Mapping of public places : integration of mobile devices and conventional mapping to investigate place identity in Muar, Malaysia

Advancement in technology provides new opportunities for mapping. Human factors need to be considered when implementing this advanced technology, mainly in the context of humans’ perceptions and engagement. A combination of digital technology and conventional approaches offers possibilities to cater for different group of participants. This paper aims to highlight the roles of mapping technique as a tool to empower residents in identifying spaces that they believed to portray their local identity in Muar, the royal town of Johor. During the investigation of place identity in Muar, 150 participants were given choices to elicit their preferences by sketching polygons either via online software on an IPad or an A3 sized printed map. They were asked to identify places that located within the targeted area by referring to a provided list of 15 landscape features. The results were then processed using GIS in order to show spaces and places that are significant and contribute to the identity of place in Muar, as a modern royal town of Johor Sultanate, Malaysia

Evaporation from a small water reservoir: Direct measurements and estimates

Summary Knowing the rate of evaporation from surface water resources such as chan¬nels and reservoirs is essential for precise management of the water balance. However, evaporation is difficult to measure experimentally over water surfaces and several tech¬niques and models have been suggested and used in the past for its determination. In this research, evaporation from a small water reservoir in northern Israel was measured and estimated using several experimental techniques and models during the rainless summer. Evaporation was measured with an eddy covariance (EC) system consisting of a three-dimensional sonic anemometer and a Krypton hygrometer. Measurements of net radia¬tion, air temperature and humidity, and water temperature enabled estimation of other energy balance components. Several models and energy balance closure were evaluated. In addition, evaporation from a class-A pan was measured at the site. EC evaporation measurements for 21 days averaged 5.48 mm day�1. Best model predictions were obtained with two combined flux-gradient and energy balance models (Penman–Mon¬teith–Unsworth and Penman–Brutsaert), which with the water heat flux term, gave sim¬ilar daily average evaporation rates, that were up to 3% smaller than the corresponding EC values. The ratio between daily pan and EC evaporation varied from 0.96 to 1.94. The bulk mass transfer coefficient was estimated using a model based on measurements of water surface temperature, evaporation rate and absolute humidity at 0.9 and 2.9 m above the water surface, and using two theoretical approaches. The bulk transfer coefficient

Generation of entangled states of two atoms inside a leaky cavity

An in-depth theoretical study is carried out to examine the quasi-deterministic entanglement of two atoms inside a leaky cavity. Two $\Lambda$-type three-level atoms, initially in their ground states, may become maximally entangled through the interaction with a single photon. By working out an exact analytic solution, we show that the probability of success depends crucially on the spectral function of the injected photon. With a cavity photon, one can generate a maximally entangled state with a certain probability that is always less than 50%. However, for an injected photon with a narrower spectral width, this probability can be significantly increased. In particular, we discover situations in which entanglement can be achieved in a single trial with an almost unit probability

Primeval Corrections to the CMB Anisotropies

We show that deviations of the quantum state of the inflaton from the thermal vacuum of inflation may leave an imprint in the CMB anisotropies. The quantum dynamics of the inflaton in such a state produces corrections to the inflationary fluctuations, which may be observable. Because these effects originate from IR physics below the Planck scale, they will dominate over any trans-Planckian imprints in any theory which obeys decoupling. Inflation sweeps away these initial deviations and forces its quantum state closer to the thermal vacuum. We view this as the quantum version of the cosmic no-hair theorem. Such imprints in the CMB may be a useful, independent test of the duration of inflation, or of significant features in the inflaton potential about 60 e-folds before inflation ended, instead of an unlikely discovery of the signatures of quantum gravity. The absence of any such substructure would suggest that inflation lasted uninterrupted much longer than ${\cal O}(100)$ e-folds.Comment: 17 pages, latex, no figures; v3: added references and comments, final version to appear in Phys. Rev.

