18,434 research outputs found
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BioNanoAdhesion: atomic force microscopy study of the electrostatic properties of pyridine-and imidazole-based polycationic surfaces
Self-assembled monolayers of pyridine- and imidazole-based disulfides are currently being produced on low roughness gold surfaces. The electrostatic interaction between these surfaces and an atomic force microscope cantilever, modified with a silica microparticle, will subsequently be investigated as a function of environmental pH. The results can be used towards the development of improved nanoparticulate non-viral gene delivery vectors
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Numerical modelling of microwave sintering of lunar simulants under near lunar atmospheric condition
Stigma: a linguistic analysis of the UK red-top tabloids press’s representation of ‘schizophrenia’
Aims.
Media representations of mental health problems may influence readers’ understanding of, and attitude towards, people who have received psychiatric diagnoses. Negative beliefs and attitudes may then lead to discriminatory behaviour, which is understood as stigma. This study explored the language used in popular national
newspapers when writing about schizophrenia and considered how this may have contributed to the processes of stigmatisation towards people with this diagnosis.
Methods.
Using corpus linguistic methods, a sample of newspaper articles over a 24 month period that mentioned the word ‘schizophrenia’ was compared with a similar sample of articles about diabetes. This enabled a theory-driven exploration of linguistic characteristics to explore stigmatising messages, whilst supported by statistical tests (Log-Likelihood) to compare the data sets and identify words with a high relative frequency.
Results.
Analysis of the ‘schizophrenia’ data set identified that overtly stigmatising language (e.g. “schizo”) was relatively infrequent, but that there was frequent use of linguistic signatures of violence. Articles frequently used graphic language referring to: acts of violence, descriptions of violent acts, implements used in violence, identity labels and exemplars of well-known individuals who had committed violent acts. The word ‘schizophrenic’ was used with a high frequency (n=108) and most commonly to name individuals who had committed acts of violence.
Discussion.
The study suggests that whilst the press have largely avoided the use of words that press guidance has steered them away from (e.g. “schizo” and “psycho”) that they still use a range of graphic language to present people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia as frighteningly ‘other’ and as prone to violence. This repetition of negative stereotypical messages may well contribute to the processes of stigmatisation many people who experience psychosis have to contend
Mechanical Characterization of Torsional Micropaddles Using Atomic Force Microscopy
The reference cantilever method is shown to act as a direct and simple method for determination of torsional spring constant. It has been applied to the characterization of micropaddle structures similar to those proposed for resonant functionalized chemical sensors and resonant thermal detectors. It is shown that this method can be used as an effective procedure to characterize a key parameter of these devices and would be applicable to characterization of other similar MEMS/NEMS devices such as micromirrors. In this study, two sets of micropaddles are manufactured (beams at centre and offset by 2.5 μm) by using LPCVD silicon nitride as a substrate. The patterning is made by direct milling using focused ion beam. The torsional spring constant is achieved through micromechanical analysis via atomic force microscopy. To obtain the gradient of force curve, the area of the micropaddle is scanned and the behaviour of each pixel is investigated through an automated developed code. The experimental results are in a good agreement with theoretical results
A study of preferences from nineteen selections in current children's literature.
Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit
Collisions of boosted black holes: perturbation theory prediction of gravitational radiation
We consider general relativistic Cauchy data representing two nonspinning,
equal-mass black holes boosted toward each other. When the black holes are
close enough to each other and their momentum is sufficiently high, an
encompassing apparent horizon is present so the system can be viewed as a
single, perturbed black hole. We employ gauge-invariant perturbation theory,
and integrate the Zerilli equation to analyze these time-asymmetric data sets
and compute gravitational wave forms and emitted energies. When coupled with a
simple Newtonian analysis of the infall trajectory, we find striking agreement
between the perturbation calculation of emitted energies and the results of
fully general relativistic numerical simulations of time-symmetric initial
data.Comment: 5 pages (RevTex 3.0 with 3 uuencoded figures), CRSR-107
Evanescent single-molecule biosensing with quantum limited precision
Sensors that are able to detect and track single unlabelled biomolecules are
an important tool both to understand biomolecular dynamics and interactions at
nanoscale, and for medical diagnostics operating at their ultimate detection
limits. Recently, exceptional sensitivity has been achieved using the strongly
enhanced evanescent fields provided by optical microcavities and nano-sized
plasmonic resonators. However, at high field intensities photodamage to the
biological specimen becomes increasingly problematic. Here, we introduce an
optical nanofibre based evanescent biosensor that operates at the fundamental
precision limit introduced by quantisation of light. This allows a four
order-of-magnitude reduction in optical intensity whilst maintaining
state-of-the-art sensitivity. It enable quantum noise limited tracking of
single biomolecules as small as 3.5 nm, and surface-molecule interactions to be
monitored over extended periods. By achieving quantum noise limited precision,
our approach provides a pathway towards quantum-enhanced single-molecule
biosensors.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, supplementary informatio
Distilling entanglement from arbitrary resources
We obtain the general formula for the optimal rate at which singlets can be
distilled from any given noisy and arbitrarily correlated entanglement
resource, by means of local operations and classical communication (LOCC). Our
formula, obtained by employing the quantum information spectrum method, reduces
to that derived by Devetak and Winter, in the special case of an i.i.d.
resource. The proofs rely on a one-shot version of the so-called "hashing
bound," which in turn provides bounds on the one-shot distillable entanglement
under general LOCC.Comment: 24 pages, article class, no figure. v2: references added, published
versio
Finite temperature bosonization
Finite temperature properties of a non-Fermi liquid system is one of the most
challenging probelms in current understanding of strongly correlated electron
systems. The paradigmatic arena for studying non-Fermi liquids is in one
dimension, where the concept of a Luttinger liquid has arisen. The existence of
a critical point at zero temperature in one dimensional systems, and the fact
that experiments are all undertaken at finite temperature, implies a need for
these one dimensional systems to be examined at finite temperature.
Accordingly, we extended the well-known bosonization method of one dimensional
electron systems to finite temperatures. We have used this new bosonization
method to calculate finite temperature asymptotic correlation functions for
linear fermions, the Tomonaga-Luttinger model, and the Hubbard model.Comment: REVTex, 48 page
Non-linear optomechanical measurement of mechanical motion
Precision measurement of non-linear observables is an important goal in all
facets of quantum optics. This allows measurement-based non-classical state
preparation, which has been applied to great success in various physical
systems, and provides a route for quantum information processing with otherwise
linear interactions. In cavity optomechanics much progress has been made using
linear interactions and measurement, but observation of non-linear mechanical
degrees-of-freedom remains outstanding. Here we report the observation of
displacement-squared thermal motion of a micro-mechanical resonator by
exploiting the intrinsic non-linearity of the radiation pressure interaction.
Using this measurement we generate bimodal mechanical states of motion with
separations and feature sizes well below 100~pm. Future improvements to this
approach will allow the preparation of quantum superposition states, which can
be used to experimentally explore collapse models of the wavefunction and the
potential for mechanical-resonator-based quantum information and metrology
applications.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, extensive supplementary material available with
published versio
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