Stable Isotope Phosphate Labelling of Diverse Metabolites is Enabled by a Family of O-18-Phosphoramidites**

A family of 18O2-phosphoramidites facilitates synthetic access on gram-scale to various isotopically pure 18O-labelled phosphate products, like nucleotides, inositol phosphates, polyphosphates, and DNA. The utility of these 18O-natural products is underlined in the assignment of various metabolites from biological matrices using capillary electrophoresis electrospray ionisation triple quadrupole mass spectrometry. Stable isotope labelling is state-of-the-art in quantitative mass spectrometry, yet often accessing the required standards is cumbersome and very expensive. Here, a unifying synthetic concept for 18O-labelled phosphates is presented, based on a family of modified 18O2-phosphoramidite reagents. This toolbox offers access to major classes of biologically highly relevant phosphorylated metabolites as their isotopologues including nucleotides, inositol phosphates, -pyrophosphates, and inorganic polyphosphates. 18O-enrichment ratios >95 % and good yields are obtained consistently in gram-scale reactions, while enabling late-stage labelling. We demonstrate the utility of the 18O-labelled inositol phosphates and pyrophosphates by assignment of these metabolites from different biological matrices. We demonstrate that phosphate neutral loss is negligible in an analytical setup employing capillary electrophoresis electrospray ionisation triple quadrupole mass spectrometry

Coherent optical wavelength conversion via cavity-optomechanics

We theoretically propose and experimentally demonstrate coherent wavelength conversion of optical photons using photon-phonon translation in a cavity-optomechanical system. For an engineered silicon optomechanical crystal nanocavity supporting a 4 GHz localized phonon mode, optical signals in a 1.5 MHz bandwidth are coherently converted over a 11.2 THz frequency span between one cavity mode at wavelength 1460 nm and a second cavity mode at 1545 nm with a 93% internal (2% external) peak efficiency. The thermal and quantum limiting noise involved in the conversion process is also analyzed, and in terms of an equivalent photon number signal level are found to correspond to an internal noise level of only 6 and 4x10-3 quanta, respectively.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, appendi

Localized amyloidosis presenting with a penile mass: a case report

Amyloidosis is a disease characterized by the deposition of altered proteins in tissues. Amyloid deposition always occurs in the extracellular matrix and presents a fibrillary conformation. Local deposition of amyloid may occur in individual organs, without systemic involvement. We report here a rare case of localized penile shaft amyloidosis--an unusual location for amyloid deposition--presenting as a penile mass that resulted in a urethral stricture in 37-year old male patient. We have also comprehensively reviewed the literature regarding localized amyloidosis

Cavity QED with a Bose-Einstein condensate

Cavity quantum electrodynamics (cavity QED) describes the coherent interaction between matter and an electromagnetic field confined within a resonator structure, and is providing a useful platform for developing concepts in quantum information processing. By using high-quality resonators, a strong coupling regime can be reached experimentally in which atoms coherently exchange a photon with a single light-field mode many times before dissipation sets in. This has led to fundamental studies with both microwave and optical resonators. To meet the challenges posed by quantum state engineering and quantum information processing, recent experiments have focused on laser cooling and trapping of atoms inside an optical cavity. However, the tremendous degree of control over atomic gases achieved with Bose-Einstein condensation has so far not been used for cavity QED. Here we achieve the strong coupling of a Bose-Einstein condensate to the quantized field of an ultrahigh-finesse optical cavity and present a measurement of its eigenenergy spectrum. This is a conceptually new regime of cavity QED, in which all atoms occupy a single mode of a matter-wave field and couple identically to the light field, sharing a single excitation. This opens possibilities ranging from quantum communication to a wealth of new phenomena that can be expected in the many-body physics of quantum gases with cavity-mediated interactions.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures; version accepted for publication in Nature; updated Fig. 4; changed atom numbers due to new calibratio

