World Community: Searching for a Global Cosmology

Every culture in history has had a cosmology, a myth about origins. Such cosmologies provide societal and religious structure, ethics, and morals. Driven by mass communication, humanity is rapidly moving toward a world community. Individual cultures have been increasingly thrown into conflict, causing fear and defensive reactions. Global humanity needs what no culture has ever been without: a unifying cosmology. Many who are seeking fruitful dialogue between faith and science have become intimately involved in searching for such a cosmology. In the same spirit, others seek a more productive interfaith dialogue. Complex-systems approaches and process thinking may provide a model for both

Plasmonic interferometry: probing launching dipoles in scanning-probe plasmonics

We develop a semi-analytical method for analyzing surface plasmon interferometry using near-field scanning optical sources. We compare our approach to Young double hole interferometry experiments using scanning tunneling microscope (STM) discussed in the literature and realize experiments with an aperture near-field scanning optical microscope (NSOM) source positioned near a ring like aperture slit milled in a thick gold film. In both cases the agreement between experiments and model is very good. We emphasize the role of dipole orientations and discuss the role of magnetic versus electric dipole contributions to the imaging process as well as the directionality of the effective dipoles associated with the various optical and plasmonic sources.Comment: To appear in Journal of Applied Physics (2014

Parcours des femmes consultant aux urgences de gynécologie du CHUV après une agression sexuelle

Objectif : Le but de ce travail est d'effectuer une évaluation quantitative et un relevé des données relatives aux femmes consultant aux Urgences de gynécologie-obstétrique du DFME suite à une agression sexuelle, afin de décrire le parcours de soins précoces, et d'identifier les éléments pouvant influencer le déroulement de ce parcours. Il vise donc à vérifier si elles tirent le bénéfice souhaité des prestations proposées ainsi que du cadre mis en place, tout en cherchant à en identifier les difficultés. Méthode : L'étude projetée est une étude épidémiologique descriptive et rétrospective. La population étudiée est constituée des 50 premières patientes de plus de 18 ans, ayant consulté initialement aux Urgences de gynécologie-obstétrique du DFME du CHUV en 2017, et pour lesquelles une documentation spécifique a été établie en raison d'une révélation d'une agression sexuelle. Résultats : La moyenne d’âge des patientes de la cohorte est de 32.3 ans. Nos résultats montrent que 54% des patientes sont orientées aux urgences soit par elles-mêmes, soit par la police. Au moment des faits, 25% d’entre elles présentent des comorbidités psychiatriques et 46% ont des antécédents de violences sexuelles dans le passé. L’agresseur est connu de la victime dans 60% des cas, et l’agression a lieu au domicile de la victime dans 32% des cas. De la violence physique est rapportées dans 46% des agressions. Le délai entre l’agression sexuelle et la consultation aux urgences est court, avec 84% des patientes qui consultent dans les 7 jours. Concernant le suivi, 70% des patientes adhèrent à la première partie du suivi, contre seulement 22% lors de la seconde partie du suivi. Et seulement 39% sont présentes à la consultation d’infectiologie pour le suivi de la PEP. Aucun élément n’a montré une influence significative sur la probabilité d’adhérence au suivi de manière générale. Conclusion : Cette étude a démontré que les patientes faisant état d’une agression sexuelle, s’orientent plutôt bien dans le système de soins du CHUV, et adhèrent relativement bien au suivi mis en place, voire mieux que ce qui est décrit dans la littérature, et plus particulièrement à la première partie de ce dernier. Toutefois, les améliorations y sont toujours possibles, notamment pour la deuxième partie du suivi, ainsi que pour la prise en charge des patientes bénéficiant de la PEP

Design and Manufacture of the Superconducting Bus-bars for the LHC Main Magnets

The main magnets of the LHC are series-connected electrically in different powering circuits by means of superconducting bus-bars, carrying a maximum current of 13 kA. These superconducting bus-bars consist of a superconducting cable thermally and electrically coupled to a copper profile all along the length. The function of the copper profile is essentially to provide an alternative path for the current in case the superconducting cable loses its superconducting state and returns to normal state because of a transient disturbance or of a normal zone propagation coming from the neighbouring magnets. When a superconducting bus-bar quenches to normal state its temperature must always stay below a safe values of about 100°C while the copper is conducting. When a resistive transition is detected, the protection systems triggers the ramping down of the current from 13000 A to 0. The ramp rate must not exceed a maximum value to avoid the transition of magnets series-connected in the circuit. This paper concerns the design and the manufacture of the high current superconducting bus-bars needed to interconnect the magnetic elements of the main dipoles, the main quadrupoles of the arcs and of the dispersion suppressors of the LHC

Giant slip lengths of a simple fluid at vibrating solid interfaces

It has been shown recently [PRL 102, 254503 (2009)] that in the plane-plane configuration a mechanical resonator vibrating close to a rigid wall in a simple fluid can be overdamped to a frozen regime. Here, by solving analytically the Navier Stokes equations with partial slip boundary conditions at the solid fluid interface, we develop a theoretical approach justifying and extending these earlier findings. We show in particular that in the perfect slip regime the above mentioned results are, in the plane-plane configuration, very general and robust with respect to lever geometry considerations. We compare the results with those obtained previously for the sphere moving perpendicularly and close to a plane in a simple fluid and discuss in more details the differences concerning the dependence of the friction forces with the gap distance separating the moving object (i.e., plane or sphere) from the fixed plane. Finally, we show that the submicron fluidic effect reported in the reference above, and discussed further in the present work, can have dramatic implications in the design of nano-electromechanical systems (NEMS).Comment: submitted to PRE (see also PRL 102, 254503 (2009)

Spatial correlations of vacuum fluctuations and the Casimir-Polder potential

We calculate the Casimir-Polder intermolecular potential using an effective Hamiltonian recently introduced. We show that the potential can be expressed in terms of the dynamical polarizabilities of the two atoms and the equal-time spatial correlation of the electric field in the vacuum state. This gives support to an interesting physical model recently proposed in the literature, where the potential is obtained from the classical interaction between the instantaneous atomic dipoles induced and correlated by the vacuum fluctuations. Also, the results obtained suggest a more general validity of this intuitive model, for example when external boundaries or thermal fields are present.Comment: 7 page

An Analysis of Multi-Processors Using Ischium

Unified optimal models have led to many extensive advances, including rasterization and robots. After years of important research into the Turing machine, we disconfirm the emulation of interrupts, demonstrates the private importance of complexity theory. Ischium, our new heuristic for the transistor, is the solution to all of these challenges

Microscopic analysis of spin-momentum locking on a geometric phase metasurface

We revisit spin-orbit coupling in a plasmonic Berry metasurface composed of rotated nanoapertures, which is known to imprint a robust far-field polarization response. We present a scattering formalism that shows how that spin-momentum locking emerges from the geometry of the unit cell without requiring global rotation symmetries. We find and confirm with Mueller polarimetry measurements that spin-momentum locking is an approximate symmetry. The symmetry breakdown is ascribed to the elliptical projection of circularly polarized light into the planar surface. This breakdown is maximal when surface waves are excited, and a new set of spin-momentum locking rules is presented for this case