Large-amplitude driving of a superconducting artificial atom: Interferometry, cooling, and amplitude spectroscopy

Superconducting persistent-current qubits are quantum-coherent artificial atoms with multiple, tunable energy levels. In the presence of large-amplitude harmonic excitation, the qubit state can be driven through one or more of the constituent energy-level avoided crossings. The resulting Landau-Zener-Stueckelberg (LZS) transitions mediate a rich array of quantum-coherent phenomena. We review here three experimental works based on LZS transitions: Mach-Zehnder-type interferometry between repeated LZS transitions, microwave-induced cooling, and amplitude spectroscopy. These experiments exhibit a remarkable agreement with theory, and are extensible to other solid-state and atomic qubit modalities. We anticipate they will find application to qubit state-preparation and control methods for quantum information science and technology.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure

Global, regional, and national under-5 mortality, adult mortality, age-specific mortality, and life expectancy, 1970–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

BACKGROUND: Detailed assessments of mortality patterns, particularly age-specific mortality, represent a crucial input that enables health systems to target interventions to specific populations. Understanding how all-cause mortality has changed with respect to development status can identify exemplars for best practice. To accomplish this, the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016) estimated age-specific and sex-specific all-cause mortality between 1970 and 2016 for 195 countries and territories and at the subnational level for the five countries with a population greater than 200 million in 2016. METHODS: We have evaluated how well civil registration systems captured deaths using a set of demographic methods called death distribution methods for adults and from consideration of survey and census data for children younger than 5 years. We generated an overall assessment of completeness of registration of deaths by dividing registered deaths in each location-year by our estimate of all-age deaths generated from our overall estimation process. For 163 locations, including subnational units in countries with a population greater than 200 million with complete vital registration (VR) systems, our estimates were largely driven by the observed data, with corrections for small fluctuations in numbers and estimation for recent years where there were lags in data reporting (lags were variable by location, generally between 1 year and 6 years). For other locations, we took advantage of different data sources available to measure under-5 mortality rates (U5MR) using complete birth histories, summary birth histories, and incomplete VR with adjustments; we measured adult mortality rate (the probability of death in individuals aged 15-60 years) using adjusted incomplete VR, sibling histories, and household death recall. We used the U5MR and adult mortality rate, together with crude death rate due to HIV in the GBD model life table system, to estimate age-specific and sex-specific death rates for each location-year. Using various international databases, we identified fatal discontinuities, which we defined as increases in the death rate of more than one death per million, resulting from conflict and terrorism, natural disasters, major transport or technological accidents, and a subset of epidemic infectious diseases; these were added to estimates in the relevant years. In 47 countries with an identified peak adult prevalence for HIV/AIDS of more than 0·5% and where VR systems were less than 65% complete, we informed our estimates of age-sex-specific mortality using the Estimation and Projection Package (EPP)-Spectrum model fitted to national HIV/AIDS prevalence surveys and antenatal clinic serosurveillance systems. We estimated stillbirths, early neonatal, late neonatal, and childhood mortality using both survey and VR data in spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression models. We estimated abridged life tables for all location-years using age-specific death rates. We grouped locations into development quintiles based on the Socio-demographic Index (SDI) and analysed mortality trends by quintile. Using spline regression, we estimated the expected mortality rate for each age-sex group as a function of SDI. We identified countries with higher life expectancy than expected by comparing observed life expectancy to anticipated life expectancy on the basis of development status alone. FINDINGS: Completeness in the registration of deaths increased from 28% in 1970 to a peak of 45% in 2013; completeness was lower after 2013 because of lags in reporting. Total deaths in children younger than 5 years decreased from 1970 to 2016, and slower decreases occurred at ages 5-24 years. By contrast, numbers of adult deaths increased in each 5-year age bracket above the age of 25 years. The distribution of annualised rates of change in age-specific mortality rate differed over the period 2000 to 2016 compared with earlier decades: increasing annualised rates of change were less frequent, although rising annualised rates of change still occurred in some locations, particularly for adolescent and younger adult age groups. Rates of stillbirths and under-5 mortality both decreased globally from 1970. Evidence for global convergence of death rates was mixed; although the absolute difference between age-standardised death rates narrowed between countries at the lowest and highest levels of SDI, the ratio of these death rates-a measure of relative inequality-increased slightly. There was a strong shift between 1970 and 2016 toward higher life expectancy, most noticeably at higher levels of SDI. Among countries with populations greater than 1 million in 2016, life expectancy at birth was highest for women in Japan, at 86·9 years (95% UI 86·7-87·2), and for men in Singapore, at 81·3 years (78·8-83·7) in 2016. Male life expectancy was generally lower than female life expectancy between 1970 and 2016, an

