5,892 research outputs found
Characterization of cross-bridge elasticity and kinetics of cross-bridge cycling during force development in single smooth muscle cells
Force development in smooth muscle, as in skeletal muscle, is believed to reflect recruitment of force-generating myosin cross-bridges. However, little is known about the events underlying cross-bridge recruitment as the muscle cell approaches peak isometric force and then enters a period of tension maintenance. In the present studies on single smooth muscle cells isolated from the toad (Bufo marinus) stomach muscularis, active muscle stiffness, calculated from the force response to small sinusoidal length changes (0.5% cell length, 250 Hz), was utilized to estimate the relative number of attached cross-bridges. By comparing stiffness during initial force development to stiffness during force redevelopment immediately after a quick release imposed at peak force, we propose that the instantaneous active stiffness of the cell reflects both a linearly elastic cross-bridge element having 1.5 times the compliance of the cross-bridge in frog skeletal muscle and a series elastic component having an exponential length-force relationship. At the onset of force development, the ratio of stiffness to force was 2.5 times greater than at peak isometric force. These data suggest that, upon activation, cross-bridges attach in at least two states (i.e., low-force-producing and high-force-producing) and redistribute to a steady state distribution at peak isometric force. The possibility that the cross-bridge cycling rate was modulated with time was also investigated by analyzing the time course of tension recovery to small, rapid step length changes (0.5% cell length in 2.5 ms) imposed during initial force development, at peak force, and after 15 s of tension maintenance. The rate of tension recovery slowed continuously throughout force development following activation and slowed further as force was maintained. Our results suggest that the kinetics of force production in smooth muscle may involve a redistribution of cross-bridge populations between two attached states and that the average cycling rate of these cross-bridges becomes slower with time during contraction
High-fidelity adiabatic inversion of a electron spin qubit in natural silicon
The main limitation to the high-fidelity quantum control of spins in
semiconductors is the presence of strongly fluctuating fields arising from the
nuclear spin bath of the host material. We demonstrate here a substantial
improvement in single-qubit gate fidelities for an electron spin qubit bound to
a P atom in natural silicon, by applying adiabatic inversion instead of
narrow-band pulses. We achieve an inversion fidelity of 97%, and we observe
signatures in the spin resonance spectra and the spin coherence time that are
consistent with the presence of an additional exchange-coupled donor. This work
highlights the effectiveness of adiabatic inversion techniques for spin control
in fluctuating environments.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Bell's inequality violation with spins in silicon
Bell's theorem sets a boundary between the classical and quantum realms, by
providing a strict proof of the existence of entangled quantum states with no
classical counterpart. An experimental violation of Bell's inequality demands
simultaneously high fidelities in the preparation, manipulation and measurement
of multipartite quantum entangled states. For this reason the Bell signal has
been tagged as a single-number benchmark for the performance of quantum
computing devices. Here we demonstrate deterministic, on-demand generation of
two-qubit entangled states of the electron and the nuclear spin of a single
phosphorus atom embedded in a silicon nanoelectronic device. By sequentially
reading the electron and the nucleus, we show that these entangled states
violate the Bell/CHSH inequality with a Bell signal of 2.50(10). An even higher
value of 2.70(9) is obtained by mapping the parity of the two-qubit state onto
the nuclear spin, which allows for high-fidelity quantum non-demolition
measurement (QND) of the parity. Furthermore, we complement the Bell inequality
entanglement witness with full two-qubit state tomography exploiting QND
measurement, which reveals that our prepared states match the target maximally
entangled Bell states with 96\% fidelity. These experiments demonstrate
complete control of the two-qubit Hilbert space of a phosphorus atom, and show
that this system is able to maintain its simultaneously high initialization,
manipulation and measurement fidelities past the single-qubit regime.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, 4 extended data figure
The relationship between particulate pollution levels in Australian cities, meteorology, and landscape fire activity detected from MODIS hotspots
Generally, sigmoid curves are used to describe the growth of animals over their lifetime. However, because growth rates often differ over an animal\u27s lifetime a single curve may not accurately capture the growth. Broken-stick models constrained to pass through a common point have been proposed to describe the different growth phases, but these are often unsatisfactory because essentially there are still two functions that describe the lifetime growth. To provide a single, converged model to age animals with disparate growth phases we developed a smoothly joining two-phase nonlinear function (SJ2P), tailored to provide a more accurate description of lifetime growth of the macropod, the Tasmanian pademelon Thylogale billardierii. The model consists of the Verhulst logistic function, which describes pouch-phase growth - joining smoothly to the Brody function, which describes post-pouch growth. Results from the model demonstrate that male pademelons grew faster and bigger than females. Our approach provides a practical means of ageing wild pademelons for life history studies but given the high variability of the data used to parametrise the second growth phase of the model, the accuracy of ageing of post-weaned animals is low: accuracy might be improved with collection of longitudinal growth data. This study provides a unique, first robust method that can be used to characterise growth over the lifespan of pademelons. The development of this method is relevant to collecting age-specific vital rates from commonly used wildlife management practices to provide crucial insights into the demographic behaviour of animal populations
Electrically controlling single spin qubits in a continuous microwave field
Large-scale quantum computers must be built upon quantum bits that are both
highly coherent and locally controllable. We demonstrate the quantum control of
the electron and the nuclear spin of a single 31P atom in silicon, using a
continuous microwave magnetic field together with nanoscale electrostatic
gates. The qubits are tuned into resonance with the microwave field by a local
change in electric field, which induces a Stark shift of the qubit energies.
This method, known as A-gate control, preserves the excellent coherence times
and gate fidelities of isolated spins, and can be extended to arbitrarily many
qubits without requiring multiple microwave sources.Comment: Main paper: 13 pages, 4 figures. Supplementary information: 25 pages,
13 figure
A Bell Inequality Analog in Quantum Measure Theory
One obtains Bell's inequalities if one posits a hypothetical joint
probability distribution, or {\it measure}, whose marginals yield the
probabilities produced by the spin measurements in question. The existence of a
joint measure is in turn equivalent to a certain causality condition known as
``screening off''. We show that if one assumes, more generally, a joint {\it
quantal measure}, or ``decoherence functional'', one obtains instead an
analogous inequality weaker by a factor of . The proof of this
``Tsirel'son inequality'' is geometrical and rests on the possibility of
associating a Hilbert space to any strongly positive quantal measure. These
results lead both to a {\it question}: ``Does a joint measure follow from some
quantal analog of `screening off'?'', and to the {\it observation} that
non-contextual hidden variables are viable in histories-based quantum
mechanics, even if they are excluded classically.Comment: 38 pages, TeX. Several changes and added comments to bring out the
meaning more clearly. Minor rewording and extra acknowledgements, now closer
to published versio
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