Observing the Spontaneous Breakdown of Unitarity

During the past decade, the experimental development of being able to create ever larger and heavier quantum superpositions has brought the discussion of the connection between microscopic quantum mechanics and macroscopic classical physics back to the forefront of physical research. Under equilibrium conditions this connection is in fact well understood in terms of the mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking, while the emergence of classical dynamics can be described within an ensemble averaged description in terms of decoherence. The remaining realm of individual-state quantum dynamics in the thermodynamic limit was addressed in a recent paper proposing that the unitarity of quantum mechanical time evolution in macroscopic objects may be susceptible to a spontaneous breakdown. Here we will discuss the implications of this theory of spontaneous unitarity breaking for the modern experiments involving truly macroscopic Schrodinger cat states.Comment: 4 pages, no figure

Visualizing clickstream data with multidimensional scaling

We visualize a a web server log by means of multidimensionalscaling. To that end, a so-called dissimilarity metric is introduced inthe sets of sessions and pages respectively. We interpret the resultingvisualizations and find some interesting patterns.

Chirality and Orbital Order in Charge Density Waves

We show that the recently observed chirality in the charge ordered phase of TiSe2 can be understood as a form of orbital ordering. The microscopic mechanism driving the transition between the novel chiral state and the non-chiral charge density wave is discussed, and shown to be of a general form, thus allowing for a broad class of materials to display this type of orbitally ordered chiral charge density wave.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Substrate induction and glucose repression of maltose utilization by Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2) is controlled by malR, a member of the lacI-galR family of regulatory genes

malR of Strepomyces coelicolor A3(2) encodes a homologue of the Lacl/Galr family of repressor proteins, and is divergently transcribed from the malEFG gene cluster, which encodes components of an ATP-dependent transport system that is required for maltose utilization. Transcription of malE was induced by maltose and repressed by glucose. Disruption or deletion of malR resulted in constitutive, glucose-insensitive malE transcription at a level markedly above that observed in the parental malR+ strain, and overproduction of MalR prevented growth on maltose as carbon source. Consequently, MalR plays a crucial role in both substrate induction and glucose repression of maltose utilization. MalR is expressed from a single promoter with transcription initiating at the first G of the predicted GTG translataion start codon

Divisive Normalization and Neuronal Oscillations in a Single Hierarchical Framework of Selective Visual Attention

Divisive normalization models of covert attention commonly use spike rate modulations as indicators of the effect of top-down attention. In addition, an increasing number of studies have shown that top-down attention increases the synchronization of neuronal oscillations as well, particularly in gamma-band frequencies (25–100 Hz). Although modulations of spike rate and synchronous oscillations are not mutually exclusive as mechanisms of attention, there has thus far been little effort to integrate these concepts into a single framework of attention. Here, we aim to provide such a unified framework by expanding the normalization model of attention with a multi-level hierarchical structure and a time dimension; allowing the simulation of a recently reported backward progression of attentional effects along the visual cortical hierarchy. A simple cascade of normalization models simulating different cortical areas is shown to cause signal degradation and a loss of stimulus discriminability over time. To negate this degradation and ensure stable neuronal stimulus representations, we incorporate a kind of oscillatory phase entrainment into our model that has previously been proposed as the “communication-through-coherence” (CTC) hypothesis. Our analysis shows that divisive normalization and oscillation models can complement each other in a unified account of the neural mechanisms of selective visual attention. The resulting hierarchical normalization and oscillation (HNO) model reproduces several additional spatial and temporal aspects of attentional modulation and predicts a latency effect on neuronal responses as a result of cued attention