Weak-value-amplification analysis beyond the AAV limit of weak measurements

The weak-value (WV) measurement proposed by Aharonov, Albert and Vaidman (AAV) has attracted a great deal of interest in connection with quantum metrology. In this work, we extend the analysis beyond the AAV limit and obtain a few main results. (i) We obtain non-perturbative result for the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In contrast to the AAV's prediction, we find that the SNR asymptotically gets worse when the AAV's WV $A_w$ becomes large, i.e., in the case $g|A_w|^2>>1$, where $g$ is the measurement strength. (ii) With the increase of $g$ (but also small), we find that the SNR is comparable to the result under the AAV limit, while both can reach -- actually the former can slightly exceed -- the SNR of the standard measurement. However, along a further increase of $g$, the WV technique will become less efficient than the standard measurement, despite that the postselection probability is increased. (iii) We find that the Fisher information can characterize the estimate precision qualitatively well as the SNR, yet their difference will become more prominent with the increase of $g$. (iv) We carry out analytic expressions of the SNR in the presence of technical noises and illustrate the particular advantage of the imaginary WV measurement. The non-perturbative result of the SNR manifests a favorable range of the noise strength and allows an optimal determination.Comment: 10 pages, 6figure

Exaggerated blood pressure response to static exercise in hindlimb ischemia-reperfusion

Peripheral artery disease (PAD) reduces the blood flow supply in the affected limbs as one of the significant cardiovascular concerns. Revascularization surgery in the femoral artery plays a central role in treating PAD. Exercise is also a rehabilitation strategy suggested for PAD patients to improve vascular functions. However, the effects of limb ischemia-reperfusion (IR), one of the most predominant complications in revascularization surgery, on exercise-induced arterial blood pressure (BP) response are poorly understood. In the present study, we determined 1) the blood flow status in the hindlimb muscles of rats (plantar muscle, red and white portions of gastrocnemius) with different time points of the hindlimb IR; and 2) the BP response to static muscle contraction in rats at different time points after the blood flow reperfusion procedure. Results of this study indicated that, compared with the Sham group, the blood flow in the hindlimb muscles evaluated by Evans blue concentration was significantly reduced at 6 h of femoral artery occlusion (FAO 6 h) (vs. sham control, p < 0.05). The decreased blood flow was gradually recovered after the blood flow reperfusion for 18 (IR 18 h), 66 (IR 66 h), and 114 (IR 114 h) hours (p < 0.05 vs. FAO 6 h for all IR groups). The response of mean arterial pressure was 20 ± 4 mmHg in Sham rats (n = 7); 32 ± 10 mmHg in IR 18 h rats (n = 10); 27 ± 7 mmHg in IR 66 h rats (n = 13); 26 ± 4 mmHg in IR 114 h rats (n = 9) (p < 0.05 vs. Sham for all groups). No significant difference was observed in the peak-developed tension during muscle contraction among all the groups (p > 0.05). In conclusion, static exercise-induced BP response is exaggerated following IR. Whereas the BP response is not statistically significant but tends to decrease with a prolonged IR time, the exaggerated BP response remains through time points from post-IR 18 h–114 h

Tests of relative vertical offsets for several types of GPS receiver antenna phase centers

AbstractThe correction for antenna phase center is considered in processing Global Positioning System (GPS) data collected from a network of GPS ultra-short baselines. Compared with the leveling measurements, the GPS results show that the relative vertical offsets for the pairs of GPS receiver antenna phase centers still exist, although absolute calibration of the antenna phase center variations (PCVs) has been considered. With respect to the TPS CR.G3 antenna, the relative vertical offset for the LEI AT504 antenna is −8.4 mm, the offset for the ASH701945C_M antenna is 5.5 mm, and those for the ASH700936E_C and ASH701945B_M antennas are approximately between −2 mm and −3 mm. The relative offsets for the same type of antennas are approximately 1 mm. By correcting the absolute PCVs, the existing relative offset becomes negligible for horizontal positioning

Induced Susceptibility of Host Is Associated with an Impaired Antioxidant System Following Infection with Cryptosporidium parvum in Se-Deficient Mice

BACKGROUND: Susceptibility or resistance to infection with Cryptosporidium parvum (C.parvum) correlates with Selenium (Se) deficiency in response to infection. Both adult Se-adequate and Se-deficient mouse models of cryptosporidiosis were used to study the cell-mediated immune response during the course of C. parvum infection. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Blood samples from mouse models were used for Se status. The concentration of MDA, SOD, GPx and CAT in blood has revealed that lower Se level exist in Se-deficient mice. Mesenteric lymph node (MLN) lymphocytes from both mouse models were proliferated after ex vivo re-stimulation with C. parvum sporozoite antigen. The study of the cytokine profiles from the supernatant of proliferated MLN cells revealed that Se-adequate mice produced higher levels of Th1 (IFN-gamma and IL-2) and moderate amounts of Th2 (IL-4) cytokines throughout the course of infection. Whereas, MLN cells from Se-deficient mice produced lower levels of IFN-gamma, IL-2 and IL-4 cytokines. The counts of total white cell and CD3, CD4, CD8 cell in Se-adequate were higher than that in Se-deficient mice. SIGNIFICANCE: These results suggest that Cell immunity is affected by Se status after infection with C. parvum from kinetic changes of different white cells and cytokine. In conclusion, induced susceptibility of host is associated with an impaired antioxidant system following infection with C. parvum in C57BL/6 Selenium deficient mice

