Quantum Cloning, Bell's Inequality and Teleportation

We analyze a possibility of using the two qubit output state from Buzek-Hillery quantum copying machine (not necessarily universal quantum cloning machine) as a teleportation channel. We show that there is a range of values of the machine parameter $\xi$ for which the two qubit output state is entangled and violates Bell-CHSH inequality and for a different range it remains entangled but does not violate Bell-CHSH inequality. Further we observe that for certain values of the machine parameter the two-qubit mixed state can be used as a teleportation channel. The use of the output state from the Buzek-Hillery cloning machine as a teleportation channel provides an additional appeal to the cloning machine and motivation of our present work.Comment: 7 pages and no figures, Accepted in Journal of Physics

Retrograde trafficking of Argonaute 2 acts as a rate-limiting step for de novo miRNP formation on endoplasmic reticulum–attached polysomes in mammalian cells

microRNAs are short regulatory RNAs in metazoan cells. Regulation of miRNA activity and abundance is evident in human cells where availability of target messages can influence miRNA biogenesis by augmenting the Dicer1-dependent processing of precursors to mature microRNAs. Requirement of subcellular compartmentalization of Ago2, the key component of miRNA repression machineries, for the controlled biogenesis of miRNPs is reported here. The process predominantly happens on the polysomes attached with the endoplasmic reticulum for which the subcellular Ago2 trafficking is found to be essential. Mitochondrial tethering of endoplasmic reticulum and its interaction with endosomes controls Ago2 availability. In cells with depolarized mitochondria, miRNA biogenesis gets impaired, which results in lowering of de novo–formed mature miRNA levels and accumulation of miRNA-free Ago2 on endosomes that fails to interact with Dicer1 and to traffic back to endoplasmic reticulum for de novo miRNA loading. Thus, mitochondria by sensing the cellular context regulates Ago2 trafficking at the subcellular level, which acts as a rate-limiting step in miRNA biogenesis process in mammalian cells

A NuSTAR observation of disk reflection from close to the neutron star in 4U 1608-52

Studying the reflection of X-rays off the inner edge of the accretion disk in a neutron star low-mass X-ray binary, allows us to investigate the accretion geometry and to constrain the radius of the neutron star. We report on a NuSTAR observation of 4U 1608-52 obtained during a faint outburst in 2014 when the neutron star, which has a known spin frequency of 620 Hz, was accreting at ~1-2% of the Eddington limit. The 3-79 keV continuum emission was dominated by a Gamma~2 power law, with a ~1-2% contribution from a kTbb~0.3-0.6 keV black body component. The high-quality NuSTAR spectrum reveals the hallmarks of disk reflection; a broad iron line peaking near 7~keV and a Compton back-scattering hump around ~20-30 keV. Modeling the disk reflection spectrum points to a binary inclination of i~30-40 degrees and a small `coronal' height of h<8.5 GM/c2. Furthermore, our spectral analysis suggests that the inner disk radius extended to Rin~7-10 GM/c2, close to the innermost stable circular obit. This constrains the neutron star radius to R<21 km and the redshift from the stellar surface to z>0.12, for a mass of M=1.5 Msun and a spin parameter of a=0.29.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, MNRAS Letters in pres

Effects of agro-chemicals practices in economic production of cabbage in valley districts of Manipur, India

