Quantum steering ellipsoids, extremal physical states and monogamy

A Corrigendum for this article has been published in 2015 New J. Phys. 17 019501Any two-qubit state can be faithfully represented by a steering ellipsoid inside the Bloch sphere, but not every ellipsoid inside the Bloch sphere corresponds to a two-qubit state. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for when the geometric data describe a physical state and investigate maximal volume ellipsoids lying on the physical-unphysical boundary. We derive monogamy relations for steering that are strictly stronger than the Coffman-Kundu- Wootters (CKW) inequality for monogamy of concurrence. The CKW result is thus found to follow from the simple perspective of steering ellipsoid geometry. Remarkably, we can also use steering ellipsoids to derive non-trivial results in classical Euclidean geometry, extending Eulers inequality for the circumradius and inradius of a triangle.The EPSRC and the ARC Centre of Excellence grant no. CE110001027. DJ is funded by the Royal Society. TR would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust. SJ acknowledges EPSRC grant EP/ K022512/1

Workshop: Urban Green Spaces, Built Environment and Urban - Mental - Environmental Health outcomes

Environmental sustainability, especially in an era of growth health inequality, is one of the most important challenges facing Public Health systems around the World. Environmental sustainability is responsibly interacting with the planet to maintain natural resources and not jeopardize the ability for future generations to meet their needs. The SDGs put environmental sustainability at the center of sustainable development. Environmental Health is the branch of Public Health concerning all aspects of the natural and built environment affecting human health. It is targeted towards preventing disease and creating health-supportive environments. It encompasses the assessment and control of those environmental factors that can potentially affect health, such as pollution, poverty and inadequate energy solutions. Urban Health is an intersectoral arena that links both the public health and the urban planning sectors, mainly captured by SDG3 (including Mental health) and SDG11. Both during the first waves of the Covid-19 pandemic period and in contemporary cities, urban environments were stressed; the resilience of our cities were tested, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the urban contexts, not always capable to pro-mote and protect the population health status. Urban Green Spaces (UGS) have proved essential role as ‘‘tools’’ to improve Urban Public and Mental Health. Unfortunately, the heterogeneous distribution of UGS inside the contemporary cities, together with the disparity in quality of such spaces, led to some exclusion phenomena. Evidence/experience-based research strongly demonstrated the positive effects on Public Health of the UGS, and for this reason, they are now becoming the strategic and challenging issue of many urban regeneration programs. The importance of UGS as a key infrastructure has generated the necessity of developing new health-centered design criteria able to conform to their new role in urban environments. The augmentation of UGS surface alone, does not necessarily make cities more livable. An increase in area and surfaces does not translate in ease of accessibility from all social groups or from all the cities’ neighborhoods, or not does it give data on the qualities of such areas, like potential for social engagement or Physical Activity. Aim of the Workshop - organized by the three EUPHA Section URB+MEN+ENV - it would like to be to build the capacity and knowledge between participants about the main topics and urban features capable to have relevant Urban Public, Mental and Environmental Health outcomes. Additional scope is to collected case studies and research experiences considered virtuous at the international level, analyzed in detail to highlight the main urban and architectural features of those healthy experiences and the related health outcomes, such as sedentary lifestyle reduction, increase of the attractiveness of places, reduction of air and noise pollution

Workshop: The city of proximity: Accessible, Inclusive, Sustainable, Healthy and Salutogenic

