Macroevolutionary Patterns In The Evolutionary Radiation Of Archosaurs (Tetrapoda: Diapsida)

The rise of archosaurs during the Triassic and Early Jurassic has been treated as a classic example of an evolutionary radiation in the fossil record. This paper reviews published studies and provides new data on archosaur lineage origination, diversity and lineage evolution, morphological disparity, rates of morphological character change, and faunal abundance during the Triassic–Early Jurassic. The fundamental archosaur lineages originated early in the Triassic, in concert with the highest rates of character change. Disparity and diversity peaked later, during the Norian, but the most significant increase in disparity occurred before maximum diversity. Archosaurs were rare components of Early–Middle Triassic faunas, but were more abundant in the Late Triassic and pre-eminent globally by the Early Jurassic. The archosaur radiation was a drawn-out event and major components such as diversity and abundance were discordant from each other. Crurotarsans (crocodile-line archosaurs) were more disparate, diverse, and abundant than avemetatarsalians (bird-line archosaurs, including dinosaurs) during the Late Triassic, but these roles were reversed in the Early Jurassic. There is no strong evidence that dinosaurs outcompeted or gradually eclipsed crurotarsans during the Late Triassic. Instead, crurotarsan diversity decreased precipitously by the end-Triassic extinction, which helped usher in the age of dinosaurian dominance

Carrier dynamics in ion-implanted GaAs studied by simulation and observation of terahertz emission

We have studied terahertz (THz) emission from arsenic-ion implanted GaAs both experimentally and using a three-dimensional carrier dynamics simulation. A uniform density of vacancies was formed over the optical absorption depth of bulk GaAs samples by performing multi-energy implantations of arsenic ions (1 and 2.4MeV) and subsequent thermal annealing. In a series of THz emission experiments the frequency of peak THz power was found to increase significantly from 1.4 to 2.2THz when the ion implantation dose was increased from 10^13 to 10^16 cm-3. We used a semi-classical Monte-Carlo simulation of ultra-fast carrier dynamics to reproduce and explain these results. The effect of the ion-induced damage was included in the simulation by considering carrier scattering at neutral and charged impurities, as well as carrier trapping at defect sites. Higher vacancy concentrations and shorter carrier trapping times both contributed to shorter simulated THz pulses, the latter being more important over experimentally realistic parameter ranges.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure

‘Mad, bad, or possessed’? Perceptions of Self-Harm and Mental Illness in Evangelical Christian Communities

Mental illness within evangelical Christian communities is frequently stigmatised, with many attributing it exclusively to demonic possession, lack of faith, personal sin, or other negative spiritual influences. This study explores perceptions of self-harm in the context of evangelical Christian faith communities using the novel qualitative story completion task. A convenience sample of 101 UK-based evangelical Christians completed a third-person fictional story stem featuring a devout female Christian who self-harms. A contextualist informed thematic analysis was carried out focusing on perceptions of cause, cure, and treatment. Most stories positioned spiritual causes of mental illness (that is, demonic possession or personal sin) as harmful to the individual by rendering individuals as stigmatised objects or as socially displaced. The stories also provided insight into negative perceptions of females experiencing mental illness within evangelical communities. The stories suggested that these views often led to stigma and shame, which ultimately exacerbated illness and led to reduced help-seeking. Conversely, stories depicting the integration of relational care alongside spiritual resources frequently led to recovery. That the stories represented the need for relational support, within a spiritually syntonic framework, for recovery from mental illness highlights the limitations of a dichotomised approach to pastoral care. Methodologically, the study demonstrates the usefulness of a seldom-used tool within the pastoral psychology context – the story completion task – for accessing sociocultural discourses and wider representations surrounding stigmatised topics or populations

Quantum Error Correction on Linear Nearest Neighbor Qubit Arrays

A minimal depth quantum circuit implementing 5-qubit quantum error correction in a manner optimized for a linear nearest neighbor architecture is described. The canonical decomposition is used to construct fast and simple gates that incorporate the necessary swap operations. Simulations of the circuit's performance when subjected to discrete and continuous errors are presented. The relationship between the error rate of a physical qubit and that of a logical qubit is investigated with emphasis on determining the concatenated error correction threshold.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Ground-layer wavefront reconstruction from multiple natural guide stars

