920 research outputs found
A scalable tripartite Wigner's friend scenario
Wigner's friend thought experiment is intended to reveal the inherent tension
between unitary evolution and measurement collapse. On the basis of Wigner's
friend experiment, Brukner derives a no-go theorem for observer-independent
facts. We construct an extended Wigner's friend scenario including three
laboratories, namely, Alice's laboratory, Bob's laboratory and Charlie's
laboratory, where Alice, Bob and Charlie are standing outside the laboratories
while their friends are placed inside their own laboratories. We consider
quantum simulation via Q\# quantum programming and also realize the primary
quantum circuits using IBM quantum computers. Then, we calculate the
probabilities and corresponding statistical uncertainties. It has been shown
that the results of quantum simulation are clearly consistent with theoretical
values, while it has a slightly higher error rates for the experimental results
of quantum computers mainly because of a series of quantum gates, especially
CNOT gates.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure
Compact and Low-Cost 3-D Printed Antennas Metalized Using Spray-Coating Technology for 5G mm-Wave Communication Systems
This letter presents a design of two compact, light, rigid, and low-cost three-dimensionally (3-D) printed millimeter-wave antennas for a fifth-generation (5G) communication system. The proposed antennas consist of a radiating slot that is surrounded by a rectangular cavity and corrugations, which boost the gain performance of the antennas. Furthermore, the proposed antennas are fabricated using 3-D printing technology, and they are metalized using novel, simple, and low-cost techniques, which utilize the commercial conducive spray-coating technology. The proposed antennas operate at a 28 GHz band, where the first design is fed by a waveguide to prove the performance, whereas the second design is fed by a microstrip line to demonstrate the ability to be integrated into a compact structure. Measurement results show a wide impedance bandwidth, which enables the proposed antenna design to be a strong candidate for 5G applications
Invasive reperfusion after 12 hours of the symptom onset remains beneficial in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction: Evidence from a meta-analysis of published data
Background: Early myocardial reperfusion therapy (< 12 h) in patients with acute myocardial infarcÂtion (AMI) can significantly improve their prognosis. However, the effect of late reperfusion (> 12 h) remains controversial. In this study, the effects of late reperfusion versus standard drug therapy on the outcomes of patients with AMI were evaluated by systematic review and meta-analysis.
Methods: PubMed, Embase, Medline, Cochrane, Wanfang, and CNKI databases were searched for eligible studies for the present study. Meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.3.3 software. RelaÂtive risk (RR) and the 95% confidence interval (CI) were used to compare the outcomes between the two groups. The main outcome measures were major adverse cardiac events (MACEs), all-cause mortality, recurrent myocardial infarction (MI), and heart failure.
Results: Eighteen studies were identified including 14,677 patients, of whom 5157 received late reperfusion with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and 9520 received medication therapy (MT). Compared to MT, late PCI was associated with decreased all-cause mortality (RR 0.60, 95% CI 0.44–0.83; p = 0.002), MACEs (RR 0.67; 95% CI 0.50–0.89; p < 0.001), and heart failure (RR 0.76; 95% CI 0.60–0.97; p = 0.03), while there was also a trend toward decreased recurrent MI (RR 0.70; 95% CI 0.47–1.05; p = 0.08). However, subgroup analysis according to time to PCI showed that the clinical benefit was only from PCI after 12 h but not from 2 to 60 days of the onset of symptoms.
Conclusions: The present meta-analysis suggested that PCI performed > 12 h but not 2–60 days after AMI is associated with significant improvement in clinical outcomes. However, these results need further rigorously designed large sample size clinical trials to be validated
Improving the Performance of Catalytic Combustion Type Methane Gas Sensors Using Nanostructure Elements Doped with Rare Earth Cocatalysts
Conventional methane gas sensors based on catalytic combustion have the drawbacks of high working temperature, low thermal stability and small measurement range. To improve their performance, cerium, which possesses high oxygen storage and release ability, was introduced via nanotechnology to prepare Ce-contained nanostructure elements. Three kinds of elements with different carriers: Al2O3, n-Al2O3 and n-Ce-Al2O3 were prepared and separately fabricated (Pt-Pd/Al, Pt-Pd/n-Al, Pt-Pd/n-Ce-Al). The performances of Wheatstone Bridges with three different catalytic elements were tested and compared. The results indicated that the cerium-containing element exhibited better performance than other elements regarding activity, anti-sulfur ability and thermal stability. Moreover, a constant temperature circuit was also applied in this system. The measurement range was extended from 4% to 10% by automatically decreasing the working current in a reasonable range. The maximum error for 0%–10% CH4 was controlled below 5%, which fully meets the measurement requirements
Single-shot spatial instability and electric control of polariton condensates at room temperature
In planar microcavities, the transverse-electric and transverse-magnetic
(TE-TM) mode splitting of cavity photons arises due to their different
penetration into the Bragg mirrors and can result in optical spin-orbit
coupling (SOC). In this work, we find that in a liquid crystal (LC) microcavity
filled with perovskite microplates, the pronounced TE-TM splitting gives rise
to a strong SOC that leads to the spatial instability of microcavity polariton
condensates under single-shot excitation. Spatially varying hole burning and
mode competition occurs between polarization components leading to different
condensate profiles from shot to shot. The single-shot polariton condensates
become stable when the SOC vanishes as the TE and TM modes are spectrally well
separated from each other, which can be achieved by application of an electric
field to our LC microcavity with electrically tunable anisotropy. Our findings
are well reproduced and traced back to their physical origin by our detailed
numerical simulations. With the electrical manipulation our work reveals how
the shot-to-shot spatial instability of spatial polariton profiles can be
engineered in anisotropic microcavities at room temperature, which will benefit
the development of stable polariton-based optoeletronic and light-emitting
devices
Recommended from our members
Microbial functional traits are sensitive indicators of mild disturbance by lamb grazing.
