#university of amsterdam

[materialsscienceandengineering]

New method flips the script on topological physics

The branch of mathematics known as topology has become a cornerstone of modern physics thanks to the remarkable—and above all reliable—properties it can impart to a material or system. Unfortunately, identifying topological systems, or even designing new ones, is generally a tedious process that requires exactly matching the physical system to a mathematical model. Researchers at the University of Amsterdam and the École Normale Supérieure of Lyon have demonstrated a model-free method for identifying topology, enabling the discovery of new topological materials using a purely experimental approach. The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Topology encompasses the properties of a system that cannot be changed by any "smooth deformation." As you might be able to tell from this rather formal and abstract description, topology began its life as a branch of mathematics. However, over the last few decades physicists have demonstrated that the mathematics underlying topology can have very real consequences. Topological effects can be found in a wide range of physical systems, from individual electrons to large-scale ocean currents.

Read more.

#Materials Science #Science #Topology #Physics #University of Amsterdam

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Physics can help us understand how the ancient Egyptians built the great pyramids of Giza, as well as how they interact with electromagnetic waves.

One of them is the wet sand technique.

This technique involves wetting the sand to reduce the friction and the effort required to drag heavy blocks of stone on sleds.

A team of physicists from the University of Amsterdam demonstrated this technique in 2014, using a simple experiment and numerical simulations.

They showed that wetting the sand to just the right degree can reduce the required pulling force by up to 50%.

This technique may have been used by the ancient Egyptians to transport the blocks from the Nile port to the pyramid site.

Another aspect of physics that can reveal some mysteries of the pyramids is the electromagnetic response.

This refers to how the pyramids interact with radio waves of different frequencies and wavelengths.

An international research group applied methods of theoretical physics to investigate this phenomenon in 2018.

They used numerical modeling and analytical methods to calculate the electromagnetic field distribution inside and around the Great Pyramid of Giza.

They found that under resonance conditions, meaning when the wavelength of the radio waves matches the size of the pyramid, the pyramid can concentrate electromagnetic energy in its internal chambers and under its base.

This effect may have some applications for designing nanoparticles that can manipulate light at the nanoscale.

#Ancient Egypt #pyramids #wet sand technique #University of Amsterdam #Ancient Egyptians #theoretical physics #electromagnetic field #Great Pyramids of Giza #electromagnetic waves #Nile

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

Jewish students at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and VU University Amsterdam (VU) have voiced their concerns regarding their safety on campus.

Students have reported experiencing an increase in anti-Israel sentiment, leading to a feeling of discomfort and insecurity.

The issue gained attention when UvA student Tamar Efrati spoke out about her personal experience, prompting parliamentary questions about the safety of Jewish students.

Tamar Efrati mentioned instances where she felt compelled to hide her Star of David, as students expressed hostility towards Israel and Jews on social media.

She revealed that phrases such as “a good Jew is a dead Jew” were used, creating a hostile environment not only for herself but also for others attending lectures alongside her.

Both UvA and VU have responded to the concerns raised by Jewish students. However, the responses have been met with mixed sentiments.

Nati Banet, a co-chair of IJAR and a student at VU,revealed that the VU’s response to increasing antisemitism on campus was inadequate, with a delayed appointment for a conversation.

Tamar’s experience with UvA also showcased a lack of immediate response, only gaining attention when she shared her story in the university magazine Folia.

The UvA stated that reports of discrimination, including antisemitism, are taken seriously and categorized accordingly. While they responded personally to letters expressing concerns about boycotts and intifada, they maintained that no incidents against Jewish students have been reported.

The VU expressed its commitment to an inclusive and safe environment, emphasizing the importance of dialogue, diversity, and taking a strong stance against exclusion and discrimination.

#university of amsterdam #university amsterdam #jewish students

[royalchildreneurope]

Crown Princess Catharina-Amalia of The Netherlands starts her studies at the University of Amsterdam in Amsterdam, Netherlands -September 5th 2022.

