Theory of Feshbach molecule formation in a dilute gas during a magnetic field ramp

Starting with coupled atom-molecule Boltzmann equations, we develop a simplified model to understand molecule formation observed in recent experiments. Our theory predicts several key features: (1) the effective adiabatic rate constant is proportional to density; (2) in an adiabatic ramp, the dependence of molecular fraction on magnetic field resembles an error function whose width and centroid are related to the temperature; (3) the molecular production efficiency is a universal function of the initial phase space density, the specific form of which we derive for a classical gas. Our predictions show qualitative agreement with the data from [Hodby et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf{94}}, 120402 (2005)] without the use of adjustable parameters

Ant genomics (Hymenoptera: Formicidae): challenges to overcome and opportunities to seize

SN is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF57). YW is funded by BBSRC grant BB/K004204/1, NERC grant NE/L00626X/1, and is a fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute

SafeOrganic - Restrictive use of antibiotics in organic animal farming – a potential for safer, high quality products with less antibiotic resistant bacteria

Main research questions: Antimicrobial resistance (AR) in the food-chain is a concern due to risk of treatment failure of humans. - Do restrictions on antimicrobial (AB) usage in organic pig production lead to lower AR levels in organic pigs compared to conventional ones? - Is lower AR a quality trait of organic pork? - Does slaughtering of organic and conventional pigs together abolish this potential quality trait? - Can markers for imprudent AR use in organic pig herds be identified

Angular momentum exchange between coherent light and matter fields

Full, three dimensional, time-dependent simulations are presented demonstrating the quantized transfer of angular momentum to a Bose-Einstein condensate from a laser carrying orbital angular momentum in a Laguerre-Gaussian mode. The process is described in terms of coherent Bragg scattering of atoms from a chiral optical lattice. The transfer efficiency and the angular momentum content of the output coupled vortex state are analyzed and compared with a recent experiment.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Evaluation and learning in public housing urban renewal

This report analyses how evaluation and learning from public housing renewal is informing policy development and delivery to maximise financial returns and socio-economic outcomes. The research was conducted pre-COVID-19. • Public housing renewal provides an opportunity for policy makers to give direction to urban reconfiguration processes. Since the 2000s public housing renewal has increasingly become part of a policy discourse that places emphasis on 'unlocking' under-utilised sites (i.e. public housing estates) for jobs, investment and urban renewal. In this intersection with urban renewal processes, mixed-tenure public housing renewal, in practice, becomes public housing urban renewal. • This research highlights a consistency of views across stakeholders (often on pragmatic grounds) regarding 'how public housing renewal works'. It is thus possible to conceptualise learning and evaluation in public housing renewal policy-making within an advocacy coalition framework (ACF). • An ACF framework focuses on the alignment of the beliefs, actions and interest of a range of stakeholders with respect to how policies work, or can work. Our use of the ACF is grounded in a consistency of views about 'how public housing renewal works', given the prevailing institutional and financial constraints, and the implication of this for the role of evaluation and learning, rather than any suggestion of a formal or informal actual coalition, or collusion, in agenda setting or public policy objectives. • Interviewees perceived evaluation to be one of several integral parts to the policy formation process. However, evaluations have frequently been summative, rather than formative in nature. In addition, stakeholders also relied on personal and institutional experience to inform policy development and decision-making. These learning dynamics have, over time, reinforced key aspects of the policy core belief within the advocacy coalition. • The policy core belief guiding public housing urban renewal is characterised by a shared belief in the instrumental role of land values and land value change as a means of reconciling multiple asset- and people-based outcomes, while controlling the cost of public policy to public budgets. Mixed tenure, housing density and the strategic leveraging of land are policies that also extract land value for public housing reinvestment and other public policy goals. • The central role of land and land value has raised concerns amongst tenants, groups external to the advocacy coalition, but also some of the interviewees that public housing renewal is increasingly driven by asset-based viability considerations and reduced government exposure to risk. While risk related to physical reconfiguration (public housing stock renewal) in this respect is reduced, other objectives (such as wider social and economic benefits for tenants) increasingly become shaped by - rather than shaping urban reconfiguration processes. • Core members of the public housing renewal advocacy coalition are state governments and private developers. Additional members are (in some cases) community housing providers (CHPs) and local governments. Policy formation within advocacy coalitions is shaped by multiple factors. This includes evaluations, but also reacting to external events and internal stakeholder dynamics. • In the contextual analysis in this research, change in relative income is used as an indicator of social and economic reconfiguration. Apart from Adelaide, census collection districts (CCD) subject to public housing renewal experienced little improvement in relative income status (1996-2016). • Citywide drivers (such as economic restructuring, urban sprawl containment, population growth) and neighbourhood drivers (such as economic obsolescence, relative incomes) are specific drivers of social and economic reconfiguration. These are evident in all three capital cities, leading to the potential to 'unlock' value through mixed tenure and public housing renewal. • Policy options exist that can unlock more inclusive conceptualisations of value, and shift the reliance on land value in the program logic of public housing renewal. The design of public housing renewal tenders, and strategies for implementation, offer considerable opportunity for policy experimentation; identification and evaluation of assumed causal relationships and benefits. A social infrastructure perspective provides a framework for 'unlocking' additional and renewal project-specific values. A number of tools already exist to estimate the (equivalent) monetary value of wider social and economic benefits

