Creation of Rydberg Polarons in a Bose Gas

We report spectroscopic observation of Rydberg polarons in an atomic Bose gas. Polarons are created by excitation of Rydberg atoms as impurities in a strontium Bose-Einstein condensate. They are distinguished from previously studied polarons by macroscopic occupation of bound molecular states that arise from scattering of the weakly bound Rydberg electron from ground-state atoms. The absence of a $p$-wave resonance in the low-energy electron-atom scattering in Sr introduces a universal behavior in the Rydberg spectral lineshape and in scaling of the spectral width (narrowing) with the Rydberg principal quantum number, $n$. Spectral features are described with a functional determinant approach (FDA) that solves an extended Fr\"{o}hlich Hamiltonian for a mobile impurity in a Bose gas. Excited states of polyatomic Rydberg molecules (trimers, tetrameters, and pentamers) are experimentally resolved and accurately reproduced with FDA.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Theory of excitation of Rydberg polarons in an atomic quantum gas

We present a quantum many-body description of the excitation spectrum of Rydberg polarons in a Bose gas. The many-body Hamiltonian is solved with functional determinant theory, and we extend this technique to describe Rydberg polarons of finite mass. Mean-field and classical descriptions of the spectrum are derived as approximations of the many-body theory. The various approaches are applied to experimental observations of polarons created by excitation of Rydberg atoms in a strontium Bose-Einstein condensate.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1706.0371

Prenatal Vitamin D Supplementation and Child Respiratory Health: A Randomised Controlled Trial

PMCID: PMC3691177This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Suicide Prevention in an Emergency Department Population: The ED-SAFE Study

Importance: Suicide is a leading cause of deaths in the United States. Although the emergency department (ED) is an opportune setting for initiating suicide prevention efforts, ED-initiated suicide prevention interventions remain underdeveloped. Objective: To determine whether an ED-initiated intervention reduces subsequent suicidal behavior. Design, Setting, and Participants: This multicenter study of 8 EDs in the United States enrolled adults with a recent suicide attempt or ideation and was composed of 3 sequential phases: (1) a treatment as usual (TAU) phase from August 2010 to December 2011, (2) a universal screening (screening) phase from September 2011 to December 2012, and (3) a universal screening plus intervention (intervention) phase from July 2012 to November 2013. Interventions: Screening consisted of universal suicide risk screening. The intervention phase consisted of universal screening plus an intervention, which included secondary suicide risk screening by the ED physician, discharge resources, and post-ED telephone calls focused on reducing suicide risk. Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary outcome was suicide attempts (nonfatal and fatal) over the 52-week follow-up period. The proportion and total number of attempts were analyzed. Results: A total of 1376 participants were recruited, including 769 females (55.9%) with a median (interquartile range) age of 37 (26-47) years. A total of 288 participants (20.9%) made at least 1 suicide attempt, and there were 548 total suicide attempts among participants. There were no significant differences in risk reduction between the TAU and screening phases (23% vs 22%, respectively). However, compared with the TAU phase, patients in the intervention phase showed a 5% absolute reduction in suicide attempt risk (23% vs 18%), with a relative risk reduction of 20%. Participants in the intervention phase had 30% fewer total suicide attempts than participants in the TAU phase. Negative binomial regression analysis indicated that the participants in the intervention phase had significantly fewer total suicide attempts than participants in the TAU phase (incidence rate ratio, 0.72; 95% CI, 0.52-1.00; P = .05) but no differences between the TAU and screening phases (incidence rate ratio, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.71-1.41; P = .99). Conclusions and Relevance: Among at-risk patients in the ED, a combination of brief interventions administered both during and after the ED visit decreased post-ED suicidal behavior