#crown princess catharina amalia #dutch royal family #netherlands #2022 #september 2022 #university of amsterdam #royal children #my edit

[maybe-love-cant]

#university of amsterdam #amsterdam #dark academia #autumn #evening #old city

[pressnewsagencyllc]

Anxiety Drives Wishful Thinking to Risky Levels - Neuroscience News

Summary: Individuals tend to become overly optimistic in situations marked by insecurity and anxiety, potentially to their detriment. The research, involving more than 1,700 participants, demonstrated that people are less accurate in recognizing patterns linked to negative outcomes, like electrical shocks or monetary loss, indicating a clear bias towards wishful thinking. Interventions to reduce…

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#anxiety #brain research #Mental health #neurobiology #Neuroscience #optimism #Psychology #University of Amsterdam

[spectrumswinger]

So do I know any anthropologists in here who attend university if Amsterdam?

I really want to get a better feel for the school for when I begin my PHD applications in Medical Anthropology

#anthropology #medical Anthropology #university of amsterdam

[differentcollectionexpert]

Hi There! 🥳

I am currently running a research project asking university students to briefly talk about “Life Transitions” in the hope to help students improve their academic strategies. It should only take 10 minutes of your time!

Sincerest Thanks!

https://uva.fra1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8qW9BPE7ZCSyXRA

#student #student life #university #college #research #study tips #study blog #study motivation #research life #masters #phd life #studyblr #masters life #undergraduate #studentlife #life transitions #motivation #study motivator #university of amsterdam #uva

[germanpostwarmodern]

Oudemanhuispoort Building (1927) of the University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, by Pieter Marnette

#1920s #university #brick #architecture #netherlands #amsterdamse school #architektur #amsterdam #pieter marnette

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Chemists recycle shrimp waste as catalyst for hydrogen generation

Flexible spheres of the biomolecule chitosan, made from shrimp waste, can be used for catalysts that generate hydrogen gas from borohydride salts. In a paper in Green Chemistry, a research team at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) shows how the spheres can "breathe out" hydrogen bubbles without breaking. This is an important step towards practical and safe hydrogen storage and release units. Since 2020, the Heterogeneous Catalysis & Sustainable Chemistry group at the UvA's Van 't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences has been working on using alkali metal borohydride salts as future hydrogen carriers. These solid salts can be stored safely in air under ambient conditions and release hydrogen gas only when reacting with water. However, controlling the hydrogen release, and thus preventing runaway reactions, is challenging. One solution is to stabilize the solution with a base, and control the hydrogen release by using a catalyst. The UvA team, led by Prof. Gadi Rothenberg, is developing such catalysts in collaboration with the Austrian Competence Centre for Tribology (AC2T) and the company Electriq Global.

Read more.

#Materials Science #Science #Recycling #Waste #Biomaterials #Chitosan #Catalysts #Reactions #Hydrogen #University of Amsterdam

[kvetchinglyneurotic]

I don't know if I'll ever actually write this, but I have a vague idea for a fic that's like, Sam, Jan, and Jamie vs the AFC Richmond Charity Gala that's set in early season 2 and basically explains what happened to the charity gala in 1x04 that's implied to be an annual tradition but that we never see again. The premise is as follows:

After the Dubai Air protest, Sam feels bad that he didn't look into the company he agreed to promote beforehand and decides to be more proactive in his activism. Which is why, when Ted announces the gala is coming up and Jan Maas (who obviously wasn't there for the last one) is like, "isn't it exploitative and dehumanizing to auction off players?" Sam decides he's going to Do Something About It and tries to rally the team to petition Rebecca to change the event, with mixed results.

Jamie, meanwhile, is having a... weird time. He's still nervous about his place on the team, especially now that Roy is back and at the height of his refusing-to-coach-Jamie era, and while there's not as much outright animosity from the other players, they're also not really friends. He's trying to be on his best behaviour, but the upcoming gala is making him nervous and Sam and Jan going around talking about like. consent and bodily autonomy and all that is dredging up some feelings that he's been repressing — mostly about Amsterdam but also about Lust Conquers All (I don't know a ton about reality TV production but it sounds pretty brutal on the contestants, and Jamie would not have been in a great frame of mind going in).

So when Sam and Jan go to talk to him, he doesn't want to turn them down because he's trying to make up for how he treated Sam last year, but he also doesn't want to get on the bad side of the rest of the team if they like the gala, and also also if auctioning off players is wrong then what happened to him in Amsterdam was definitely wrong, and he's not ready to confront that. But of course Sam is a sweetheart and realizes pretty quickly that Something Bad happened here and is like. okay now we really can't have the gala.