Behind the scene of knowledge sharing : the impact of task complexity

Numerous empirical studies on knowledge management have examined the relative effectiveness of various enablers, such as organizational structure, technology, culture, managerial system and strategy for knowledge creation and sharing in organizations. While these studies play a critical role in helping us to appreciate the importance of organizational enablers in knowledge management, they have neglected to examine the possible effects of task complexity on the nature and efficacy of knowledge sharing. This study investigates how task complexity influences the mode and effectiveness of knowledge sharing among professional accountants in Malaysia. In particular, it highlights the relationships between different task dimensions and modes of knowledge sharing, and the impact of knowledge sharing on professional competency. This study adopts a process oriented approach based on Nonaka&rsquo;s (1994) knowledge sharing model. This study reveals that task complexity is significantly related to knowledge sharing. Tasks carried out by professional accountants vary from repetitive or clearly-defined procedural tasks to unstructured tasks that required professional judgment and expertise for successful task performance. While professional accountants are generally keen to gain access to knowledge databases to source for possible task solutions, they are generally hesitant to share their tacit knowledge by transforming the knowledge into explicit form. The finding suggests that there may be cultural-related factors that inhibit sharing of one&rsquo;s tacit&nbsp; knowledge totally and completely. This study also shows the existence of a&nbsp; significant relationship between knowledge sharing and professional&nbsp; competency, suggesting that the importance of the internalization mode of&nbsp; knowledge sharing in sustaining the competitive edge of professional&nbsp; accountants.<br /

Cumene cracking functionalities on sulfided Co(Ni)Mo/TiO2-SiO2 catalysts

Cumene cracking reaction was carried out on pure support as well as sulfided Mo, CoMo, and NiMo catalysts in a plug flow micro-reactor at 400 ◦C and atmospheric pressure. Catalytic activity was studied as a function of Mo content, promoter content (Co, Ni), and support composition [Ti/(Ti + Si) = 0.0, 0.15, 0.30, 0.45, 0.70, 1.0]. Surface acid–base properties of pure supports were measured with 2-propanol decomposition, showed that the supports were acidic in nature, the acidic character increases with increasing TiO2 content in SiO2. Techniques used for characterization were BET specific surface area (SSA), pore volume, X-ray diffraction, CO2 chemisorption, and low temperature oxygen chemisorption (LTOC). CO2 chemisorption on sulfided catalysts showed a strong decrease in the amount of CO2 adsorption as a function of metal loading. The sulfided-supported catalysts exhibited better cracking activity in presence of hydrogen, which suggests that sulfided molybdenum phases were responsible for cumene cracking activity. The LTOC and catalytic activity results showed similar trends with variation of molybdenum content which indicated that the cracking activity of Mo and CoMo catalysts has significant contribution from the supported phases. The cumene cracking activity over supported catalysts is attributed to the Brønsted (S–H) sites like sulfhydryl groups. Variation of support composition strongly affects the catalytic cracking activity which decreases with increasing TiO2 content in SiO2. © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Magnetic hyperthermia therapy: An emerging modality of cancer treatment in combination with radiotherapy

Magnetic hyperthermia therapy (MHT) involves heat generation using magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) in response to an externally applied alternating current magnetic field. These MNPs can be specifically targeted to the tumor site for homogenous heating. Compared to MHT, conventional methods of HT cause heterogeneous heating of tumor and thus poor efficacy of cancer treatment. MHT has also been shown to effectively eliminate the highly chemo- and radio-resistant cancer stem cells in the tumor mass. Due to their diagnostic capability as well as heat-induced cancer cell killing ability, extensive research has been carried out to develop MNPs as potential cancer theranostic agent. The major focus of MNP research has been to design MNPs formulations for efficient targeting, increased colloidal stability, effective heat generation, and minimal inherent toxicity. A few recent MNPs formulations meet some of the required features and showed promising results in preclinical and clinical studies. HT applied through conventional modes has been combined with chemo- and radiotherapy, owing to its ability to increase oxygenation and drug supply due to vasodilation but has shown a limited success in clinic. However, a great hope has arisen from the MNPs to make combinatorial therapies more successful, not only because of the many advantages of MNPs mentioned but also due to their potential for targeted delivery of a range of anti-cancer drugs and radiosensitizing agents

Extracted species of Np(IV) complex with diglycolamide functionalized task specific ionic liquid: diffusion, kinetics and thermodynamics by cyclic voltammetry

This paper reports a first-ever cyclic voltammetric study and the electrochemical characterization of Np(IV) complexes with task-specific ionic liquid with appended diglycolamide (DGA-TSIL) ligand dissolved in the room-temperature ionic liquid 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide (C4mimNTf2). The results are compared with molecular entity, N,N,N′,N′-tetraoctyl diglycolamide (TODGA) dissolved in the same diluent. The diffusion coefficient (D) values were determined using the Randles–Ševcik equation. The standard rate constant (k s) values were also computed for the Np(IV)/Np(III) electrode redox reaction. The activation energy for diffusion (E a) and thermodynamic parameters for the redox reactions of the Np complexes were determined and compared