Anti-shielding Effect and Negative Temperature in Instantaneously Reversed Electric Fields and Left-Handed Media

The connections between the anti-shielding effect, negative absolute temperature and superluminal light propagation in both the instantaneously reversed electric field and the left-handed media are considered in the present paper. The instantaneous inversion of the exterior electric field may cause the electric dipoles into the state of negative absolute temperature and therefore give rise to a negative effective mass term of electromagnetic field (i. e., the electromagnetic field propagating inside the negative-temperature medium will acquire an imaginary rest mass), which is said to result in the potential superluminality effect of light propagation in this anti-shielding dielectric. In left-handed media, such phenomena may also arise.Comment: 9 pages, Late

Insights from the revised complete genome sequences of Acinetobacter baumannii strains AB307-0294 and ACICU belonging to global clones 1 and 2

© 2019 The Authors. The Acinetobacter baumannii global clone 1 isolate AB307-0294, recovered in the USA in 1994, and the global clone 2 (GC2) isolate ACICU, isolated in 2005 in Italy, were among the first A. baumannii isolates to be completely sequenced. AB307-0294 is susceptible to most antibiotics and has been used in many genetic studies, and ACICU belongs to a rare GC2 lineage. The complete genome sequences, originally determined using 454 pyrosequencing technology, which is known to generate sequencing errors, were re-determined using Illumina MiSeq and MinION (Oxford Nanopore Technologies) technologies and a hybrid assembly generated using Unicycler. Comparison of the resulting new high-quality genomes to the earlier 454-sequenced versions identified a large number of nucleotide differences affecting protein coding sequence (CDS) features, and allowed the sequences of the long and highly repetitive bap and blp1 genes to be properly resolved for the first time in ACICU. Comparisons of the annotations of the original and revised genomes revealed a large number of differences in the protein CDS features, underlining the impact of sequence errors on protein sequence predictions and core gene determination. On average, 400 predicted CDSs were longer or shorter in the revised genomes and about 200 CDS features were no longer present

Unconventional Fermi surface in an insulating state

Insulators occur in more than one guise, a recent finding was a class of topological insulators, which host a conducting surface juxtaposed with an insulating bulk. Here we report the observation of an unusual insulating state with an electrically insulating bulk that simultaneously yields bulk quantum oscillations with characteristics of an unconventional Fermi liquid. We present quantum oscillation measurements of magnetic torque in high purity single crystals of the Kondo insulator SmB6, which reveal quantum oscillation frequencies characteristic of a large three-dimensional conduction electron Fermi surface similar to the metallic rare earth hexaborides such as PrB6 and LaB6. The quantum oscillation amplitude strongly increases at low temperatures, appearing strikingly at variance with conventional metallic behaviour

Complete Genome Sequence of Stenotrophomonas maltophilia Strain CF13, Recovered from Sputum from an Australian Cystic Fibrosis Patient.

Stenotrophomonas maltophilia isolate CF13 is a multidrug-resistant isolate that was recovered in Sydney, Australia, in 2011, from a sputum sample from an individual with cystic fibrosis. The genome sequence of CF13 was completed using long- and short-read technologies

Fast Differentially Private Matrix Factorization

Differentially private collaborative filtering is a challenging task, both in terms of accuracy and speed. We present a simple algorithm that is provably differentially private, while offering good performance, using a novel connection of differential privacy to Bayesian posterior sampling via Stochastic Gradient Langevin Dynamics. Due to its simplicity the algorithm lends itself to efficient implementation. By careful systems design and by exploiting the power law behavior of the data to maximize CPU cache bandwidth we are able to generate 1024 dimensional models at a rate of 8.5 million recommendations per second on a single PC

Magnetoconductivity of Hubbard bands induced in Silicon MOSFETs

Sodium impurities are diffused electrically to the oxide-semiconductor interface of a silicon MOSFET to create an impurity band. At low temperature and at low electron density, the band is split into an upper and a lower sections under the influence of Coulomb interactions. We used magnetoconductivity measurements to provide evidence for the existence of Hubbard bands and determine the nature of the states in each band.Comment: In press in Physica

Numerical methods for non-LTE line radiative transfer: Performance and convergence characteristics

Comparison is made between a number of independent computer programs for radiative transfer in molecular rotational lines. The test models are spherically symmetric circumstellar envelopes with a given density and temperature profile. The first two test models have a simple power law density distribution, constant temperature and a fictive 2-level molecule, while the other two test models consist of an inside-out collapsing envelope observed in rotational transitions of HCO+. For the 2-level molecule test problems all codes agree well to within 0.2%, comparable to the accuracy of the individual codes, for low optical depth and up to 2% for high optical depths (tau=4800). The problem of the collapsing cloud in HCO+ has a larger spread in results, ranging up to 12% for the J=4 population. The spread is largest at the radius where the transition from collisional to radiative excitation occurs. The resulting line profiles for the HCO+ J=4-3 transition agree to within 10%, i.e., within the calibration accuracy of most current telescopes. The comparison project and the results described in this paper provide a benchmark for future code development, and give an indication of the typical accuracy of present day calculations of molecular line transfer.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&

