Browsing by Author "Bianco, Elisabeth"

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    Communicating Science Concepts to Individuals with Visual Impairments Using Short Learning Modules
    (American Chemical Society, 2016) Stender, Anthony S.; Newell, Ryan; Villarreal, Eduardo; Swearer, Dayne F.; Bianco, Elisabeth; Ringe, Emilie
    Of the 6.7 million individuals in the United States who are visually impaired, 63% are unemployed, and 59% have not attained an education beyond a high school diploma. Providing a basic science education to children and adults with visual disabilities can be challenging because most scientific learning relies on visual demonstrations. Creating resources to help teachers and service organizations better communicate science is thus critical both to the education of sighted students as well as to the continuing education of individuals with blindness or low vision (BLV). Here, 4 new scientific learning activities that last 5–15 min each are described. These simple exercises are designed to educate the general public, including both those who are sighted and those with BLV. The modules use tactile and auditory approaches to convey basic concepts including the metric system, material strength and deformation, transparency, and the electromagnetic spectrum. These modules were tested on 20 adults with BLV during a science outreach event. Answers to learning assessment questions indicate that the modules conveyed information about the scientific concepts presented and increased an interest in science for most participants.
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    Square selenene and tellurene: novel group VI elemental 2D materials with nontrivial topological properties
    (IOP Publishing, 2017) Xian, Lede; Paz, Alejandro Pérez; Bianco, Elisabeth; Ajayan, Pulickel M.; Rubio, Angel
    With first principles calculations, we predict a novel stable 2D layered structure for group VI elements Se and Te that we call square selenene and square tellurene, respectively. They have chair-like buckled structures similar to other layered materials such as silicene and germanene but with a square unit cell rather than a hexagonal one. This special structure gives rise to anisotropic band dispersions near the Fermi level that can be described by a generalized semi-Dirac Hamiltonian. We show that the considerably large band gap (~0.1 eV) opened by spin-orbit coupling makes square selenene and tellurene topological insulators, hosting non-trivial edge states. Therefore, square selenene and tellurene are promising materials for novel electronic and spintronic applications. Finally, we show that this new type of 2D elemental materials can potentially be grown on proper substrates, such as a Au(1 0 0) surface.