Direct Optical Coupling to an Unoccupied Dirac Surface State in the Topological Insulator Bi2_2Se3_3

We characterize the occupied and unoccupied electronic structure of the topological insulator Bi$_2$Se$_3$ by one-photon and two-photon angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and slab band structure calculations. We reveal a second, unoccupied Dirac surface state with similar electronic structure and physical origin to the well-known topological surface state. This state is energetically located 1.5 eV above the conduction band, which permits it to be directly excited by the output of a Ti:Sapphire laser. This discovery demonstrates the feasibility of direct ultrafast optical coupling to a topologically protected, spin-textured surface state.Comment: Accepted to Physical Review Letter

Performance of the CDF Silicon VerteX detector

The current status of the online and offline performance of the CDF Silicon VerteX detector is presented. So far, at low radiation dose, the device delivers good quality data. After the latest alignment using collision data, a spatial resolution of 13 pm is achieved in the transverse plane, demonstrating that CDF has a powerful tool to detect b decay vertices

Automatic lighting controls demonstration: Long-term results

An advanced electronically ballasted lighting control system was installed in a portion of an office building to measure the energy and demand savings. The lighting control system used an integrated lighting control scenario that included daylight following, lumen depreciation correction, and scheduling. The system reduced lighting energy on weekdays by 62% and 51% in the north and south daylit zones, respectively, compared to a reference zone that did not have controls. During the summer, over 75% energy savings were achieved on weekdays in the north daylit zone. Even in the south interior zone, which benefitted lime from daylight, correction strategies and adjustment of the aisleway lights to a low level resulted in energy use of only half that of the reference zone. Although, in general, the savings varied over the year due to changing daylight conditions, the energy reduction achieved with controls could be fit using a simple analytical model. Significant savings also occurred during core operating hours when it is more expensive to supply and use energy. Compared to the usage in the reference zone, energy reductions of 49%, 44%, and 62% were measured in the south daylight, south interior, and north daylight zones, respectively, during core operating hours throughout the year. Lighting energy usage on weekends decreased dramatically in the zones with controls, with the usage in the north daylit zone only 10% that of the reference zone. A simple survey developed to assess occupant response to the lighting control system showed that the occupants were satisfied with the light levels provided

Improved prognostic classification of breast cancer defined by antagonistic activation patterns of immune response pathway modules.

BACKGROUND: Elucidating the activation pattern of molecular pathways across a given tumour type is a key challenge necessary for understanding the heterogeneity in clinical response and for developing novel more effective therapies. Gene expression signatures of molecular pathway activation derived from perturbation experiments in model systems as well as structural models of molecular interactions ("model signatures") constitute an important resource for estimating corresponding activation levels in tumours. However, relatively few strategies for estimating pathway activity from such model signatures exist and only few studies have used activation patterns of pathways to refine molecular classifications of cancer. METHODS: Here we propose a novel network-based method for estimating pathway activation in tumours from model signatures. We find that although the pathway networks inferred from cancer expression data are highly consistent with the prior information contained in the model signatures, that they also exhibit a highly modular structure and that estimation of pathway activity is dependent on this modular structure. We apply our methodology to a panel of 438 estrogen receptor negative (ER-) and 785 estrogen receptor positive (ER+) breast cancers to infer activation patterns of important cancer related molecular pathways. RESULTS: We show that in ER negative basal and HER2+ breast cancer, gene expression modules reflecting T-cell helper-1 (Th1) and T-cell helper-2 (Th2) mediated immune responses play antagonistic roles as major risk factors for distant metastasis. Using Boolean interaction Cox-regression models to identify non-linear pathway combinations associated with clinical outcome, we show that simultaneous high activation of Th1 and low activation of a TGF-beta pathway module defines a subtype of particularly good prognosis and that this classification provides a better prognostic model than those based on the individual pathways. In ER+ breast cancer, we find that simultaneous high MYC and RAS activity confers significantly worse prognosis than either high MYC or high RAS activity alone. We further validate these novel prognostic classifications in independent sets of 173 ER- and 567 ER+ breast cancers. CONCLUSION: We have proposed a novel method for pathway activity estimation in tumours and have shown that pathway modules antagonize or synergize to delineate novel prognostic subtypes. Specifically, our results suggest that simultaneous modulation of T-helper differentiation and TGF-beta pathways may improve clinical outcome of hormone insensitive breast cancers over treatments that target only one of these pathways.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

