7,830 research outputs found
Why is the condensed phase of DNA preferred at higher temperature? DNA compaction in the presence of a multivalent cation
Upon the addition of multivalent cations, a giant DNA chain exhibits a large
discrete transition from an elongated coil into a folded compact state. We
performed single-chain observation of long DNAs in the presence of a
tetravalent cation (spermine), at various temperatures and monovalent salt
concentrations. We confirmed that the compact state is preferred at higher
temperatures and at lower monovalent salt concentrations. This result is
interpreted in terms of an increase in the net translational entropy of small
ions due to ionic exchange between higher and lower valence ions.Comment: 4pages,3figure
Photon collection from a trapped ion--cavity system
We present the design and implementation of a trapped ion cavity QED system.
A single ytterbium ion is confined by a micron-scale ion trap inside a 2 mm
optical cavity. The ion is coherently pumped by near resonant laser light while
the cavity output is monitored as a function of pump intensity and cavity
detuning. We observe a Purcell enhancement of scattered light into the solid
angle subtended by the optical cavity, as well as a three-peak structure
arising from strongly driving the atom. This system can be integrated into
existing atom{photon quantum network protocols and is a pathway towards an
efficient atom{photon quantum interface
Fabrication Infrastructure to Enable Efficient Exploration and Utilization of Space
Unlike past one-at-a-time mission approaches, system-of-systems infrastructures will be needed to enable ambitious scenarios for sustainable future space exploration and utilization. Fabrication infrastructure will be needed to support habitat structure development, tools and mechanical part fabrication, as well as repair and replacement of ground support and space mission hardware such as life support items, vehicle components and crew systems. The fabrication infrastructure will need the In Situ Fabrication and Repair (ISFR) element, which is working in conjunction with the In Situ Resources Utilization (ISRU) element, to live off the land. The ISFR Element supports the entire life cycle of Exploration by: reducing downtime due to failed components; decreasing risk to crew by recovering quickly from degraded operation of equipment; improving system functionality with advanced geometry capabilities; and enhancing mission safety by reducing assembly part counts of original designs where possible. This paper addresses the fabrication infrastructures that support efficient, affordable, reliable infrastructures for both space exploration systems and logistics; these infrastructures allow sustained, affordable and highly effective operations on the Moon, Mars and beyond
Adiabatic quantum algorithm for search engine ranking
We propose an adiabatic quantum algorithm for generating a quantum pure state
encoding of the PageRank vector, the most widely used tool in ranking the
relative importance of internet pages. We present extensive numerical
simulations which provide evidence that this algorithm can prepare the quantum
PageRank state in a time which, on average, scales polylogarithmically in the
number of webpages. We argue that the main topological feature of the
underlying web graph allowing for such a scaling is the out-degree
distribution. The top ranked entries of the quantum PageRank state
can then be estimated with a polynomial quantum speedup. Moreover, the quantum
PageRank state can be used in "q-sampling" protocols for testing properties of
distributions, which require exponentially fewer measurements than all
classical schemes designed for the same task. This can be used to decide
whether to run a classical update of the PageRank.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures; closer to published versio
Smooth-AP: Smoothing the Path Towards Large-Scale Image Retrieval
Optimising a ranking-based metric, such as Average Precision (AP), is
notoriously challenging due to the fact that it is non-differentiable, and
hence cannot be optimised directly using gradient-descent methods. To this end,
we introduce an objective that optimises instead a smoothed approximation of
AP, coined Smooth-AP. Smooth-AP is a plug-and-play objective function that
allows for end-to-end training of deep networks with a simple and elegant
implementation. We also present an analysis for why directly optimising the
ranking based metric of AP offers benefits over other deep metric learning
losses. We apply Smooth-AP to standard retrieval benchmarks: Stanford Online
products and VehicleID, and also evaluate on larger-scale datasets: INaturalist
for fine-grained category retrieval, and VGGFace2 and IJB-C for face retrieval.
In all cases, we improve the performance over the state-of-the-art, especially
for larger-scale datasets, thus demonstrating the effectiveness and scalability
of Smooth-AP to real-world scenarios.Comment: Accepted at ECCV 202
Mg(, )Na reaction study for spectroscopy of Na
The Mg(, )Na reaction was measured at the Holifield
Radioactive Ion Beam Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in order to
better constrain spins and parities of energy levels in Na for the
astrophysically important F()Ne reaction rate
calculation. 31 MeV proton beams from the 25-MV tandem accelerator and enriched
Mg solid targets were used. Recoiling He particles from the
Mg(, )Na reaction were detected by a highly segmented
silicon detector array which measured the yields of He particles over a
range of angles simultaneously. A new level at 6661 5 keV was observed in
the present work. The extracted angular distributions for the first four levels
of Na and Distorted Wave Born Approximation (DWBA) calculations were
compared to verify and extract angular momentum transfer.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, proceedings of the 18th International Conference
on Accelerators and Beam Utilization (ICABU2014
Classification of protein interaction sentences via gaussian processes
The increase in the availability of protein interaction studies in textual format coupled with the demand for easier access to the key results has lead to a need for text mining solutions. In the text processing pipeline, classification is a key step for extraction of small sections of relevant text. Consequently, for the task of locating protein-protein interaction sentences, we examine the use of a classifier which has rarely been applied to text, the Gaussian processes (GPs). GPs are a non-parametric probabilistic analogue to the more popular support vector machines (SVMs). We find that GPs outperform the SVM and na\"ive Bayes classifiers on binary sentence data, whilst showing equivalent performance on abstract and multiclass sentence corpora. In addition, the lack of the margin parameter, which requires costly tuning, along with the principled multiclass extensions enabled by the probabilistic framework make GPs an appealing alternative worth of further adoption
Worker heterogeneity, new monopsony, and training
A worker's output depends not only on his/her own ability but also on that of colleagues, who can facilitate the performance of tasks that each individual cannot accomplish on his/her own. We show that this common-sense observation generates monopsony power and is sufficient to explain why employers might expend resources on training employees even when the training is of use to other firms. We show that training will take place in better-than-average or ‘good’ firms enjoying greater monopsony power, whereas ‘bad’ firms will have low-ability workers unlikely to receive much training
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