Topological quantum buses: coherent quantum information transfer between topological and conventional qubits

We propose computing bus devices that enable quantum information to be coherently transferred between topological and conventional qubits. We describe a concrete realization of such a topological quantum bus acting between a topological qubit in a Majorana wire network and a conventional semiconductor double quantum dot qubit. Specifically, this device measures the joint (fermion) parity of these two different qubits by using the Aharonov-Casher effect in conjunction with an ancilliary superconducting flux qubit that facilitates the measurement. Such a parity measurement, together with the ability to apply Hadamard gates to the two qubits, allows one to produce states in which the topological and conventional qubits are maximally entangled and to teleport quantum states between the topological and conventional quantum systems.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures; v2: minor revision

Corporate social responsibility reporting in China: political, social and corporate influences

This paper explores the main drivers of CSR and its reporting for large Chinese listed companies, and identifies the key institutional pressures and stakeholder influences that shape CSR and its reporting. The data were collected through interviews with managers from large listed Chinese companies. Our findings reveal how the Chinese government uses social organisations and social intermediaries to facilitate and mediate CSR and its reporting to meet changing societal expectations across regions, while ensuring that companies remain responsive to the expectations of international stakeholders. We find that CSR and its reporting help companies gain political legitimacy domestically, while retaining their legitimacy in global markets. Companies co-operate with social organisations and social intermediaries actively and continuously. This helped companies secure political legitimacy with the government, while helping officials maintain their social legitimacy. Our findings on regional differences support the idea that relations between Chinese business and society have a fundamental effect on CSR and its reporting

Screening properties and phase transitions in unconventional plasmas for Ising-type quantum Hall states

Utilizing large-scale Monte-Carlo simulations, we investigate an unconventional two-component classical plasma in two dimensions which controls the behavior of the norms and overlaps of the quantum-mechanical wavefunctions of Ising-type quantum Hall states. The plasma differs fundamentally from that which is associated with the two-dimensional XY model and Abelian fractional quantum Hall states. We find that this unconventional plasma undergoes a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition from an insulator to a metal. The parameter values corresponding to Ising-type quantum Hall states lie on the metallic side of this transition. This result verifies the required properties of the unconventional plasma used to demonstrate that Ising-type quantum Hall states possess quasiparticles with non-Abelian braiding statistics.Comment: 16 pages, 14 figures. Submitted to Physical Review

Supplier quality improvement: the value of information under uncertainty

We consider supplier development decisions for prime manufacturers with extensive supply bases producing complex, highly engineered products. We propose a novel modelling approach to support supply chain managers decide the optimal level of investment to improve quality performance under uncertainty. We develop a Poisson–Gamma model within a Bayesian framework, representing both the epistemic and aleatory uncertainties in non-conformance rates. Estimates are obtained to value a supplier quality improvement activity and assess if it is worth gaining more information to reduce epistemic uncertainty. The theoretical properties of our model provide new insights about the relationship between the degree of epistemic uncertainty, the effectiveness of development programmes, and the levels of investment. We find that the optimal level of investment does not have a monotonic relationship with the rate of effectiveness. If investment is deferred until epistemic uncertainty is removed then the expected optimal investment monotonically decreases as prior variance increases but only if the prior mean is above a critical threshold. We develop methods to facilitate practical application of the model to industrial decisions by a) enabling use of the model with typical data available to major companies and b) developing computationally efficient approximations that can be implemented easily. Application to a real industry context illustrates the use of the model to support practical planning decisions to learn more about supplier quality and to invest in improving supplier capability

Taking Cooperative Decisions in Group-Based Wireless Sensor Networks

Several studies have demonstrated that communications are more efficient when cooperative group-based architectures are used in wireless sensor networks (WSN). This type of architecture allows increasing sensor nodes' lifetime by decreasing the number of messages in network. But, the main gap is to know how to take cooperative decisions in order to make the right communication. In this paper, we analyze the main aspects related to collaborative decisions in WSNs. A mathematical analysis will be presented in order to take the correct decision. Finally, the simulations will show the efficiency of the method used to make cooperative decisions in WSNs. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.García Pineda, M.; Lloret, J.; Sendra Compte, S.; Rodrigues, JJPC. (2011). Taking Cooperative Decisions in Group-Based Wireless Sensor Networks. En Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer Verlag (Germany). 61-65. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-23734-8_9S6165Garcia, M., Bri, D., Sendra, S., Lloret, J.: Practical Deployments of Wireless Sensor Networks: a Survey. Int. Journal on Advances in Networks and Services 3(3-4), 170–185 (2010)Lloret, J., Garcia, M., Tomas, J.: Improving Mobile and Ad-hoc Networks performance using Group-Based Topologies. In: Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks II. IFIP, vol. 264, pp. 209–220 (2008)Garcia, M., Lloret, J.: A Cooperative Group-Based Sensor Network for Environmental Monitoring. In: Luo, Y. (ed.) CDVE 2009. LNCS, vol. 5738, pp. 276–279. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)Garcia, M., Sendra, S., Lloret, J., Lacuesta, R.: Saving Energy with Cooperative Group-Based Wireless Sensor Networks. In: Luo, Y. (ed.) CDVE 2010. LNCS, vol. 6240, pp. 73–76. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)Parsa, S., Parand, F.-A.: Cooperative decision making in a knowledge grid environment. Future Generation Computer Systems 23, 932–938 (2007)Soubie, J.-L., Zaraté, P.: Distributed Decision Making: A Proposal of Support Through Cooperative Systems. J. Group Decisions and Negotiation 14(2), 147–158 (2005)Kraemer, K.L., King, J.L.: Computer-based systems for cooperative work and group decision making. ACM Computer Survey 20(2), 115–146 (1988)Kernan, J.B.: Choice Criteria, Decision Behavior, and Personality. Journal of Marketing Research 5(2), 155–164 (1968