MFV Reductions of MSSM Parameter Space

The 100+ free parameters of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) make it computationally difficult to compare systematically with data, motivating the study of specific parameter reductions such as the cMSSM and pMSSM. Here we instead study the reductions of parameter space implied by using minimal flavour violation (MFV) to organise the R-parity conserving MSSM, with a view towards systematically building in constraints on flavour-violating physics. Within this framework the space of parameters is reduced by expanding soft supersymmetry-breaking terms in powers of the Cabibbo angle, leading to a 24-, 30- or 42-parameter framework (which we call MSSM-24, MSSM-30, and MSSM-42 respectively), depending on the order kept in the expansion. We provide a Bayesian global fit to data of the MSSM-30 parameter set to show that this is manageable with current tools. We compare the MFV reductions to the 19-parameter pMSSM choice and show that the pMSSM is not contained as a subset. The MSSM-30 analysis favours a relatively lighter TeV-scale pseudoscalar Higgs boson and $\tan \beta \sim 10$ with multi-TeV sparticles.Comment: 2nd version, minor comments and references added, accepted for publication in JHE

Transcript levels of ten caste-related genes in adult diploid males of Melipona quadrifasciata (Hymenoptera, Apidae) - A comparison with haploid males, queens and workers

In Hymenoptera, homozygosity at the sex locus results in the production of diploid males. In social species, these pose a double burden by having low fitness and drawing resources normally spent for increasing the work force of a colony. Yet, diploid males are of academic interest as they can elucidate effects of ploidy (normal males are haploid, whereas the female castes, the queens and workers, are diploid) on morphology and life history. Herein we investigated expression levels of ten caste-related genes in the stingless bee Melipona quadrifasciata, comparing newly emerged and 5-day-old diploid males with haploid males, queens and workers. In diploid males, transcript levels for dunce and paramyosin were increased during the first five days of adult life, while those for diacylglycerol kinase and the transcriptional co-repressor groucho diminished. Two general trends were apparent, (i) gene expression patterns in diploid males were overall more similar to haploid ones and workers than to queens, and (ii) in queens and workers, more genes were up-regulated after emergence until day five, whereas in diploid and especially so in haploid males more genes were down-regulated. This difference between the sexes may be related to longevity, which is much longer in females than in males

Prevalence of Pulmonary Embolism in Patients with Syncope

Importance:Sparse data and conflicting evidence exist on the prevalence of pulmonary embolism (PE) in patients with syncope. Objective:To estimate the prevalence of PE among patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) for evaluation of syncope. Design, Setting, and Participants:This retrospective, observational study analyzed longitudinal administrative data from 5 databases in 4 different countries (Canada, Denmark, Italy, and the United States). Data from all adult patients (aged 6518 years) who presented to the ED were screened to identify those with syncope codes at discharge. Data were collected from January 1, 2000, through September 30, 2016. Main Outcomes and Measures:The prevalence of PE at ED and hospital discharge, identified using codes from the International Classification of Diseases, was considered the primary outcome. Two sensitivity analyses considering prevalence of PE at 90 days of follow-up and prevalence of venous thromboembolism were performed. Results: A total of 1\u202f671\u202f944 unselected adults who presented to the ED for syncope were included. The prevalence of PE, according to administrative data, ranged from 0.06% (95% CI, 0.05%-0.06%) to 0.55% (95% CI, 0.50%-0.61%) for all patients and from 0.15% (95% CI, 0.14%-0.16%) to 2.10% (95% CI, 1.84%-2.39%) for hospitalized patients. The prevalence of PE at 90 days of follow-up ranged from 0.14% (95% CI, 0.13%-0.14%) to 0.83% (95% CI, 0.80%-0.86%) for all patients and from 0.35% (95% CI, 0.34%-0.37%) to 2.63% (95% CI, 2.34%-2.95%) for hospitalized patients. Finally, the prevalence of venous thromboembolism at 90 days ranged from 0.30% (95% CI, 0.29%-0.31%) to 1.37% (95% CI, 1.33%-1.41%) for all patients and from 0.75% (95% CI, 0.73%-0.78%) to 3.86% (95% CI, 3.51%-4.24%) for hospitalized patients. Conclusions and Relevance: Pulmonary embolism was rarely identified in patients with syncope. Although PE should be considered in every patient, not all patients should undergo evaluation for PE