Bloch Oscillations of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen States

Bloch Oscillations (BOs) of quantum particles manifest themselves as periodic spreading and re-localization of the associated wave functions when traversing lattice potentials subject to external gradient forces. Albeit BOs are deeply rooted into the very foundations of quantum mechanics, all experimental observations of this phenomenon so far have only contemplated dynamics of one or two particles initially prepared in separable local states, which is well described by classical wave physics. Evidently, a more general description of genuinely quantum BOs will be achieved upon excitation of a Bloch-oscillator lattice system by nonlocal states, that is, containing correlations in contradiction with local realism. Here we report the first experimental observation of BOs of two-particle Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen states (EPR), whose associated N-particle wave functions are nonlocal by nature. The time evolution of two-photon EPR states in Bloch-oscillators, whether symmetric, antisymmetric or partially symmetric, reveals unexpected transitions from particle antibunching to bunching. Consequently, the initial state can be tailored to produce spatial correlations akin to bosons, fermions or anyons. These results pave the way for a wider class of photonic quantum simulators.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure

Partial Stochastic Analysis with the Aglink-Cosimo Model: A Methodological Overview

Aglink-Cosimo is a recursive-dynamic partial equilibrium model developed and maintained by the OECD and FAO Secretariats as a collaborative effort. The model is primarily used to prepare the OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook, a yearly publication aiming at providing baseline projections for the main global agricultural commodities over the medium term. This deterministic projections are enhanced by a Partial Stochastic Analysis tool, which allows for the analysis of specific market uncertainties. This is done by producing counterfactual scenarios to the baseline originating from varying yields and macroeconomic variables stochastically. The aim of this report is to propose and evaluate different methods of analysing stochastically important yields and macroeconomic uncertainty drivers. In a first stage, we identify and evaluate the best parametric method to extract unexplained variability, which we consider as uncertainty in the macro and yield drivers. In a second stage, we test parametric and nonparametric methods side by side to simulate ten years of potentially different macroeconomic and yield environments. The results can be summarised as follows. For yields, we find out that a parametric cubic trend method performs best in the first stage and a non-parametric hierarchical copula (Clayton) method is more appropriate in the second stage. For macroeconomic variables, a vector autoregressive model performs best in the first stage, while a non-parametric hierarchical copula (Frank) method is more appropriate in the second stage.JRC.D.4-Economics of Agricultur

Orientations to Happiness and University Students’ Engagement during the COVID-19 Era: Evidence from Six American Countries

Positive personal characteristics such as happiness or wellbeing can motivate students to elevate their school performance in higher education. Orientation to happiness is a construct that combines three sources of happiness: pleasure, meaning, and engagement, all of which have been identified as a predictor of university student’s engagement. However, most research in this area has been conducted during ideal situations or face-to-face education, and no cross-country research has been published examining the relationship between these two concepts during the COVID-19 era, where online education was predominant. This study aimed to investigate the relation between orientation to happiness and student engagement after twelve months of distance education in a sample of 1723 students from six American countries, including the USA, Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia, Peru, and the Dominican Republic. Results indicate that university student´s' engagement is influenced by the orientation to happiness. Further implications of these results are discussed

Development of an interface for digital neuromorphic hardware based on an FPGA

Exploring and understanding the functioning of the human brain is one of the greatest challenges for current research. Neuromorphic engineering tries to address this challenge by abstracting biological mechanisms and translating them into technology. Via the abstraction process and experiments with the resulting technical system, an attempt is made to obtain information about the biological counterpart. One subsection of Neuromorphic Engineering (NE) are Spiking Neural Networks (SNN), which describe the structures of the human brain more and more closely than Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). Together with their dedicated hardware, SNNs provide a good platform for developing new algorithms for information processing. In the context of these neuromorphic hardware platforms, this paper aims to develop an interface for a digital hardware platform (SPINN-3 Development Board) to enable the use of industrial or conventional sensors and thus create new approaches for experimental research. The basis for this endeavor is a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), which is placed as a gateway between the sensors and the neuromorphic hardware. Overall, the developed system provides a robust solution for a wide variety of investigations related to neuromorphic hardware and SNNs. Furthermore, the solution also offers suitable possibilities to monitor all processes within the system in order to obtain suitable measurements, which can be examined in search of meaningful results.Comment: Accepted for publication with Proceedings of the Unified Conference of DAMAS, InCoME and TEPEN Conferences (UNIfied 2023), Springer Natur

High-resolution QTL mapping in Tetranychus urticae reveals acaricide-specific responses and common target-site resistance after selection by different METI-I acaricides