Janus-graphene: a two-dimensional half-auxetic carbon allotropes with non-chemical Janus configuration

The asymmetric properties of Janus two-dimensional materials commonly depend on chemical effects, such as different atoms, elements, material types, etc. Herein, based on carbon gene recombination strategy, we identify an intrinsic non-chemical Janus configuration in a novel purely sp$^2$ hybridized carbon monolayer, named as Janus-graphene. With the carbon gene of tetragonal, hexagonal, and octagonal rings, the spontaneous unilateral growth of carbon atoms drives the non-chemical Janus configuration in Janus-graphene, which is totally different from the chemical effect in common Janus materials such as MoSSe. A structure-independent half-auxetic behavior is mapped in Janus-graphene that the structure maintains expansion whether stretched or compressed, which lies in the key role of $p_z$ orbital. The unprecedented half-auxeticity in Janus-graphene extends intrinsic auxeticity into pure sp$^2$ hybrid carbon configurations. With the unique half-auxeticity emerged in the non-chemical Janus configuration, Janus-graphene enriches the functional carbon family as a promising candidate for micro/nanoelectronic device applications

Numerical Solution of Nonlinear Fredholm Integrodifferential Equations of Fractional Order by Using Hybrid Functions and the Collocation Method

A numerical method to solve nonlinear Fredholm integral equations of second kind is presented in this work. The method is based upon hybrid function approximate. The properties of hybrid of block-pulse functions and Taylor series are presented and are utilized to reduce the computation of nonlinear Fredholm integral equations to a system of algebraic equations. Some numerical examples are selected to illustrate the effectiveness and simplicity of the method

Correlation Cube Attack Revisited: Improved Cube Search and Superpoly Recovery Techniques

In this paper, we improve the cube attack by exploiting low-degree factors of the superpoly w.r.t. certain special index set of cube (ISoC). This can be viewed as a special case of the correlation cube attack proposed at Eurocrypt 2018, but under our framework more beneficial equations on the key variables can be obtained in the key-recovery phase. To mount our attack, one has two challenging problems: (1) effectively recover algebraic normal form of the superpoly and extract out its low-degree factors; and (2) efficiently search a large quantity of good ISoCs. We bring in new techniques to solve both of them. First, we propose the variable substitution technique for middle rounds of a cipher, in which polynomials on the key variables in the algebraic expressions of internal states are substituted by new variables. This will improve computational complexity of the superpoly recovery and promise more compact superpolys that can be easily decomposed with respect to the new variables. Second, we propose the vector numeric mapping technique, which seeks out a tradeoff between efficiency of the numeric mapping technique (Crypto 2019) and accuracy of the monomial prediction technique (Asiacrypt 2020) in degree evaluation of superpolys. Combining with this technique, a fast pruning method is given and modeled by MILP to filter good ISoCs of which the algebraic degree satisfies some fixed threshold. Thanks to automated MILP solvers, it becomes practical to comprehensively search for good cubes across the entire search space. To illustrate the power of our techniques, we apply all of them to Trivium stream cipher. As a result, we have recovered the superpolys of three cubes given by Kesarwani et al. in 2020, only to find they do not have zero-sum property up to 842 rounds as claimed in their paper. To our knowledge, the previous best practical key recovery attack was on 820-round Trivium with complexity $2^{53.17}$. We put forward 820-, 825- and 830-round practical key-recovery attacks, in which there are $\mathbf{2^{80}\times 87.8\%}$, $\mathbf{2^{80}\times 83\%}$ and $\mathbf{2^{80}\times 65.7\%}$ keys that could be practically recovered, respectively, if we consider $\mathbf{2^{60}}$ as the upper bound for practical computational complexity. Besides, even for computers with computational power not exceeding $\mathbf{2^{52}}$ (resp. $\mathbf{2^{55}}$), we can still recover $\mathbf{58\%}$ (resp. $\mathbf{46.6\%}$) of the keys in the key space for 820 rounds (resp. 830 rounds). Our attacks have led 10 rounds more than the previous best practical attack

Numerical Solution of Nonlinear Fredholm Integrodifferential Equations of Fractional Order by Using Hybrid Functions and the Collocation Method

A numerical method to solve nonlinear Fredholm integral equations of second kind is presented in this work. The method is based upon hybrid function approximate. The properties of hybrid of block-pulse functions and Taylor series are presented and are utilized to reduce the computation of nonlinear Fredholm integral equations to a system of algebraic equations. Some numerical examples are selected to illustrate the effectiveness and simplicity of the method

Ammonia and salinity tolerance of Penaeus monodon across eight breeding families

© 2016 Chen et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.Ammonia nitrogen and salinity tolerance of Penaeus monodon from eight selected breeding families were evaluated at the concentration of 67.65 mg L−1 ammonia-N and reducing salinity from 15 to 0 ‰. The final survival of family A (88.67 ± 9.81 %) was highest, and the final survival of family B was lowest (24.33 ± 14.01 %) after the ammonia tolerance test. Upon completing the sudden drop salinity test from 15 to 0 ‰, the highest survival was observed in family B (98.00 ± 1.73 %), and the lowest survival was found in family H (18.00 ± 1.73 %). Family A showed the strongest ability to tolerate ammonia stress, and family B showed the strongest tolerance to low salinity. This study suggests that the tolerance of salinity and ammonia nitrogen varied between breeding families. Results from the present study provide useful information towards selective breeding in shrimp in aquaculture for environmental tolerance