Isolation of the first toxin from the scorpion Buthus occitanus israelis showing preference for Shaker potassium channels

AbstractWe have purified BoiTx1, the first toxin from the venom of the Israeli scorpion, Buthus occitanus israelis, and studied its activity and genomic organization. BoiTx1 is a 37 amino acid-long peptide contained six conserved cysteines, and is classified as an α-KTx3.10 toxin. The pharmacological effects of BoiTx1 were studied on various cloned K+ channels expressed in Xenopus laevis oocytes. BoiTx1 inhibited currents through Drosophila Shaker channels with an IC50 value of 3.5±0.5nM, yet had much lesser effect on its mammalian orthologs. Thus, BoiTx1 is the first member of the α-KTx3 family that preferentially affects insect potassium channels

Correcting quantum errors with the Zeno effect

In order to reduce errors, error correction codes (ECCs) need to be implemented fast. They can correct the errors corresponding to the first few orders in the Taylor expansion of the Hamiltonian of the interaction with the environment. If implemented fast enough, the zeroth order error predominates and the dominant effect is of error prevention by measurement (Zeno Effect) rather than correction. In this ``Zeno Regime'', codes with less redundancy are sufficient for protection. We describe such a simple scheme, which uses two ``noiseless'' qubits to protect a large number, $n$, of information qubits from noise from the environment. The ``noisless qubits'' can be realized by treating them as logical qubits to be encoded by one of the previously introduced encoding schemes.Comment: 11 page