UN-Behindertenrechtskonvention: UN prüfen 2014 die Umsetzung in Deutschland

Im September 2014 prüft der UN-Ausschuss für die Rechte von Menschen mit Behinderungen erstmals in einem internationalen Verfahren, wie Deutschland die UN-Behindertenrechtskonvention umsetzt. Das Verfahren bietet die Chance, die Rechte von Menschen mit Behinderungen in Deutschland zu stärken. Die Monitoring-Stelle zur UN-Behindertenrechtskonvention fordert die politisch Verantwortlichen in Bund und Ländern auf, das Prüfungsverfahren aktiv mitzugestalten

Rapid Neutrophil Response Controls Fast-Replicating Intracellular Bacteria but Not Slow-Replicating Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Being one of the first cells to invade the site of infection, neutrophils play an important role in the control of various bacterial and viral infections. In the present work, the contribution of neutrophils to the control of infection with different intracellular bacteria was investigated. Mice were treated with the neutrophil-depleting monoclonal antibody RB6-8C5, and the time course of infection in treated and untreated mice was compared by using intracellular bacterial species and strains varying in virulence and replication rate. The results indicate that neutrophils are crucial for the control of fast-replicating intracellular bacteria, whereas early neutrophil effector mechanisms are dispensable for the control of the slow-replicating Mycobacterium tuberculosi

Single-qubit optical quantum fingerprinting

We analyze and demonstrate the feasibility and superiority of linear optical single-qubit fingerprinting over its classical counterpart. For one-qubit fingerprinting of two-bit messages, we prepare `tetrahedral' qubit states experimentally and show that they meet the requirements for quantum fingerprinting to exceed the classical capability. We prove that shared entanglement permits 100% reliable quantum fingerprinting, which will outperform classical fingerprinting even with arbitrary amounts of shared randomness.Comment: 4 pages, one figur

Peptide Antigen Treatment of Naive and Virus-Immune Mice: Antigen-Specific Tolerance Versus Immunopathology

AbstractPeptide-specific down-regulation of T cell responses may represent a powerful tool to intervene in autoimmune diseases or graft rejections. It is therefore important to know whether peptide treatment tolerizes both naive and antigen-experienced memory T lymphocytes. Here we show that a major histocompatibility complex class I binding peptide, derived from the glycoprotein (GP33 peptide) of lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV), specifically tolerized naive cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) when administered three times intraperitoneally in incomplete Freund's adjuvants. However, in the presence of GP33-specific memory CTL in LCMV-primed mice, the same treatment had a general immunosuppressive effect on unrelated third-party antigen-specific T cell responses and caused severe immunopathological damage to the spleen

Zukunftspotenzial entfalten: Die Aktionspläne der Länder zur Umsetzung der UN-Behindertenrechtskonvention

Der politische Handlungsansatz "Aktionspläne" hat sich im Zusammenhang mit der UN-Behindertenrechtskonvention (UN-BRK) über eine Dekade hinweg von einer großen Unbekannten zu einem fast landläufig genutzten Instrument entwickelt. Die vorliegende Analyse untersucht die derzeit in den Ländern geltenden Aktionspläne (Stichtag 01.11.2019) und prüft, ob die Länder die allgemeinen und menschenrechtlich spezifischen Fragen, die sich bei der Umsetzung der UN-BRK stellen, darin reflektieren und insbesondere, wie sie diese Fragen beantwortet haben. Dabei sucht sie zum einen nach guten und überzeugenden Lösungen, zum anderen überprüft sie, ob menschenrechtliche Mindeststandards, etwa zu Querschnitt und Prozessgestaltung, hinreichend zum Tragen gekommen sind

Optimal photons for quantum-information processing

Photonic quantum-information processing schemes, such as linear optics quantum computing, and other experiments relying on single-photon interference, inherently require complete photon indistinguishability to enable the desired photonic interactions to take place. Mode-mismatch is the dominant cause of photon distinguishability in optical circuits. Here we study the effects of photon wave-packet shape on tolerance against the effects of mode mismatch in linear optical circuits, and show that Gaussian distributed photons with large bandwidth are optimal. The result is general and holds for arbitrary linear optical circuits, including ones which allow for postselection and classical feed forward. Our findings indicate that some single photon sources, frequently cited for their potential application to quantum-information processing, may in fact be suboptimal for such applications

Improving the performance of bright quantum dot single photon sources using amplitude modulation

Single epitaxially-grown semiconductor quantum dots have great potential as single photon sources for photonic quantum technologies, though in practice devices often exhibit non-ideal behavior. Here, we demonstrate that amplitude modulation can improve the performance of quantum-dot-based sources. Starting with a bright source consisting of a single quantum dot in a fiber-coupled microdisk cavity, we use synchronized amplitude modulation to temporally filter the emitted light. We observe that the single photon purity, temporal overlap between successive emission events, and indistinguishability can be greatly improved with this technique. As this method can be applied to any triggered single photon source, independent of geometry and after device fabrication, it is a flexible approach to improve the performance of solid-state systems, which often suffer from excess dephasing and multi-photon background emission