497 research outputs found
The Holevo-Schumacher-Westmoreland Channel Capacity for a Class of Qudit Unital Channels
The Holevo-Schumacher-Westmoreland (HSW) classical (entanglement-unassisted)
channel capacity for a class of qudit unital channels is shown to be C =
log2(d) - Smin, where d is the dimension of the qudit, and Smin is the minimum
possible von Neumann entropy at the channel output. The HSW channel capacity
for tensor products of this class of unital qudit channels is shown to obey the
same formula.Comment: 21 Pages. No Figure
Thermocline management of stratified tanks for heat storage
Stratified tanks are useful for maximising the thermal energy efficiency of non-continuous and semi-continuous processes. Liquid at two or more dissimilar temperatures is stored within the same tank to provide a buffer for variations in heating and cooling loads. Control of the thermocline between the hot and cold fluid regions is needed to minimise thermocline growth and maximise operation of the storage tank. An experimental programme using a scale model of an industrial stratified tank (aspect ratio 3.5) and Perspex tank (aspect ratio 8.2) is reported. The behaviour and growth of the hot-cold thermocline under various operating conditions is presented. A siphoning method to re-establish the thermocline without interrupting the use of the tank is tested. Siphoning of the thermocline region from either 20%, 50% or 80% of the tank height is an effective strategy for uninterrupted interface re-establishment. However, the rate and position of siphoning and the load balance of the exit streams are critical variables for minimising the time for effective re-establishment of the two temperature zones
Rotor Design Optimisation through Low Cycle Fatigue Testing
AbstractThe current work aims at modifying the rotor geometry to improve the alternator performance. For that purpose, the fatigue behaviour of the material needs to be defined. Experimental tests were conducted on the Fe-3Si steel constituting the rotor. It is shown that this material hardens under cyclic loadings and TEM observations revealed unusual damage mechanisms. From the experimental LCF tests, the material parameters needed for FEA and the fatigue resistance law have been defined. The FEA results were validated on smooth and notch samples. Finally, the rotor design is modified which enables a light-weighting of the magnet or an increase of the torque value depending on the considered rotor and purpose
Some Properties of the Computable Cross Norm Criterion for Separability
The computable cross norm (CCN) criterion is a new powerful analytical and
computable separability criterion for bipartite quantum states, that is also
known to systematically detect bound entanglement. In certain aspects this
criterion complements the well-known Peres positive partial transpose (PPT)
criterion. In the present paper we study important analytical properties of the
CCN criterion. We show that in contrast to the PPT criterion it is not
sufficient in dimension 2 x 2. In higher dimensions we prove theorems
connecting the fidelity of a quantum state with the CCN criterion. We also
analyze the behaviour of the CCN criterion under local operations and identify
the operations that leave it invariant. It turns out that the CCN criterion is
in general not invariant under local operations.Comment: 7 pages; accepted by Physical Review A; error in Appendix B correcte
Recurrent acute biliary pancreatitis: The protective role of cholecystectomy and endoscopic sphincterotomy
Background: Recurrent attacks of acute biliary pancreatitis (RABP) are prevented by (laparoscopic) cholecystectomy. Since the introduction of endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreaticography (ERCP), several series have described a similar reduction of RABP after endoscopic sphincterotomy (ES). This report discusses the different treatment options for preventing RABP including conservative treatment, cholecystectomy, ES, and combinations of these options as well as their respective timing. Methods: A search in PubMed for observational studies and clinical (comparative) trials published in the English language was performed on the subject of recurrent acute biliary pancreatitis and other galls
On Relativistic Material Reference Systems
This work closes certain gaps in the literature on material reference systems
in general relativity. It is shown that perfect fluids are a special case of
DeWitt's relativistic elastic media and that the velocity--potential formalism
for perfect fluids can be interpreted as describing a perfect fluid coupled to
a fleet of clocks. A Hamiltonian analysis of the elastic media with clocks is
carried out and the constraints that arise when the system is coupled to
gravity are studied. When the Hamiltonian constraint is resolved with respect
to the clock momentum, the resulting true Hamiltonian is found to be a
functional only of the gravitational variables. The true Hamiltonian is
explicitly displayed when the medium is dust, and is shown to depend on the
detailed construction of the clocks.Comment: 18 pages, ReVTe
Local channels preserving maximal entanglement or Schmidt number
Maximal entanglement and Schmidt number play an important role in various
quantum information tasks. In this paper, it is shown that a local channel
preserves maximal entanglement state(MES) or preserves pure states with Schmidt
number ( is a fixed integer) if and only if it is a local unitary
operation.Comment: 10 page
Faithful Squashed Entanglement
Squashed entanglement is a measure for the entanglement of bipartite quantum
states. In this paper we present a lower bound for squashed entanglement in
terms of a distance to the set of separable states. This implies that squashed
entanglement is faithful, that is, strictly positive if and only if the state
is entangled. We derive the bound on squashed entanglement from a bound on
quantum conditional mutual information, which is used to define squashed
entanglement and corresponds to the amount by which strong subadditivity of von
Neumann entropy fails to be saturated. Our result therefore sheds light on the
structure of states that almost satisfy strong subadditivity with equality. The
proof is based on two recent results from quantum information theory: the
operational interpretation of the quantum mutual information as the optimal
rate for state redistribution and the interpretation of the regularised
relative entropy of entanglement as an error exponent in hypothesis testing.