Recent studies of nuclear and chemical properties of elements 103, 104 and 105

Information obtained since 1983 on the nuclear and chemical properties of element 103, the last on the actinide series, and elements 104 and 105, at the beginning of the transactinide series, is reviewed. Their chemical properties are compared with their lanthanide and lighter group 4 and 5 homologs and evidence for possible relativistic effects is discussed. The current knowledge of the nuclear properties of these elements and how these affect of the study of chemical properties is discussed. Some of the challenges involved in the study of short-lived isotopes which can only be produced an atom-at-a-time'' at an appropriate accelerator and the prognosis for future studies of these and still heavier elements are considered. 40 refs., 4 figs

Surface structures and surface-atom vibrations determined using photoelectron diffraction

Surface structures of {radical}3 {times} {radical}3 R30{degrees} Cl/Ni(111) and c(2 {times} 2)Cl/Cu(001) were determined using low- temperature angle-resolved photoemission extended fine structure (ARPEFS), which yields both more accurate surface and near-surface structural information for deeper substrate layers. A study of surface-atom vibrations for {radical}3 {times} {radical}3 R30{degrees} Cl/Ni(111) and c(2 {times} 2)Cl/Cu(001) was made using temperature-dependent ARPEFS. A model for predicting the adsorbate vibrational anisotropy from surface structures was proposed and also successfully applied to several adsorbate systems. This model offered a simple and straightforward physical picture for understanding different types of vibrational anisotropy

The method of Laplace Transform MultiQuadrics (LTMQ) for the solution of the groundwater flow equation

This paper presents a new numerical method, the Laplace Transform MultiQuadrics (LTMQ) method, developed for the solution of the diffusion-type parabolic Partial Differential Equation (PDE) of fluid flow through porous media. LTMQ combines a MultiQuadrics (MQ) approximation scheme with a Laplace transform formulation. The use of MQ in the spatial approximations allows the accurate description of problems in complex porous media with a very limited number of nodes. The Laplace transform formulation eliminates the need for time discretization, thus allowing an unlimited time step size without any loss of accuracy. LTMQ is tested against results from three test problems of groundwater flow obtained from a standard Finite Difference (FD) model, as well as from analytical solutions. An excellent agreement between the LTMQ and the analytical and FD solutions is observed, while significant reductions in computer execution times may be achieved

Examining electron-boson coupling using time-resolved spectroscopy

Nonequilibrium pump-probe time domain spectroscopies can become an important tool to disentangle degrees of freedom whose coupling leads to broad structures in the frequency domain. Here, using the time-resolved solution of a model photoexcited electron-phonon system we show that the relaxational dynamics are directly governed by the equilibrium self-energy so that the phonon frequency sets a window for "slow" versus "fast" recovery. The overall temporal structure of this relaxation spectroscopy allows for a reliable and quantitative extraction of the electron-phonon coupling strength without requiring an effective temperature model or making strong assumptions about the underlying bare electronic band dispersion.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figures + Supplementary Material and movies, to appear in PR

Vacuum requirements for heavy ion recirculating induction linacs

We examine the requirements of the vacuum system for the LLNL/LBL recirculating induction linac concept. We reexamine processes, including beam stripping, background gas ionization, intra-beam charge exchange and desorption of gas molecules from the wall due to the incident ionized gas molecules and stripped ions, in the context of the proposed recirculator. We discuss implications for the vacuum system layout and estimate the cost of such a system. 18 refs., 2 figs., 1 tab