Anyway they make a 50-slide Powerpoint that they rehearse a bunch of times and go to present it to Rebecca in full Isaac-approved suits and everything, and then only get like. one slide in before Rebecca's like, "you're right, that is creepy. We'll come up with something new for this year." Also Roy apologizes for joking about Jamie having to sleep with that woman. The end 😊

#i'm pretty sure the doylist reason the gala only happens once is there's a limited number of episodes and they didn't want to be redundant #and in-universe we're maybe supposed to assume it happened off screen #but i thought it was creepy even before we knew what happened to jamie in amsterdam so i'm going with this instead #jamie's stint on lust conquers all genuinely makes me so sad if i think about it for too long #ted lasso fanfic #or i guess. hypothetical future ted lasso fanfic #it's on the list but i'm incapable of working on multiple wips at once so if someone else wants to write this go for it #jamie tartt #sam obisanya #jan maas

[popsicle-stick]

I don't know anything about England but I'm interested in how the characters' locations inform their characters like Seward's. I'd like to know more about the implications of being from Purfleet/Essex for example (Though iirc Stoker immigrated from Dublin well into adulthood so I don't know how well he knew all the cities.)

there's so much to be said! i really don't think that stoker meant much intentionally, but the placement of the asylum in purfleet specifically is interesting.

long post so i'm cutting this!

the asylum at purfleet, essex, is an example of the common 19th-early 20th century phenomenon of establishing psychiactric hospitals in the rural counties surrounding london - simultaneously serving as a 'tranquil' location away from the city, while also serving the dubious, cruel purpose of squirelling away would-be patients into residences away from the city - out of society, out of sight, out of mind.

in terms of jack seward himself, purfleet is a kind of an in-between, nothing place - things and people pass through, not much stays. (there's a reason why whitby is remembered as 'the dracula place', and not purfleet.) it's quite literally on the edge of london - of society - and in that scene where jack's looking despondently towards the sun setting west over london, his own isolation becomes palpable - from society and from the world as a whole. the endless, transient, liminal feel of the essex saltmarshes just....gives the vibe. this was a scene that felt particularly gothic to me - jack is the custodian of his very own haunted house, here, in all its bleak, isolated glory.

It was a shock to me to turn from the wonderful smoky beauty of a sunset over London, with its lurid lights and inky shadows and all the marvellous tints that come on foul clouds even as on foul water, and to realise all the grim sternness of my own cold stone building, with its wealth of breathing misery, and my own desolate heart to endure it all.

this is an fascinating parallel with the count's situation in transylvania, which is NOT the topic du jour here so i'll stop before i ramble but compelling nonetheless! like the count, though, he's a liminal figure - in london, but not quite in london. in the group, but not in the group. alive, but not really living. wide awake in the witching hour, unsure how to re-integrate with society.

it's also worth noting that the opening of dickens' great expectations has pip in his childhood home on the kent marshes - which would pretty much be the opposite bank of the thames from purfleet. in great expectations, pip's village serves a similar role - the quiet, bleak, nowhere-place directly placed against the bustling cosmopolis of london.

in terms of other characters and locations, i've written a bit before about jonathan (and mina possibly) hailing from exeter, devon, in the south west of england - which is much further from london.

jonathan and mina, in terms of the group dynamics, are outsiders: they're very much lower middle class, hyper-aware of the importance of money and societal etiquette as a means for survival and social betterment. this is a personal hc of mine, but i like to think of jonathan as having the long supressed remnants of a devon accent. south west accents are often the subject of a lot of ridicule and mockery in the UK (akin to a southern US accent) and hiding that regionalism, in both the 1890s and today's britain, would be a means of survival and progress for him - i think the fact that he's always given a standard home counties RP accent in adaptations cuts out a major aspect of his character. he's a devon boy!

in contrast to all this, lucy's hampstead residence shows her affluence. it, too, at risk of breaking my social isolation metaphor, was on the edge of london at the time - but was known more as a wealthy suburb with huge areas of greenery at hampstead heath and highgate. there's something to be said, though, about a place like highgate cemetery - a liminal place between the dead and the living, between city and country, haunted at night by a vampire - and the same could be said for purfleet.

arthur is hard to pin down - for the life of me i CANNOT work out where 'ring' is supposed to be - at first i thought it might be a shortening for ringwood, hampshire, which could work! but i just don't know. his character does scream privileged southern/home counties though, and if anyone has any followups on 'ring' and its wherabouts i would LOVE to know because this has been bugging me for ages. lmao

tl;dr, psychology and sociology as informed by place is SO fucking fascinating to me like it just. it affects so much. from the liminality of certain places lending themselves to the supernatural, to characters being mirrored by their surroundings and vice versa, to the social implications of where you call home. it's just!!! interesting!!

