Spin-to-Orbital Angular Momentum Conversion in Semiconductor Microcavities

We experimentally demonstrate a technique for the generation of optical beams carrying orbital angular momentum using a planar semiconductor microcavity. Despite being isotropic systems, the transverse electric - transverse magnetic (TE-TM) polarization splitting featured by semiconductor microcavities allows for the conversion of the circular polarization of an incoming laser beam into the orbital angular momentum of the transmitted light field. The process implies the formation of topological entities, a pair of optical half-vortices, in the intracavity field

Forecasting the SST space-time variability of the Alboran Sea with genetic algorithms

We propose a nonlinear ocean forecasting technique based on a combination of genetic algorithms and empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis. The method is used to forecast the space-time variability of the sea surface temperature (SST) in the Alboran Sea. The genetic algorithm finds the equations that best describe the behaviour of the different temporal amplitude functions in the EOF decomposition and, therefore, enables global forecasting of the future time-variability.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures; latex compiled with agums.st

Prospects for Energy-Saving Methods of Crushing Brittle Materials

Crushing machines are part of the charge departments of blast-furnace and steel-making shops of metallurgical enterprises. One of the main indicator of the crushing process is its energy efficiency. It is determined by the mass of crushed material when consuming a unit of electricity. The article considers various methods of crushing brittle materials and the design of crushing machines for their implementation. The analysis of the crushers has shown that impact crushers are the most energy-efficient. However, due to a significant drawback (the yield of a suitable product is very small), they are practically not used in the metallurgical industry, in which high requirements are imposed on the finished product fractional composition. In the metallurgical industry, compression crushers are widely used with approximately the same specific energy intensity, that is, with the same energy consumption for the destruction of a unit volume of material of equal strength. Compression fracture is the most energy-intensive crushing method known. In single-roll crushers, a piece of material is fed into the gap between a roll and a solid, stationary plate. During the operation, a complex stress state is generated in the destructed material. Compressive forces act on a piece of crushed material, causing normal compressive stresses in it, as well as an internal torque causing shear stresses. This is achieved by the reduction in energy on crushing by 20–30% in comparison with crushers operating in compression (all other things are equal). The authors describe the design of a crusher, in which the destruction of the processed material occurs due to the forces acting on the crushed piece in one plane towards each other. In this case, only shear stresses arise in the processed piece. The use of crushers, in which the destruction of the processed material occurs due to generation of only tangential stresses in a piece, can reduce the energy consumption per unit of finished product by almost a half. The design of such crushers is a promising direction in the development of machines intended for crushing. © 2021, Allerton Press, Inc

Перспективы развития энергосберегающих способов дробления хрупких материалов

Crushing machines are part of the charge departments of blastfurnace and steelmaking shops of metallurgical enterprises. One of the main indicator of the crushing process is its energy efficiency. It is determined by the mass of crushed material when consuming a unit of electricity. The article considers various methods of crushing brittle materials and the design of crushing machines for their implementation. The analysis of the crushers has shown that impact crushers are the most energyefficient. However, due to a significant drawback (the yield of a suitable product is very small), they are practically not used in the metallurgical industry, in which high requirements are imposed on the finished product fractional composition. In the metallurgical industry, compression crushers are widely used with approximately the same specific energy intensity, that is, with the same energy consumption for the destruction of a unit volume of material of equal strength. Compression fracture is the most energy intensive crushing method known. In singleroll crushers, a piece of material is fed into the gap between a roll and a solid, stationary plate. During the operation a complex stress state is generated in the destructed material. Compressive forces act on a piece of crushed material, causing normal compressive stresses in it, and an internal torque, causing shear stresses. This is achieved by the reduction in energy on crushing by 20 - 30 % in comparison with crushers operating in compression (all other things are equal). The authors describe the design of a crusher, in which the destruction of the processed material occurs due to the forces acting on the crushed piece in one plane towards each other. In this case, only shear stresses arise in the processed piece. The use of crushers, in which the destruction of the processed material occurs due to generation of only tangential stresses in a piece, can reduce the energy consumption per unit of finished product by almost a half. The design of such crushers is a promising direction in the development of machines intended for crushing. © 2021 National University of Science and Technology MISIS. All rights reserved

Variations on the Deuteron

We consider few problems which are related to the deuteron and have simple analytical solution. Relation is found between the deuteron electric quadrupole moment and the $np$-scattering amplitude. The degree of circular polarization of photons is calculated for the radiative capture of longitudinally polarized thermal neutrons. The anapole, electric dipole and magnetic quadrupole moments of the deuteron are calculated.Comment: 14 pages, late

Representation of Time-Varying Stimuli by a Network Exhibiting Oscillations on a Faster Time Scale

