2,661 research outputs found
Use of entanglement in quantum optics
Several recent demonstrations of two-particle interferometry are reviewed and shown to be examples of either color entanglement or beam entanglement. A device, called a number filter, is described and shown to be of value in preparing beam entanglements. Finally, we note that all three concepts (color and beam entaglement, and number filtering) may be extended to three or more particles
Governing beyond the project:Refocusing innovation governance in emerging science and technology funding
Simplifying responsible research and innovation – a tool building in societal readiness into research
Researchers and research funders are increasingly seeking to ensure their work is aligned to societal needs and to prevent it from having foreseeable negative impacts, particularly in fast moving and ethically sensitive fields. In this post, Stefan de Jong, Michael J. Bernstein and Ingeborg Meijer, describe their work developing a tool that facilitates researchers and research funders to incorporate responsible research and innovation values into their work
Capabilities to support responsible research & innovation in European biotechnology
Emerging biotechnologies from fields such as synthetic biology and industrial biotechnology
raise challenges for governance. In response, public funders have developed new approaches to
govern these technologies before decisions are locked in and products emerge onto the market.
Over a decade of experience with these nascent forms of governance, such as Responsible Re-
search and Innovation (RRI), shows their value but also the limitations, particularly when im-
plemented without consideration of day-to-day working conditions, sector specific distinctions
and institutional structures shaping research in the biological sciences.
Drawing on three workshops with members of the ERA CoBioTech funding programme, we
show how a new approach, grounded in the idea of human capabilities, can help to integrate the
skills, knowledge and institutional conditions needed to enact upstream governance in the
design of future funding programmes. We identify the goals researchers associated with RRI in
the life sciences, outline five sets of capabilities that enable researchers, managers and adminis-
trators to practise responsible research and innovation, and unearth a corresponding set of re-
sources that these capabilities depend upon. Funders that learn to design programmes to max-
imise and expand the five capability sets are likely to enable more substantive forms of upstream
governance than before
The European Commission’s Green Deal is an opportunity to rethink harmful practices of research and innovation policy
The European Union’s Green Deal and associated policies, aspiring to long-term environmental sustainability, now require economic activities to ‘do no significant harm’ to EU environmental objectives. The way the European Commission is enacting the do no significant harm principle relies on quantitative tools that try to identify harm and adjudicate its significance. A reliance on established technical approaches to assessing such questions ignores the high levels of imprecision, ambiguity, and uncertainty—levels often in flux—characterizing the social contexts in which harms emerge. Indeed, harm, and its significance, are relational, not absolute. A better approach would thus be to acknowledge the relational nature of harm and develop broad capabilities to engage and ‘stay with’ the harm. We use the case of European research and innovation activities to expose the relational nature of harm, and explore an alternative and potentially more productive approach that departs from attempts to unilaterally or uniformly claim to know or adjudicate what is or is not significantly harmful. In closing, we outline three ways research and innovation policy-makers might experiment with reconfiguring scientific and technological systems and practices to better address the significant harms borne by people, other-than-human beings, and ecosystems
MASE: A New Data--Reduction Pipeline for the Magellan Echellette Spectrograph
We introduce a data reduction package written in Interactive Data Language
(IDL) for the Magellan Echellete Spectrograph (MAGE). MAGE is a
medium-resolution (R ~4100), cross-dispersed, optical spectrograph, with
coverage from ~3000-10000 Angstroms. The MAGE Spectral Extractor (MASE)
incorporates the entire image reduction and calibration process, including bias
subtraction, flat fielding, wavelength calibration, sky subtraction, object
extraction and flux calibration of point sources. We include examples of the
user interface and reduced spectra. We show that the wavelength calibration is
sufficient to achieve ~5 km/s RMS accuracy and relative flux calibrations
better than 10%. A light-weight version of the full reduction pipeline has been
included for real-time source extraction and signal-to-noise estimation at the
telescope.Comment: 10 pages (ApJ format), accepted PAS
A note on monopole moduli spaces
We discuss the structure of the framed moduli space of Bogomolny monopoles
for arbitrary symmetry breaking and extend the definition of its stratification
to the case of arbitrary compact Lie groups. We show that each stratum is a
union of submanifolds for which we conjecture that the natural metric is
hyperKahler. The dimensions of the strata and of these submanifolds are
calculated, and it is found that for the latter, the dimension is always a
multiple of four.Comment: 17 pages, LaTe
Azithromycin use in paediatrics: A practical overview
Azithromycin is an antibiotic that is commonly prescribed for upper and lower respiratory tract infections in children. While it has proven benefits, some concerns regarding azithromycin use have arisen in recent years. This practice point considers azithromycin therapy for acute respiratory infections in otherwise healthy children. Pharmacokinetics, spectrum of activity, the problem of resistant bacteria and clinical aspects are considered, along with recommendations for use and contraindications. Azithromycin should be avoided in patients with a significant risk of bacteremia. It is associated with pneumococcal resistance and, with stated exceptions, is generally not recommended for the treatment of acute pharyngitis, acute otitis media or pneumococcal community-acquired pneumonia in the paediatric population. © Canadian Paediatric Society 2013
Generalized Bernstein--Reznikov integrals
We find a closed formula for the triple integral on spheres in
whose kernel is
given by powers of the standard symplectic form. This gives a new proof to the
Bernstein--Reznikov integral formula in the case. Our method also applies
for linear and conformal structures
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