According to the ‘‘Urban Health Rome Declaration’’ at European meeting ‘‘G7 Health’’ that defines the strategic aspects and actions to improve Urban, Environmental and Public Mental Health into the cities, and referring to the Agenda 2030 in which the 11th SDG argue about ‘‘Sustainable Cities and Communities. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’’, one of the most expressive syntheses of the challenging relationship between urban planning and Public Health is stated by WHO (2016): ‘‘Health is the precondition of urban sustainable development and the first priority for urban planners’’. Referring to the Healthy Cities & Urban Health definitions, we can consider Public Health not merely an aspect of individual health protection and promotion, but a collective condition, strongly influenced by the environmental context and by the strategies implemented by local Governments. The ‘‘Health in All Policies’’ strategy, clearly underlines how health depend by the quality of outdoor and indoor living environments. In this scenario, healthy living and the requirements for healthy places, infrastructure for the public good and Public Health, cycling, walking, disintegrating the role of polluting traffic from the urban environments, social vulnerability and equality are just a few aspects in complex puzzle when designing the urban spaces for healthy, active, walkable cities. The lockdown due to the pandemic has prevented travels, forcing many people to work at home and reducing the possibility of accessing services in the territory. This condition has further highlighted the importance of urban living areas capable of satisfying basic needs within a reasonably easy range of accessibility. The concept of the ‘‘15 minutes city’’ is a useful vision to represent the city of proximity, where it is possible to meet the needs for sustainable, fair, quality, and healthy living. This dimension of proximity can be central to formulating strategies to improve the quality of urban life. A place of proximity, therefore not only defined based on the physical characteristics and people’s uses, but also based on the data collected from a public health perspective in which it is also possible to try to test different types of information and build the conditions to suggest suitable policies and projects. Aim of the Workshop - organized by the two EUPHA Section URB+ENV - it would like to be to build the capacity and knowledge between participants about the main topics and urban features capable to have relevant Urban Public and Environmental Health outcomes. Additional scope is to collected case studies and research experiences considered virtuous at the international level, analyzed in detail to highlight the main urban and architectural features of those healthy experiences and the related health outcomes, such as sedentary lifestyle reduction, increase of the attractiveness of places, reduction of air and noise pollution

Quality of Honey Bee Bread Collected in Spring

Pollen is the only source of protein that honey bees collect from nature. It is very important for the development of brood, and consequently, for the development of the colony. Honey bee bread is the pollen which the bees collect from flowers and store in honeycomb cells. Honey bee bread has a modified structure due to the fermentation process under the influence of enzymes it passes through. For this study, ten honey bee colonies were selected. Honey bee bread was sampled from the combs. The quality of pollen and honey bee bread was determined by the chemical composition, using standard methods used in food analysis. Total nitrogen was determined by Kjeldahl method. Micro- and macroelements were determined by spectrophotometric method. The pollen collected from two sites had rich protein content (29.93 % and 27.63 % on average)

Insecticidal Activity of Sage (Salvia Officinalis) Essential Oil to Varroa Destructor (Acari: Varroidae) and Apis Mellifera (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

The need to find alternative systems of the fight against Varroa mite without application of chemicals and provide healthy bee products resulted in investigation of application of different plant essences to arthropod control. In order to perceive the sage essential oil (Salvia officinalis) bioactivity, contact residual toxicity of mites and bees was examined in the laboratory conditions. The chemical composition of essential oil was determined by standard GC and GC/MS methods. Different doses of the sage essential oil dissolved in acetone (0.1–10 μl/Petri dish) were applied in Petri dishes and left to dry for 20 minute at a room temperature. Following this period of time, ten honey bees and five adult female mites were added in each Petri dish and they were all maintained in controlled conditions (T = 30°C, Relative humidity = 60%). Survival of examined honey bees and Varroa mites was recorded two times, after 24 h and 48 h. The most prominent toxic effect on the examined Varroa mites was observed after 24 h and 48 h, with application of 10 μl of sage oil (the average values for dead mite individuals were 3.25 and 3.50, respectively). Recorded biological activities of the oil tested in different doses on both honey bee and Varroa mite revealed opportunity to proceed with further investigation by selecting the most appropriate variants and combinations of the most prominent individual components of the examined sage oil

Роль фактора некроза опухоли-альфа в прогнозировании тяжести и исхода сепсиса у пациентов неотложного отделения с системным воспалением