Present investigation was conducted in Thoubal district and Imphal East district of Manipur, India to assemble the information about the economics of cabbage production, checking the practices done by farmers while using agro-chemicals and identifying the problems encountered by the producers in cabbage production. NPK was the most popular inorganic fertilizer amongst farmers. As such 59 farms applied fertilizer twice and 26 farms applied more than twice before harvesting. Different irrigation practices were encountered where use of pipes was more popular (53 farms) relative to the use of bucket irrigation (32 farms). Hoeing or hand fork were the most efficient tools for weed management (66 farms) followed by hand picking (21 farms). Majority of the farmers (79 farms) applied insecticides to control insect pest and fungicides as the major means of diseases management (78 farms). Overall the average cost of cultivation was worked out to be Rs. 18007.18 farm-1 with the cost of large farms much higher than the small farms which is estimated as Rs. 26827.12 farm-1 and Rs. 12126.35 farm-1 respectively. The main problems faced by farmers were pest and diseases problems, insufficient irrigation, inadequate electricity for irrigation, infertility of soil, non-availability of fertilizers in time and suitable plant protection chemicals. The study concluded that cabbage farmer misused pesticides in terms of its types and quantity used in order to increase its production. In addition, consumers were exposed to high pesticide residue levels due to limited or no waiting period before cabbage heads were harvested

Precision Timing of Two Anomalous X-Ray Pulsars

We report on long-term X-ray timing of two anomalous X-ray pulsars, 1RXS J170849.0-400910 and 1E 2259+586, using the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. In monthly observations made over 1.4 yr and 2.6 yr for the two pulsars, respectively, we have obtained phase-coherent timing solutions which imply that these objects have been rotating with great stability throughout the course of our observations. For 1RXS J170849.0-400910, we find a rotation frequency of 0.0909169331(5) Hz and frequency derivative -15.687(4) x 10^(-14) Hz/s, for epoch MJD 51215.931. For 1E 2259+586, we find a rotation frequency of 0.1432880613(2)Hz, and frequency derivative -1.0026(7) x 10^(-14) Hz/s, for epoch MJD 51195.583. RMS phase residuals from these simple models are only about 0.01 cycles for both sources. We show that the frequency derivative for 1E 2259+586 is inconsistent with that inferred from incoherent frequency observations made over the last 20 yr. Our observations are consistent with the magnetar hypothesis and make binary accretion scenarios appear unlikely.Comment: 12 pages including 3 figures. To appear in ApJ Letter

Lift-and-Round to Improve Weighted Completion Time on Unrelated Machines

We consider the problem of scheduling jobs on unrelated machines so as to minimize the sum of weighted completion times. Our main result is a $(3/2-c)$-approximation algorithm for some fixed $c>0$, improving upon the long-standing bound of 3/2 (independently due to Skutella, Journal of the ACM, 2001, and Sethuraman & Squillante, SODA, 1999). To do this, we first introduce a new lift-and-project based SDP relaxation for the problem. This is necessary as the previous convex programming relaxations have an integrality gap of $3/2$. Second, we give a new general bipartite-rounding procedure that produces an assignment with certain strong negative correlation properties.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figure

Probing the effects of a thermonuclear X-ray burst on the neutron star accretion flow with NuSTAR

Observational evidence has been accumulating that thermonuclear X-ray bursts ignited on the surface of neutron stars influence the surrounding accretion flow. Here, we exploit the excellent sensitivity of NuSTAR up to 79 keV to analyze the impact of an X-ray burst on the accretion emission of the neutron star LMXB 4U 1608-52. The ~200 s long X-ray burst occurred during a hard X-ray spectral state, and had a peak intensity of ~30-50 per cent of the Eddington limit with no signs of photospheric radius expansion. Spectral analysis suggests that the accretion emission was enhanced up to a factor of ~5 during the X-ray burst. We also applied a linear unsupervised decomposition method, namely non-negative matrix factorization (NMF), to study this X-ray burst. We find that the NMF performs well in characterizing the evolution of the burst emission and is a promising technique to study changes in the underlying accretion emission in more detail than is possible through conventional spectral fitting. For the burst of 4U 1608-52, the NMF suggests a possible softening of the accretion spectrum during the X-ray burst, which could potentially be ascribed to cooling of a corona. Finally, we report a small (~3 per cent) but significant rise in the accretion emission ~0.5 h before the X-ray burst, although it is unclear whether this was related to the X-ray burst ignition.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, 1 table, to appear in MNRA