Mesoscopic conductance fluctuations in InAs nanowire-based SNS junctions

We report a systematic experimental study of mesoscopic conductance fluctuations in superconductor/normal/superconductor (SNS) devices Nb/InAs-nanowire/Nb. These fluctuations far exceed their value in the normal state and strongly depend on temperature even in the low-temperature regime. This dependence is attributed to high sensitivity of perfectly conducting channels to dephasing and the SNS fluctuations thus provide a sensitive probe of dephasing in a regime where normal transport fails to detect it. Further, the conductance fluctuations are strongly non-linear in bias voltage and reveal sub-gap structure. The experimental findings are qualitatively explained in terms of multiple Andreev reflections in chaotic quantum dots with imperfect contacts.Comment: Manuscript and supplemen

Long-term methimazole therapy in Graves' hyperthyroidism and adverse reactions: a Danish multicenter study

PURPOSE: In this prospective multicenter study with patients newly diagnosed with Graves’ hyperthyroidism (GH), we studied the timing and characteristics of adverse drug reactions in patients treated with anti-thyroid drugs (ATD) for up to 48 months. METHODS: Patients with GH were treated with ATD until remission and hereafter with a low-dose regime to keep the patients in remission. The patients were followed with blood samples and recording of adverse events approximately every second month for the first 2 years and every third month for the following 2 years. RESULTS: We included 208 patients and the patients were treated for a median of 22 (range: 0.5–49) months. Ten percent of the patients experienced adverse drug reactions and 75% of the cases occurred during the first 6 months. After 24 months, the methimazole dose was lowered to 5 mg/day, and after this time point, no further adverse drug reactions were recorded. Skin reactions were the most prominent reaction, comprising 68% of the registered reactions, and no hepatic and bonemarrow affection was recorded. CONCLUSION: With this study, we report the frequency, timing of occurrence, and characteristics of adverse drug reactions when treating GH with the ATD drug methimazole for up to 48 months. Long-term low-dose methimazole treatment can be a cost-effective and straightforward treatment option if adverse drug reactions such as severe hepatic and bone marrow affection are kept in mind

Superconductivity enhanced conductance fluctuations in few layer graphene nanoribbons

We investigate the mesoscopic disorder induced rms conductance variance $\delta G$ in a few layer graphene nanoribbon (FGNR) contacted by two superconducting (S) Ti/Al contacts. By sweeping the back-gate voltage, we observe pronounced conductance fluctuations superimposed on a linear background of the two terminal conductance G. The linear gate-voltage induced response can be modeled by a set of inter-layer and intra-layer capacitances. $\delta G$ depends on temperature T and source-drain voltage $V_{sd}$. $\delta G$ increases with decreasing T and $|V_{sd}|$. When lowering $|V_{sd}|$, a pronounced cross-over at a voltage corresponding to the superconducting energy gap $\Delta$ is observed. For |V_{sd}|\ltequiv \Delta the fluctuations are markedly enhanced. Expressed in the conductance variance $G_{GS}$ of one graphene-superconducutor (G-S) interface, values of 0.58 e^2/h are obtained at the base temperature of 230 mK. The conductance variance in the sub-gap region are larger by up to a factor of 1.4-1.8 compared to the normal state. The observed strong enhancement is due to phase coherent charge transfer caused by Andreev reflection at the nanoribbon-superconductor interface.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure

Clinical outcomes and safety assessment in elderly patients undergoing decompressive laminectomy for lumbar spinal stenosis: a prospective study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>To assess safety, risk factors and clinical outcomes in elderly patients with spinal stenosis after decompressive laminectomy.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A prospective cohort of patients 70 years and older with spinal stenosis undergoing conventional laminectomy without fusion (n = 101) were consecutively enrolled from regular clinical practice and reassessed at 3 and 12 months. Primary outcome was change in health related quality of life measured (HRQL) with EuroQol-5 D (EQ-5D). Secondary outcomes were safety assessment, changes in Oswestry disability index (ODI), Visual Analogue Scale (EQ-VAS) score for self reported health, VAS score for leg and back pain and patient satisfaction. We used regression analyses to evaluate risk factors for less improvement.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The mean EQ-5 D total score were 0.32, 0.63 and 0.60 at baseline, 3 months and 12 months respectively, and represents a statistically significant (P < 0.001) improvement. Effect size was > 0.8. Mean ODI score at baseline was 44.2, at 3 months 25.6 and at 27.9. This represents an improvement for all post-operative scores. A total of 18 (18.0%) complications were registered with 6 (6.0%) classified as major, including one perioperative death. Patients stating that the surgery had been beneficial at 3 months was 82 (89.1%) and at 12 months 73 (86.9%). The only predictor found was patients with longer duration of leg pain had less improvement in ODI (P < 0.001). Increased age or having complications did not predict a worse outcome in any of the outcome variables.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Properly selected patients of 70 years and older can expect a clinical meaningful improvement of HRQL, functional status and pain after open laminectomy without fusion. The treatment seems to be safe. However, patients with longstanding leg-pain prior to operation are less likely to improve one year after surgery.</p

Effective Swarm Parameters And Transport Coefficients In CO2 Laser Mixtures

A pulsed electron swarm technique has been used to obtain effective attachment and ionization cross-sections as well as electron drift velocities in mixtures of CO2 laser interest. In binary CO2:N 2 mixtures, below a reduced electric field of E/N=60*10 -17 V cm2, attachment was the principal ion production process. (N is the total gas number density.) The reduced attachment coefficients measured were small and in excellent agreement with numerical predictions. In ternary mixtures of He:CO2:N2, positive ion formation described by Townsend\u27s first ionisation coefficient played a more important role over the same range of E/N. The reduced coefficient for total ion formation was measured and found to be in good agreement with numerical calculations. Electron drift velocities in both the binary and ternary mixtures were determined using a time-of-flight technique. Overall agreement with previous experimental and numerical results was good