Mono Lake or Laschamp geomagnetic event recorded from lava flows in Amsterdam Island (southeastern Indian Ocean)

We report a survey carried out on basalt flows from Amsterdam Island in order to check the presence of intermediate directions interpreted to belong to a geomagnetic field excursion within the Brunhes epoch, completing this paleomagnetic record with paleointensity determinations and radiometric dating. The directional results corroborate the findings by Watkins and Nougier (1973) : normal polarity is found for two units and an intermediate direction, with associated VGPs close to the equator, for the other two units. A notable result is that these volcanic rocks are well suited for absolute paleointensity determinations. Fifty percent of the samples yields reliable intensity values with high quality factors. An original element of this study is that we made use of the PTRM-tail test of Shcherbakova et al. (2000) to help in the interpretation of the paleointensity measurements. Doing thus, only the high temperature intervals, beyond 400 degres C, were retained to obtain the most reliable estimate of the strength of the ancient magnetic field. The normal units yield Virtual Dipole Moments (VDM) of 6.2 and 7.7 10e22 Am2 and the excursional units yield values of 3.7 and 3.4 10e22 Am2. These results are quite consistent with the other Thellier determinations from Brunhes excursion records, all characterized by a decrease of the VDM as VGP latitude decreases. 40Ar/39Ar isotopic age determinations provide an estimate of 26+-15 Kyr and 18+-9 Kyr for the transitional lava flows, which could correspond to the Mono Lake excursion. However, the large error bars associated with these ages do not exclude the hypothesis that this event is the Laschamp

Optimized Compilation of Aggregated Instructions for Realistic Quantum Computers

Recent developments in engineering and algorithms have made real-world applications in quantum computing possible in the near future. Existing quantum programming languages and compilers use a quantum assembly language composed of 1- and 2-qubit (quantum bit) gates. Quantum compiler frameworks translate this quantum assembly to electric signals (called control pulses) that implement the specified computation on specific physical devices. However, there is a mismatch between the operations defined by the 1- and 2-qubit logical ISA and their underlying physical implementation, so the current practice of directly translating logical instructions into control pulses results in inefficient, high-latency programs. To address this inefficiency, we propose a universal quantum compilation methodology that aggregates multiple logical operations into larger units that manipulate up to 10 qubits at a time. Our methodology then optimizes these aggregates by (1) finding commutative intermediate operations that result in more efficient schedules and (2) creating custom control pulses optimized for the aggregate (instead of individual 1- and 2-qubit operations). Compared to the standard gate-based compilation, the proposed approach realizes a deeper vertical integration of high-level quantum software and low-level, physical quantum hardware. We evaluate our approach on important near-term quantum applications on simulations of superconducting quantum architectures. Our proposed approach provides a mean speedup of $5\times$, with a maximum of $10\times$. Because latency directly affects the feasibility of quantum computation, our results not only improve performance but also have the potential to enable quantum computation sooner than otherwise possible.Comment: 13 pages, to apper in ASPLO

Low Cost Delivery of Proteins Bioencapsulated in Plant Cells to Human Non-Immune or Immune Modulatory Cells

Targeted oral delivery of GFP fused with a GM1 receptor binding protein (CTB) or human cell penetrating peptide (PTD) or dendritic cell peptide (DCpep) was investigated. Presence of GFP+ intact plant cells between villi of ileum confirm their protection in the digestive system from acids/enzymes. Efficient delivery of GFP to gut-epithelial cells by PTD or CTB and to M cells by all these fusion tags confirm uptake of GFP in the small intestine. PTD fusion delivered GFP more efficiently to most tissues or organs than other two tags. GFP was efficiently delivered to the liver by all fusion tags, likely through the gut-liver axis. In confocal imaging studies of human cell lines using purified GFP fused with different tags, GFP signal of DCpep-GFP was only detected within dendritic cells. PTD-GFP was only detected within kidney or pancreatic cells but not in immune modulatory cells (macrophages, dendritic, T, B, or mast cells). In contrast, CTB-GFP was detected in all tested cell types, confirming ubiquitous presence of GM1 receptors. Such low-cost oral delivery of protein drugs to sera, immune system or non-immune cells should dramatically lower their cost by elimination of prohibitively expensive fermentation, protein purification cold storage/transportation and increase patient compliance

