taiwanese maps include Mongolia within the boundaries of China. For the majority of Mongolian viewers who do not read Chinese, this constitutes a clear case of cartographic aggression. The second gap is found in cultural-historical maps of China that portray large swaths of northern Asia as regions formerly inhabited by Chinese. While neither map constitutes a political claim, the Chinese cultural imaginary each portrays posits Mongolia as “not quite foreign.” Rather than “cartographic aggression,” the term “cartographic embrace” may be a better designation here. Even if Chinese cartographic practices do not index intent, for countries like Mongolia—whose political existence is founded on separation from China—cultural “embrace” can be even more threatening. Keywords: Mongolia, cartography, anxiety, Sinophobia, mapping, individuation, paranoia, territorial disputes
    Cover page: On China's Cartographic Embrace: A View from Its Northern Rim
    • Article
    Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, Issue 21 (2016)
    While the term “cartographic anxieties” is metaphorically loaded, it has remained under-theorized and is used to refer to very different situations. A state can experience anxiety when it is subject to the “cartographic aggression” (de Blij 2012) of another. Anxiety can also be found in the gap between state representations and the imaginaries held by the citizens of that state, or between a dominant majority and an ethnic, religious, or political minority (Cons 2016). Further, it can have different temporal resonances in that the gap can index the nostalgic mourning for past territorial grandeur (Callahan 2010; Cartier 2013), evoke a programmatic future (Fortna 2002), or offer poetic and corporealized visions of the nation-state (Ramaswamy 2010). The five articles in this special issue explore various political and cultural reverberations of cartography, as well as the complex set of discursive practices in which it is embedded. The discussion framing these papers began as a panel at the 2016 American Association of Geographers’ annual meeting, which included four of the authors featured here (Akin, Billé, Roszko, and Saxer). The contributions focus on China and its neighbors from the perspective of different disciplines: anthropology (Billé, Roszko, Saxer), history (Akin), and history of art (Tsultemin). In addition to bringing a cohesive and coherent focus to the special issue, this geographic convergence is timely given China’s recent economic and political trajectory. In tracing and analyzing the cartographic tremors of a geopolitical formation in flux, the different articles offer an outline of the mechanics of “cartographic anxiety” and together contribute to a better understanding of the affective power of mapping.
      Cover page: Introduction to "Cartographic Anxieties"
      • Article
      Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, Issue 19 (2016)
        Cover page: A Soundtrack to Mongolian History
        • Thesis
        • Peer Reviewed
        UC Davis Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2023)

        With the increasing deterioration of the global climate, ushered in by fossil-fueled industrialization, a call to action is set forth to develop technologies that will transform our current manufacturing and energy landscapes into sustainable ones, where materials chemistry plays a central role. Among the biggest challenges of our time lies the realization of carbon neutral and negative emission technologies as ways to ameliorate the effects of global warming. From a materials’ perspective, this realization can be achieved by the design of efficient light absorbers that can harvest intermittent sunlight, through the development of higher capacity batteries wherein this collected energy can be stored, and by the conception of selective catalyst materials that can directly or indirectly utilize renewably-sourced energy inputs to enable the conversion of molecules, whose products can act as energy vectors or replace petroleum-derived commodities. Metal chalcogenides represent a material space with apt characteristics to tackle these problems owing to the wide range of properties that sulfides, selenides, and tellurides encompass.Chapter 1 provides a summary of the advantageous properties that metal chalcogenides present in the field of energy storage and conversion, with a focus on the fundamental principles that underpin them. Additionally, gaps in the current understanding of catalytic and sensing properties in these materials are introduced. Essential information related to important characterization techniques applied in this work is incorporated as well. Chapter 2 delves into the study of the structural and electronic changes induced by the intercalation of transition metals into the framework of Chevrel Phase chalcogenides (MxMo6T8, where M = transition metal, T = S, Se, Te) – a series of materials with promising applications as catalysts and battery electrodes, for which the connection between composition and function is still poorly understood. Using X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) techniques our study indicates that significant changes to the local structure of the clusters occurs upon intercalation, as evidenced by the decrease in the Mo6 trigonal antiprism anisotropy in sulfides and selenides, and its increase in tellurides. Furthermore, the charge transfer that occurs upon intercalation is dominated by the chalcogen ions, with the molybdenum atoms remaining largely redox inactive. Chapter 3 comprehends a thorough investigation into the structural, electronic and photophysical properties of a series of lanthanoid oxysulfides of formula Ln10S14O (Ln = La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm). Reflectance spectroscopy shows that these materials have band gaps in the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum, exhibiting n-type semiconductivity, with electrons as majority carriers, and striking long lifetimes, possibly indicating the presence of surface defects. Chapter 4 presents the first report of the high temperature reversible thermochromism of Ln10S14O. Color space analysis determines the temperature regions in which the most dramatic color transitions occur for each lanthanoid. In situ X-ray diffraction experiments provide a detailed look at the evolution of the structural parameters with temperature, and calorimetric measurements show the reversibility and susceptibility of these materials to their environments between 300 °C – 600 °C.

