Many body physics from a quantum information perspective

The quantum information approach to many body physics has been very successful in giving new insight and novel numerical methods. In these lecture notes we take a vertical view of the subject, starting from general concepts and at each step delving into applications or consequences of a particular topic. We first review some general quantum information concepts like entanglement and entanglement measures, which leads us to entanglement area laws. We then continue with one of the most famous examples of area-law abiding states: matrix product states, and tensor product states in general. Of these, we choose one example (classical superposition states) to introduce recent developments on a novel quantum many body approach: quantum kinetic Ising models. We conclude with a brief outlook of the field.Comment: Lectures from the Les Houches School on "Modern theories of correlated electron systems". Improved version new references adde

Taxonomy of the order Mononegavirales: update 2016

In 2016, the order Mononegavirales was emended through the addition of two new families (Mymonaviridae and Sunviridae), the elevation of the paramyxoviral subfamily Pneumovirinae to family status (Pneumoviridae), the addition of five free-floating genera (Anphevirus, Arlivirus, Chengtivirus, Crustavirus, and Wastrivirus), and several other changes at the genus and species levels. This article presents the updated taxonomy of the order Mononegavirales as now accepted by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV)

Wastewater-Based Epidemiology: Global Collaborative to Maximize Contributions in the Fight against COVID-19

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARSCoV-2), a novel member of the Coronaviridae family, has been identified as the etiologic agent of an ongoing pandemic of severe pneumonia known as COVID-19. To date there have been millions of cases of COVID-19 diagnosed in 184 countries with case fatality rates ranging from 1.8% in Germany to 12.5% in Italy. Limited diagnostic testing capacity and asymptomatic and oligosymptomatic infections result in significant uncertainty in the estimated extent of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Recent reports have documented that infection with SARS-CoV-2 is accompanied by persistent shedding of virus RNA in feces in 27% to 89% of patients at densities from 0.8 to 7.5 log10 gene copies per gram. The presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in feces raises the potential to survey sewage for virus RNA to inform epidemiological monitoring of COVID-19, which we refer to as wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE), but is also known as environmental surveillance

Gene expression variation in the adult human retina

Despite evidence that differences in gene expression levels contribute significantly to phenotypic variation across individuals, there has been only limited effort to study gene expression variation in human tissue. To characterize expression variation in the normal human retina, the authors utilized a custom retinal microarray to analyze 33 normal retinas from 19 donors, aged 29 to 90 years. Statistical models were designed to separate and quantify biological and technical sources of variation, including age, gender, eye laterality, gene function, and age-by-gender interaction. Although the majority of the 9406 genes analyzed showed relatively stable expression across different donors (for an average gene the expression level value of 95 out of a 100 individual fell within a 1.23-fold range), 2.6% of genes showed significant donor-to-donor variation, with a false discovery rate of 10%. The mean expression ratio standard deviation was 0.15 ± 0.8, log 2, with a range of 0.09 to 0.99. Genes selectively expressed in photoreceptors showed higher expression variation than other gene classes. Gender, age, and other donor-specific factors contributed significantly to the expression variation of multiple genes, and groups of genes with age- or gender-associated expression pattern were identified. These findings show that a significant fraction of gene expression variation in the normal human retina is attributable to identifiable biologic factors. The greater expression variability of many genes central to retinal function (including photoreceptor-specific gene) may be partially explained by the dynamics of the vision process, and raises the possibility that photoreceptor gene expression levels may contribute to phenotypic diversity across normal adult retinas. Additionally, as such diversity may result in different levels of disease susceptibility, exploring its sources may provide insights into the pathogenesis of retinal disease.—Hans E. Grossniklau