Sensory processing is associated with gamma frequency oscillations (30–80 Hz) in sensory cortices. This raises the question whether gamma oscillations can be directly involved in the representation of time-varying stimuli, including stimuli whose time scale is longer than a gamma cycle. We are interested in the ability of the system to reliably distinguish different stimuli while being robust to stimulus variations such as uniform time-warp. We address this issue with a dynamical model of spiking neurons and study the response to an asymmetric sawtooth input current over a range of shape parameters. These parameters describe how fast the input current rises and falls in time. Our network consists of inhibitory and excitatory populations that are sufficient for generating oscillations in the gamma range. The oscillations period is about one-third of the stimulus duration. Embedded in this network is a subpopulation of excitatory cells that respond to the sawtooth stimulus and a subpopulation of cells that respond to an onset cue. The intrinsic gamma oscillations generate a temporally sparse code for the external stimuli. In this code, an excitatory cell may fire a single spike during a gamma cycle, depending on its tuning properties and on the temporal structure of the specific input; the identity of the stimulus is coded by the list of excitatory cells that fire during each cycle. We quantify the properties of this representation in a series of simulations and show that the sparseness of the code makes it robust to uniform warping of the time scale. We find that resetting of the oscillation phase at stimulus onset is important for a reliable representation of the stimulus and that there is a tradeoff between the resolution of the neural representation of the stimulus and robustness to time-warp. Author Summary Sensory processing of time-varying stimuli, such as speech, is associated with high-frequency oscillatory cortical activity, the functional significance of which is still unknown. One possibility is that the oscillations are part of a stimulus-encoding mechanism. Here, we investigate a computational model of such a mechanism, a spiking neuronal network whose intrinsic oscillations interact with external input (waveforms simulating short speech segments in a single acoustic frequency band) to encode stimuli that extend over a time interval longer than the oscillation's period. The network implements a temporally sparse encoding, whose robustness to time warping and neuronal noise we quantify. To our knowledge, this study is the first to demonstrate that a biophysically plausible model of oscillations occurring in the processing of auditory input may generate a representation of signals that span multiple oscillation cycles.National Science Foundation (DMS-0211505); Burroughs Wellcome Fund; U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Researc

Mechanisms explaining transitions between tonic and phasic firing in neuronal populations as predicted by a low dimensional firing rate model

Several firing patterns experimentally observed in neural populations have been successfully correlated to animal behavior. Population bursting, hereby regarded as a period of high firing rate followed by a period of quiescence, is typically observed in groups of neurons during behavior. Biophysical membrane-potential models of single cell bursting involve at least three equations. Extending such models to study the collective behavior of neural populations involves thousands of equations and can be very expensive computationally. For this reason, low dimensional population models that capture biophysical aspects of networks are needed. \noindent The present paper uses a firing-rate model to study mechanisms that trigger and stop transitions between tonic and phasic population firing. These mechanisms are captured through a two-dimensional system, which can potentially be extended to include interactions between different areas of the nervous system with a small number of equations. The typical behavior of midbrain dopaminergic neurons in the rodent is used as an example to illustrate and interpret our results. \noindent The model presented here can be used as a building block to study interactions between networks of neurons. This theoretical approach may help contextualize and understand the factors involved in regulating burst firing in populations and how it may modulate distinct aspects of behavior.Comment: 25 pages (including references and appendices); 12 figures uploaded as separate file

Легочные секвестрации

Congenital lung malformations account for 2.2 – 6.6% of all congenital abnormalities of the lungs. This is a pretty rare problem as compared to acquired lung diseases. Pulmonary sequestrations account for 0.15 – 1.8% in the incidence of all lung malformations, occupying the second place after the complex abnormalities called “lung agenesis-hypoplasia”. Pulmonary sequestrations are common in children and adolescents so one could encounter them in pediatric practice. But pulmonary sequestrations may be associated with insignificant symptoms or even be asymptomatic in selected pediatric cases. Thereby, adult general practitioners, pulmonologists, and thoracic surgeons may encounter such patients. The aim. Review had the purpose to inform the general practitioners, pulmonologists, and thoracic surgeons about pulmonary sequestrations and their diagnostic, clinics course, and treatment. Conclusion. There is a wide range of congenital abnormalities of human body. Pulmonary sequestrations are only a part of this huge problem. But modern medicine has a vast selection of methods for revealing and treating these conditions (including minimally invasive surgery).Врожденные легочные мальформации встречаются примерно в 2,2–6,6 % случаев среди всего разнообразия врожденных аномалий легких и являются относительно редкой проблемой по сравнению с приобретенными болезнями легких. Частота встречаемости легочных секвестраций (ЛС) в структуре врожденных легочных мальформаций составляет 0,15–1,8 %, что делает их вторыми по частоте после комплекса аномалий, называемых легочной агенезией-гипоплазией. ЛС более характерны для детского возраста и чаще встречаются в педиатрической практике. Однако в некоторых случаях они могут оставаться малосимптомными или протекать бессимптомно в детском и подростковом возрасте. Таким образом, в практике врачей-пульмонологов и торакальных хирургов могут встречаться взрослые пациенты. Целью обзора явилось информирование врачей-пульмонологов, терапевтов, кардиологов, торакальных хирургов о существовании ЛС, особенностях их диагностики, клинического течения и вариантах лечения. Заключение. Врожденные аномалии развития человеческого организма отличаются большим разнообразием. ЛС – лишь часть этой большой проблемы. Однако медицина располагает широким набором методов своевременного распознавания и лечения (включая малоинвазивные) данной патологии

Gain control network conditions in early sensory coding

Gain control is essential for the proper function of any sensory system. However, the precise mechanisms for achieving effective gain control in the brain are unknown. Based on our understanding of the existence and strength of connections in the insect olfactory system, we analyze the conditions that lead to controlled gain in a randomly connected network of excitatory and inhibitory neurons. We consider two scenarios for the variation of input into the system. In the first case, the intensity of the sensory input controls the input currents to a fixed proportion of neurons of the excitatory and inhibitory populations. In the second case, increasing intensity of the sensory stimulus will both, recruit an increasing number of neurons that receive input and change the input current that they receive. Using a mean field approximation for the network activity we derive relationships between the parameters of the network that ensure that the overall level of activity of the excitatory population remains unchanged for increasing intensity of the external stimulation. We find that, first, the main parameters that regulate network gain are the probabilities of connections from the inhibitory population to the excitatory population and of the connections within the inhibitory population. Second, we show that strict gain control is not achievable in a random network in the second case, when the input recruits an increasing number of neurons. Finally, we confirm that the gain control conditions derived from the mean field approximation are valid in simulations of firing rate models and Hodgkin-Huxley conductance based models