Arthropod herbivores cause dramatic crop losses, and frequent pesticide use has led to widespread resistance in numerous species. One such species, the two-spotted spider mite, Tetranychus urticae, is an extreme generalist herbivore and a major worldwide crop pest with a history of rapidly developing resistance to acaricides. Mitochondrial Electron Transport Inhibitors of complex I (METI-Is) have been used extensively in the last 25 years to control T. urticae around the globe, and widespread resistance to each has been documented. METI-I resistance mechanisms in T. urticae are likely complex, as increased metabolism by cytochrome P450 monooxygenases as well as a target-site mutation have been linked with resistance. To identify loci underlying resistance to the METI-I acaricides fenpyroximate, pyridaben and tebufenpyrad without prior hypotheses, we crossed a highly METI-I-resistant strain of T. urticae to a susceptible one, propagated many replicated populations over multiple generations with and without selection by each compound, and performed bulked segregant analysis genetic mapping. Our results showed that while the known H92R target-site mutation was associated with resistance to each compound, a genomic region that included cytochrome P450-reductase (CPR) was associated with resistance to pyridaben and tebufenpyrad. Within CPR, a single nonsynonymous variant distinguished the resistant strain from the sensitive one. Furthermore, a genomic region linked with tebufenpyrad resistance harbored a non-canonical member of the nuclear hormone receptor 96 (NHR96) gene family. This NHR96 gene does not encode a DNA-binding domain (DBD), an uncommon feature in arthropods, and belongs to an expanded family of 47 NHR96 proteins lacking DBDs in T. urticae. Our findings suggest that although cross-resistance to METI-Is involves known detoxification pathways, structural differences in METI-I acaricides have also resulted in resistance mechanisms that are compound-specific

Commodity Market Development in Europe – Outlook Workshop 2014. Proceedings

This report contains a summary and the presentations of the expert workshop 'Commodity Market Development in Europe – Outlook', held in October 2014 in Brussels. The workshop was held in order to present and discuss the preliminary results of the DG AGRI outlook on EU agricultural market developments. The workshop gathered high-level policy makers, modelling and market experts and provided a forum to present and discuss recent and projected developments on the EU agricultural and commodity markets, to outline the reasons behind observed and prospected developments, and to draw conclusions on the short/medium term perspectives of European agricultural markets in the context of world market developments. Special focus was given on the discussion of the influence of different settings/assumptions (regarding e.g. drivers of demand and supply, macroeconomic uncertainties, etc.) on the projected market developments.JRC.J.4-Agriculture and Life Sciences in the Econom

Time-frequency analysis based on minimum-norm spectral estimation to detect induction motor faults

Producción CientíficaIn this work, a new time-frequency tool based on minimum-norm spectral estimation is introduced for multiple fault detection in induction motors. Several diagnostic techniques are available to identify certain faults in induction machines; however, they generally give acceptable results only for machines operating under stationary conditions. Induction motors rarely operate under stationary conditions as they are constantly affected by load oscillations, speed waves, unbalanced voltages, and other external conditions. To overcome this issue, different time-frequency analysis techniques have been proposed for fault detection in induction motors under non-stationary regimes. However, most of them have low-resolution, low-accuracy or both. The proposed method employs the minimum-norm spectral estimation to provide high frequency resolution and accuracy in the time-frequency domain. This technique exploits the advantages of non-stationary conditions, where mechanical and electrical stresses in the machine are higher than in stationary conditions, improving the detectability of fault components. Numerical simulation and experimental results are provided to validate the effectiveness of the method in starting current analysis of induction motors.Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (Proyecto 487058)Universidad de Guanajuato (Proyecto 248495/2019

Documentation of the European Comission’s EU module of the Aglink-Cosimo modelling system

This report documents the EU module of Aglink-Cosimo model. Aglink-Cosimo is a recursive-dynamic, partial equilibrium, supply demand model of world agriculture developed by the OECD and FAO Secretariats. The model is used to simulate development of annual supply, demand and prices for the main agricultural commodities produced, consumed and traded worldwide. Aglink-Cosimo covers 44 individual countries and 12 regions, and 40 commodities clearing markets at the world level. At the EU level, the Aglink-Cosimo model is used to produce the "Prospects for Agricultural Markets and Income in the EU". This is a yearly exercise that provides a detailed overview of EU agricultural markets with a 10 year time horizon. It incorporates information from policy makers and market experts in the European Commission, stakeholders, researchers and modellers. The EU Outlook intends to provide a broad consensus about the evolution of European Agriculture in the medium-term. It serves as reference timeline for counterfactual policy analysis and market analysis done in numerous research sites in Europe. The report includes a detailed presentation and discussion of the structure and specific features of the model, along with the theoretical underpinnings. It also documents the process of calibration such as to obtain a medium-term baseline and different efforts towards the validation of results. Nonetheless, different applications in the area of uncertainty analysis and the use of partial stochastics are also included.JRC.J.4-Agriculture and Life Sciences in the Econom

