2,649 research outputs found
The uses and functions of ageing celebrity war reporters
This article starts from the premise that recognition of professional authority and celebrity status depends on the embodiment and performance of field-specific dispositional practices: there’s no such thing as a natural, though we often talk about journalistic instinct as something someone simply has or doesn’t have. Next, we have little control over how we are perceived by peers and publics, and what we think are active positioning or subjectifying practices are in fact, after Bourdieu, revelations of already-determined delegation. The upshot is that two journalists can arrive at diametrically opposed judgements on the basis of observation of the same actions of a colleague, and as individuals we are blithely hypocritical in forming (or reciting) evaluations of the professional identity of celebrities. Nowhere is this starker than in the discourse of age-appropriate behaviour, which this paper addresses using the examples of ‘star’ war reporters John Simpson, Kate Adie and Martin Bell. A certain rough-around-the-edges irreverence is central to dispositional authenticity amongst war correspondents, and for ageing hacks this incorporates gendered attitudes to sex and alcohol as well as indifference to protocol. And yet perceived age-inappropriate sexual behaviour is also used to undermine professional integrity, and the paper ends by outlining the phenomenological context that makes possible this effortless switching between amoral and moralising recognition by peers and audiences alike
Incorporating spatial correlations into multispecies mean-field models
In biology, we frequently observe different species existing within the same environment. For example, there are many cell types in a tumour, or different animal species may occupy a given habitat. In modeling interactions between such species, we often make use of the mean-field approximation, whereby spatial correlations between the locations of individuals are neglected. Whilst this approximation holds in certain situations, this is not always the case, and care must be taken to ensure the mean-field approximation is only used in appropriate settings. In circumstances where the mean-field approximation is unsuitable, we need to include information on the spatial distributions of individuals, which is not a simple task. In this paper, we provide a method that overcomes many of the failures of the mean-field approximation for an on-lattice volume-excluding birth-death-movement process with multiple species. We explicitly take into account spatial information on the distribution of individuals by including partial differential equation descriptions of lattice site occupancy correlations. We demonstrate how to derive these equations for the multispecies case and show results specific to a two-species problem. We compare averaged discrete results to both the mean-field approximation and our improved method, which incorporates spatial correlations. We note that the mean-field approximation fails dramatically in some cases, predicting very different behavior from that seen upon averaging multiple realizations of the discrete system. In contrast, our improved method provides excellent agreement with the averaged discrete behavior in all cases, thus providing a more reliable modeling framework. Furthermore, our method is tractable as the resulting partial differential equations can be solved efficiently using standard numerical techniques
Nondispersive hole transport in a spin-coated dendrimer film measured by the charge-generation-layer time-of-flight method
Published versio
The maximally entangled symmetric state in terms of the geometric measure
The geometric measure of entanglement is investigated for permutation
symmetric pure states of multipartite qubit systems, in particular the question
of maximum entanglement. This is done with the help of the Majorana
representation, which maps an n qubit symmetric state to n points on the unit
sphere. It is shown how symmetries of the point distribution can be exploited
to simplify the calculation of entanglement and also help find the maximally
entangled symmetric state. Using a combination of analytical and numerical
results, the most entangled symmetric states for up to 12 qubits are explored
and discussed. The optimization problem on the sphere presented here is then
compared with two classical optimization problems on the S^2 sphere, namely
Toth's problem and Thomson's problem, and it is observed that, in general, they
are different problems.Comment: 18 pages, 15 figures, small corrections and additions to contents and
reference
Integrated Diamond Optics for Single Photon Detection
Optical detection of single defect centers in the solid state is a key
element of novel quantum technologies. This includes the generation of single
photons and quantum information processing. Unfortunately the brightness of
such atomic emitters is limited. Therefore we experimentally demonstrate a
novel and simple approach that uses off-the-shelf optical elements. The key
component is a solid immersion lens made of diamond, the host material for
single color centers. We improve the excitation and detection of single
emitters by one order of magnitude, as predicted by theory.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure
Deterministic delivery of remote entanglement on a quantum network
Large-scale quantum networks promise to enable secure communication,
distributed quantum computing, enhanced sensing and fundamental tests of
quantum mechanics through the distribution of entanglement across nodes. Moving
beyond current two-node networks requires the rate of entanglement generation
between nodes to exceed their decoherence rates. Beyond this critical
