Time-bin to Polarization Conversion of Ultrafast Photonic Qubits

The encoding of quantum information in photonic time-bin qubits is apt for long distance quantum communication schemes. In practice, due to technical constraints such as detector response time, or the speed with which co-polarized time-bins can be switched, other encodings, e.g. polarization, are often preferred for operations like state detection. Here, we present the conversion of qubits between polarization and time-bin encodings using a method that is based on an ultrafast optical Kerr shutter and attain efficiencies of 97% and an average fidelity of 0.827+/-0.003 with shutter speeds near 1 ps. Our demonstration delineates an essential requirement for the development of hybrid and high-rate optical quantum networks

Detection of cancer cells in the cerebrospinal fluid: current methods and future directions

The spread of cancer into the central nervous system is a serious problem leading to neurological symptoms and rapid mortality. The current tools available for detecting the spread of cancer into the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) are cytology, neurologic examination, and neuroimaging. All three of these methods can be applied in concert to reach a diagnosis, but they all suffer from a lack of sensitivity, leading to delays in treatment in many cases. An overview of research tools in the field of CSF cancer detection reveals a variety of promising technologies that can be used to answer questions about the biology of metastatic cancer and to develop more powerful clinical detection methods. Methods currently under investigation include new immunocytochemistry methods and flow cytometry for the in vitro detection of cells. Additionally, polymerase chain reaction, fluorescence in situ hybridization, capillary electrophoresis with laser-induced fluorescence, and mass spectrometry using matrix-assisted laser absorption-deionization time-of-flight and surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight techniques are being tested for in vitro assessment of the non-cellular biomarkers in CSF. For in vivo detection of cancer in the CSF, research techniques include certain quantum dot platforms as well as magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles. As systemic therapies for cancer improve, the CNS is becoming a more common site of disease recurrence. This increases the importance of effective detection methods in the CSF, since early intervention can maximize therapeutic benefit. Furthermore, many cell-based detection methods can be combined with therapeutic agents to serve multiple medical functions through a common targeting system

Twenty Years in the Trenches: A Fight for Equitable and Adequate School Funding in Ohio

Abstract This single case study examined the perceptions of William L. “Bill” Phillis, the Executive Director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, concerning an unconstitutional funding model, subsequent sociopolitical barriers, and their impact on students and school districts from underprivileged socioeconomic background within the context of the DeRolph v. State of Ohio legal battle. This research adds to the extant literature on the educational implications of the property tax and foundation model of school funding. As well, we discuss William’s insights regarding the politics, nature, and development of the current state of public school financing in Ohio. There were four emergent themes: sociopolitical sentiment and rhetoric, the plight of poorer districts, seeing a shared vision, and constitutional language and responsibility. Key findings from the study provide awareness to foster civic responsibility to effect change for inequitable and inadequate funding formulae, to encourage politicians to abandon political agendas over constitutional will, and for educators and students alike to continually advocate for a reformed system of school funding. These findings are especially relevant among under-resourced districts such as those in Appalachian Ohio. Key words: advocacy, educational leadership, equity, foundation model, school funding, single-case stud

Democratic Teacher Preparation and Praxis: Creating Active, Reflective Educators (CARE)

This qualitative study investigates the ability of teachers that have completed their clinical experience—i.e., teacher preparation—in a school grounded in Deweyan theory to maintain a democratic practice. As such, the study focused on educators that were graduates of a school-university partnership program, known as CARE—Creating Active, Reflective Educators. Data were collected to address the following research question: “To what extent can former CARE students practice democratic education in their current public-school teaching environment?” Interviews conducted with current school teachers and leaders that were former CARE program students. Responses were audio-recorded and transcribed, then coded and organized into thematic units to report findings

Promoting the Peer-Related Social Development of Young Children With Mild Developmental Delays: Effectiveness of a Comprehensive Intervention

To address the unusual peer-related social competence difficulties characteristic of young children with mild developmental delays, we conducted a randomized clinical trial to evaluate the effectiveness of a comprehensive, developmentally oriented, highly individu-alized intervention extending over a 2-year period. Outcome measures emphasized gener-alization of peer interactions in unfamiliar playgroups. Results revealed modest effects of the intervention, with children who had lower cognitive levels benefiting most. Interven-tion effects were best conceptualized as preventative, minimizing the negative features and atypical patterns of children’s social play with peers. Our discussion of future work was focused on alternative implementation models to enhance intervention intensity, inclusion of specific subgroups of children, and direct measurement of children engaging in social tasks. Extensive observations of preschool-age chil-dren with mild developmental (cognitive) delays in settings involving peers have revealed that sub

Novel use of stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE) as a tool for isolation of oviposition site attractants for gravid Culex quinquefasciatus

Mosquitoes such as Culex quinquefasciatus Say (Diptera: Culicidae) are important vectors of organisms that cause disease in humans. Research into the development of effective standardized odour baits for blood-fed females (oviposition attractants), to enable entomological monitoring of vector populations, is hampered by complex protocols for extraction of physiologically active volatile chemicals from natural breeding site water samples, which have produced inconsistent results. Air entrainment and solvent extraction are technically demanding methods and are impractical for use in resource poor environments where mosquito-borne disease is most prevalent. This study reports the first use of a simple, robust extraction technique, stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE), to extract behaviourally active small lipophilic molecules (SLMs) present in water samples collected from Cx. quinquefasciatus breeding sites in Tanzania. Extracts from a pit latrine and from a cess pool breeding site attracted more gravid Cx. quinquefasciatus in pair choice bioassays than control extracts, and coupled gas chromatography-electroantennography (GC-EAG) allowed tentative identification of 15 electrophysiologically active chemicals, including the known oviposition attractant, skatole (3-methylindole). Here, we have demonstrated, using simple pair choice bioassays in controlled laboratory conditions, that SBSE is effective for the extraction of behaviourally and electrophysiologically active semiochemicals from mosquito breeding site waters. Further research is required to confirm that SBSE is an appropriate technique for use in field surveys in the search for oviposition cues for Cx. quinquefasciatus