A Scalable Correlator Architecture Based on Modular FPGA Hardware, Reuseable Gateware, and Data Packetization

A new generation of radio telescopes is achieving unprecedented levels of sensitivity and resolution, as well as increased agility and field-of-view, by employing high-performance digital signal processing hardware to phase and correlate large numbers of antennas. The computational demands of these imaging systems scale in proportion to BMN^2, where B is the signal bandwidth, M is the number of independent beams, and N is the number of antennas. The specifications of many new arrays lead to demands in excess of tens of PetaOps per second. To meet this challenge, we have developed a general purpose correlator architecture using standard 10-Gbit Ethernet switches to pass data between flexible hardware modules containing Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chips. These chips are programmed using open-source signal processing libraries we have developed to be flexible, scalable, and chip-independent. This work reduces the time and cost of implementing a wide range of signal processing systems, with correlators foremost among them,and facilitates upgrading to new generations of processing technology. We present several correlator deployments, including a 16-antenna, 200-MHz bandwidth, 4-bit, full Stokes parameter application deployed on the Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization.Comment: Accepted to Publications of the Astronomy Society of the Pacific. 31 pages. v2: corrected typo, v3: corrected Fig. 1

Nuclear Activity and the Conditions of Star-formation at the Galactic Center

The Galactic Center is the closest galactic nucleus that can be studied with unprecedented angular resolution and sensitivity. We summarize recent basic observational results on Sagittarius A* and the conditions for star formation in the central stellar cluster. We cover results from the radio, infrared, and X-ray domain and include results from simulation as well. From (sub-)mm and near-infrared variability and near-infrared polarization data we find that the SgrA* system (supermassive black hole spin, a potential temporary accretion disk and/or outflow) is well ordered in its geometrical orientation and in its emission process that we assume to reflect the accretion process onto the supermassive black hole (SMBH).Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, 1 table; published in PoS-SISSA Proceedings of the: Frontier Research in Astrophysics - II, 23-28 May 2016, Mondello (Palermo), Ital

The impact of cardiovascular risk factors on the site and extent of coronary artery disease

Background: In patients with coronary artery disease (CAD), the site and extent of coronary artery involvement in terms of proximal versus distal stenosis and multi- versus single-vessel disease have a crucial effect on patients' outcome. This study was designed to evaluate the relationship between cardiovascular risk factors and the site and extent of coronary artery involvement. Methods: In this study of patients who had undergone coronary angiography in our hospital, 125 with proximal lesions were enrolled as the case group (group 1) and an equal ageand gender-matched number of patients with non-proximal lesions were selected as the control group (group 2). The two groups were compared based on the presence or absence of diabetes mellitus (DM), hypercholesterolaemia, hypertriglyceridaemia, hypertension (HTN) and cigarette smoking. Results: The frequency of DM was 33.6 and 10.4 in the case and control groups, respectively, which was statistically significant (p < 0.0001). However, the frequency of hypercholesterolaemia in the case and control groups was 30.4 and 29.6 (p = 0.89), respectively; for hypertriglyceridaemia it was 19.2 and 16.8 (p = 0.062), respectively; for HTN it was 33.6 and 28.8 (p = 0.4), respectively; and for cigarette smoking it was 28.8 and 39.2 (p = 0.08), respectively, which were not statistically significant. Diabetic patients compared to non-diabetics had more multi-vessel disease (89.1 vs 61, p < 0.0001, respectively), which was statistically significant. There was no relationship between hypercholesterolaemia, hypertriglyceridaemia, HTN and cigarette smoking and extent (multi-vessel involvement) of CAD (p = NS). Conclusion: Proximal and multi-vessel involvement of the coronary arteries in patients with CAD was related to a history of DM but not of hypercholesterolaemia, HTN, cigarette smoking and hypertiglyceridaemia

Experimental Indicators of Accretion Processes in Active Galactic Nuclei

Bright Active Galactic Nuclei are powered by accretion of mass onto the super massive black holes at the centers of the host galaxies. For fainter objects star formation may significantly contribute to the luminosity. We summarize experimental indicators of the accretion processes in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), i.e., observable activity indicators that allow us to conclude on the nature of accretion. The Galactic Center is the closest galactic nucleus that can be studied with unprecedented angular resolution and sensitivity. Therefore, here we also include the presentation of recent observational results on Sagittarius A* and the conditions for star formation in the central stellar cluster. We cover results across the electromagnetic spectrum and find that the Sagittarius A* (SgrA*) system is well ordered with respect to its geometrical orientation and its emission processes of which we assume to reflect the accretion process onto the super massive black hole.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures, conference proceeding: Accretion Processes in Cosmic Sources - APCS2016 - 5-10 September 2016, Saint Petersburg, Russi

Sensorless speed control of five-phase PMSM drives with low current distortion

This paper introduces a design for a sensorless control of a five-phase PMSM drive working at low and zero speeds with low current distortion. The rotor position is obtained through tracking the saturation saliency by measuring the dynamic currents responses of the motor due to the IGBTs switching actions. It uses the fundamental PWM waveform obtained using the multi-phase space vector pulse width modulation only. The saliency tracking algorithm used in this paper doesn’t only improve the quality of the estimated position signals but also guarantees a minimum current distortion through reducing the modifications introduced on the PWM waveform. Simulation results are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed strategy for saliency tracking and current distortion minimizing of a five-phase PMSM motor drive over a wide speed ranges under different load conditions