Entanglement between a diamond spin qubit and a photonic time-bin qubit at telecom wavelength

We report on the realization and verification of quantum entanglement between an NV electron spin qubit and a telecom-band photonic qubit. First we generate entanglement between the spin qubit and a 637 nm photonic time-bin qubit, followed by photonic quantum frequency conversion that transfers the entanglement to a 1588 nm photon. We characterize the resulting state by correlation measurements in different bases and find a lower bound to the Bell state fidelity of F = 0.77 +/- 0.03. This result presents an important step towards extending quantum networks via optical fiber infrastructure

Peptide receptor radionuclide therapy

Peptide receptor radionuclide therapy is a new treatment modality for patients with inoperable or metastasised neuroendocrine gastroenteropancreatic tumours. After the successful implementation of somatostatin receptor scintigraphy in daily clinical practice, the next logical step was to increase the radiation dose of the administered radiolabelled somatostatin analogue in an attempt to induce tumour shrinkage. Since then, an increasing number of patients has been successfully treated with this approach, resulting in a substantial numbers of patient with objective tumour shrinkage. Serious side-effects have been rare. This article reviews the effectiveness of the different radiolabelled somatostatin analogues used, the currently known side-effects and the survival data available. Furthermore, clinical issues, including indication and timing of therapy, are discussed. Finally, important directions for future research are briefly mentioned to illustrate that, although the currently available results already suggest a favourable outcome compared with other systemic therapies, new strategies are being developed to increase efficacy

Lengthening adalimumab dosing interval in quiescent Crohn's disease patients: Protocol for the pragmatic randomised non-inferiority LADI study

Introduction Adalimumab is effective for maintenance of remission in patients with Crohn's disease (CD) at a dose of 40 mg subcutaneously every 2 weeks. However, adalimumab is associated with (long-term) adverse events and is costly. The aim of this study is to demonstrate non-inferiority and cost-effectiveness of disease activity guided adalimumab interval lengthening compared to standard dosing of every other week (EOW). Methods and analysis The Lengthening Adalimumab Dosing Interval (LADI) study is a pragmatic, multicentre, open label, randomised controlled non-inferiority trial. Non-inferiority is reached if the difference in cumulative incidence of persistent (>8 weeks) flares does not exceed the non-inferiority margin of 15%. 174 CD patients on adalimumab maintenance therapy in long-term (>9 months) clinical and biochemical remission will be included (C-reactive protein (CRP) 250 μg/g, CRP≥10 mg/l, HBI≥5. Secondary outcomes include cumulative incidence of transient flares, adverse events, predictors for successful dose reduction and cost-effectiveness. Ethics and dissemination The study is approved by the Medical Ethics Committee Arnhem-Nijmegen, the Netherlands (registration number NL58948.091.16). Results will be published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at international conferences. Trial registration numbers EudraCT registry (2016-003321-42); Clinicaltrials.gov registry (NCT03172377); Dutch trial registry (NTRID6417)

Long-term treatment with the dopamine agonist quinagolide of patients with clinically non-functioning pituitary adenoma

OBJECTIVE: This study was performed to evaluate the effect of prolonged treatment with the dopamine agonist quinagolide on serum gonadotropin and alpha-subunit concentrations and tumor volume in patients with clinically non-functioning pituitary adenomas (CNPA). DESIGN: Ten patients with CNPA were treated with quinagolide (0.3 mg daily). The median duration of treatment was 57 months (range 36-93 months). Blood samples for measurement of serum gonadotropin and alpha-subunit concentrations were drawn before treatment, after 5 days, and at each outpatient visit. Computerized tomography or magnetic resonance imaging of the pituitary region and Goldmann perimetry were done before and at regular intervals during treatment. RESULTS: A significant decrease of serum FSH, LH or alpha-subunit concentrations was found in nine patients. The levels remained low during the entire treatment period. In two out of three patients with pre-existing visual field defects a slight improvement was shown during the first months of treatment, but eventually deterioration occurred in all three patients. A fourth patient developed unilateral ophthalmoplegia dur

Higher-order Singular Value Decomposition Filter for Contrast Echocardiography

Assessing the coronary circulation with contrast-enhanced echocardiography has high clinical relevance. However, it is not being routinely performed in clinical practice because the current clinical tools generally could not provide adequate image quality. The contrast agent’s visibility in the myocardium is generally poor, impaired by motion and non-linear propagation artifacts. The established multi-pulse contrast schemes (MPCS) and the more experimental singular value decomposition (SVD) filter also fall short to solve these issues. Here, we propose a scheme to process AM/AMPI echoes with higher-order singular value decomposition (HOSVD) instead of conventionally summing the complementary pulses. The echoes from the complementary pulses form a separate dimension in the HOSVD algorithm. Then, removing the ranks in that dimension with dominant coherent signals coming from tissue scattering would provide the contrast detection. We performed both in vitro and in vivo experiments to assess the performance of our proposed method in comparison with the current standard methods. A flow phantom study shows that HOSVD on AM pulsing exceeds the contrast-to-background ratio (CBR) of conventional AM and an SVD filter by 10dB and 14dB, respectively. In vivo porcine heart results also demonstrate that, compared to AM, HOSVD improves CBR in open-chest acquisition (up to 19dB) and contrast ratio in closed-chest acquisition (3dB)

Reaction-diffusion model for the preparation of polymer gratings by patterned ultraviolet illumination

A model is developed to describe the migration mechanism of monomers during the lithographic preparation of polymer gratings by ultraviolet polymerization. The model is based on the Flory–Huggins theory: a thermodynamic theory that deals with monomer/polymer solutions. During the photoinduced polymerization process, monomer migration is assumed to be driven by a gradient in the chemical potential rather than the concentration. If the chemical potential is used as the driving force, monomer migration is not only driven by a difference in concentration, or volume fraction, but also by other entropic effects such as monomer size and the degree of crosslinking of the polymer network, which is related to the ability of a polymer to swell. Interaction of the monomers with each other or the polymer is an additional energetic term in the chemical potential. The theoretical background of the model is explained and results of simulations are compared with those of nuclear microprobe measurements. A nuclear microprobe is used to determine the spatial monomer distribution in the polymer gratings. It is shown that two-way diffusion is expected if the monomers are both difunctional and have the same size. In some cases, if one monomer is considerably smaller than the other, it can eventually have a higher concentration in the illuminated regions, even when it has a lower reactivity. The model is used to simulate the grating formation process. This results in a calculated distribution of the monomer volume fractions as a function of position in polymer gratings. An excellent agreement with the nuclear microprobe measurements is obtained. ©2004 American Institute of Physics