The quick and the dead: when reaction beats intention

Everyday behaviour involves a trade-off between planned actions and reaction to environmental events.Evidence from neurophysiology, neurology and functional brain imaging suggests different neural bases for the control of different movement types. Here we develop a behavioural paradigm to test movement dynamics for intentional versus reaction movements and provide evidence for a ‘reactive advantage’ in movement execution, whereby the same action is executed faster in reaction to an opponent. We placed pairs of participants in competition with each other to make a series of button presses. Within subject analysis of movement times revealed a 10 per cent benefit for reactive actions. This was maintained when opponents performed dissimilar actions, and when participants competed against a computer, suggesting that the effect is not related to facilitation produced by action observation. Rather, faster ballistic movements may be a general property of reactive motor control, potentially providing a useful means of promoting survival

FORTRAN programs for calculating lower ionosphere electron densities and collision frequencies from rocket data

FORTRAN programs for calculating lower ionosphere electron densities and collision frequencie

Driving down the Detection Limit in Microstructured Fiber-Based Chemical Dip Sensors

We present improvements to fluorescence sensing in soft-glass microstructured optical fibers that result in significantly improved sensitivity relative to previously published results. Concentrations of CdSe quantum dots down to 10 pM levels have been demonstrated. We show that the primary limitation to the sensitivity of these systems is the intrinsic fluorescence of the glass itself

Brillouin suppression through longitudinal structural variation in high nonlinearity silica holey fibers

Copyright © 2006 IEEEWe consider longitudinal variation in the fiber structure as a method of increasing the Brillouin linewidth and threshold within high nonlinearity silica holey fibers. Strategies to control the associated variation in nonlinearity and dispersion along the fiber length are described.http://www.ofcnfoec.org/materials/06AbstractsWednesday.pd

Cancer detection in human tissue samples using a fiber-tip pH probe

Abstract not availableErik P. Schartner, Matthew R. Henderson, Malcolm Purdey, Deepak Dhatrak, Tanya M. Monro, P. Grantley Gill, and David F. Calle

Dynamic self-referencing approach to whispering gallery mode biosensing and its application to measurement within undiluted serum

Biosensing within complex biological samples requires a sensor that can compensate for fluctuations in the signal due to changing environmental conditions and nonspecific binding events. To achieve this, we developed a novel self-referenced biosensor consisting of two almost identically sized dye-doped polystyrene microspheres placed on adjacent holes at the tip of a microstructured optical fiber (MOF). Here self-referenced biosensing is demonstrated with the detection of Neutravidin in undiluted, immunoglobulin-deprived human serum samples. The MOF allows remote excitation and collection of the whispering gallery modes (WGMs) of the microspheres while also providing a robust and easy to manipulate dip-sensing platform. By taking advantage of surface functionalization techniques, one microsphere acts as a dynamic reference, compensating for nonspecific binding events and changes in the environment (such as refractive index and temperature), while the other microsphere is functionalized to detect a specific interaction. The almost identical size allows the two spheres to have virtually identical refractive index sensitivity and surface area, while still having discernible WGM spectra. This ensures their responses to nonspecific binding and environmental changes are almost identical, whereby any specific changes, such as binding events, can be monitored via the relative movement between the two sets of WGM peaks.Tess Reynolds, Alexandre Franc, ois, Nicolas Riesen, Michelle E. Turvey, Stephen J. Nicholls, Peter Hoffmann, and Tanya M. Monr

Air-clad holmium-doped silica fiber laser

Date of Publication : 10 December 2015We report the design, fabrication, and operation of an air-clad holmium-doped fiber laser that was manufactured by directly milling the rare-earth-doped preform. This silica fiber laser operates at 2.1 μm with a slope efficiency of 49.7%, and is in-band pumped with a 1.94-μm thulium fiber laser. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of an air-clad holmium-doped fiber laser.Sebastian W. S. Ng, David G. Lancaster, Tanya M. Monro, Peter C. Henry, and David J. Ottawa

SOHO (SOlid HOley) fiber

We report the first successful fabrication of an all-solid microstructured fiber based on large index contrast glasses. High effective nonlinearity 230 W at 1550nm has been predicted and measured

Detection of quantum-dot labeled proteins using soft glass microstructured optical fibers

This paper was published in Optics Express and is made available as an electronic reprint with the permission of OSA. The paper can be found at the following URL on the OSA website: http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?URI=oe-15-26-17819. Systematic or multiple reproduction or distribution to multiple locations via electronic or other means is prohibited and is subject to penalties under law.The detection of quantum-dot labeled proteins is demonstrated within lead silicate soft glass microstructured optical fibers using near infrared light. The protein concentration is measured using a new fluorescence capture approach. Light guided within the fiber is used both to excite and collect fluorescent photons, and the detection limit achieved without optimization of the fiber geometry is 1 nM, using just 3% of the guided mode of the fiber. Issues that currently restrict the detection of lower protein concentrations are discussed.Yinlan Ruan, Erik P. Schartner, Heike Ebendorff-Heidepriem, Peter Hoffmann and Tanya M. Monr

An quantum approach of measurement based on the Zurek's triple model

In a close form without referring the time-dependent Hamiltonian to the total system, a consistent approach for quantum measurement is proposed based on Zurek's triple model of quantum decoherence [W.Zurek, Phys. Rev. D 24, 1516 (1981)]. An exactly-solvable model based on the intracavity system is dealt with in details to demonstrate the central idea in our approach: by peeling off one collective variable of the measuring apparatus from its many degrees of freedom, as the pointer of the apparatus, the collective variable de-couples with the internal environment formed by the effective internal variables, but still interacts with the measured system to form a triple entanglement among the measured system, the pointer and the internal environment. As another mechanism to cause decoherence, the uncertainty of relative phase and its many-particle amplification can be summed up to an ideal entanglement or an Shmidt decomposition with respect to the preferred basis.Comment: 22pages,3figure