On the noise-resolution duality, Heisenberg uncertainty and Shannon's information

Several variations of the Heisenberg uncertainty inequality are derived on the basis of "noise-resolution duality" recently proposed by the authors. The same approach leads to a related inequality that provides an upper limit for the information capacity of imaging systems in terms of the number of imaging quanta (particles) used in the experiment. These results can be useful in the context of biomedical imaging constrained by the radiation dose delivered to the sample, or in imaging (e.g. astronomical) problems under "low light" conditions

Inhomogeneous critical current in nanowire superconducting single-photon detectors

A superconducting thin film with uniform properties is the key to realize nanowire superconducting single-photon detectors (SSPDs) with high performance and high yield. To investigate the uniformity of NbN films, we introduce and characterize simple detectors consisting of short nanowires with length ranging from 100nm to 15{\mu}m. Our nanowires, contrary to meander SSPDs, allow probing the homogeneity of NbN at the nanoscale. Experimental results, endorsed by a microscopic model, show the strongly inhomogeneous nature of NbN films on the sub-100nm scale.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Het komkommervisje: Onopvallende spil in het IJsselmeer dreigt te verdwijnen

Het spieringbestand daalt al twee decennia gestaag. De spiering is geen gewaardeerde consumptievis, maar als schakel tussen plankton en predatoren wel een belangrijk onderdeel in het voedselweb. Mogelijke oorzaken die een rol spelen in de teruggang van de spiering zijn de temperatuurstijging en het helder worden van wateren. Nader onderzoek moet uitwijzen welke maatregelen deze vissoort er weer bovenop kunnen helpe

The application of compressive sampling to radio astronomy I: Deconvolution

Compressive sampling is a new paradigm for sampling, based on sparseness of signals or signal representations. It is much less restrictive than Nyquist-Shannon sampling theory and thus explains and systematises the widespread experience that methods such as the H\"ogbom CLEAN can violate the Nyquist-Shannon sampling requirements. In this paper, a CS-based deconvolution method for extended sources is introduced. This method can reconstruct both point sources and extended sources (using the isotropic undecimated wavelet transform as a basis function for the reconstruction step). We compare this CS-based deconvolution method with two CLEAN-based deconvolution methods: the H\"ogbom CLEAN and the multiscale CLEAN. This new method shows the best performance in deconvolving extended sources for both uniform and natural weighting of the sampled visibilities. Both visual and numerical results of the comparison are provided.Comment: Published by A&A, Matlab code can be found: http://code.google.com/p/csra/download

Asymptotic approximations for vibrational modes of helices

The free vibrations in the plane normal to the helical axis are studied under the assumption that the helical pitch is small. Asymptotic approximations for eigenvalues and eigenfunctions are derived for both small and large numbers of helical turns. The analytic approximations reveal interesting features of helix vibrations and the connection between the vibrational modes of a helix and the flexural modes of a curved beam. Comparison with numerical calculations shows that the approximations derived cover with sufficient accuracy a wide range of number of helical turns