Mild disturbances are prevalent in the environment, which may not be easily notable but could have considerable ecological consequences over prolonged periods. To evaluate this, a field study was designed to examine the effects of very light-intensity lamb grazing on grassland soil microbiomes with different soil backgrounds. No significant change (P > 0.05) was observed in any vegetation and soil variables. Nonetheless, hundreds of microbial functional gene families, but not bacterial taxonomy, were significantly (P < 0.05) shifted. The relative abundances of both taxonomic markers and functional genes related to nitrifying bacteria were also changed. The observation highlighted herein, showing a high level of sensitivity with respect to functional traits (functionally categorized taxa or genes) in differentiating mild environmental disturbance, suggests that the key level at which to address microbial responses may not be "species" (by means of rRNA taxonomy), but rather at the functional gene level
Lightweight Image Super-Resolution with Information Multi-distillation Network
In recent years, single image super-resolution (SISR) methods using deep
convolution neural network (CNN) have achieved impressive results. Thanks to
the powerful representation capabilities of the deep networks, numerous
previous ways can learn the complex non-linear mapping between low-resolution
(LR) image patches and their high-resolution (HR) versions. However, excessive
convolutions will limit the application of super-resolution technology in low
computing power devices. Besides, super-resolution of any arbitrary scale
factor is a critical issue in practical applications, which has not been well
solved in the previous approaches. To address these issues, we propose a
lightweight information multi-distillation network (IMDN) by constructing the
cascaded information multi-distillation blocks (IMDB), which contains
distillation and selective fusion parts. Specifically, the distillation module
extracts hierarchical features step-by-step, and fusion module aggregates them
according to the importance of candidate features, which is evaluated by the
proposed contrast-aware channel attention mechanism. To process real images
with any sizes, we develop an adaptive cropping strategy (ACS) to super-resolve
block-wise image patches using the same well-trained model. Extensive
experiments suggest that the proposed method performs favorably against the
state-of-the-art SR algorithms in term of visual quality, memory footprint, and
inference time. Code is available at \url{https://github.com/Zheng222/IMDN}.Comment: To be appear in ACM Multimedia 2019, https://github.com/Zheng222/IMD
Divergent taxonomic and functional responses of microbial communities to field simulation of aeolian soil erosion and deposition.
Aeolian soil erosion and deposition have worldwide impacts on agriculture, air quality and public health. However, ecosystem responses to soil erosion and deposition remain largely unclear in regard to microorganisms, which are the crucial drivers of biogeochemical cycles. Using integrated metagenomics technologies, we analysed microbial communities subjected to simulated soil erosion and deposition in a semiarid grassland of Inner Mongolia, China. As expected, soil total organic carbon and plant coverage were decreased by soil erosion, and soil dissolved organic carbon (DOC) was increased by soil deposition, demonstrating that field simulation was reliable. Soil microbial communities were altered (p < .039) by both soil erosion and deposition, with dramatic increase in Cyanobacteria related to increased stability in soil aggregates. amyA genes encoding α-amylases were specifically increased (p = .01) by soil deposition and positively correlated (p = .02) to DOC, which likely explained changes in DOC. Surprisingly, most of microbial functional genes associated with carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium cycling were decreased or unaltered by both erosion and deposition, probably arising from acceleration of organic matter mineralization. These divergent responses support the necessity to include microbial components in evaluating ecological consequences. Furthermore, Mantel tests showed strong, significant correlations between soil nutrients and functional structure but not taxonomic structure, demonstrating close relevance of microbial function traits to nutrient cycling
Metastasis-Associated Protein 1 Deficiency Results in Compromised Pulmonary Alveolar Capillary Angiogenesis in Mice.
Background The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of metastasis-associated protein 1 (MTA1) deficiency during angiogenesis of pulmonary alveolar capillaries in mice and to determine the molecular mechanisms involved. Material/Methods The expressions of MTA1, CD34, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), alpha smooth muscle actin (α-SMA), and HIF-1α were analyzed in the lungs of MTA1-knockout (KO) and wild-type mice at embryonic day 18.5 and 2 months by quantitative PCR, immunoblotting, and immunohistochemistry. The morphological changes were investigated during pulmonary alveolar capillary formation. The heart weight/body weight (HW/BW) ratio and the size of the right ventricular wall cardiomyocytes were also measured. Regulation of MTA1 on HIF-1α was determined in vitro. Results MTA1 deficiency reduced the number of pulmonary alveolar capillaries compared to the wild-type mice. MTA1-KO mice exhibited a decreased expression of HIF-1α and VEGF in the lungs. The retarded growth of the MTA1-KO mice was also noticed during the first week after birth. Accordingly, MTA1 deficiency resulted in increased infant mortality. In surviving adult mice, MTA1 deficiency induced myocardial hypertrophy, highlighted by an increased heart weight/body weight ratio and larger cardiomyocytes. In cultured cells, HIF-1α and VEGF levels were significantly upregulated upon MTA1 overexpression, suggesting a close relationship between all 3 molecules. Conclusions MTA1 participates in the formation of pulmonary capillaries via stabilization of HIF-1α. This finding sheds new light on the function of MTA1 in lung development, opening new avenues for the diagnosis/treatment of related pulmonary diseases
- …