Plasmonic Cloaking of Cylinders: Finite Length, Oblique Illumination and Cross-Polarization Coupling

Metamaterial cloaking has been proposed and studied in recent years following several interesting approaches. One of them, the scattering-cancellation technique, or plasmonic cloaking, exploits the plasmonic effects of suitably designed thin homogeneous metamaterial covers to drastically suppress the scattering of moderately sized objects within specific frequency ranges of interest. Besides its inherent simplicity, this technique also holds the promise of isotropic response and weak polarization dependence. Its theory has been applied extensively to symmetrical geometries and canonical 3D shapes, but its application to elongated objects has not been explored with the same level of detail. We derive here closed-form theoretical formulas for infinite cylinders under arbitrary wave incidence, and validate their performance with full-wave numerical simulations, also considering the effects of finite lengths and truncation effects in cylindrical objects. In particular, we find that a single isotropic (idealized) cloaking layer may successfully suppress the dominant scattering coefficients of moderately thin elongated objects, even for finite lengths comparable with the incident wavelength, providing a weak dependence on the incidence angle. These results may pave the way for application of plasmonic cloaking in a variety of practical scenarios of interest.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures, 2 table

4D-fy: Text-to-4D Generation Using Hybrid Score Distillation Sampling

Recent breakthroughs in text-to-4D generation rely on pre-trained text-to-image and text-to-video models to generate dynamic 3D scenes. However, current text-to-4D methods face a three-way tradeoff between the quality of scene appearance, 3D structure, and motion. For example, text-to-image models and their 3D-aware variants are trained on internet-scale image datasets and can be used to produce scenes with realistic appearance and 3D structure -- but no motion. Text-to-video models are trained on relatively smaller video datasets and can produce scenes with motion, but poorer appearance and 3D structure. While these models have complementary strengths, they also have opposing weaknesses, making it difficult to combine them in a way that alleviates this three-way tradeoff. Here, we introduce hybrid score distillation sampling, an alternating optimization procedure that blends supervision signals from multiple pre-trained diffusion models and incorporates benefits of each for high-fidelity text-to-4D generation. Using hybrid SDS, we demonstrate synthesis of 4D scenes with compelling appearance, 3D structure, and motion.Comment: Project page: https://sherwinbahmani.github.io/4df

Beyond the Social Determinants of Learning™ A Walden University Position Paper

The Social Determinants of Health (SDOH), presented by the World Health Organization (WHO) and a cross-organizational global commission in the early 2000s, provide an understanding of health status of individuals and communities. SDOH consider societal forces and conditions such as housing, work conditions, environment, and education (Braveman & Gottlieb, 2014; WHO, 2021). The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (n.d.) launched a “Healthy People 2030” initiative, addressing five key social determinants of health and offering a framework from which organizations can build strategy: 1. Healthcare access and quality 2. Education access and quality 3. Social and community context 4. Economic stability 5. Neighborhood and built environment As leaders in preparing provisioners of healthcare, Walden’s nursing and healthcare programs operate from the Social Determinants of Health & Healthcare (SDOH&H) framework (emphasizing both health and healthcare) and address the SDOH&H in every course

A geography of residents' worry about the disruptive effects of contaminated sites

© 2018 Institute of Australian Geographers While the links between contaminated sites and adverse effects on human health and well-being are being increasingly recognised, some argue that the magnitude of the health problem is inadequately addressed because it is largely invisible. Health geographies literature has sought to highlight this invisibility by focusing on the link between contaminated sites and health. This study adds to health geographies by presenting unique insights into the geography of residents' worry about the disruptive effect of environmental contamination on health and well-being. It analyses a sample of residents (n = 485) living near 13 contaminated sites across Australia. Ordinal logistic regression analysis of closed-format survey questions was combined with coding of open-ended survey questions to reveal the geography of residents' worry about contamination from nearby sites. First, the study explores some of the main relationships between residents, their environs, and contaminants from nearby source sites, which determines their levels of worry: residents' demographics, residents' proximity to sites, contaminant boundaries and borders, and type of contaminant. Second, the study investigates how worry affects residents' health and well-being, ranging from effects on their personal functioning through to their sense of ontological security, which depends in part upon their perceptions of contaminants' impacts. Despite having identified a range of diverse and negative effects of worry about contamination on residents, we found that worry for contamination can also prompt coping strategies and problem-solving, reinforcing the need for more research on this subject

TLR3 essentially promotes protective class I–restricted memory CD8+ T-cell responses to Aspergillus fumigatus in hematopoietic transplanted patients

Aspergillus fumigatus is a model fungal pathogen and a common cause of severe infections and diseases. CD8+ T cells are present in the human and murine T-cell repertoire to the fungus. However, CD8+ T-cell function in infection and the molecular mechanisms that control their priming and differentiation into effector and memory cells in vivo remain elusive. In the present study, we report that both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells mediate protective memory responses to the fungus contingent on the nature of the fungal vaccine. Mechanistically, class I MHC-restricted, CD8+ memory T cells were activated through TLR3 sensing of fungal RNA by cross-presenting dendritic cells. Genetic deficiency of TLR3 was associated with susceptibility to aspergillosis and concomitant failure to activate memory-protective CD8+ T cells both in mice and in patients receiving stem-cell transplantations. Therefore, TLR3 essentially promotes antifungal memory CD8+ T-cell responses and its deficiency is a novel susceptibility factor for aspergillosis in high-risk patients.These studies were supported by the Specific Targeted Research Project ALLFUN (FP7-HEALTH-2009 contract number 260338 to L.R.), by SYBARIS (FP7-HEALTH-2009 contract number 242220 to L.R.), and by the Italian Project AIDS 2010 by the Istituto Superiore di Sanita (contract number 40H40 to L.R.). A.C. and C.C. were supported by fellowships from Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia, Portugal (contracts SFRH/BPD/46292/2008 and SFRH/BD/65962/2009, respectively)

Determining carnivore habitat use in a rubber/forest landscape in Brazil using multispecies occupancy models.

Understanding the factors that influence the presence and distribution of carnivores in human-dominated agricultural landscapes is one of the main challenges for biodiversity conservation, especially in landscapes where setting aside large protected areas is not feasible. Habitat use models of carnivore communities in rubber plantations are lacking despite the critical roles carnivores play in structuring ecosystems and the increasing expansion of rubber plantations. We investigated the habitat use of a mammalian carnivore community within a 4,200-ha rubber plantation/forest landscape in Bahia, Brazil. We placed two different brands of camera traps in a 90-site grid. We used a multispecies occupancy model to determine the probabilities of habitat use by each species and the effect of different brands of camera traps on their detection probabilities. Species showed significant differences in habitat use with domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) and crab-eating foxes (Cerdocyon thous) having higher probabilities of using rubber groves and coatis (Nasua nasua) having a higher probability of using forest. The moderate level of captures and low detection probabilities (≤ 0.1) of tayras (Eira barbara) and wildcats (Leopardus spp.) precluded a precise estimation of habitat use probabilities using the multispecies occupancy model. The different brands of camera traps had a significant effect on the detection probability of all species. Given that the carnivore community has persisted in this 70-year-old landscape, the results show the potential of rubber/forest landscapes to provide for the long-term conservation of carnivore communities in the Atlantic forest, especially in mosaics with 30-40% forest cover and guard patrolling systems. The results also provide insights for mitigating the impact of rubber production on biodiversity

Correction: Determining carnivore habitat use in a rubber/forest landscape in Brazil using multispecies occupancy models.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0195311.]

EDGE RESPONSES OF TROPICAL AND TEMPERATE BIRDS

Volume: 119Start Page: 205End Page: 22