An explanation for a universality of transition temperatures in families of copper oxide superconductors

A remarkable mystery of the copper oxide high-transition-temperature (Tc) superconductors is the dependence of Tc on the number of CuO2 layers, n, in the unit cell of a crystal. In a given family of these superconductors, Tc rises with the number of layers, reaching a peak at n=3, and then declines: the result is a bell-shaped curve. Despite the ubiquity of this phenomenon, it is still poorly understood and attention has instead been mainly focused on the properties of a single CuO2 plane. Here we show that the quantum tunnelling of Cooper pairs between the layers simply and naturally explains the experimental results, when combined with the recently quantified charge imbalance of the layers and the latest notion of a competing order nucleated by this charge imbalance that suppresses superconductivity. We calculate the bell-shaped curve and show that, if materials can be engineered so as to minimize the charge imbalance as n increases, Tc can be raised further.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures. The version published in Natur

Psychometric precision in phenotype definition is a useful step in molecular genetic investigation of psychiatric disorders

Affective disorders are highly heritable, but few genetic risk variants have been consistently replicated in molecular genetic association studies. The common method of defining psychiatric phenotypes in molecular genetic research is either a summation of symptom scores or binary threshold score representing the risk of diagnosis. Psychometric latent variable methods can improve the precision of psychiatric phenotypes, especially when the data structure is not straightforward. Using data from the British 1946 birth cohort, we compared summary scores with psychometric modeling based on the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) scale for affective symptoms in an association analysis of 27 candidate genes (249 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)). The psychometric method utilized a bi-factor model that partitioned the phenotype variances into five orthogonal latent variable factors, in accordance with the multidimensional data structure of the GHQ-28 involving somatic, social, anxiety and depression domains. Results showed that, compared with the summation approach, the affective symptoms defined by the bi-factor psychometric model had a higher number of associated SNPs of larger effect sizes. These results suggest that psychometrically defined mental health phenotypes can reflect the dimensions of complex phenotypes better than summation scores, and therefore offer a useful approach in genetic association investigations

Detection of mild to moderate influenza A/H7N9 infection by China's national sentinel surveillance system for influenza-like illness: case series

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The sudden change phenomenon of quantum discord

Even if the parameters determining a system's state are varied smoothly, the behavior of quantum correlations alike to quantum discord, and of its classical counterparts, can be very peculiar, with the appearance of non-analyticities in its rate of change. Here we review this sudden change phenomenon (SCP) discussing some important points related to it: Its uncovering, interpretations, and experimental verifications, its use in the context of the emergence of the pointer basis in a quantum measurement process, its appearance and universality under Markovian and non-Markovian dynamics, its theoretical and experimental investigation in some other physical scenarios, and the related phenomenon of double sudden change of trace distance discord. Several open questions are identified, and we envisage that in answering them we will gain significant further insight about the relation between the SCP and the symmetry-geometric aspects of the quantum state space.Comment: Lectures on General Quantum Correlations and their Applications, F. F. Fanchini, D. O. Soares Pinto, and G. Adesso (Eds.), Springer (2017), pp 309-33

Quantum Correlations in NMR systems

In conventional NMR experiments, the Zeeman energy gaps of the nuclear spin ensembles are much lower than their thermal energies, and accordingly exhibit tiny polarizations. Generally such low-purity quantum states are devoid of quantum entanglement. However, there exist certain nonclassical correlations which can be observed even in such systems. In this chapter, we discuss three such quantum correlations, namely, quantum contextuality, Leggett-Garg temporal correlations, and quantum discord. In each case, we provide a brief theoretical background and then describe some results from NMR experiments.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figure

Impact of ENSO longitudinal position on teleconnections to the NAO

While significant improvements have been made in understanding how the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) impacts both North American and Asian climate, its relationship with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) remains less clear. Observations indicate that ENSO exhibits a highly complex relationship with the NAO-associated atmospheric circulation. One critical contribution to this ambiguous ENSO/NAO relationship originates from ENSO’s diversity in its spatial structure. In general, both eastern (EP) and central Pacific (CP) El Niño events tend to be accompanied by a negative NAO-like atmospheric response. However, for two different types of La Niña the NAO response is almost opposite. Thus, the NAO responses for the CP ENSO are mostly linear, while nonlinear NAO responses dominate for the EP ENSO. These contrasting extra-tropical atmospheric responses are mainly attributed to nonlinear air-sea interactions in the tropical eastern Pacific. The local atmospheric response to the CP ENSO sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies is highly linear since the air-sea action center is located within the Pacific warm pool, characterized by relatively high climatological SSTs. In contrast, the EP ENSO SST anomalies are located in an area of relatively low climatological SSTs in the eastern equatorial Pacific. Here only sufficiently high positive SST anomalies during EP El Niño events are able to overcome the SST threshold for deep convection, while hardly any anomalous convection is associated with EP La Niña SSTs that are below this threshold. This ENSO/NAO relationship has important implications for NAO seasonal prediction and places a higher requirement on models in reproducing the full diversity of ENSO

A Global Clustering Algorithm to Identify Long Intergenic Non-Coding RNA - with Applications in Mouse Macrophages

Identification of diffuse signals from the chromatin immunoprecipitation and high-throughput massively parallel sequencing (ChIP-Seq) technology poses significant computational challenges, and there are few methods currently available. We present a novel global clustering approach to enrich diffuse CHIP-Seq signals of RNA polymerase II and histone 3 lysine 4 trimethylation (H3K4Me3) and apply it to identify putative long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs) in macrophage cells. Our global clustering method compares favorably to the local clustering method SICER that was also designed to identify diffuse CHIP-Seq signals. The validity of the algorithm is confirmed at several levels. First, 8 out of a total of 11 selected putative lincRNA regions in primary macrophages respond to lipopolysaccharides (LPS) treatment as predicted by our computational method. Second, the genes nearest to lincRNAs are enriched with biological functions related to metabolic processes under resting conditions but with developmental and immune-related functions under LPS treatment. Third, the putative lincRNAs have conserved promoters, modestly conserved exons, and expected secondary structures by prediction. Last, they are enriched with motifs of transcription factors such as PU.1 and AP.1, previously shown to be important lineage determining factors in macrophages, and 83% of them overlap with distal enhancers markers. In summary, GCLS based on RNA polymerase II and H3K4Me3 CHIP-Seq method can effectively detect putative lincRNAs that exhibit expected characteristics, as exemplified by macrophages in the study

An Effective Amperometric Biosensor Based on Gold Nanoelectrode Arrays

A sensitive amperometric biosensor based on gold nanoelectrode array (NEA) was investigated. The gold nanoelectrode array was fabricated by template-assisted electrodeposition on general electrodes, which shows an ordered well-defined 3D structure of nanowires. The sensitivity of the gold NEA to hydrogen peroxide is 37 times higher than that of the conventional electrode. The linear range of the platinum NEA toward H2O2is from 1 × 10−6to 1 × 10−2 M, covering four orders of magnitudes with detection limit of 1 × 10−7 M and a single noise ratio (S/N) of four. The enzyme electrode exhibits an excellent response performance to glucose with linear range from 1 × 10−5to 1 × 10−2 M and a fast response time within 8 s. The Michaelis–Menten constantkm and the maximum current densityimaxof the enzyme electrode were 4.97 mM and 84.60 μA cm−2, respectively. This special nanoelectrode may find potential application in other biosensors based on amperometric signals