172 research outputs found
Optimal purification of thermal graph states
In this paper, a purification protocol is presented and its performance is
proven to be optimal when applied to a particular subset of graph states that
are subject to local Z-noise. Such mixed states can be produced by bringing a
system into thermal equilibrium, when it is described by a Hamiltonian which
has a particular graph state as its unique ground state. From this protocol, we
derive the exact value of the critical temperature above which purification is
impossible, as well as the related optimal purification rates. A possible
simulation of graph Hamiltonians is proposed, which requires only bipartite
interactions and local magnetic fields, enabling the tuning of the system
temperature.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures v2: published versio
Entanglement entropy of two disjoint intervals in c=1 theories
We study the scaling of the Renyi entanglement entropy of two disjoint blocks
of critical lattice models described by conformal field theories with central
charge c=1. We provide the analytic conformal field theory result for the
second order Renyi entropy for a free boson compactified on an orbifold
describing the scaling limit of the Ashkin-Teller (AT) model on the self-dual
line. We have checked this prediction in cluster Monte Carlo simulations of the
classical two dimensional AT model. We have also performed extensive numerical
simulations of the anisotropic Heisenberg quantum spin-chain with tree-tensor
network techniques that allowed to obtain the reduced density matrices of
disjoint blocks of the spin-chain and to check the correctness of the
predictions for Renyi and entanglement entropies from conformal field theory.
In order to match these predictions, we have extrapolated the numerical results
by properly taking into account the corrections induced by the finite length of
the blocks to the leading scaling behavior.Comment: 37 pages, 23 figure
Sprint Training Increases Muscle Oxidative Metabolism During High-Intensity Exercise in Patients With Type 1 Diabetes
OBJECTIVE—To investigate sprint-training effects on muscle metabolism during exercise in subjects with (type 1 diabetic group) and without (control group) type 1 diabetes
Urinary C-Peptide of Insulin as a Non-Invasive Marker of Nutritional Status: Some Practicalities
Nutritional status is a critical element of many aspects of animal ecology, but has proven difficult to measure non-invasively in studies of free-ranging animals. Urinary C-peptide of insulin (UCP), a small polypeptide cleaved in an equimolar ratio from proinsulin when the body converts it to insulin, offers great promise in this regard, and recent studies of several non-human primate species have utilized it with encouraging results. Despite this, there are a number of unresolved issues related to the collection, processing, storage and transport of samples. These include: contamination of samples on collection (most commonly by dirt or faeces), short-term storage before returning to a field station, differences in processing and long-term storage methods (blotting onto filter paper, freezing, lyophilizing), and for frozen samples, transportation while keeping samples frozen. Such issues have been investigated for urine samples in particular with respect to their effects on steroid hormone metabolites, but there has been little investigation of their effects on UCP measurement. We collected samples from captive macaques, and undertook a series of experiments where we systematically manipulated samples and tested the effects on subsequent UCP measurements. We show that contamination of urine samples by faeces led to a decrease in UCP levels by >90%, but that contamination with dirt did not have substantial effects. Short-term storage (up to 12 hours) of samples on ice did not affect UCP levels significantly, but medium-term storage (up to 78 hours) did. Freezing and lyophilization for long-term storage did not affect UCP levels, but blotting onto filter paper did. A transportation simulation showed that transporting frozen samples packed in ice and insulated should be acceptable, but only if it can be completed within a period of a few days and if freeze-thaw can be avoided. We use our data to make practical recommendations for fieldworkers
Concatenated tensor network states
We introduce the concept of concatenated tensor networks to efficiently
describe quantum states. We show that the corresponding concatenated tensor
network states can efficiently describe time evolution and possess arbitrary
block-wise entanglement and long-ranged correlations. We illustrate the
approach for the enhancement of matrix product states, i.e. 1D tensor networks,
where we replace each of the matrices of the original matrix product state with
another 1D tensor network. This procedure yields a 2D tensor network, which
includes -- already for tensor dimension two -- all states that can be prepared
by circuits of polynomially many (possibly non-unitary) two-qubit quantum
operations, as well as states resulting from time evolution with respect to
Hamiltonians with short-ranged interactions. We investigate the possibility to
efficiently extract information from these states, which serves as the basic
step in a variational optimization procedure. To this aim we utilize known
exact and approximate methods for 2D tensor networks and demonstrate some
improvements thereof, which are also applicable e.g. in the context of 2D
projected entangled pair states. We generalize the approach to higher
dimensional- and tree tensor networks.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figure
Urinary C-Peptide Measurement as a Marker of Nutritional Status in Macaques
Studies of the nutritional status of wild animals are important in a wide range of research areas such as ecology, behavioural ecology and reproductive biology. However, they have so far been strongly limited by the indirect nature of the available non-invasive tools for the measurement of individual energetic status. The measurement of urinary C-peptide (UCP), which in humans and great apes shows a close link to individual nutritional status, may be a more direct, non-invasive tool for such studies in other primates as well and possibly even in non-primate mammals. Here, we test the suitability of UCPs as markers of nutritional status in non-hominid primates, investigating relationships between UCPs and body-mass-index (BMI), skinfold fatness, and plasma C-peptide levels in captive and free-ranging macaques. We also conducted a food reduction experiment, with daily monitoring of body weight and UCP levels. UCP levels showed significant positive correlations with BMI and skinfold fatness in both captive and free-ranging animals and with plasma C-peptide levels in captive ones. In the feeding experiment, UCP levels were positively correlated with changes in body mass and were significantly lower during food reduction than during re-feeding and the pre-experimental control condition. We conclude that UCPs may be used as reliable biomarkers of body condition and nutritional status in studies of free-ranging catarrhines. Our results open exciting opportunities for energetic studies on free-ranging primates and possibly also other mammals
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