Experimental evidence of a {\phi} Josephson junction

We demonstrate experimentally the existence of Josephson junctions having a doubly degenerate ground state with an average Josephson phase \psi=\pm{\phi}. The value of {\phi} can be chosen by design in the interval 0<{\phi}<\pi. The junctions used in our experiments are fabricated as 0-{\pi} Josephson junctions of moderate normalized length with asymmetric 0 and {\pi} regions. We show that (a) these {\phi} Josephson junctions have two critical currents, corresponding to the escape of the phase {\psi} from -{\phi} and +{\phi} states; (b) the phase {\psi} can be set to a particular state by tuning an external magnetic field or (c) by using a proper bias current sweep sequence. The experimental observations are in agreement with previous theoretical predictions

Helping education undergraduates to use appropriate criteria for evaluating accounts of motivation

The aim of the study was to compare students in a control group with those in a treatment group with respect to evaluative comments on psychological accounts of motivation. The treatment group systematically scrutinized the nature and interpretation of evidence that supported different accounts, and the assumptions, logic, coherence and clarity of accounts. Content analysis of 74 scripts (using three categories) showed that the control group students made more assertions than either evidential or evaluative points, whereas the treatment group used evaluative statements as often as they used assertion. The findings provide support for privileging activities that develop understanding of how knowledge might be contested, and suggest a need for further research on pedagogies to serve this end. The idea is considered that such understanding has a pivotal role in the development of critical thinking

Variety of Clostridium difficile PCR ribotypes in pigs arriving at the slaughterhouse

Food products of animal origin might play a role in interspecies transmission of C. difficile. In pigs, Clostridium difficile can cause neonatal enteritis and can be isolated from faeces from both diseased and healthy animals. To determine the prevalence of C. difficile in Dutch pigs arriving at the slaughterhouse a pilot study was conducted at one slaughterhouse in the Netherlands. Rectal faecal samples were taken from fifty slaughtering pigs from ten farms just after the pigs were sedated. These samples were examined using a real time PCR (BD GeneOhmTM Cdiff Assay), in combination with culturing after enrichment. Using real time PCR, none of the faecal samples were found to be positive for C. difficile while after culturing 14 samples (coming from pigs from nine different farms) were found to be positive for C. difficile. The positive samples derived from 9 different farms and encompassed seven different ribotypes

Social presence in the 21st Century: an adjustment to the Community of Inquiry framework

The Community of Inquiry framework, originally proposed by Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000) identifies teaching, social and cognitive presences as central to a successful online educational experience. This article presents the findings of a study conducted in Uruguay between 2007 and 2010. The research aimed to establish the role of cognitive, social and teaching presences in the professional development of 40 English language teachers on Continuous Professional Development (CPD) programmes delivered in blended learning settings. The findings suggest that teaching presence and cognitive presence have themselves 'become social'. The research points to social presence as a major lever for engagement, sense-making and peer support. Based on the patterns identified in the study, this article puts forward an adjustment to the Community of Inquiry framework, which shows social presence as more prominent within the teaching and cognitive constructs than the original version of the framework suggests

On the Complexity of Searching in Trees: Average-case Minimization

We focus on the average-case analysis: A function w : V -> Z+ is given which defines the likelihood for a node to be the one marked, and we want the strategy that minimizes the expected number of queries. Prior to this paper, very little was known about this natural question and the complexity of the problem had remained so far an open question. We close this question and prove that the above tree search problem is NP-complete even for the class of trees with diameter at most 4. This results in a complete characterization of the complexity of the problem with respect to the diameter size. In fact, for diameter not larger than 3 the problem can be shown to be polynomially solvable using a dynamic programming approach. In addition we prove that the problem is NP-complete even for the class of trees of maximum degree at most 16. To the best of our knowledge, the only known result in this direction is that the tree search problem is solvable in O(|V| log|V|) time for trees with degree at most 2 (paths). We match the above complexity results with a tight algorithmic analysis. We first show that a natural greedy algorithm attains a 2-approximation. Furthermore, for the bounded degree instances, we show that any optimal strategy (i.e., one that minimizes the expected number of queries) performs at most O(\Delta(T) (log |V| + log w(T))) queries in the worst case, where w(T) is the sum of the likelihoods of the nodes of T and \Delta(T) is the maximum degree of T. We combine this result with a non-trivial exponential time algorithm to provide an FPTAS for trees with bounded degree

Препятствия, стоящие перед эффективной национальной программой лечения туберкулеза: пример Индии = Obstacles facing an effective national tuberculosis treatment program: a case study of India