High-Density Amplicon Sequencing Identifies Community Spread and Ongoing Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in the Southern United States

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is constantly evolving. Prior studies focused on high-case-density locations, such as the northern and western metropolitan areas of the United States. This study demonstrates continued SARS-CoV-2 evolution in a suburban southern region of the United States by high-density amplicon sequencing of symptomatic cases. 57% of strains carry the spike D614G variant, which is associated with higher genome copy numbers, and its prevalence expands with time. Four strains carry a deletion in a predicted stem loop of the 3′ UTR. The data are consistent with community spread within local populations and the larger continental United States. The data instill confidence in current testing sensitivity and validate “testing by sequencing” as an option to uncover cases, particularly nonstandard coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) clinical presentations. This study contributes to the understanding of COVID-19 through an extensive set of genomes from a non-urban setting and informs vaccine design by defining D614G as a dominant and emergent SARS-CoV-2 isolate in the United States

Treatment for acute myelogenous leukemia by low dose Total Body Irradiation (TBI) based conditioning and hematopoietic cell transplantation from related and unrelated donors

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Heavy quarkonium: progress, puzzles, and opportunities

A golden age for heavy quarkonium physics dawned a decade ago, initiated by the confluence of exciting advances in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and an explosion of related experimental activity. The early years of this period were chronicled in the Quarkonium Working Group (QWG) CERN Yellow Report (YR) in 2004, which presented a comprehensive review of the status of the field at that time and provided specific recommendations for further progress. However, the broad spectrum of subsequent breakthroughs, surprises, and continuing puzzles could only be partially anticipated. Since the release of the YR, the BESII program concluded only to give birth to BESIII; the $B$-factories and CLEO-c flourished; quarkonium production and polarization measurements at HERA and the Tevatron matured; and heavy-ion collisions at RHIC have opened a window on the deconfinement regime. All these experiments leave legacies of quality, precision, and unsolved mysteries for quarkonium physics, and therefore beg for continuing investigations. The plethora of newly-found quarkonium-like states unleashed a flood of theoretical investigations into new forms of matter such as quark-gluon hybrids, mesonic molecules, and tetraquarks. Measurements of the spectroscopy, decays, production, and in-medium behavior of c\bar{c}, b\bar{b}, and b\bar{c} bound states have been shown to validate some theoretical approaches to QCD and highlight lack of quantitative success for others. The intriguing details of quarkonium suppression in heavy-ion collisions that have emerged from RHIC have elevated the importance of separating hot- and cold-nuclear-matter effects in quark-gluon plasma studies. This review systematically addresses all these matters and concludes by prioritizing directions for ongoing and future efforts.Comment: 182 pages, 112 figures. Editors: N. Brambilla, S. Eidelman, B. K. Heltsley, R. Vogt. Section Coordinators: G. T. Bodwin, E. Eichten, A. D. Frawley, A. B. Meyer, R. E. Mitchell, V. Papadimitriou, P. Petreczky, A. A. Petrov, P. Robbe, A. Vair

Study of the B^0 Semileptonic Decay Spectrum at the Upsilon(4S) Resonance

We have made a first measurement of the lepton momentum spectrum in a sample of events enriched in neutral B's through a partial reconstruction of B0 --> D*- l+ nu. This spectrum, measured with 2.38 fb**-1 of data collected at the Upsilon(4S) resonance by the CLEO II detector, is compared directly to the inclusive lepton spectrum from all Upsilon(4S) events in the same data set. These two spectra are consistent with having the same shape above 1.5 GeV/c. From the two spectra and two other CLEO measurements, we obtain the B0 and B+ semileptonic branching fractions, b0 and b+, their ratio, and the production ratio f+-/f00 of B+ and B0 pairs at the Upsilon(4S). We report b+/b0=0.950 (+0.117-0.080) +- 0.091, b0 = (10.78 +- 0.60 +- 0.69)%, and b+ = (10.25 +- 0.57 +- 0.65)%. b+/b0 is equivalent to the ratio of charged to neutral B lifetimes, tau+/tau0.Comment: 14 page, postscript file also available at http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLN

Demonstration of the temporal matter-wave Talbot effect for trapped matter waves

We demonstrate the temporal Talbot effect for trapped matter waves using ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. We investigate the phase evolution of an array of essentially non-interacting matter waves and observe matter-wave collapse and revival in the form of a Talbot interference pattern. By using long expansion times, we image momentum space with sub-recoil resolution, allowing us to observe fractional Talbot fringes up to 10th order.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figure