A simple atomic beam oven with a metal thermal break

We report the design and construction of a simple, easy to machine high-temperature oven for generating an atomic beam in laser cooling experiments. This design eliminates the problem of thermal isolation of the oven region from the rest of the vacuum system without using a glass or ceramic thermal break. This design simplifies the construction and operation of high-temperature ovens for elements having low vapor pressure. We demonstrate the functionality of such a source for Strontium (Sr) atoms. We generate a high flux of Sr atoms for use in laser cooling and trapping experiments. The optimization of the design of the metal thermal break is done using a finite element analysis.Comment: 5 pages,6 figure

The Shadows of Life: Medicaid\u27s Failure of Health Care\u27s Moral Test

North Carolina Medicaid covers one-fifth of the state’s population and makes up approximately one-third of the budget. Yet the state has experienced increasing costs and worsening health outcomes over the past decade, while socioeconomic disparities persist among communities. In this article, the authors explore the factors that influence these trends and provide a series of policy lessons to inform the state’s current reform efforts following the recent approval of North Carolina’s Section 1115 waiver by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The authors used health, social, and financial data from the state Department of Health and Human Services, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the University of North Carolina to identify the highest cost counties in North Carolina. They found higher per beneficiary spending to be inversely related to population health, with many counties with the most expensive beneficiaries also reporting poor health outcomes. These trends appear to be attributed to a breakdown in access to basic health services, with high cost counties often lacking adequate numbers of health care providers and possessing limited health care services, leading patients to primarily engage the health care system in a reactive manner and predominantly in institutional care settings. To illustrate this pattern, the authors developed case studies of Tyrrell County and Graham County, which respectively are home to the state’s worst health outcomes and most expensive Medicaid beneficiaries. The authors combined stories of these counties with the larger historical trends to offer policy recommendations to help reorient North Carolina Medicaid around patient needs. The results shed light on traditionally understudied hotspots of cost and poor outcomes in North Carolina, while proposing tangible steps to support reform

Assessment of antimicrobial prescribing and rationality of drug usage in general practitioners in Pune city, India

Background: Most of the common ailments are managed by general practitioners (GPs). GPs prescribe major bulk of the drugs sold in the market. Naturally, irrational use of drugs at this level could lead to disastrous consequences. So this study was undertaken to determine prescribing pattern of Antimicrobials (AMA) and the rationality of drug usage by GPs in Pune city.Methods: It was a cross-sectional study. Pune city was divided into 5 zones. MBBS, BAMS and BHMS GPs doing Allopathic practice were selected randomly. 2 GPs of each specialty per zone were selected; this gave us 10 GPs of each degree – so total 30 GPs.30 Prescriptions at each GP were collected – total 900 prescriptions. The following parameters were studied- Diagnosis of patient, Average no. of drugs/prescription Percentage of AMAs prescribed, Rationality of AMA, Selection of AMAs diagnosis wise, Rationality of Prescription.Results: More than 75% patients coming to GPs were suffering from communicable diseases. Average no. of drugs / prescription and percentage of prescription with AMAs was high in all GPs. Macrolides was the most common group of AMA used by MBBS whereas Cephalosporins was used by BAMS and BHMS. Irrational use of AMAs was high in BHMS GPs. Use of irrational FDCs, banned drugs, steroids was high in BAMS GPs.Conclusions: There are deficiencies in prescription practices among all GPs. Not only are GPs prescribing the highest number of  AMAs  per prescription anywhere, their prescription practices for common health problems are highly inappropriate. High level of irrational use of drugs by BAMS and BHMS GPs are cause of concern

Comparative Analysis of Phase Noise for different configurations of Bragg lattice for an Atomic Gravimeter with Bose-Einstein Condensate

We perform a comparative study of the phase noise induced in the lasers used for Bragg diffraction in a Bose-Einstein condensate-based quantum gravimeter where the Bragg beams are generated using two different configurations. In one of the configurations, the Bragg beams that form the moving optical lattice are generated using two different acousto-optic modulators. In the second configuration, the Bragg beams are generated using a single acousto-optic modulator carrying two phase-locked frequencies. The second configuration shows a suppression of phase noise by a factor of 4.7 times in the frequency band upto 10 $kHz$, the primary source of noise, which is the background acoustic noise picked up by optical components and the optical table. We report a sensitivity of 99.7 $\mu Gal/\sqrt Hz$ for an interferometric time of 10 $ms$.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Data Release 9 Spectroscopic Galaxy Sample

We present measurements of galaxy clustering from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III). These use the Data Release 9 (DR9) CMASS sample, which contains 264,283 massive galaxies covering 3275 square degrees with an effective redshift z=0.57 and redshift range 0.43 < z < 0.7. Assuming a concordance Lambda-CDM cosmological model, this sample covers an effective volume of 2.2 Gpc^3, and represents the largest sample of the Universe ever surveyed at this density, n = 3 x 10^-4 h^-3 Mpc^3. We measure the angle-averaged galaxy correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of 5\sigma in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Combining with the SDSS-II Luminous Red Galaxy Sample, the detection significance increases to 6.7\sigma. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance to z=0.57 relative to the sound horizon DV /rs = 13.67 +/- 0.22 at z=0.57. Assuming a fiducial sound horizon of 153.19 Mpc, which matches cosmic microwave background constraints, this corresponds to a distance DV(z=0.57) = 2094 +/- 34 Mpc. At 1.7 per cent, this is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. We place this result alongside previous BAO measurements in a cosmological distance ladder and find excellent agreement with the current supernova measurements. We use these distance measurements to constrain various cosmological models, finding continuing support for a flat Universe with a cosmological constant.Comment: 33 page

Electromagnetically Induced Transparency (EIT) aided cooling of strontium atoms

The presence of ultra-narrow inter-combination spectroscopic lines in alkaline earth elements places them as promising candidates for optical atomic clocks, quantum computation, and for probing fundmental physics. Doppler cooling of these atoms is typically achieved through two subsequent stages: the initial cooling is on the 1s0-1p1 transition followed by cooling using the narrow-line 1s0-3p1 transition. However, due to significantly lower linewidth of the second stage cooling transition, efficient transfer of atoms into the second stage becomes technically challenging. The velocity distribution of the atoms after the first stage of cooling is too broad for atoms to be captured efficiently in the second stage cooling. As a result, the capture efficiency of atoms into the second stage Magneto-Optical Trap is low, even if the linewidth of the second stage cooling laser is artificially broadened.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Dimensionality reduction for enhancing malware classification accuracy in portable executable files.

Portable executable (PE) files are a common vector used for the spread of malware. This paper reviews and evaluates machine learning-based PE malware detection techniques. A dataset was constructed using malicious samples from Virus Share and benign samples from github. Static analysis was used to extract highly ranked features, followed by dimensionality reduction using Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). K-Nearest Neighbors and Random Forest classifiers performed well, achieving accuracy between ≈93% and ≈94% when combined with LDA. By integrating static analysis with dimensionality reduction, this study provides new insights into optimising machine learning performance for malware classification