Spawning rings of exceptional points out of Dirac cones

The Dirac cone underlies many unique electronic properties of graphene and topological insulators, and its band structure--two conical bands touching at a single point--has also been realized for photons in waveguide arrays, atoms in optical lattices, and through accidental degeneracy. Deformations of the Dirac cone often reveal intriguing properties; an example is the quantum Hall effect, where a constant magnetic field breaks the Dirac cone into isolated Landau levels. A seemingly unrelated phenomenon is the exceptional point, also known as the parity-time symmetry breaking point, where two resonances coincide in both their positions and widths. Exceptional points lead to counter-intuitive phenomena such as loss-induced transparency, unidirectional transmission or reflection, and lasers with reversed pump dependence or single-mode operation. These two fields of research are in fact connected: here we discover the ability of a Dirac cone to evolve into a ring of exceptional points, which we call an "exceptional ring." We experimentally demonstrate this concept in a photonic crystal slab. Angle-resolved reflection measurements of the photonic crystal slab reveal that the peaks of reflectivity follow the conical band structure of a Dirac cone from accidental degeneracy, whereas the complex eigenvalues of the system are deformed into a two-dimensional flat band enclosed by an exceptional ring. This deformation arises from the dissimilar radiation rates of dipole and quadrupole resonances, which play a role analogous to the loss and gain in parity-time symmetric systems. Our results indicate that the radiation that exists in any open system can fundamentally alter its physical properties in ways previously expected only in the presence of material loss and gain

Ceftolozane/tazobactam versus meropenem in patients with ventilated hospital-acquired bacterial pneumonia: Subset analysis of the ASPECT-NP randomized, controlled phase 3 trial

BACKGROUND: Ceftolozane/tazobactam is approved for treatment of hospital-acquired/ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia (HABP/VABP) at double the dose approved for other infection sites. Among nosocomial pneumonia subtypes, ventilated HABP (vHABP) is associated with the lowest survival. In the ASPECT-NP randomized, controlled trial, participants with vHABP treated with ceftolozane/tazobactam had lower 28-day all-cause mortality (ACM) than those receiving meropenem. We conducted a series of post hoc analyses to explore the clinical significance of this finding. METHODS: ASPECT-NP was a multinational, phase 3, noninferiority trial comparing ceftolozane/tazobactam with meropenem for treating vHABP and VABP; study design, efficacy, and safety results have been reported previously. The primary endpoint was 28-day ACM. The key secondary endpoint was clinical response at test-of-cure. Participants with vHABP were a prospectively defined subgroup, but subgroup analyses were not powered for noninferiority testing. We compared baseline and treatment factors, efficacy, and safety between ceftolozane/tazobactam and meropenem in participants with vHABP. We also conducted a retrospective multivariable logistic regression analysis in this subgroup to determine the impact of treatment arm on mortality when adjusted for significant prognostic factors. RESULTS: Overall, 99 participants in the ceftolozane/tazobactam and 108 in the meropenem arm had vHABP. 28-day ACM was 24.2% and 37.0%, respectively, in the intention-to-treat population (95% confidence interval [CI] for difference: 0.2, 24.8) and 18.2% and 36.6%, respectively, in the microbiologic intention-to-treat population (95% CI 2.5, 32.5). Clinical cure rates in the intention-to-treat population were 50.5% and 44.4%, respectively (95% CI - 7.4, 19.3). Baseline clinical, baseline microbiologic, and treatment factors were comparable between treatment arms. Multivariable regression identified concomitant vasopressor use and baseline bacteremia as significantly impacting ACM in ASPECT-NP; adjusting for these two factors, the odds of dying by day 28 were 2.3-fold greater when participants received meropenem instead of ceftolozane/tazobactam. CONCLUSIONS: There were no underlying differences between treatment arms expected to have biased the observed survival advantage with ceftolozane/tazobactam in the vHABP subgroup. After adjusting for clinically relevant factors found to impact ACM significantly in this trial, the mortality risk in participants with vHABP was over twice as high when treated with meropenem compared with ceftolozane/tazobactam. TRIAL REGISTRATION: clinicaltrials.gov, NCT02070757. Registered 25 February, 2014, clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02070757

Potencial dos solos das regiões litoral e mata de Pernambuco para o cultivo da cana-de-açúcar empregando alto nível tecnológico.

