Amplitude Damping for single-qubit System with single-qubit mixed-state Environment

We study a generalized amplitude damping channel when environment is initially in the single-qubit mixed state. Representing the affine transformation of the generalized amplitude damping by a three-dimensional volume, we plot explicitly the volume occupied by the channels simulatable by a single-qubit mixed-state environment. As expected, this volume is embedded in the total volume by the channels which is simulated by two-qubit enviroment. The volume ratio is approximately 0.08 which is much smaller than 3/8, the volume ratio for generalized depolarizing channels.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures incluided V2: homepage address is included in reference V3: version to appear in J. Phys. A: Mathematical and Theoretica

Interiorized Feminism and Gendered Nostalgia of The ‘Daughter Generation’ in Ning Ying's Perpetual Motion

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The original publication is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/jcc.5.3.253_1Ning Ying’s 2006 film Wuqiong dong/Perpetual Motion can be regarded as her first attempt to explore the genre of ‘women’s film’. Deviating from her previous neo-realist style, this film seeks to cultivate an alternative cinematic practice through developing a heavy-handed negative aesthetics. Ning Ying interiorizes the filmic exploration of female subjectivity in an enclosed time and space, which is constantly haunted by a spectral aesthetics characterized by audio-visual allusions to loss, grave, ruins and ghosts. However, the film’s radical content and alternative aesthetics are, ironically, packaged in prevailing consumer aesthetics and commodity fetishism on and off the silver screen. All these competing drives and accounts render the film a contested narrative constantly oscillating between avant-garde feminism and domestic melodrama, and between a register of disintegrating sisterhood and a celebrity scandal of adultery. This article examines the discursive and aesthetic innovations, contradictions and limits of Ning Ying’s cinematic feminism

The Physics of the B Factories

This work is on the Physics of the B Factories. Part A of this book contains a brief description of the SLAC and KEK B Factories as well as their detectors, BaBar and Belle, and data taking related issues. Part B discusses tools and methods used by the experiments in order to obtain results. The results themselves can be found in Part C

The BaBar detector: Upgrades, operation and performance

Contains fulltext : 121729.pdf (preprint version ) (Open Access

Cardiorenal end points in a trial of aliskiren for type 2 diabetes.

Background This study was undertaken to determine whether use of the direct renin inhibitor aliskiren would reduce cardiovascular and renal events in patients with type 2 dia- betes and chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, or both. Methods In a double-blind fashion, we randomly assigned 8561 patients to aliskiren (300 mg daily) or placebo as an adjunct to an angiotensin-converting\u2013enzyme inhibitor or an angiotensin-receptor blocker. The primary end point was a composite of the time to cardiovascular death or a first occurrence of cardiac arrest with resuscitation; nonfatal myocardial infarction; nonfatal stroke; unplanned hospitalization for heart failure; end-stage renal disease, death attributable to kidney failure, or the need for renal-replacement therapy with no dialysis or transplantation available or initiated; or doubling of the baseline serum creatinine level. Results The trial was stopped prematurely after the second interim efficacy analysis. After a median follow-up of 32.9 months, the primary end point had occurred in 783 patients (18.3%) assigned to aliskiren as compared with 732 (17.1%) assigned to placebo (hazard ratio, 1.08; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.98 to 1.20; P=0.12). Effects on secondary renal end points were similar. Systolic and diastolic blood pres- sures were lower with aliskiren (between-group differences, 1.3 and 0.6 mm Hg, respectively) and the mean reduction in the urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio was greater (between-group difference, 14 percentage points; 95% CI, 11 to 17). The proportion of patients with hyperkalemia (serum potassium level, 656 mmol per liter) was significantly higher in the aliskiren group than in the placebo group (11.2% vs. 7.2%), as was the proportion with reported hypotension (12.1% vs. 8.3%) (P<0.001 for both comparisons). Conclusions The addition of aliskiren to standard therapy with renin\u2013angiotensin system block- ade in patients with type 2 diabetes who are at high risk for cardiovascular and renal events is not supported by these data and may even be harmful