325 research outputs found
Synthetic biology and biomass conversion: a match made in heaven?
To move our economy onto a sustainable basis, it is essential that we find a replacement for fossil carbon as a source of liquid fuels and chemical industry feedstocks. Lignocellulosic biomass, available in enormous quantities, is the only feasible replacement. Many micro-organisms are capable of rapid and efficient degradation of biomass, employing a battery of specialized enzymes, but do not produce useful products. Attempts to transfer biomass-degrading capability to industrially useful organisms by heterologous expression of one or a few biomass-degrading enzymes have met with limited success. It seems probable that an effective biomass-degradation system requires the synergistic action of a large number of enzymes, the individual and collective actions of which are poorly understood. By offering the ability to combine any number of transgenes in a modular, combinatorial way, synthetic biology offers a new approach to elucidating the synergistic action of combinations of biomass-degrading enzymes in vivo and may ultimately lead to a transferable biomass-degradation system. Also, synthetic biology offers the potential for assembly of novel product-formation pathways, as well as mechanisms for increased solvent tolerance. Thus, synthetic biology may finally lead to cheap and effective processes for conversion of biomass to useful products
Interaction-free measurement and forward scattering
Interaction-free measurement is shown to arise from the forward-scattered
wave accompanying absorption: a "quantum silhouette" of the absorber.
Accordingly, the process is not free of interaction. For a perfect absorber the
forward-scattered wave is locked both in amplitude and in phase. For an
imperfect one it has a nontrivial phase of dynamical origin (``colored
silhouette"), measurable by interferometry. Other examples of quantum
silhouettes, all controlled by unitarity, are briefly discussed.Comment: 4 pages in RevTex + 1 figure in eps; submitted to Phys. Rev. A since
09Jan98; now update
Are Interaction-free Measurements Interaction Free?
In 1993 Elitzur and Vaidman introduced the concept of interaction-free
measurements which allowed finding objects without ``touching'' them. In the
proposed method, since the objects were not touched even by photons, thus, the
interaction-free measurements can be called as ``seeing in the dark''. Since
then several experiments have been successfully performed and various
modifications were suggested. Recently, however, the validity of the term
``interaction-free'' has been questioned. The criticism of the name is briefly
reviewed and the meaning of the interaction-free measurements is clarified.Comment: 11 pages, 3 eps figures. Contribution to the ICQO 2000, Raubichi,
Belaru
Quantum coherence and interaction-free measurements
We investigate the extent to which ``interaction-free'' measurements perturb
the state of quantum systems. We show that the absence of energy exchange
during the measurement is not a sufficient criterion to preserve that state, as
the quantum system is subject to measurement dependent decoherence. While it is
possible in general to design interaction-free measurement schemes that do
preserve that state, the requirement of quantum coherence preservation rapidly
leads to a very low efficiency. Our results, which have a simple interpretation
in terms of ``which-way'' arguments, open up the way to novel quantum
non-demolition techniques.Comment: 4 pages incl. 2 PostScript figures (.eps), LaTeX using RevTeX,
submitted to Phys. Rev. A (Rapid Comm.
Entanglement Creation Using Quantum Interrogation
We present some applications of high efficiency quantum interrogation
("interaction free measurement") for the creation of entangled states of
separate atoms and of separate photons. The quantum interrogation of a quantum
object in a superposition of object-in and object-out leaves the object and
probe in an entangled state. The probe can then be further entangled with other
objects in subsequent quantum interrogations. By then projecting out those
cases were the probe is left in a particular final state, the quantum objects
can themselves be left in various entangled states. In this way we show how to
generate two-, three-, and higher qubit entanglement between atoms and between
photons. The effect of finite efficiency for the quantum interrogation is
delineated for the various schemes.Comment: 7 pages, 13 figures, Submitted to PR
Modelling search for people in 900 scenes: A combined source model of eye guidance
How predictable are human eye movements during search in real world scenes? We recorded 14 observers’ eye movements as they performed a search task (person detection) in 912 outdoor scenes. Observers were highly consistent in the regions fixated during search, even when the target was absent from the scene. These eye movements were used to evaluate computational models of search guidance from three sources: Saliency, target features, and scene context. Each of these models independently outperformed a cross-image control in predicting human fixations. Models that combined sources of guidance ultimately predicted 94% of human agreement, with the scene context component providing the most explanatory power. None of the models, however, could reach the precision and fidelity of an attentional map defined by human fixations. This work puts forth a benchmark for computational models of search in real world scenes. Further improvements in modelling should capture mechanisms underlying the selectivity of observers’ fixations during search.National Eye Institute (Integrative Training Program in Vision grant T32 EY013935)Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Singleton Graduate Research Fellowship)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Graduate Research Fellowship)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (CAREER Award (0546262))National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF contract (0705677))National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Career Award (0747120)
On the Consequences of Retaining the General Validity of Locality in Physical Theory
The empirical validity of the locality (LOC) principle of relativity is used
to argue in favour of a local hidden variable theory (HVT) for individual
quantum processes. It is shown that such a HVT may reproduce the statistical
predictions of quantum mechanics (QM), provided the reproducibility of initial
hidden variable states is limited. This means that in a HVT limits should be
set to the validity of the notion of counterfactual definiteness (CFD). This is
supported by the empirical evidence that past, present, and future are
basically distinct. Our argumentation is contrasted with a recent one by Stapp
resulting in the opposite conclusion, i.e. nonlocality or the existence of
faster-than-light influences. We argue that Stapp's argumentation still depends
in an implicit, but crucial, way on both the notions of hidden variables and of
CFD. In addition, some implications of our results for the debate between Bohr
and Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen are discussed.Comment: revtex, 11 page
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