  High magnetic field studies of cuprate superconductors revealed a non-BCS
temperature dependence of the upper critical field $H_{c2}(T)$ determined
resistively by several groups.
  These determinations caused some doubts on the grounds of both the
contrasting effect of the magnetic field on the in-plane and out-of-plane
resistances reported for large Bi2212 sample and the large Nernst signal
\emph{well above} $T_{c}$.
  Here we present both $\rho_{ab}(B)$ and $\rho_{c}(B)$ of tiny Bi2212 crystals
in magnetic fields up to 50 Tesla.
  None of our measurements revealed a situation when on the field increase
$\rho_c$ reaches its maximum while $\rho_{ab}$ remains very small if not zero.
  The resistive %upper critical fields estimated from the in-plane and
out-of-plane $H_{c2}(T)$ estimated from $\rho_{ab}(B)$ and $\rho_{c}(B)$ are
approximately the same. Our results support any theory of cuprates that
describes the state above the resistive phase transition as perfectly normal
with a zero off-diagonal order parameter. In particular, the anomalous Nernst
effect above the resistive phase transition in high-$T_{c}$ cuprates can be
described quantitatively as a normal state phenomenon in a model with itinerant
and localised fermions and/or charged bosons.

Superconductivity