17,883 research outputs found
Scotland, Catalonia and the “right” to self-determination: a comment suggested by Kathryn Crameri’s “Do Catalans Have the Right to Decide?
No abstract available
Decoherence and dephasing in strongly driven colliding Bose-Einstein condensates
We report on a series of measurements of decoherence and wavepacket dephasing
between two colliding, strongly coupled, identical Bose-Einstein condensates.
We measure, in the strong excitation regime, a suppression of the mean-field
shift, compared to the shift which is observed for a weak excitation. This
suppression is explained by applying the Gross-Pitaevskii energy functional. By
selectively counting only the non-decohered fraction in a time of flight image
we observe oscillations for which both inhomogeneous and Doppler broadening are
suppressed, in quantitative agreement with a full Gross-Pitaevskii equation
simulation. If no post selection is used, the decoherence rate due to
collisions can be extracted, and is in agreement with the local density average
calculated rate.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
Utility of Lymph Node Aspiration in the Diagnosis of Visceral Leishmaniasis in Sudan.
We evaluated lymph node aspiration (LNA) as a simple diagnostic procedure for visceral leishmaniasis (VL). Lymph node aspiration was compared with the direct agglutination test (DAT) using a diagnostic titer > or = 1:6,400 in 7,880 suspected VL patients in eastern Sudan. Compared with DAT, LNA had a sensitivity of 65.1% (95% confidence interval = 63.5-66.6%). Parasite density in LNA correlated strongly with DAT titers (P < 0.0001), and low parasite density accounted for 78.1% of positive LNA results with DAT titers < 1:6,400 (n = 782). Risk factors predictive of a positive LNA result were an age of 1-29 years, male sex, a hemoglobin level < 10.0 g/dL, a DAT titer > or = 1:800, and a location with a higher prevalence of VL. Lymph node and splenic aspirations were similarly accurate as tests of cure after treatment of 50 VL patients in southern Sudan. Pre-treatment LNA results were negative in 20 cases of severe post kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis
High sensitivity phonon spectroscopy of Bose-Einstein condensates using matter-wave interference
We study low momentum excitations of a Bose-Einstein condensate using a novel
matter-wave interference technique. In time-of-flight expansion images we
observe strong matter-wave fringe patterns. The fringe contrast is a sensitive
spectroscopic probe of in-trap phonons and is explained by use of a Bogoliubov
excitation projection method applied to the rescaled order parameter of the
expanding condensate. Gross-Pitaevskii simulations agree with the experimental
data and confirm the validity of the theoretical interpretation. We show that
the high sensitivity of this detection scheme gives access to the quantized
quasiparticle regime.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, author list update
Regions of beta 2 and beta 4 responsible for differences between the steady state dose-response relationships of the alpha 3 beta 2 and alpha 3 beta 4 neuronal nicotinic receptors
We constructed chimeras of the rat beta 2 and beta 4 neuronal nicotinic subunits to locate the regions that contribute to differences between the acetylcholine (ACh) dose-response relationships of the alpha 3 beta 2 and alpha 3 beta 4 receptors. Expressed in Xenopus oocytes, the alpha 3 beta 2 receptor displays an EC50 for ACh approximately 20-fold less than the EC50 of the alpha 3 beta 4 receptor. The apparent Hill slope (n(app)) of alpha 3 beta 2 is near one whereas the alpha 3 beta 4 receptor displays an n(app) near two. Substitutions within the first 120 residues convert the EC50 for ACh from one wild-type value to the other. Exchanging just beta 2:104-120 for the corresponding region of beta 4 shifts the EC50 of ACh dose-response relationship in the expected direction but does not completely convert the EC50 of the dose- response relationship from one wild-type value to the other. However, substitutions in the beta 2:104-120 region do account for the relative sensitivity of the alpha 3 beta 2 receptor to cytisine, tetramethylammonium, and ACh. The expression of beta 4-like (strong) cooperativity requires an extensive region of beta 4 (beta 4:1-301). Relatively short beta 2 substitutions (beta 2:104-120) can reduce cooperativity to beta 2-like values. The results suggest that amino acids within the first 120 residues of beta 2 and the corresponding region of beta 4 contribute to an agonist binding site that bridges the alpha and beta subunits in neuronal nicotinic receptors
Splitting in the Excitation Spectrum of A Bose-Einstein Condensate Undergoing Strong Rabi Oscillations
We report on a measurement of splitting in the excitation spectrum of a
condensate driven by an optical travelling wave. Experimental results are
compared to a numerical solution of the Gross Pitaevskii equation, and analyzed
by a simple two level model and by the more complete band theory, treating the
driving beams as an optical lattice. In this picture, the splitting is a
manifestation of the energy gap between neighboring bands that opens on the
boundary of the Brillouin zone.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
Multistable alignment states in nematic liquid crystal filled wells
Two distinct, stable alignment states have been observed for a nematic liquid crystal confined in a layer with thickness of 12 μm and in square wells with sides of length between 20 and 80 μm. The director lies in the plane of the layer and line defects occur in two corners of the squares. The positions of the defects determine whether the director orientation is across the diagonal or is parallel to two opposite edges of the square. The device is multistable because both the diagonal and parallel states are stable when rotated by multiples of 90° in plane
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