ELECTIONS: Elections and Primaries Through the Pandemic

The 2020 election cycle was all but normal. Due to certain health concerns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, Georgia delayed its primary election three months from March to June and summarily mailed absentee ballot request forms to all active, registered voters. From presidential social media postings to a federal lawsuit, debate ensued over the widespread usage of absentee ballots, their overall effectiveness and security, who would receive request forms, and whether postage requirements qualified as an impermissible poll tax. To further compound these uncertainties, Georgia legislators, who are not permitted to fundraise or campaign during the forty-day legislative session, had to make significant changes to their election campaign strategies to account for the suspended term. This Peach Sheet explores Georgia’s 2020 election season and outlines the major issues that faced the state through the ongoing pandemic

Hippocampal Subregions Differentially Associate with Standardized Memory Tests

Recent studies suggest that individual hippocampal subregions perform distinct cognitive operations and are differentially targeted by aging and disease. Although originally developed to assess global hippocampal function, whether performance on standard memory tests used in neuropsychological batteries is associated with individual hippocampal subregions remains unknown. Here we addressed this issue by imaging 210 neuropsychologically characterized subjects using a high-resolution variant of functional magnetic resonance imaging that generates maps reflective of basal hippocampal metabolism. Regression analysis revealed memory tests that differentially associate with two hippocampal subregions, the entorhinal cortex (EC) and the dentate gyrus (DG). Whereas performance on the delayed retention component of the Selective Reminding Test was associated with the EC, performance on the recognition component of the Benton Visual Retention Test (BVRT) was associated with the DG. Furthermore, elevation in blood glucose, previously shown to target the DG, was found to correlate selectively with the recognition component of the BVRT. These findings provide further evidence that the hippocampal subregions perform distinct roles, and, interpreted in the context of previous neuropsychological and imaging studies, confirm that aging and Alzheimer's disease target different hippocampal subregions

Zero-Point cooling and low heating of trapped 111Cd+ ions

We report on ground state laser cooling of single 111Cd+ ions confined in radio-frequency (Paul) traps. Heating rates of trapped ion motion are measured for two different trapping geometries and electrode materials, where no effort was made to shield the electrodes from the atomic Cd source. The low measured heating rates suggest that trapped 111Cd+ ions may be well-suited for experiments involving quantum control of atomic motion, including applications in quantum information science.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, Submitted to PR

Implementation of Grover's Quantum Search Algorithm in a Scalable System

We report the implementation of Grover's quantum search algorithm in the scalable system of trapped atomic ion quantum bits. Any one of four possible states of a two-qubit memory is marked, and following a single query of the search space, the marked element is successfully recovered with an average probability of 60(2)%. This exceeds the performance of any possible classical search algorithm, which can only succeed with a maximum average probability of 50%.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, updated error discussio