Field-Tunable 0-pi-Transitions in SnTe Topological Crystalline Insulator SQUIDs.

Schonle J, Borisov K, Klett R, et al. Field-Tunable 0-pi-Transitions in SnTe Topological Crystalline Insulator SQUIDs. Scientific reports. 2019;9(1): 1987.The manifestation of spin-orbit interactions, long known to dramatically affect the band structure of heavy-element compounds, governs the physics in the surging class of topological matter. A particular example is found in the new family of topological crystalline insulators. In this systems transport occurs at the surfaces and spin-momentum locking yields crystal-symmetry protected spin-polarized transport. We investigated the current-phase relation of SnTe thin films connected to superconducting electrodes to form SQUID devices. Our results demonstrate that an assisting in-plane magnetic field component can induce 0-π-transitions. We attribute these findings to giant g-factors and large spin-orbit coupling of SnTe topological crystalline insulator, which provides a new platform for investigation of the interplay between spin-orbit physics and topological transport

Are we there yet? Electronic Resources Discovery in WorldCat

In 2012 the UMD Libraries began implementing WorldShare Collection Manager to manage the Libraries’ electronic collections and to make them accessible in the Libraries’ discovery system, WorldCat UMD. The panel will discuss how our understanding of WorldCat Discovery (WCD) informs our work to make the Libraries' resources available to students, faculty, staff, and others who rely on OCLC catalog records for library resource discovery. Our discussion will: provide background information on WCD; discuss its advantages and disadvantages; highlight cross-departmental collaboration and workflows; and finally, discuss new work in response to the Covid-19 Pandemic, in particular, work to implement the HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Service, and to make undiscoverable and important electronic resources, such as the Adam Matthew Digital American Indian Histories and Cultures collection discoverable and accessible

A Threat-and-Defense Perspective on the Psychological Dynamics Behind the Covid-19 Pandemic

In this review, we analyse the Covid-19 pandemic in the light of the General Process Model of Threat and Defense (GPMTD; Jonas et al., 2014) and describe motivational and affective consequences resulting from the psychological threat elicited by the pandemic: Covid-19 did not only abruptly change everyday life, but also confronted people with existential questions. This led to the experience of discrepancies that people could not resolve, triggering an aversive state of anxious inhibition. People were motivated to overcome this anxiety using defensive behaviours that re-establish approach motivation. Such defensive behaviours include conspiratorial thinking and increased ingroup support. While describing the pandemic, we review evidence in favour and against the model to develop concrete suggestions to effectively promote non-destructive reactions to manage affective-motivational challenges resulting from the pandemic. In a final outlook, we conclude that the evidence generated may be used to analyse and react to future crises and their related psychological threats

Exact field ionization rates in the barrier suppression-regime from numerical TDSE calculations

Numerically determined ionization rates for the field ionization of atomic hydrogen in strong and short laser pulses are presented. The laser pulse intensity reaches the so-called "barrier suppression ionization" regime where field ionization occurs within a few half laser cycles. Comparison of our numerical results with analytical theories frequently used shows poor agreement. An empirical formula for the "barrier suppression ionization"-rate is presented. This rate reproduces very well the course of the numerically determined ground state populations for laser pulses with different length, shape, amplitude, and frequency. Number(s): 32.80.RmComment: Enlarged and newly revised version, 22 pages (REVTeX) + 8 figures in ps-format, submitted for publication to Physical Review A, WWW: http://www.physik.tu-darmstadt.de/tqe

Computational models as predictors of HIV treatment outcomes for the Phidisa cohort in South Africa

Background: Selecting the optimal combination of HIV drugs for an individual in resourcelimited settings is challenging because of the limited availability of drugs and genotyping.Objective: The evaluation as a potential treatment support tool of computational models that predict response to therapy without a genotype, using cases from the Phidisa cohort in South Africa.Methods: Cases from Phidisa of treatment change following failure were identified that had the following data available: baseline CD4 count and viral load, details of failing and previous antiretroviral drugs, drugs in new regimen and time to follow-up. The HIV Resistance Response Database Initiative’s (RDI’s) models used these data to predict the probability of a viral load < 50 copies/mL at follow-up. The models were also used to identify effective alternative combinations of three locally available drugs.Results: The models achieved accuracy (area under the receiver–operator  characteristic curve) of 0.72 when predicting response to therapy, which is less accurate than for an independent global test set (0.80) but at least comparable to that of genotyping with rules-based interpretation. The models were able to identify alternative locally available three-drug regimens that were predicted to be effective in 69% of all cases and 62% of those whose new treatment failed in the clinic.Conclusion: The predictive accuracy of the models for these South African patients together with the results of previous studies suggest that the RDI’s models have the potential to optimise treatment selection and reduce virological failure in different patient populations, without the use of a genotype

Nevirapine and efavirenz elicit different changes in lipid profiles in antiretroviral-therapy-naive patients infected with HIV-1

Patients infected with HIV-1 initiating antiretroviral therapy (ART) containing a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI) show presumably fewer atherogenic lipid changes than those initiating most ARTs containing a protease inhibitor. We analyzed whether lipid changes differed between the two most commonly used NNRTIs, nevirapine (NVP) and efavirenz (EFV)

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13