Adapting and disseminating effective public health interventions in another country: towards a systematic approach.

Background: Public health interventions that have proven effective in one country, are often adapted and disseminated in other countries. However, the process by which effective interventions are chosen for adaptation and dissemination in another country is often not conducted systematically. Methods: We propose a more systematic approach and describe the main steps that have to be taken in the assessment of the usefulness of effective interventions in another national context. Results: The following steps are proposed. Step 0: Point out the most relevant areas in public health (this is a collaborative effort by policy makers, scientists and practitioners). Step 1: Identification of potentially effective interventions (through systematic literature searches). Step 2: Assessing the levels of evidence and grades of recommendation for adoption. Step 3: Can the results of the trials be generalized to the national situation? Step 4: Can the intervention be implemented in the national situation? Conclusion: A more systematic approach to the adaptation and dissemination can be adopted. The basic steps described should be worked out in more detail before they can be used in practice

Effects of quasiparticle tunneling in a circuit-QED realization of a strongly driven two-level system

We experimentally and theoretically study the frequency shift of a driven cavity coupled to a superconducting charge qubit. In addition to previous studies, we here also consider drive strengths large enough to energetically allow for quasiparticle creation. Quasiparticle tunneling leads to the inclusion of more than two charge states in the dynamics. To explain the observed effects, we develop a master equation for the microwave dressed charge states, including quasiparticle tunneling. A bimodal behavior of the frequency shift as a function of gate voltage can be used for sensitive charge detection. However, at weak drives the charge sensitivity is significantly reduced by non-equilibrium quasiparticles, which induce transitions to a non-sensitive state. Unexpectedly, at high enough drives, quasiparticle tunneling enables a very fast relaxation channel to the sensitive state. In this regime, the charge sensitivity is thus robust against externally injected quasiparticles and the desired dynamics prevail over a broad range of temperatures. We find very good agreement between theory and experiment over a wide range of drive strengths and temperatures.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figure

Near-Field Scanning Microwave Microscopy in the Single Photon Regime

The microwave properties of nano-scale structures are important in a wide variety of applications in quantum technology. Here we describe a low-power cryogenic near-field scanning microwave microscope (NSMM) which maintains nano-scale dielectric contrast down to the single microwave photon regime, up to $10^{9}$ times lower power than in typical NSMMs. We discuss the remaining challenges towards developing nano-scale NSMM for quantum coherent interaction with two-level systems as an enabling tool for the development of quantum technologies in the microwave regime

Dynamic parity recovery in a strongly driven Cooper-pair box

We study a superconducting charge qubit coupled to an intensive electromagnetic field and probe changes in the resonance frequency of the formed dressed states. At large driving strengths, exceeding the qubit energy-level splitting, this reveals the well known Landau-Zener-Stuckelberg (LZS) interference structure of a longitudinally driven two-level system. For even stronger drives we observe a significant change in the LZS pattern and contrast. We attribute this to photon-assisted quasiparticle tunneling in the qubit. This results in the recovery of the qubit parity, eliminating effects of quasiparticle poisoning and leads to an enhanced interferometric response. The interference pattern becomes robust to quasiparticle poisoning and has a good potential for accurate charge sensing.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Photography of ground sites from AAP orbit

Photography of ground sites from Apollo Applications Progra

Stability of additive-free water-in-oil emulsions

We calculate ion distributions near a planar oil-water interface within non-linear Poisson-Boltzmann theory, taking into account the Born self-energy of the ions in the two media. For unequal self-energies of cations and anions, a spontaneous charge separation is found such that the water and oil phase become oppositely charged, in slabs with a typical thickness of the Debye screening length in the two media. From the analytical solutions, the corresponding interfacial charge density and the contribution to the interfacial tension is derived, together with an estimate for the Yukawa-potential between two spherical water droplets in oil. The parameter regime is explored where the plasma coupling parameter exceeds the crystallization threshold, i.e. where the droplets are expected to form crystalline structures due to a strong Yukawa repulsion, as recently observed experimentally. Extensions of the theory that we discuss briefly include numerical calculations on spherical water droplets in oil, and analytical calculations of the linear PB-equation for a finite oil-water interfacial width.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, accepted by JPCM for proceedings of LMC

Coupling of a locally implanted rare-earth ion ensemble to a superconducting micro-resonator

We demonstrate the coupling of rare-earth ions locally implanted in a substrate (Gd$^{3+}$ in Al$_{2}$O$_{3}$) to a superconducting NbN lumped-element micro-resonator. The hybrid device is fabricated by a controlled ion implantation of rare-earth ions in well-defined micron-sized areas, aligned to lithographically defined micro-resonators. The technique does not degrade the internal quality factor of the resonators which remain above $10^{5}$. Using microwave absorption spectroscopy we observe electron-spin resonances in good agreement with numerical modelling and extract corresponding coupling rates of the order of $1$ MHz and spin linewidths of $50 - 65$ MHz.Comment: 4 pages, 2 Figure

An effective method to compute closure ordering for nilpotent orbits of θ\theta-representations

We develop an algorithm for computing the closure of a given nilpotent $G_0$-orbit in \g_1, where \g_1 and $G_0$ are coming from a $\Z$ or a $\Z/m\Z$-grading \g= \bigoplus \g_i of a simple complex Lie algebra \g