A Voltage Multiplier for the nEDM Experiment

The nEDM experiment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a search for the electric dipole moment of the neutron (nEDM) at the 10-28 level. The experiment is currently in the research and development phase. One of the variables proportional to the sensitivity of the measurement is the strength of the electric field in the measurement cell where the effect of an nEDM is to be generated. The design of the experiment calls for an electric field of 75 kV/cm in this cell. A unique voltage multiplier involving a variable capacitor has been proposed to achieve this large required electric field. Electrostatic calculations using two independent software packages, COMSOL and Field Precision, were carried out to study the feasibility of the proposed voltage multiplier. A prototype of the electrodes and the voltage multiplier whose size was 25% of full size was also built to verify the predictions of the electrostatic calculations. Results of the tests with the prototype and the electrostatic calculations, are presented

Embedding Ethical Impact Assessment in Nanosafety Decision Support

Nanotechnology is a key enabling technology, which is developing fast and influences many aspects of life. Nanomaterials are already included in a broad range of products and industrial sectors. Nanosafety issues are still a matter of concern for policy makers and stakeholders, but currently, there is no platform where all stakeholders can meet and discuss these issues. A comprehensive overview of all the issues in one single dashboard presenting the output of a decision support system is also lacking. This article outlines a strategy for developing one innovative part of a modular decision support system, designed to support the work of a new Risk Governance Council (RGC) for nanomaterials which will be established through the combined efforts of the GOV4NANO, NANORIGO, and RiskGONE H2020 projects. This new module will consist of guidelines for Ethical Impact Assessment (EIA) for nanomaterials and nanoenabled products. This article offers recommendations for adapting the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) prestandard on Ethical Impact Assessment CWA (CEN Workshop Agreement) 17145-2:2017 (E), to fit into the more-encompassing decision support system for risk governance of nanomaterials within the RiskGONE project

A document image model and estimation algorithm for optimized JPEG decompression

The JPEG standard is one of the most prevalent image compression schemes in use today. While JPEG was designed for use with natural images, it is also widely used for the encoding of raster documents. Unfortunately, JPEG\u27s characteristic blocking and ringing artifacts can severely degrade the quality of text and graphics in complex documents. We propose a JPEG decompression algorithm which is designed to produce substantially higher quality images from the same standard JPEG encodings. The method works by incorporating a document image model into the decoding process which accounts for the wide variety of content in modern complex color documents. The method works by first segmenting the JPEG encoded document into regions corresponding to background, text, and picture content. The regions corresponding to text and background are then decoded using maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation. Most importantly, the MAP reconstruction of the text regions uses a model which accounts for the spatial characteristics of text and graphics. Our experimental comparisons to the baseline JPEG decoding as well as to three other decoding schemes, demonstrate that our method substantially improves the quality of decoded images, both visually and as measured by PSNR

Титульні сторінки та зміст

Sr and Nd isotopes were determined using new thermal ionisation mass spectrometry (TIMS) techniques for a suite of 21 olivine-hosted (85-92mol% Fo) melt inclusions selected from potassic and ultra-potassic lavas from the Italian peninsula. Sr isotopes were measured using default 1

Observation of the 4π\pi-periodic Josephson effect in indium arsenide nanowires

Quantum computation by non-Abelian Majorana zero modes (MZMs) offers an approach to achieve fault tolerance by encoding quantum information in the non-local charge parity states of semiconductor nanowire networks in the topological superconductor regime. Thus far, experimental studies of MZMs chiefly relied on single electron tunneling measurements which leads to decoherence of the quantum information stored in the MZM. As a next step towards topological quantum computation, charge parity conserving experiments based on the Josephson effect are required, which can also help exclude suggested non-topological origins of the zero bias conductance anomaly. Here we report the direct measurement of the Josephson radiation frequency in InAs nanowires with epitaxial aluminium shells. For the first time, we observe the $4\pi$-periodic Josephson effect above a magnetic field of $\approx 200\,$mT, consistent with the estimated and measured topological phase transition of similar devices.Comment: Published version. Supplementary Information is available as ancillary file, raw data and calculations can be downloaded from http://dx.doi.org/10.4121/uuid:1f936840-5bc2-40ca-8c32-1797c12cacb

Secure certification of mixed quantum states with application to two-party randomness generation

We investigate sampling procedures that certify that an arbitrary quantum state on $n$ subsystems is close to an ideal mixed state $\varphi^{\otimes n}$ for a given reference state $\varphi$, up to errors on a few positions. This task makes no sense classically: it would correspond to certifying that a given bitstring was generated according to some desired probability distribution. However, in the quantum case, this is possible if one has access to a prover who can supply a purification of the mixed state. In this work, we introduce the concept of mixed-state certification, and we show that a natural sampling protocol offers secure certification in the presence of a possibly dishonest prover: if the verifier accepts then he can be almost certain that the state in question has been correctly prepared, up to a small number of errors. We then apply this result to two-party quantum coin-tossing. Given that strong coin tossing is impossible, it is natural to ask "how close can we get". This question has been well studied and is nowadays well understood from the perspective of the bias of individual coin tosses. We approach and answer this question from a different---and somewhat orthogonal---perspective, where we do not look at individual coin tosses but at the global entropy instead. We show how two distrusting parties can produce a common high-entropy source, where the entropy is an arbitrarily small fraction below the maximum (except with negligible probability)

Extraction of arbitrarily shaped objects using stochastic multiple birth-and-death dynamics and active contours

We extend the marked point process models that have been used for object extraction from images to arbitrarily shaped objects, without greatly increasing the computational complexity of sampling and estimation. The approach can be viewed as an extension of the active contour methodology to an a priori unknown number of objects. Sampling and estimation are based on a stochastic birth-and-death process defined in a space of multiple, arbitrarily shaped objects, where the objects are defined by the image data and prior information. The performance of the approach is demonstrated via experimental results on synthetic and real data

Op weg naar Park Essenburg : advies aan Bewonersgroep ProGroen Rotterdam

Bewonersgroep ProGroen in Rotterdam is voor het behoud van een miskende groenstrook van circa twaalf hectare tussen de spoordijk en Essenburgsingel. Ze wil dat het gebied in de deelgemeente Delfshaven het groene en duurzame karakter behoudt en dat het in de toekomst goed bruikbaar is en blijft voor alle mensen uit de buurt en de stad. De Wetenschapswinkel ziet voor ProGroen de opgave weggelegd om aan te tonen dat de strook een waardevol groenelement is in de stad. Het park draagt bij aan de sociale cohesie: het vergroot het aantal ontmoetingsplekken in de wijk, biedt laagdrempelige aanleidingen om contact te leggen en motiveert bewoners te investeren in relaties in de buurt. Daarnaast biedt het park de wijkbewoners nieuwe mogelijkheden om in contact te komen met groen, met natuur. De eerste concrete invulling van het park is PlukTuin Essenburg RFC. Deze PlukTuin, een buurttuin, wordt aangelegd op een voormalige parkeerplaats. Opzet is dat bewoners de PlukTuin zelf aanleggen en onderhoude