218 research outputs found
Negative Optical Torque
Maxwell noted that light carries angular momentum, and as such it can exert
torques on material objects. This was subsequently proved by Beth in 1936.
Applications of these opto-mechanical effects were limited initially due to
their smallness in magnitude, but later enabled by the invention of laser.
Novel and practical approaches for harvesting light for particle rotation have
been demonstrated, where the structure is subjected to a positive optical
torque along a certain axis21 if the incident angular momentum has a positive
projection on the same axis. We report here a counter-intuitive phenomenon of
negative optical torque, meaning that incoming photons carrying angular
momentum rotate an object in the opposite sense. Surprisingly this can be
realized quite straightforwardly in simple planar structures. Field retardation
is a necessary condition. The optimal conditions are explored and explained.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figure
Collapse of Vacuum Bubbles in a Vacuum
Motivated by the discovery of a plenitude of metastable vacua in a string
landscape and the possibility of rapid tunneling between these vacua, we
revisit the dynamics of a false vacuum bubble in a background de Sitter
spacetime. We find that there exists a large parameter space that allows the
bubble to collapse into a black hole or to form a wormhole. This may have
interesting implications to inflationary physics.Comment: 8 pages including 6 figures, LaTex; references adde
Western Australian Radiology Departments’ Views on Australian Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record
Introduction: Since the last decade, many countries have started developing a national electronic health record (EHR). The national EHR in Australia is called Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR). It has been available for use since 1 July 2012. A federal government’s review of its implementation was conducted in late 2013 because it failed to meet the set targets. The purpose of this study was to investigate Western Australian radiology departments’ views on the PCEHR complementary to the government’s review report. Methods: Chief medical imaging technologists (n=18) and picture archiving and communication system (PACS) administrators (n=18) from public and private hospitals in Western Australian were invited to participate in this study in May 2014. The response rate for participation was 22.2 percent (8/36). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the participants to obtain their perceptions of PCEHR. The interviews were analysed inductively and thematically. Results: There were eight people (n=8) who agreed to participate. They believed the PCEHR would enhance efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare services if barriers to its implementation were addressed. The major barriers identified were concern of individual privacy, increase of staff workload, inadequate system functionalities and training, lack of involvement of stakeholders and money. The use of Medicare to provide both positive and negative incentives to the stakeholders was suggested as a viable solution to address the current barriers. Conclusion: This study investigated four Western Australian radiology departments’ perceptions of PCEHR. Although their perceptions were similar to the ideas in the government’s review report in general, new insights were also provided by the participants. These findings could potentially complement the government’s review
Quantum Stress Tensor Fluctuations of a Conformal Field and Inflationary Cosmology
We discuss the additional perturbation introduced during inflation by quantum
stress tensor fluctuations of a conformally invariant field such as the photon.
We consider both a kinematical model, which deals only with the expansion
fluctuations of geodesics, and a dynamical model which treats the coupling of
the stress tensor fluctuations to a scalar inflaton. In neither model do we
find any growth at late times, in accordance with a theorem due to Weinberg.
What we find instead is a correction which becomes larger the earlier one
starts inflation. This correction is non-Gaussian and highly scale dependent,
so the absence of such effects from the observed power spectra may imply a
constraint on the total duration of inflation. We discuss different views about
the validity of perturbation theory at very early times during which currently
observable modes are transplanckian.Comment: 31 pages, 1 figure, uses LaTeX2epsilo
Observational Strategies of CMB Temperature and Polarization Interferometry Experiments
We have simulated the interferometric observation of the Cosmic Microwave
Background (CMB) temperature and polarization fluctuations. We have constructed
data pipelines from the time-ordered raw visibility samples to the CMB power
spectra which utilize the methods of data compression, maximum likelihood
analysis, and optimal subspace filtering. They are customized for three
observational strategies, such as the single pointing, the mosaicking, and the
drift-scanning. For each strategy, derived are the optimal strategy parameters
that yield band power estimates with minimum uncertainty. The results are
general and can be applied to any close-packed array on a single platform such
as the CBI and the forthcoming AMiBA experiments. We have also studied the
effect of rotation of the array platform on the band power correlation by
simulating the CBI single pointing observation. It is found that the band power
anti-correlations can be reduced by rotating the platform and thus densely
sampling the visibility plane. This enables us to increase the resolution of
the power spectrum in the l-space down to the limit of the sampling theorem
(Delta l = 226 = pi / theta), which is narrower by a factor of about sqrt{2}
than the resolution limit (Delta l = 300) used in the recent CBI single
pointing observation. The validity of this idea is demonstrated for a
two-element interferometer that samples visibilities uniformly in the
uv-annulus. From the fact that the visibilities are the Fourier modes of the
CMB field convolved with the beam, a fast unbiased estimator (FUE) of the CMB
power spectra is developed and tested. It is shown that the FUE gives results
very close to those from the quadratic estimator method without requiring large
computer resources even though uncertainties in the results increase.Comment: 33 pages, 6 figures, Accepted version for publication in
Astrophysical Journa
ZnO nanorod/GaN light-emitting diodes: The origin of yellow and violet emission bands under reverse and forward bias
ZnO nanorods have been prepared by electrodeposition under identical conditions on various p-GaN-based thin film structures. The devices exhibited lighting up under both forward and reverse biases, but the turn-on voltage and the emission color were strongly dependent on the p-GaN-based structure used. The origin of different luminescence peaks under forward and reverse bias has been studied by comparing the devices with and without ZnO and by photoluminescence and cathodoluminescence spectroscopy. We found that both yellow-orange emission under reverse bias and violet emission under forward bias, which are commonly attributed to ZnO, actually originate from the p-GaN substrate and/or surface/interface defects. While the absolute brightness of devices without InGaN multiple quantum wells was low, high brightness with luminance exceeding 10 000 cd/m 2 and tunable emission (from orange at 2.1 V to blue at 2.7 V, with nearly white emission with Commission internationale de l'éclairage (CIE) coordinates (0.30, 0.31) achieved at 2.5 V) was obtained for different devices containing InGaN multiple quantum wells. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.published_or_final_versio
Complex Visibilities of Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies
We study the complex visibilities of the cosmic microwave background
anisotropies that are observables in interferometric observations of the cosmic
microwave background, using the multipole expansion methods commonly adopted in
analyzing single-dish experiments. This allows us to recover the properties of
the visibilities that is obscured in the flat-sky approximation. Discussions of
the window function, multipole resolution, instrumental noise, pixelization,
and polarization are given.Comment: 22 pages, 1 figure include
Random and Correlated Phases of Primordial Gravitaional Waves
The phases of primordial gravity waves is analysed in detail within a quantum
mechanical context following the formalism developed by Grishchuk and Sidorov.