Association between celiac sprue and cryopyrin associated autoinflammatory disorders: a case report

Cryopyrin-associated diseases may be characterized by rashes, fever, and sensorineural deafness, while celiac disease may present with symptoms of malabsorption and fatigue. Arthritis is seen in both conditions. We report a young child with histologically diagnosed celiac disease and a cryopyrinopathy

Dark matter and structure formation a review

This paper provides a review of the variants of dark matter which are thought to be fundamental components of the universe and their role in origin and evolution of structures and some new original results concerning improvements to the spherical collapse model. In particular, I show how the spherical collapse model is modified when we take into account dynamical friction and tidal torques

The role of cold gas and environment on the stellar mass - metallicity relation of nearby galaxies

We investigate the relationship between stellar mass, metallicity and gas content for a magnitude- and volume-limited sample of 260 nearby late-type galaxies in different environments, from isolated galaxies to Virgo cluster members. We derive oxygen abundance estimates using new integrated, drift-scan optical spectroscopy and the base metallicity calibrations of Kewley & Ellison (2008). Combining these measurements with ultraviolet to near-infrared photometry and HI 21 cm line observations, we examine the relations between stellar mass, metallicity, gas mass fraction and star formation rate. We find that, at fixed stellar mass, galaxies with lower gas fractions typically also possess higher oxygen abundances. We also observe a relationship between gas fraction and metal content, whereby gas-poor galaxies are typically more metal-rich, and demonstrate that the removal of gas from the outskirts of spirals increases the observed average metallicity by approximately 0.1 dex. Although some cluster galaxies are gas-deficient objects, statistically the stellar-mass metallicity relation is nearly invariant to the environment, in agreement with recent studies. These results indicate that internal evolutionary processes, rather than environmental effects, play a key role in shaping the stellar mass-metallicity relation. In addition, we present metallicity estimates based on observations of 478 nearby galaxies.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A. 28 pages, including 10 figures and 3 table

Identified baryon and meson distributions at large transverse momenta from Au+Au collisions at sNN=200\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}} = 200 GeV

Transverse momentum spectra of $\pi^{\pm}$, $p$ and $\bar{p}$ up to 12 GeV/c at mid-rapidity in centrality selected Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}} = 200$ GeV are presented. In central Au+Au collisions, both $\pi^{\pm}$ and $p(\bar{p})$ show significant suppression with respect to binary scaling at $p_T >$ 4 GeV/c. Protons and anti-protons are less suppressed than $\pi^{\pm}$, in the range 1.5 $< p_{T} <$6 GeV/c. The $\pi^-/\pi^+$ and $\bar{p}/p$ ratios show at most a weak $p_T$ dependence and no significant centrality dependence. The $p/\pi$ ratios in central Au+Au collisions approach the values in p+p and d+Au collisions at $p_T >$ 5 GeV/c. The results at high $p_T$ indicate that the partonic sources of $\pi^{\pm}$, $p$ and $\bar{p}$ have similar energy loss when traversing the nuclear medium.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Longitudinal double-spin asymmetry and cross section for inclusive jet production in polarized proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 200 GeV

We report a measurement of the longitudinal double-spin asymmetry A_LL and the differential cross section for inclusive midrapidity jet production in polarized proton collisions at sqrt(s)=200 GeV. The cross section data cover transverse momenta 5 < pT < 50 GeV/c and agree with next-to-leading order perturbative QCD evaluations. The A_LL data cover 5 < pT < 17 GeV/c and disfavor at 98% C.L. maximal positive gluon polarization in the polarized nucleon.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. Minor changes from review process in Phys. Rev. Lett. Plain text tables of data in STAR publications may be found at http://www.star.bnl.gov/central/publications

Longitudinal double-spin asymmetry for inclusive jet production in p+p collisions at sqrt(s)=200 GeV

We report a new STAR measurement of the longitudinal double-spin asymmetry A_LL for inclusive jet production at mid-rapidity in polarized p+p collisions at a center-of-mass energy of sqrt(s) = 200 GeV. The data, which cover jet transverse momenta 5 < p_T < 30 GeV/c, are substantially more precise than previous measurements. They provide significant new constraints on the gluon spin contribution to the nucleon spin through the comparison to predictions derived from one global fit of polarized deep-inelastic scattering measurements.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures + 1 tabl