A adoção de tecnologias como fertilização dos solos e mecanização agrícola, têm sido fatores cada vez mais determinantes na competitividade do agronegócio sucroalcooleiro. O emprego de tais tecnologias, contudo, é condicionado por vários aspectos ambientais relacionados com o solo e, ou, com os fatores do ambiente a este associados. Este trabalho teve como objetivo identificar nas regiões Litoral e Mata de Pernambuco as áreas com melhor potencial pedológico para o cultivo da cana-de-açúcar, empregando alto nível tecnológico. Foi utilizado como material básico o levantamento de baixa e média intensidade dos solos do estado de Pernambuco, na escala 1:100.000. A interpretação foi feita para o uso das terras empregando alto nível tecnológico (manejo C). Os solos foram enquadrados nas classes de aptidão agrícola boa, regular, marginal e inapta, em função do seu potencial produtivo e, ou, dos riscos de degradação ambiental devido ao uso e manejo das terras com a cultura. O estudo estimou que 4.571 km2 (40,8% da região estudada) apresentaram aptidão pedológica boa, e, 511 km2 (4,6% da área), aptidão regular, para a cultura da cana. O restante da área é formado por solos de aptidão marginal ou inapta para a cultura. Os locais de ocorrência das melhores áreas para a cultura foram indicados por meio de um mapa com o potencial pedológico da região estudada

Uma metodologia alternativa para o zoneamento de risco climático da cultura do milho.

Produzir milho sob condições de sequeiro é uma prática comum no Brasil. Neste sistema, de produção as culturas são fortemente afetadas pela inerente variabilidade climática anual e interanual, especialmente pelos veranicos, que afetam a produtividade. Uma das estratégias mais simples, com praticamente nenhum custo, para mitigar este problema é a determinação de uma janela de semeadura, que minimize os efeitos negativos da variabilidade climática na agricultura de sequeiro. Os objetivos deste estudo foram: a) usar os resultados de produtividade de milho simulada com um modelo baseado em processos, para estabelecer janelas de semeadura e b) comparar os resultados obtidos com a atual metodologia empregada pelo Ministério da Agricultura, Pecuária e Abastecimento (Mapa). Utilizou-se o modelo CSMCERES-Maize, do Sistema de Apoio à Decisão para Transferência de Agrotecnologia (DSSAT), para simular cenários de épocas de semeadura semanais, sob condições de sequeiro, para municípios do Estado de Minas Gerais. Para cada época de semeadura, determinou-se a quebra de rendimento, comparando o rendimento médio da época de semeadura atual com o maior rendimento médio obtido a partir de todas as datas de semeadura. Assim, cada data de semeadura foi associada a um risco de perda de rendimento. As janelas de semeadura obtidas a partir das simulações foram ligeiramente diferentes daquelas propostas pelo Mapa. O uso de modelos baseados em processos para simular o rendimento das culturas permite a integração de muitos fatores não considerados na atual metodologia de zoneamento agrícola utilizada pelo Mapa. A abordagem proposta tem vantagens sobre a metodologia do Ministério da Agricultura, entre as quais a possibilidade de determinar o rendimento médio esperado e a sua amplitude.bitstream/item/94391/1/bol-87.pd

The Pierre Auger Observatory III: Other Astrophysical Observations

Astrophysical observations of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays with the Pierre Auger ObservatoryComment: Contributions to the 32nd International Cosmic Ray Conference, Beijing, China, August 201

Azimuthal asymmetry in the risetime of the surface detector signals of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The azimuthal asymmetry in the risetime of signals in Auger surface detector stations is a source of information on shower development. The azimuthal asymmetry is due to a combination of the longitudinal evolution of the shower and geometrical effects related to the angles of incidence of the particles into the detectors. The magnitude of the effect depends upon the zenith angle and state of development of the shower and thus provides a novel observable, $(\sec \theta)_\mathrm{max}$, sensitive to the mass composition of cosmic rays above $3 \times 10^{18}$ eV. By comparing measurements with predictions from shower simulations, we find for both of our adopted models of hadronic physics (QGSJETII-04 and EPOS-LHC) an indication that the mean cosmic-ray mass increases slowly with energy, as has been inferred from other studies. However, the mass estimates are dependent on the shower model and on the range of distance from the shower core selected. Thus the method has uncovered further deficiencies in our understanding of shower modelling that must be resolved before the mass composition can be inferred from $(\sec \theta)_\mathrm{max}$.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Highlights from the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Pierre Auger Observatory is the world's largest cosmic ray observatory. Our current exposure reaches nearly 40,000 km$^2$ str and provides us with an unprecedented quality data set. The performance and stability of the detectors and their enhancements are described. Data analyses have led to a number of major breakthroughs. Among these we discuss the energy spectrum and the searches for large-scale anisotropies. We present analyses of our X$_{max}$ data and show how it can be interpreted in terms of mass composition. We also describe some new analyses that extract mass sensitive parameters from the 100% duty cycle SD data. A coherent interpretation of all these recent results opens new directions. The consequences regarding the cosmic ray composition and the properties of UHECR sources are briefly discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 12 figures, talk given at the 33rd International Cosmic Ray Conference, Rio de Janeiro 201