Gyrotropic impact upon negatively refracting surfaces

Surface wave propagation at the interface between different types of gyrotropic materials and an isotropic negatively refracting medium, in which the relative permittivity and relative permeability are, simultaneously, negative is investigated. A general approach is taken that embraces both gyroelectric and gyromagnetic materials, permitting the possibility of operating in either the low GHz, THz or the optical frequency regimes. The classical transverse Voigt configuration is adopted and a complete analysis of non-reciprocal surface wave dispersion is presented. The impact of the surface polariton modes upon the reflection of both plane waves and beams is discussed in terms of resonances and an example of the influence upon the Goos–Hänchen shift is given

Insights from the revised complete genome sequences of Acinetobacter baumannii strains AB307-0294 and ACICU belonging to global clone 1 and 2

2. Abstract The Acinetobacter baumannii global clone 1 (GC1) isolate AB307-0294, recovered in the USA in 1994, and the global clone 2 (GC2) isolate ACICU, isolated in 2005 in Italy, were among the first A. baumannii isolates to be completely sequenced. AB307-0294 is susceptible to most antibiotics and has been used in many genetic studies and ACICU belongs to a rare GC2 lineage. The complete genome sequences, originally determined using 454 pyrosequencing technology which is known to generate sequencing errors, were re-determined using Illumina MiSeq and MinION (ONT) technologies and a hybrid assembly generated using Unicycler. Comparison of the resulting new high-quality genomes to the earlier 454-sequenced version identified a large number of nucleotide differences affecting protein coding features, and allowed the sequence of the long and highly-repetitive bap and blp1 genes to be properly resolved for the first time in ACICU. Comparisons of the annotations of the original and revised genomes revealed a large number of differences in the protein coding features (CDSs), underlining the impact of sequence errors on protein sequence predictions and core gene determination. On average, 400 predicted CDSs were longer or shorter in the revised genomes and about 200 CDS features were no longer present. 3. Impact statement The genomes of the first 10 A. baumannii strains to be completely sequenced underpin a large amount of published genetic and genomic analysis. However, most of their genome sequences contain substantial numbers of errors as they were sequenced using 454 pyrosequencing, which is known to generate errors particularly in homopolymer regions; and employed manual PCR and capillary sequencing steps to bridge contig gaps and repetitive regions in order to finish the genomes. Assembly of the very large and internally repetitive gene for the biofilm-associated proteins Bap and BLP1 was a recurring problem. As these strains continue to be used for genetic studies and their genomes continue to be used as references in phylogenomics studies including core gene determination, there is value in improving the quality of their genome sequences. To this end, we re-sequenced two such strains that belong to the two major globally distributed clones of A. baumannii , using a combination of highly-accurate short-read and gap-spanning long-read technologies. Annotation of the revised genome sequences eliminated hundreds of incorrect CDS feature annotations and corrected hundreds more. Given that these revisions affected hundreds of non-existent or incorrect CDS features currently cluttering GenBank protein databases, it can be envisaged that similar revision of other early bacterial genomes that were sequenced using error-prone technologies will affect thousands of CDS currently listed in GenBank and other databases. These corrections will impact the quality of predicted protein sequence data stored in public databases. The revised genomes will also improve the accuracy of future genetic and comparative genomic analyses incorporating these clinically important strains. 4. Data summary The corrected complete genome sequence of A. baumannii AB307-0294 has been deposited in GenBank; GenBank accession number CP001172.2 (chromosome url - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/CP001172.2 ). The corrected complete genome sequence of ACICU has been deposited in GenBank under the GenBank accession numbers CP031380 (chromosome; url - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/CP031380 ), CP031381 (pACICU1; url - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/CP031381 ) and CP031382 (pACICU2; url - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/CP031382 ). The authors confirm all supporting data, code and protocols have been provided within the article or through supplementary data files

Cooling Rates of Molecular Clouds Based on Numerical MHD Turbulence and non-LTE Radiative Transfer

We have computed line emission cooling rates for the main cooling species in models of interstellar molecular clouds. The models are based on numerical simulations of super-sonic magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence. Non-LTE radiative transfer calculations have been performed to properly account for the complex density and velocity structures in the MHD simulations. Three models are used. Two of the models are based on MHD simulations with different magnetic field strength and the third includes the computation of self-gravity (in the super-Alfvenic regime of turbulence). The density and velocity fields in the simulations are determined self-consistently by the dynamics of super-sonic turbulence. The models are intended to represent molecular clouds with linear size L~6 pc and mean density ~300 cm^-3, with the density exceeding 10^4 cm^-3 in the densest cores. We present 12CO, 13CO, C18O, O2, OI, CI and H2O cooling rates in isothermal clouds with kinetic temperatures 10-80K. Analytical approximations are derived for the cooling rates. The inhomogeneity of the models reduces photon trapping and enhances the cooling in the densest parts of the clouds. Compared with earlier models the cooling rates are less affected by optical depth effects and are therefore higher. The main effects comes, however, from the density variation since cooling efficiency increases with density. This is very important for the cooling of the clouds as a whole since most cooling is provided by gas with density above the average.Comment: AASTeX, 19 pages, 15 figures; final, revised version; accepted to Ap