Туберкулез (ТБ) - это заболевание, имеющее большое значение и входящее в десятку основных причин смертности в мире. Индия несет непропорционально большое бремя, на которую приходится более четверти случаев в мире. За последние 25 лет Индийское правительство расширило национальную программу диагностики и лечения, охватывающую всю страну. Тем не менее, накопились данные о том, что общая заболеваемость туберкулезом и случаи множественной лекарственной устойчивости не изменились и даже могут увеличиваться. В этой статье мы обсудим возможные препятствия, стоящие перед индийской программой по борьбе с ТБ. К ним относятся в основном нерегулируемый частный сектор, недостаточное финансирование Индийского бюджета здравоохранения, недостаточные местные знания о болезни у поставщиков противотуберкулезных препаратов, пробелы в текущем каскаде медицинской помощи (от диагностики до лечения), преобладающая социальная стигматизация туберкулеза и высокая распространенность других важных сопутствующих заболеваний, таких как нищета, диабет, ВИЧ и курение. Для достижения всеобщего, высококачественного охвата диагностикой и лечением ключевое значение имеет эффективное сотрудничество с частным сектором. Кроме того, эффективные, основанные на фактических данных инновационные мобильные технологии, а также использование медицинских работников местных сообществ могут принести пользу наиболее социально маргинализированным слоям населения, на которых эти препятствия оказывают наибольшее влияние в Индийском обществе. / Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease of major significance, being one of the top ten causes of death globally. India bears a disproportionately large burden, accounting for more than a quarter of the world’s cases. Over the last 25 years, the Indian Government has scaled-up a national diagnostics and treatment program to cover the entire country. However, there is accumulating evidence that the total TB incidence and that of multi-drug resistance cases has not changed and may even be increasing. In this article, we discuss possible obstacles facing the Indian TB control programme. These include a largely unregulated private sector, underfunding of the Indian health budget, inadequate local knowledge about the disease in TB medication providers, gaps in the current cascade of care (from diagnosis to treatment), prevailing social stigma for TB and a high prevalence of other important comorbidities, such as poverty, diabetes, HIV and smoking. To achieve universal, high quality diagnostics and treatment coverage, effective collaboration with the private sector is key. Furthermore, efficient, evidence-based innovative mobile technologies plus the use of local community healthcare workers can benefit the most socially-marginalized upon whom these obstacles most impact in Indian society

Asymptotic Behavior of Ext functors for modules of finite complete intersection dimension

Let $R$ be a local ring, and let $M$ and $N$ be finitely generated $R$-modules such that $M$ has finite complete intersection dimension. In this paper we define and study, under certain conditions, a pairing using the modules \Ext_R^i(M,N) which generalizes Buchweitz's notion of the Herbrand diference. We exploit this pairing to examine the number of consecutive vanishing of \Ext_R^i(M,N) needed to ensure that \Ext_R^i(M,N)=0 for all $i\gg 0$. Our results recover and improve on most of the known bounds in the literature, especially when $R$ has dimension at most two

Respiratory health status is impaired in UK HIV-positive adults with virologically suppressed HIV infection

OBJECTIVES: We sought to evaluate whether people living with HIV (PLWH) using effective antiretroviral therapy (ART) have worse respiratory health status than similar HIV-negative individuals. METHODS: We recruited 197 HIV-positive and 93 HIV-negative adults from HIV and sexual health clinics. They completed a questionnaire regarding risk factors for respiratory illness. Respiratory health status was assessed using the St George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) and the Medical Research Council (MRC) breathlessness scale. Subjects underwent spirometry without bronchodilation. RESULTS: PLWH had worse respiratory health status: the median SGRQ Total score was 12 [interquartile range (IQR) 6-25] in HIV-positive subjects vs. 6 (IQR 2-14) in HIV-negative subjects (P < 0.001); breathlessness was common in the HIV-positive group, where 47% compared with 24% had an MRC breathlessness score ≥ 2 (P = 0.001). Eighteen (11%) HIV-positive and seven (9%) HIV-negative participants had airflow obstruction. In multivariable analyses (adjusted for age, gender, smoking, body mass index and depression), HIV infection remained associated with higher SGRQ and MRC scores, with an adjusted fold-change in SGRQ Total score of 1.54 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.14-2.09; P = 0.005] and adjusted odds ratio of having an MRC score of ≥ 2 of 2.45 (95% CI 1.15-5.20; P = 0.02). Similar findings were obtained when analyses were repeated including only HIV-positive participants with a viral load < 40 HIV-1 RNA copies/mL. CONCLUSIONS: Despite effective ART, impaired respiratory health appears more common in HIV-positive adults, and has a significant impact on health-related quality of life

Mean-Field HP Model, Designability and Alpha-Helices in Protein Structures

Analysis of the geometric properties of a mean-field HP model on a square lattice for protein structure shows that structures with large number of switch backs between surface and core sites are chosen favorably by peptides as unique ground states. Global comparison of model (binary) peptide sequences with concatenated (binary) protein sequences listed in the Protein Data Bank and the Dali Domain Dictionary indicates that the highest correlation occurs between model peptides choosing the favored structures and those portions of protein sequences containing alpha-helices.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure