Effective Potential Theory: A Practical Way to Extend Plasma Transport Theory to Strong Coupling

The effective potential theory is a physically motivated method for extending traditional plasma transport theories to stronger coupling. It is practical in the sense that it is easily incorporated within the framework of the Chapman-Enskog or Grad methods that are commonly applied in plasma physics and it is computationally efficient to evaluate. The extension is to treat binary scatterers as interacting through the potential of mean force, rather than the bare Coulomb or Debye-screened Coulomb potential. This allows for aspects of many-body correlations to be included in the transport coefficients. Recent work has shown that this method accurately extends plasma theory to orders of magnitude stronger coupling when applied to the classical one-component plasma model. The present work shows that similar accuracy is realized for the Yukawa one-component plasma model and it provides a comparison with other approaches.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, Proceedings of the Strongly Coupled Coulomb Systems conference 201

Vaccines for poverty. Associated infection diseases: Accessing innovation

There are very few exceptions to the rule that vaccines have been developed in high income countries (HIC) and have been extended over time to low and middle income countries (LMIC). For the diseases of childhood, and now for human papilloma virus, these innovative vaccines have resulted in dramatic reductions in death and improvement in socioeconomic indicators. However, there has often been a delay between the introduction of life-saving (or morbidity reducing) vaccines in HIC and their subsequent introduction in LMIC. Recently a dengue vaccine targeting middle income countries and a typhoid conjugate vaccine whose primary target population is LMIC have been developed. However, accessing innovative vaccines remains a key problem, particularly in countries that are not Gavi eligible or for diseases that are not covered by Gavi. The latter point can be further developed by noting that full implementation of existing vaccines from 2011-2020 will save an estimated 2.5 million lives per year. However, infectious diseases for which no vaccines exist will kill nearly 5 million per year. These diseases include the usual suspects -- HIV, TB and malaria – but also infectious diseases associated with poverty: invasive non-typhoidal Salmonella (up to 650,000 deaths annually), Group A Streptococcus (~450,000 deaths annually), Shigella (~200,000 deaths annually), hepatitis E, among others. In general, the latter group is characterized by burden in LMIC, imprecise epidemiology, and lack of incentivization (for major vaccine companies). Unlike the CEPI outbreak diseases, there is no global fund to accelerate clinical development. While economic development will result in the gradual subsidence of these infectious diseases, vaccines could and should be viewed as a cost-effective alternative and mechanisms to fund the development and deployment of vaccines against poverty associated infectious diseases would have a high rate of return on investment

Fivebranes Wrapped on SLAG Three-Cycles and Related Geometry

We construct ten-dimensional supergravity solutions corresponding to the near horizon limit of IIB fivebranes wrapping special Lagrangian three-cycles of constant curvature. The case of branes wrapping a three-sphere provides a gravity dual of pure N=2 super-Yang-Mills theory in D=3. The non-trivial part of the solutions are seven manifolds that admit two G_2 structures each of which is covariantly constant with respect to a different connection with torsion. We derive a formula for the generalised calibration for this general class of solutions. We discuss analogous aspects of the geometry that arises when fivebranes wrap other supersymmetric cycles which lead to Spin(7) and SU(N) structures. In some cases there are two covariantly constant structures and in others one.Comment: v2: 26 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Section 7 slightly expanded, references adde

Dual-drive LiNbO_3 interferometric Mach-Zehnder architecture with extended linear regime for high peak-to-average OFDM-based communication systems

A dual-drive LiNbO3 architecture modulator with chirp management is proposed and developed offering SFDR > 25 dB in a 1.4 V bias excursion compared to only 0.5 V bias excursion in a conventional Mach-Zehnder electro-optical modulator (MZ-EOM). The architecture effectively extends the linear regime and enables the optical transmission of wireless systems employing orthogonal division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation such as ultra-wide band (UWB) which require high linearity over a broad frequency range due to their high peak-to-average power ratio (PARP). Radio-over-fiber UWB transmission in a passive optical network is experimentally demonstrated employing this technique, exhibiting an enhancement of 2.2 dB in EVM after 57 km SSMF when the dual-drive developed modulator is employed. © 2011 Optical Society of America