An Elementary Quantum Network of Single Atoms in Optical Cavities

Quantum networks are distributed quantum many-body systems with tailored topology and controlled information exchange. They are the backbone of distributed quantum computing architectures and quantum communication. Here we present a prototype of such a quantum network based on single atoms embedded in optical cavities. We show that atom-cavity systems form universal nodes capable of sending, receiving, storing and releasing photonic quantum information. Quantum connectivity between nodes is achieved in the conceptually most fundamental way: by the coherent exchange of a single photon. We demonstrate the faithful transfer of an atomic quantum state and the creation of entanglement between two identical nodes in independent laboratories. The created nonlocal state is manipulated by local qubit rotation. This efficient cavity-based approach to quantum networking is particularly promising as it offers a clear perspective for scalability, thus paving the way towards large-scale quantum networks and their applications.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Photonic quantum state transfer between a cold atomic gas and a crystal

Interfacing fundamentally different quantum systems is key to build future hybrid quantum networks. Such heterogeneous networks offer superior capabilities compared to their homogeneous counterparts as they merge individual advantages of disparate quantum nodes in a single network architecture. However, only very few investigations on optical hybrid-interconnections have been carried out due to the high fundamental and technological challenges, which involve e.g. wavelength and bandwidth matching of the interfacing photons. Here we report the first optical quantum interconnection between two disparate matter quantum systems with photon storage capabilities. We show that a quantum state can be faithfully transferred between a cold atomic ensemble and a rare-earth doped crystal via a single photon at telecommunication wavelength, using cascaded quantum frequency conversion. We first demonstrate that quantum correlations between a photon and a single collective spin excitation in the cold atomic ensemble can be transferred onto the solid-state system. We also show that single-photon time-bin qubits generated in the cold atomic ensemble can be converted, stored and retrieved from the crystal with a conditional qubit fidelity of more than $85\%$. Our results open prospects to optically connect quantum nodes with different capabilities and represent an important step towards the realization of large-scale hybrid quantum networks

Cavity Induced Interfacing of Atoms and Light

This chapter introduces cavity-based light-matter quantum interfaces, with a single atom or ion in strong coupling to a high-finesse optical cavity. We discuss the deterministic generation of indistinguishable single photons from these systems; the atom-photon entanglement intractably linked to this process; and the information encoding using spatio-temporal modes within these photons. Furthermore, we show how to establish a time-reversal of the aforementioned emission process to use a coupled atom-cavity system as a quantum memory. Along the line, we also discuss the performance and characterisation of cavity photons in elementary linear-optics arrangements with single beam splitters for quantum-homodyne measurements.Comment: to appear as a book chapter in a compilation "Engineering the Atom-Photon Interaction" published by Springer in 2015, edited by A. Predojevic and M. W. Mitchel

Analysis of trastuzumab and chemotherapy in advanced breast cancer after the failure of at least one earlier combination: An observational study

BACKGROUND: Combining trastuzumab and chemotherapy is standard in her2/neu overexpressing advanced breast cancer. It is not established however, whether trastuzumab treatment should continue after the failure of one earlier combination. In this trial, we report our experience with continued treatment beyond disease progression. METHODS: Fifty-four patients, median age 46 years, range 25–73 years, were included. We analysed for time to tumour progression (TTP) for first, second and beyond second line treatment, response rates and overall survival. RESULTS: Median time of observation was 24 months, range 7–51. Response rates for first line treatment were 7.4% complete remission (CR), 35.2% partial remissions (PR), 42.6% stable disease > 6 months (SD) and 14.8% of patients experienced disease progression despite treatment (PD). Corresponding numbers for second line were 3.7% CR, 22.2% PR, 42.6% SD and 31.5% PD; numbers for treatment beyond second line (60 therapies, 33 pts 3(rd )line, 18 pts 4(th )line, 6 pts 5(th )line, 2 pts 6(th )line and 1 patient 7(th )line) were 1.7% CR, 28.3% PR, 28.3% SD and 41.6% PD respectively. Median TTP was 6 months (m) in the first line setting, and also 6 m for second line and beyond second line. An asymptomatic drop of left ventricular ejection fraction below 50% was observed in one patient. No case of symptomatic congestive heart failure was observed. CONCLUSION: The data presented clearly strengthen evidence that patients do profit from continued trastuzumab treatment. The fact that TTP did not decrease significantly from first line to beyond second line treatment is especially noteworthy. Still, randomized trials are warranted