Pix2Prof: fast extraction of sequential information from galaxy imagery via a deep natural language ‘captioning’ model

We present ‘Pix2Prof’, a deep learning model that can eliminate any manual steps taken when measuring galaxy profiles. We argue that a galaxy profile of any sort is conceptually similar to a natural language image caption. This idea allows us to leverage image captioning methods from the field of natural language processing, and so we design Pix2Prof as a float sequence ‘captioning’ model suitable for galaxy profile inference. We demonstrate the technique by approximating a galaxy surface brightness (SB) profile fitting method that contains several manual steps. Pix2Prof processes ∼1 image per second on an Intel Xeon E5-2650 v3 CPU, improving on the speed of the manual interactive method by more than two orders of magnitude. Crucially, Pix2Prof requires no manual interaction, and since galaxy profile estimation is an embarrassingly parallel problem, we can further increase the throughput by running many Pix2Prof instances simultaneously. In perspective, Pix2Prof would take under an hour to infer profiles for 105 galaxies on a single NVIDIA DGX-2 system. A single human expert would take approximately 2 yr to complete the same task. Automated methodology such as this will accelerate the analysis of the next generation of large area sky surveys expected to yield hundreds of millions of targets. In such instances, all manual approaches – even those involving a large number of experts – will be impractical.Peer reviewe

Habitat Characteristics of Eastern Wild Turkey Nest and Ground-roost Sites in 2 Longleaf Pine Forests

Managing and restoring longleaf pine forests throughout the Southeast is a conservation priority. Prescribed fire is an integral part of these activities, as it is the primary means of controlling hardwood encroachment and maintaining native groundcover. Nest site and preflight brood groundroost site selection of eastern wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) has not been well studied in longleaf pine systems. Therefore, we determined habitat characteristics associated with wild turkey nests and ground-roosts in 2 longleaf pine forests in southwestern Georgia. We radio-tagged 45 female turkeys and evaluated habitat characteristics associated with 84 nests and 51 ground-roosts during the 2011–2013 nesting seasons. Nests were located farther from mature pine and mature pine-hardwood stands and closer to shrub/scrub habitats than expected. Nests were also negatively associated with percent canopy closure and positively associated with percent woody ground cover and vegetation height. Ground-roosts were closer to mature pine-hardwood stands and open water than were random sites. We suggest that management of longleaf pine forests should focus on maintaining open-canopied forests with adequate understory vegetation to serve as nesting and brood-rearing cover. Our findings suggest that frequent prescribed fire (≤ 2 years), when the management goal is to optimize restoration of longleaf ecosystems, is conducive to maintaining wild turkey populations

Acetylation-induced TDP-43 pathology is suppressed by an HSF1-dependent chaperone program

TDP-43 pathology marks a spectrum of multisystem proteinopathies including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, frontotemporal lobar degeneration, and sporadic inclusion body myositis. Surprisingly, it has been challenging to recapitulate this pathology, highlighting an incomplete understanding of TDP-43 regulatory mechanisms. Here we provide evidence supporting TDP-43 acetylation as a trigger for disease pathology. Using cultured cells and mouse skeletal muscle, we show that TDP-43 acetylation-mimics promote TDP-43 phosphorylation and ubiquitination, perturb mitochondria, and initiate degenerative inflammatory responses that resemble sporadic inclusion body myositis pathology. Analysis of functionally linked amyotrophic lateral sclerosis proteins revealed recruitment of p62, ubiquilin-2, and optineurin to TDP-43 aggregates. We demonstrate that TDP-43 acetylation-mimic pathology is potently suppressed by an HSF1-dependent mechanism that disaggregates TDP-43. Our study illustrates bidirectional TDP-43 processing in which TDP-43 aggregation is targeted by a coordinated chaperone response. Thus, activation or restoration of refolding mechanisms may alleviate TDP-43 aggregation in tissues that are uniquely susceptible to TDP-43 proteinopathies.TDP-43 aggregation is linked to various diseases including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Here the authors show that acetylation of the protein triggers TDP-43 pathology in cultured cells and mouse skeletal muscle, which can be cleared through an HSF1-dependent chaperone mechanism that disaggregates the protein

EFFECT OF IMPACT SURFACE ON EQUESTRIAN FALLS

This study examines the effect of impact surface on head kinematic response and maximum principal strain (MPS) for equestrian falls. A helmeted Hybrid Ill headform was dropped unrestrained onto three impact surfaces (steel, turf and sand) and three locations. Peak resultant linear acceleration, rotational acceleration and duration of the impact events were measured. A finite element brain model was used to calculate MPS. The results revealed that drops onto steel produced higher peak linear acceleration, rotational acceleration and MPS but lower impact durations than drops to turf and sand. However, despite lower MPS values, turf and sand impacts compared to steel impacts still represented a risk of concussion. This suggests that equestrian helmets standards do not properly account for the loading conditions experienced in equestrian accidents