A Quantum Electrodynamical Foundation for Molecular Photonics

In this review the authors describe some of the advances in the quantum electrodynamical formulation of theory for molecular photonics. Earlier work has been extended and reformulated for application to real dispersive media—as reflected in the new treatment of refractive, dissipative, and resonance properties. Applications of the new theory have revealed new quantum optical features in two quite different aspects of the familiar process of second harmonic generation, one operating through local coherence within small particles and the other, a coherence between the quantum amplitudes for fundamental and harmonic excitation. Where the salient experiments have been performed, they exactly match the theoretical predictions

A mean-removed variation of weighted universal vector quantization for image coding

Weighted universal vector quantization uses traditional codeword design techniques to design locally optimal multi-codebook systems. Application of this technique to a sequence of medical images produces a 10.3 dB improvement over standard full search vector quantization followed by entropy coding at the cost of increased complexity. In this proposed variation each codebook in the system is given a mean or 'prediction' value which is subtracted from all supervectors that map to the given codebook. The chosen codebook's codewords are then used to encode the resulting residuals. Application of the mean-removed system to the medical data set achieves up to 0.5 dB improvement at no rate expense

Laser optical separation of chiral molecules

The optical trapping of molecules with an off-resonant laser beam involves a forward-Rayleigh scattering mechanism. It is shown that discriminatory effects arise on irradiating chiral molecules with circularly polarized light; the complete representation requires ensemble-weighted averaging to account for the influence of the trapping beam on the distribution of molecular orientations. Results of general application enable comparisons to be drawn between the results for two limits of the input laser intensity. It emerges that, in a racemic mixture, there is a differential driving force whose effect, at high laser intensities, is to produce differing local concentrations of the two enantiomers

Proteomics FASTA Archive and Reference Resource

A FASTA file archive and reference resource has been added to ProteomeCommons.org. Motivation for this new functionality derives from two primary sources. The first is the recent FASTA standardization work done by the Human Proteome Organization's Proteomics Standards Initiative (HUPO-PSI). Second is the general lack of a uniform mechanism to properly cite FASTA files used in a study, and to publicly access such FASTA files post-publication. An extension to the Tranche data sharing network has been developed that includes web-pages, documentation, and tools for facilitating the use of FASTA files. These include conversion to the new HUPO-PSI format, and provisions for both citing and publicly archiving FASTA files. This new resource is available immediately, free of charge, and can be accessed at http://www.proteomecommons.org/data/fasta/. Source-code for related tools is also freely available under the BSD license.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/58584/1/1756_ftp.pd

"A Carnival of Muscle": Popular Amusements and Public Culture in Turn-of-the-Century San Francisco, 1880-1920

This dissertation examines prizefighting and other popular amusements in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century San Francisco both to construct a social history of participants, spectators, and consumers and to illuminate the relationship between popular amusements and politics. Turn-of-the-century San Franciscans promoted and challenged class, racial, and gender identities in the spaces of popular amusement, as in controversies over women's attendance at prizefights. At the same time, these identities were displayed through the production of particular forms of public culture, as in the racialized scripts promoted in the screenings of the film The Birth of a Nation and the suppression of the film version of the Jack Johnson-Jim Jeffries boxing match, in which a black man bested his white opponent. But while such people as athletes, sports enthusiasts, moviegoers, and dance-hall denizens sought entertainment, self-assertion, and sometimes a livelihood from popular amusements, politicians and social reformers often made these civic pastimes the focus of debates about what constituted a modern and progressive city. Would San Francisco's vibrant world of prizefighting persist amid politicians' attempts to sell the city as the modern and progressive choice for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition? Would female dance instructors and prizefighters be able to keep working in San Francisco after a gang of boxers brutally assaulted two women they met in one of the city's most popular dance halls and reformers took up the cause? Much more than a study of urban Americans at play, then, this dissertation uses popular amusements to explore the most pressing and controversial issues of the era: women's rights, race relations, class conflict, ethnic identity, and moral reform