It is found that for physically relevant wavelengths both the phase of each
individual mode and the phase {\it difference} between modes are randomly
distributed. The phase {\it sum} between modes with oppositely directed
wave-vectors, however, is not random and takes on a definite value with no rms
fluctuation. The conventional point of view that primordial gravity waves
appear after inflation as a classical, random stochastic background is also
addressed.Comment: 14 pages, written in REVTE
Quantum Stress Tensor Fluctuation Effects in Inflationary Cosmology
We review several related investigations of the effects of the quantum stress
tensor of a conformal field in inflationary cosmology. Particular attention
will be paid to the effects of quantum stress tensor fluctuations as a source
of density and tensor perturbations in inflationary models. These effects can
possibly depend upon the total expansion factor during inflation, and hence be
much larger than one might otherwise expect. They have the potential to
contribute a non-scale invariant and non-Gaussian component to the primordial
spectrum of perturbations, and might be observable.Comment: 8 pages, proceedings of IARD 2010, Conference on Classical and
Quantum Relativistic Dynamics of Particles and Fields, Hualien, Taiwan May
201
Integrated Transcriptomics, Metabolomics, and Lipidomics Profiling in Rat Lung, Blood, and Serum for Assessment of Laser Printer-Emitted Nanoparticle Inhalation Exposure-Induced Disease Risks
settings Open AccessArticle Integrated Transcriptomics, Metabolomics, and Lipidomics Profiling in Rat Lung, Blood, and Serum for Assessment of Laser Printer-Emitted Nanoparticle Inhalation Exposure-Induced Disease Risks by Nancy Lan Guo 1,*,Tuang Yeow Poh 2,Sandra Pirela 3,Mariana T. Farcas 4,Sanjay H. Chotirmall 2,Wai Kin Tham 5,Sunil S. Adav 5,Qing Ye 1,Yongyue Wei 6,Sipeng Shen 2,David C. Christiani 2,Kee Woei Ng 3,7,8,Treye Thomas 9,Yong Qian 4 andPhilip Demokritou 3 1 West Virginia University Cancer Institute/School of Public Health, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA 2 Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 308232, Singapore 3 Center for Nanotechnology and Nanotoxicology, Department of Environmental Health, T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02115, USA 4 Pathology and Physiology Research Branch, Health Effects Laboratory Division, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Morgantown, WV 26505, USA 5 Singapore Phenome Centre, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 636921, Singapore 6 Key Lab for Modern Toxicology, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Ministry of Education (MOE), School of Public Health, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210029, China 7 School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Singapore 8 Environmental Chemistry and Materials Centre, Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute, Singapore 637141, Singapore 9 Office of Hazard Identification and Reduction, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Rockville, MD 20814, USA * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2019, 20(24), 6348; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms20246348 Received: 2 December 2019 / Revised: 12 December 2019 / Accepted: 13 December 2019 / Published: 16 December 2019 (This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Nanostructured Materials between Pharmaceutics and Biomedicine) Download PDF Browse Figures Review Reports Cite This Paper Abstract Laser printer-emitted nanoparticles (PEPs) generated from toners during printing represent one of the most common types of life cycle released particulate matter from nano-enabled products. Toxicological assessment of PEPs is therefore important for occupational and consumer health protection. Our group recently reported exposure to PEPs induces adverse cardiovascular responses including hypertension and arrythmia via monitoring left ventricular pressure and electrocardiogram in rats. This study employed genome-wide mRNA and miRNA profiling in rat lung and blood integrated with metabolomics and lipidomics profiling in rat serum to identify biomarkers for assessing PEPs-induced disease risks. Whole-body inhalation of PEPs perturbed transcriptional activities associated with cardiovascular dysfunction, metabolic syndrome, and neural disorders at every observed time point in both rat lung and blood during the 21 days of exposure. Furthermore, the systematic analysis revealed PEPs-induced transcriptomic changes linking to other disease risks in rats, including diabetes, congenital defects, auto-recessive disorders, physical deformation, and carcinogenesis. The results were also confirmed with global metabolomics profiling in rat serum. Among the validated metabolites and lipids, linoleic acid, arachidonic acid, docosahexanoic acid, and histidine showed significant variation in PEPs-exposed rat serum. Overall, the identified PEPs-induced dysregulated genes, molecular pathways and functions, and miRNA-mediated transcriptional activities provide important insights into the disease mechanisms. The discovered important mRNAs, miRNAs, lipids and metabolites may serve as candidate biomarkers for future occupational and medical surveillance studies. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study systematically integrating in vivo, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and lipidomics to assess PEPs inhalation exposure-induced disease risks using a rat model
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