#cw ableism #dracula #dracula daily #this is my disorganised magnum opus i wrote so much and deleted half bc it goes off-topic but there's so much..... #i grew up near the fringes of london myself and there's a certain transience to that kind of hinterland which i think you get w/ any city #my own personal hc for jack seward is that he was brought up in an isolated seaside town (harwich‚ maybe?) and went to university in london #before continuing his education in amsterdam #also i like that harwich has a DIRECT ship route to the netherlands....thinking.....thoughts.. #while writing this i was doing some research and now i have many seward hometown thoughts god. #[points to a puddle in a saltmarsh] this is jack seward. to me

[royalchildreneurope]

Crown Princess Catharina-Amalia of The Netherlands starts her studies at the University of Amsterdam in Amsterdam, Netherlands -September 5th 2022.

#crown princess catharina amalia #dutch royal family #netherlands #2022 #september 2022 #university of amsterdam #royal children #my edit

[waywardted]

Believing in rom-communism is all about believing that everything is going to work out in the end... Now, it may not work out how you think it will, or how you hope it does, but, believe me, it will all work out.

#ted lasso spoilers #ted lasso #otp: you liven up the place #mine #m*ne: lasso #i like don't want to tag this with anything i'm having a thought exercise lmao #this is the tip of the iceberg for real i really do think it's their movie #and on an emotional level i'm devastated by this and on an intellectual level i'm just. fascinated #if we take the end as endgamey (though i'm partial to hannah canon ha) #within that endgame the universe gives her a consolation prize of a ted #and i don’t even think that’s my biased reading like his name means the same thing he also is from another country is also divorced also has #a child who evidently can be moved around more easily maybe cause she’s younger and amsterdam is closer #plus all the other similarities we’d talked about after amsterdam #and all the little moments that fatefully lead rebecca to this moment are moments with ted #ted walks away from her and she walks out the door to find this man again #it wouldn’t have happened if she didn’t need to say goodbye to her soulmate #with all of that idk it seems like they added this man not just as love interest but so that he'd be specifically #filling the void ted left in her life and in their romcom #to invoke sleepless in seattle like that when there is a very clear fated soulmate relationship at play #and then to give the ending to another character #like no shade to matthijs he's a fine man but #it just seems intentionally to say the hero of this story has to leave #so 'god's gift' is this substitute #is it the 'it just doesn't happen twice'?? is ted like the maggie of this situation??? #is it 'the dream of someone else' which kinda seems like hannah's reading?? #you can't always get what you want (the romcom ending the way you think it's going to) but you get what you need (them ending up with their #respective families and possibilities for the future)??? #it's just that isn't it. just a completely heartbreaking realization of ted's romcommunsim speech #it's bananas and on purpose and i'm in pain

[itsautomaticfaegirl]

Beautiful captivating skies - reminding me of those above meadows - shades of burnt orange, soft blue, yellow ocher and bright yellow, to be seen above the streets of Amsterdam

🌱🧚🏻🌅🌿 Source: @itsautomaticfaegirl

#fairycore #light academia #dark cottagecore #dark academia aesthetic #romantic academia #dark academia #amsterdam #dutch skies #cloudphotography #cloudcore #sunset #sunnyafternoon #naturecore #nature photography #17th century #paintings #17th century house #springcore #springtime #studyblr #study aesthetic #bookblr #bookcore #university #literature #cityscape #colourful sky #night sky #painting aesthetic #architecture

[studytimewiththeminion]

Studies and private life

- History Studies

- Amsterdam

- Tomie (Junji Ito)

#studyblr #study #study blog #studying #ambience #student life #university #german university #history #history student #ruhrgebiet #ruhr uni bochum #history studies #history stuff #amsterdam vacation #amsterdam #pokemon #pokemon x van gogh #van gogh #van gogh museum