New Passive Instruments Developed for Ocean Monitoring at the Remote Sensing Lab—Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

Lack of frequent and global observations from space is currently a limiting factor in many Earth Observation (EO) missions. Two potential techniques that have been proposed nowadays are: (1) the use of satellite constellations, and (2) the use of Global Navigation Satellite Signals (GNSS) as signals of opportunity (no transmitter required). Reflectometry using GNSS opportunity signals (GNSS-R) was originally proposed in 1993 by Martin-Neira (ESA-ESTEC) for altimetry applications, but later its use for wind speed determination has been proposed, and more recently to perform the sea state correction required in sea surface salinity retrievals by means of L-band microwave radiometry (TB). At present, two EO space-borne missions are currently planned to be launched in the near future: (1) ESA's SMOS mission, using a Y-shaped synthetic aperture radiometer, launch date November 2nd, 2009, and (2) NASA-CONAE AQUARIUS/SAC-D mission, using a three beam push-broom radiometer. In the SMOS mission, the multi-angle observation capabilities allow to simultaneously retrieve not only the surface salinity, but also the surface temperature and an “effective” wind speed that minimizes the differences between observations and models. In AQUARIUS, an L-band scatterometer measuring the radar backscatter (σ0) will be used to perform the necessary sea state corrections. However, none of these approaches are fully satisfactory, since the effective wind speed captures some sea surface roughness effects, at the expense of introducing another variable to be retrieved, and on the other hand the plots (TB-σ0) present a large scattering. In 2003, the Passive Advance Unit for ocean monitoring (PAU) project was proposed to the European Science Foundation in the frame of the EUropean Young Investigator Awards (EURYI) to test the feasibility of GNSS-R over the sea surface to make sea state measurements and perform the correction of the L-band brightness temperature. This paper: (1) provides an overview of the Physics of the L-band radiometric and GNSS reflectometric observations over the ocean, (2) describes the instrumentation that has been (is being) developed in the frame of the EURYI-funded PAU project, (3) the ground-based measurements carried out so far, and their interpretation in view of placing a GNSS-reflectometer as secondary payload in future SMOS follow-on missions

Plan estratégico de mercadeo para artesanías de la etnia wayuu colombiana en Bogotá, Medellín, Cartagena, Barranquilla y Santa Marta

El presente trabajo constituyó la realización de una propuesta de comercialización para el desarrollado de la comunidad Wayuu, a partir de su artesanía, en las ciudades colombianas de Bogotá, Medellín, Cartagena, Barranquilla y Santa Marta. Nació como producto de un vacío planteado por algunos representantes de la comunidad Wayuu a uno de los integrantes del grupo de investigación, donde se planteó la paulatina disminución en las ventas y producción de los productos artesanales de los indígenas Wayuu, en especial en el municipio de Uríbia. De esta forma se formalizó el trabajo investigativo para conocer detalles de la producción artesanal Wayuu y su proceso de la distribución, en cada una de las fuentes, para así compilar datos que permitieran establecer las estrategias de mejoramiento para ambos frentes. En lo relativo al frente de producción, se identificaron los componentes principales de los sistemas de producción existentes en el municipio de Uríbia, sus alrededores (rancherías), hasta Manáure, para incorporarlos al análisis de una matriz DOFA de Producción, que permitiera establecer las estrategias apropiadas para optimizar dicho proceso. De igual manera, en el frente de distribución se identificaron los componentes de este proceso, en las cinco ciudades seleccionadas, incorporándolos a una matriz DOFA de Distribución, que permitió formular estrategias de mejoramiento para la comercialización de cara a los distribuidores de artesanías Wayuu en las ciudades de estudio. Dentro de los resultados encontrados en la Producción de la artesanía Wayuu, podemos resaltar los siguientes: Elaboración de productos 100% manuales, con diseños exclusivos y una alta calidad y colorido, que transmite el conocimiento ancestral del arte de tejeduría Wayuu; palpable falencia de una organización productiva integral; márgenes de utilidad escasos, sumados a una baja rotación de los productos, con consecuencias evidentes en una nula seguridad social, deserción artesanal, y aumento de los niveles de pobreza indígena. Sin embargo, existen claras oportunidades de mejoramiento ante el interés estatal del gobierno Uribe, para un mejor nivel de vida de los pueblos indígenas. Para el proceso de comercialización de la artesanía Wayuu, se encontró como resultado relevante el reconocimiento del producto Wayuu por su diseño, colorido y calidad; amenazado por la creciente presencia de artesanías de otras regiones y países.Incluye bibliografí