The distance to the set of separable states is measured by the one-way LOCC
norm, an operationally-motivated norm giving the optimal probability of
distinguishing two bipartite quantum states, each shared by two parties, using
any protocol formed by local quantum operations and one-directional classical
communication between the parties. A similar result for the Frobenius or
Euclidean norm follows immediately. The result has two applications in
complexity theory. The first is a quasipolynomial-time algorithm solving the
weak membership problem for the set of separable states in one-way LOCC or
Euclidean norm. The second concerns quantum Merlin-Arthur games. Here we show
that multiple provers are not more powerful than a single prover when the
verifier is restricted to one-way LOCC operations thereby providing a new
characterisation of the complexity class QMA.Comment: 24 pages, 1 figure, 1 table. Due to an error in the published
version, claims have been weakened from the LOCC norm to the one-way LOCC
nor
Hyaluronic Acid Enhances Gene Delivery into the Cochlea
Abstract Cochlear gene therapy can be a new avenue for the treatment of severe hearing loss by inducing regeneration or phenotypic rescue. One necessary step to establish this therapy is the development of a safe and feasible inoculation surgery, ideally without drilling the bony cochlear wall. The round window membrane (RWM) is accessible in the middle-ear space, but viral vectors placed on this membrane do not readily cross the membrane to the cochlear tissues. In an attempt to enhance permeability of the RWM, we applied hyaluronic acid (HA), a nontoxic and biodegradable reagent, onto the RWM of guinea pigs, prior to delivering an adenovirus carrying enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) reporter gene (Ad-eGFP) at the same site. We examined distribution of eGFP in the cochlea 1 week after treatment, comparing delivery of the vector via the RWM, with or without HA, to delivery by a cochleostomy into the perilymph. We found that cochlear tissue treated with HA-assisted delivery of Ad-eGFP demonstrated wider expression of transgenes in cochlear cells than did tissue treated by cochleostomy injection. HA-assisted vector delivery facilitated expression in cells lining the scala media, which are less accessible and not transduced after perilymphatic injection. We assessed auditory function by measuring auditory brainstem responses and determined that thresholds were significantly better in the ears treated with HA-assisted Ad-eGFP placement on the RWM as compared with cochleostomy. Together, these data demonstrate that HA-assisted delivery of viral vectors provides an atraumatic and clinically feasible method to introduce transgenes into cochlear cells, thereby enhancing both research methods and future clinical application.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/98453/1/hum%2E2011%2E086.pd
Do Seasonal Glucocorticoid Changes Depend on Reproductive Investment? A Comparative Approach in Birds
Animals go through different life history stages such as reproduction, moult, or migration, of which some are more energy-demanding than others. Baseline concentrations of glucocorticoid hormones increase during moderate, predictable challenges and thus are expected to be higher when seasonal energy demands increase, such as during reproduction. By contrast, stress-induced glucocorticoids prioritize a survival mode that includes reproductive inhibition. Thus, many species down-regulate stress-induced glucocorticoid concentrations during the breeding season. Interspecific variation in glucocorticoid levels during reproduction has been successfully mapped onto reproductive investment, with species investing strongly in current reproduction (fast pace of life) showing higher baseline and lower stress-induced glucocorticoid concentrations than species that prioritize future reproduction over current attempts (slow pace of life). Here we test the >glucocorticoid seasonal plasticity hypothesis>, in which we propose that interspecific variation in seasonal changes in glucocorticoid concentrations from the non-breeding to the breeding season will be related to the degree of reproductive investment (and thus pace of life). We extracted population means for baseline (for 54 species) and stress-induced glucocorticoids (for 32 species) for the breeding and the non-breeding seasons from the database >HormoneBase>, also calculating seasonal glucocorticoid changes. We focused on birds because this group offered the largest sample size. Using phylogenetic comparative methods, we first showed that species differed consistently in both average glucocorticoid concentrations and their changes between the two seasons, while controlling for sex, latitude, and hemisphere. Second, as predicted seasonal changes in baseline glucocorticoids were explained by clutch size (our proxy for reproductive investment), with species laying larger clutches showing a greater increase during the breeding season-especially in passerine species. In contrast, changes in seasonal stress-induced levels were not explained by clutch size, but sample sizes were more limited. Our findings highlight that seasonal changes in baseline glucocorticoids are associated with a species' reproductive investment, representing an overlooked physiological trait that may underlie the pace of life
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