Aim of the study was to determine whether the TNF-a levels, proximal inflammatory mediator, in septic patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) and admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) are associated with progression to severe sepsis, septic shock or death. Material and methods. A retrospective observational study was performed on a sample of one hundred adult subjects presenting to the ED with systemic inflammatory response syndrome of 2 etiologies: presumed (and later confirmed in the ICU and/or operating room) severe acute pancreatitis or generalized peritonitis. Blood TNF-a samples measurements were taken shortly after ED admission. TNF-a was measured by commercial ELISA test in plasma. Results. Mean values of TNF-a on admission (day zero, in ED) were 191,5-fold lower in group with septic shock compared to severe sepsis group and were 63-fold higher in survivors (p<0.01). The area under the curve (AUC) for the TNF-a plots for severity of clinical status was 0.813 and for outcome 0.834. Patients with TNF-a levels lower than 7.95 pg/mL had a 3.2-fold higher probability of septic shock development than those with higher values, at the cutoff level sensitivity was 83,9% and specificity 72,5%. Patients with TNF-a levels higher than 10.5 pg/mL had a 4.8-fold higher probability to survive than those with lower values, at the cutoff level sensitivity was 83,0% and specificity 77,4%. Conclusion: Decreasing in TNF-a concentration leads to the septic shock development and fatal outcome. TNF-a is very good predictor of sepsis severity and outcome. Key words: sepsis, tumor necrosis factor-alpha, emergency medical services, survival rate, severity of illness index.Цель исследования — определить, связаны ли уровни ФНО-a, ключевого медиатора воспаления, у пациентов с сепсисом, поступающих в отделение неотложной помощи и переводящихся в отделение реанимации, с прогрессированием его до тяжелого сепсиса, септического шока и смерти. Материал и методы. Ретроспективное обсервационное исследование было выполнено на выборке в 100 взрослых человек, поступивших в неотложное отделение с признаками системного воспаления двух возможных этиологий: тяжелый острый панкреатит (предполагаемый, а затем подтвержденный в отделении реанимации и/или операционной) или общий перитонит. Производили измерения ФНО-a в крови сразу после поступления. ФНО-a измеряли коммерчески доступным ELISA-методом в плазме крови. Результаты. Средние уровни ФНО-a при поступлении (день 0, в неотложном отделении) были в 191,5 раз ниже в группе с септическим шоком по сравнению с группой тяжелого сепсиса и в 63 раза выше у выживших (

Implementation of ETX Metric within the AODV Protocol in the NS-3 Simulator

Modern life cannot be imagined without wireless ad hoc networks (WANETs). People use, in a daily manner, smart phones, laptops or tablet computers. With an increasing number of users of WANETs, the need for a fast throughput and small delay is increasing as well. One efficient way to provide users with such demands is to find an optimal route between source and destination node. Therefore, many routing protocols and metrics for WANETs are proposed in last decades. It is very important to test performances of the proposed protocols in various network scenarios. The computer simulation is a very efficient way to test routing protocols and to evaluate their significance and practical value. One of the most recent but very frequently used discrete-event network simulators is Network Simulator 3 (NS-3). In order to contribute to the NS-3 simulator development, an implementation of one of the most commonly used metric in WANET protocols the expected transmission count (ETX) is proposed in this paper. ETX metric is implemented within an ad-hoc on demand distance vector (AODV) protocol. The source code of this implementation is publicly available

Single-qubit thermometry

This article is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Distinguishing hot from cold is the most primitive form of thermometry. Here we consider how well this task can be performed using a single qubit to distinguish between two different temperatures of a bosonic bath. In this simple setting, we find that letting the qubit equilibrate with the bath is not optimal, and depending on the interaction time it may be advantageous for the qubit to start in a state with some quantum coherence. We also briefly consider the case that the qubit is initially entangled with a second qubit that is not put into contact with the bath and show that entanglement allows for even better thermometry