threshold, intrinsically probabilistic entangling protocols can be subsumed
into a powerful building block that deterministically provides remote entangled
links at pre-specified times. Here we surpass this threshold using diamond spin
qubit nodes separated by 2 metres. We realise a fully heralded single-photon
entanglement protocol that achieves entangling rates up to 39 Hz, three orders
of magnitude higher than previously demonstrated two-photon protocols on this
platform. At the same time, we suppress the decoherence rate of remote
entangled states to 5 Hz by dynamical decoupling. By combining these results
with efficient charge-state control and mitigation of spectral diffusion, we
are able to deterministically deliver a fresh remote state with average
entanglement fidelity exceeding 0.5 at every clock cycle of 100 ms
without any pre- or post-selection. These results demonstrate a key building
block for extended quantum networks and open the door to entanglement
distribution across multiple remote nodes.Comment: v2 - updated to include relevant citatio
Another argument for values-based medicine
There is a contemporary dialectic concerning the status of evidence-based medicine, criticising it for being ‘scientistic’, epistemologically inconsistent, rigid and dismissive of non-numerical sources of knowledge. A host of alternative frameworks has been proposed, including values-based medicine, narrative medicine, patient-centered care and personcentered medicine. Person-centered medicine is amongst the most persuasive and well-argued models. Miles and Mezzich [1] have argued in a major article that person-centered medicine employs theories of personhood to elaborate and justify its epistemology and praxis. At the same time, they claim that person-centered medicine is an ‘emergent’ concept that needs no base or foundation to justify it. We believe, however, that without some foundational values to underpin the status claimed for personhood, the arguments for person-centered medicine are incomplete. We therefore propose a set of foundational values – survival, security and flourishing – that underpin individual and social functioning transculturally. While these values are the same in all cultures, their expressions differ from culture to culture. Importantly, our notion of values is only modestly foundational. Modest foundationalism recognises that foundational propositions are only ‘warrantable assertions’ that may very well change in time and place. Foundational values in this sense are pragmatic and heuristic in kind and not normative. We enter a plea for their recognition in the form of the values-based medicine we describe. Keywords Evidence-based medicine, medical epistemology, modest foundationalism, person-centered medicine, values-based medicin
Another argument for values-based medicine
There is a contemporary dialectic concerning the status of evidence-based medicine, criticising it for being ‘scientistic’, epistemologically inconsistent, rigid and dismissive of non-numerical sources of knowledge. A host of alternative frameworks has been proposed, including values-based medicine, narrative medicine, patient-centered care and personcentered medicine. Person-centered medicine is amongst the most persuasive and well-argued models. Miles and Mezzich [1] have argued in a major article that person-centered medicine employs theories of personhood to elaborate and justify its epistemology and praxis. At the same time, they claim that person-centered medicine is an ‘emergent’ concept that needs no base or foundation to justify it. We believe, however, that without some foundational values to underpin the status claimed for personhood, the arguments for person-centered medicine are incomplete. We therefore propose a set of foundational values – survival, security and flourishing – that underpin individual and social functioning transculturally. While these values are the same in all cultures, their expressions differ from culture to culture. Importantly, our notion of values is only modestly foundational. Modest foundationalism recognises that foundational propositions are only ‘warrantable assertions’ that may very well change in time and place. Foundational values in this sense are pragmatic and heuristic in kind and not normative. We enter a plea for their recognition in the form of the values-based medicine we describe. Keywords Evidence-based medicine, medical epistemology, modest foundationalism, person-centered medicine, values-based medicin
Survival of entanglement in thermal states
We present a general sufficiency condition for the presence of multipartite
entanglement in thermal states stemming from the ground state entanglement. The
condition is written in terms of the ground state entanglement and the
partition function and it gives transition temperatures below which
entanglement is guaranteed to survive. It is flexible and can be easily adapted
to consider entanglement for different splittings, as well as be weakened to
allow easier calculations by approximations. Examples where the condition is
calculated are given. These examples allow us to characterize a minimum gapping
behavior for the survival of entanglement in the thermodynamic limit. Further,
the same technique can be used to find noise thresholds in the generation of
useful resource states for one-way quantum computing.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures. Changes made in line with publication
recommendations. Motivation and concequences of result clarified, with the
addition of one more example, which applies the result to give noise
thresholds for measurement based quantum computing. New author added with new
result
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