2,655 research outputs found
Quantum Backflow States from Eigenstates of the Regularized Current Operator
We present an exhaustive class of states with quantum backflow -- the
phenomenon in which a state consisting entirely of positive momenta may have
negative current and the probability flows in the opposite direction to the
momentum. They are characterized by a general function of momenta subject to
very weak conditions. Such a family of states is of interest in the light of a
recent experimental proposal to measure backflow. We find one particularly
simple state which has surprisingly large backflow -- about 41 percent of the
lower bound on flux derived by Bracken and Melloy. We study the eigenstates of
a regularized current operator and we show how some of these states, in a
certain limit, lead to our class of backflow states. This limit also clarifies
the correspondence between the spectrum of the regularized current operator,
which has just two non-zero eigenvalues in our chosen regularization, and the
usual current operator.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figure
Portable bedside ultrasound: the visual stethoscope of the 21st century
Over the past decade technological advances in the realm of ultrasound have allowed what was once a cumbersome and large machine to become essentially hand-held. This coupled with a greater understanding of lung sonography has revolutionized our bedside assessment of patients. Using ultrasound not as a diagnostic test, but instead as a component of the physical exam, may allow it to become the stethoscope of the 21st century
Hybrid Pixel Detector Development for the Linear Collider Vertex Tracker
In order to fully exploit the physics potential of the future high energy
e+e- linear collider, a Vertex Tracker able to provide particle track
extrapolation with very high resolution is needed. Hybrid Si pixel sensors are
an attractive technology due to their fast read-out capabilities and radiation
hardness. A novel pixel detector layout with interleaved cells has been
developed to improve the single point resolution. Results of the
characterisation of the first processed prototypes by electrostatic
measurements and charge collection studies are discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the Proceedings of the 9th Int.
Workshop on Vertex Detectors, Lake Michigan MI (USA), September~200
Quantitating Iron in Serum Ferritin by Use of ICP-MS
A laboratory method has been devised to enable measurement of the concentration of iron bound in ferritin from small samples of blood (serum). Derived partly from a prior method that depends on large samples of blood, this method involves the use of an inductively-coupled-plasma mass spectrometer (ICP-MS). Ferritin is a complex of iron with the protein apoferritin. Heretofore, measurements of the concentration of serum ferritin (as distinguished from direct measurements of the concentration of iron in serum ferritin) have been used to assess iron stores in humans. Low levels of serum ferritin could indicate the first stage of iron depletion. High levels of serum ferritin could indicate high levels of iron (for example, in connection with hereditary hemochromatosis an iron-overload illness that is characterized by progressive organ damage and can be fatal). However, the picture is complicated: A high level of serum ferritin could also indicate stress and/or inflammation instead of (or in addition to) iron overload, and low serum iron concentration could indicate inflammation rather than iron deficiency. Only when concentrations of both serum iron and serum ferritin increase and decrease together can the patient s iron status be assessed accurately. Hence, in enabling accurate measurement of the iron content of serum ferritin, the present method can improve the diagnosis of the patient s iron status. The prior method of measuring the concentration of iron involves the use of an atomic-absorption spectrophotometer with a graphite furnace. The present method incorporates a modified version of the sample- preparation process of the prior method. First, ferritin is isolated; more specifically, it is immobilized by immunoprecipitation with rabbit antihuman polyclonal antibody bound to agarose beads. The ferritin is then separated from other iron-containing proteins and free iron by a series of centrifugation and wash steps. Next, the ferritin is digested with nitric acid to extract its iron content. Finally, a micronebulizer is used to inject the sample of the product of the digestion into the ICPMS for analysis of its iron content. The sensitivity of the ICP-MS is high enough to enable it to characterize samples smaller than those required in the prior method (samples can be 0.15 to 0.60 mL)
Artifacts with uneven sampling of red noise
The vast majority of sampling systems operate in a standard way: at each tick
of a fixed-frequency master clock a digitizer reads out a voltage that
corresponds to the value of some physical quantity and translates it into a bit
pattern that is either transmitted, stored, or processed right away. Thus
signal sampling at evenly spaced time intervals is the rule: however this is
not always the case, and uneven sampling is sometimes unavoidable.
While periodic or quasi-periodic uneven sampling of a deterministic signal
can reasonably be expected to produce artifacts, it is much less obvious that
the same happens with noise: here I show that this is indeed the case only for
long-memory noise processes, i.e., power-law noises with . The resulting artifacts are usually a nuisance although they can be
eliminated with a proper processing of the signal samples, but they could also
be turned to advantage and used to encode information.Comment: 5 figure
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