Observational tests of ground layer wavefront recovery have been made in open loop using a constellation of four natural guide stars at the 1.55 m Kuiper telescope in Arizona. Such tests explore the effectiveness of wide-field seeing improvement by correction of low-lying atmospheric turbulence with ground-layer adaptive optics (GLAO). The wavefronts from the four stars were measured simultaneously on a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor (WFS). The WFS placed a 5 x 5 array of square subapertures across the pupil of the telescope, allowing for wavefront reconstruction up to the fifth radial Zernike order. We find that the wavefront aberration in each star can be roughly halved by subtracting the average of the wavefronts from the other three stars. Wavefront correction on this basis leads to a reduction in width of the seeing-limited stellar image by up to a factor of 3, with image sharpening effective from the visible to near infrared wavelengths over a field of at least 2 arc minutes. We conclude that GLAO correction will be a valuable tool that can increase resolution and spectrographic throughput across a broad range of seeing-limited observations.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figures, to be published in Astrophys.

Polarisation-sensitive terahertz detection by multicontact photoconductive receivers

We have developed a terahertz radiation detector that measures both the amplitude and polarization of the electric field as a function of time. The device is a three-contact photoconductive receiver designed so that two orthogonal electric-field components of an arbitrary polarized electromagnetic wave may be detected simultaneously. The detector was fabricated on Fe+ ion-implanted InP. Polarization-sensitive detection is demonstrated with an extinction ratio better than 100:1. This type of device will have immediate application in studies of birefringent and optically active materials in the far-infrared region of the spectrum.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figure

Protocol for a longitudinal qualitative interview study: maintaining psychological well-being in advanced cancer - what can we learn from patients' and carers' own coping strategies?

IntroductionPeople with advanced cancer and their carers experience stress and uncertainty which affects the quality of life and physical and mental health. This study aims to understand how patients and carers recover or maintain psychological well-being by exploring the strategies employed to self-manage stress and uncertainty.Methods and analysisA longitudinal qualitative interview approach with 30 patients with advanced cancer and 30 associated family or informal carers allows the exploration of contexts, mechanisms and outcomes at an individual level. Two interviews, 4–12?weeks apart, will not only enable the exploration of individuals’ evolving coping strategies in response to changing contexts but also how patients’ and carers’ strategies inter-relate. Patient and Carer focus groups will then consider how the findings may be used in developing an intervention. Recruiting through two major tertiary cancer centres in the North West and using deliberately broad and inclusive criteria will enable the sample to capture demographic and experiential breadth.Ethics and disseminationThe research team will draw on their considerable experience to ensure that the study is sensitive to a patient and carer group, which may be considered vulnerable but still values being able to contribute its views. Public and patient involvement (PPI) is integral to the design and is evidenced by: a research advisory group incorporating patient and carers, prestudy consultations with the PPI group at one of the study sites and a user as the named applicant. The study team will use multiple methods to disseminate the findings to clinical, policy and academic audiences. A key element will be engaging health professionals in patient and carer ideas for promoting self-management of psychological well-being. The study has ethical approval from the North West Research Ethics Committee and the appropriate NHS governance clearance.RegistrationNational Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Clinical Studies Portfolio, UK Clinical Research Network (UKCRN) Study number 11725

Eigenvector Approximation Leading to Exponential Speedup of Quantum Eigenvalue Calculation

We present an efficient method for preparing the initial state required by the eigenvalue approximation quantum algorithm of Abrams and Lloyd. Our method can be applied when solving continuous Hermitian eigenproblems, e.g., the Schroedinger equation, on a discrete grid. We start with a classically obtained eigenvector for a problem discretized on a coarse grid, and we efficiently construct, quantum mechanically, an approximation of the same eigenvector on a fine grid. We use this approximation as the initial state for the eigenvalue estimation algorithm, and show the relationship between its success probability and the size of the coarse grid.Comment: 4 page