          Cover page: Understanding the Structure – Function Relationships in Metal (Oxy)Chalcogenides: Towards the Development of Materials for Targeted Applications in Energy Conversion and Sensing
          • Article
          • Peer Reviewed
          UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2019)
          The success of nonlinear optics relies largely on pulse-to-pulse consistency. In contrast, covariance-based techniques used in photoionization electron spectroscopy and mass spectrometry have shown that a wealth of information can be extracted from noise that is lost when averaging multiple measurements. Here, we apply covariance-based detection to nonlinear optical spectroscopy, and show that noise in a femtosecond laser is not necessarily a liability to be mitigated, but can act as a unique and powerful asset. As a proof of principle we apply this approach to the process of stimulated Raman scattering in α-quartz. Our results demonstrate how nonlinear processes in the sample can encode correlations between the spectral components of ultrashort pulses with uncorrelated stochastic fluctuations. This in turn provides richer information compared with the standard nonlinear optics techniques that are based on averages over many repetitions with well-behaved laser pulses. These proof-of-principle results suggest that covariance-based nonlinear spectroscopy will improve the applicability of fs nonlinear spectroscopy in wavelength ranges where stable, transform-limited pulses are not available, such as X-ray free-electron lasers which naturally have spectrally noisy pulses ideally suited for this approach.
            Cover page: Femtosecond covariance spectroscopyCreative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
            • Article
            • Peer Reviewed
            UC Santa Cruz Previously Published Works (2013)
            Ocean acidification has emerged over the last two decades as one of the largest threats to marine organisms and ecosystems. However, most research efforts on ocean acidification have so far neglected management and related policy issues to focus instead on understanding its ecological and biogeochemical implications. This shortfall is addressed here with a systematic, international and critical review of management and policy options. In particular, we investigate the assumption that fighting acidification is mainly, but not only, about reducing CO2 emissions, and explore the leeway that this emerging problem may open in old environmental issues. We review nine types of management responses, initially grouped under four categories: preventing ocean acidification; strengthening ecosystem resilience; adapting human activities; and repairing damages. Connecting and comparing options leads to classifying them, in a qualitative way, according to their potential and feasibility. While reducing CO2 emissions is confirmed as the key action that must be taken against acidification, some of the other options appear to have the potential to buy time, e.g. by relieving the pressure of other stressors, and help marine life face unavoidable acidification. Although the existing legal basis to take action shows few gaps, policy challenges are significant: tackling them will mean succeeding in various areas of environmental management where we failed to a large extent so far.
              Cover page: Taking Action Against Ocean Acidification: A Review of Management and Policy Options
              • Article
              • Peer Reviewed
              Molecular Foundry (2022)
              The electronic structure and local coordination of binary (Mo6T8) and ternary Chevrel Phases (MxMo6T8) are investigated for a range of metal intercalant and chalcogen compositions. We evaluate differences in the Mo L3-edge and K-edge X-ray absorption near edge structure across the suite of chalcogenides MxMo6T8 (M = Cu, Ni, x = 1-2, T = S, Se, Te), quantifying the effect of compositional and structural modification on electronic structure. Furthermore, we highlight the expansion, contraction, and anisotropy of Mo6 clusters within these Chevrel Phase frameworks through extended X-ray absorption fine structure analysis. Our results show that metal-to-cluster charge transfer upon intercalation is dominated by the chalcogen acceptors, evidenced by significant changes in their respective X-ray absorption spectra in comparison to relatively unaffected Mo cations. These results explain the effects of metal intercalation on the electronic and local structure of Chevrel Phases across various chalcogen compositions, and aid in rationalizing electron distribution within the structure.
                Creative Commons 'BY-NC' version 4.0 license
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