13,310 research outputs found
Damage-free single-mode transmission of deep-UV light in hollow-core PCF
Transmission of UV light with high beam quality and pointing stability is
desirable for many experiments in atomic, molecular and optical physics. In
particular, laser cooling and coherent manipulation of trapped ions with
transitions in the UV require stable, single-mode light delivery. Transmitting
even ~2 mW CW light at 280 nm through silica solid-core fibers has previously
been found to cause transmission degradation after just a few hours due to
optical damage. We show that photonic crystal fiber of the kagom\'e type can be
used for effectively single-mode transmission with acceptable loss and bending
sensitivity. No transmission degradation was observed even after >100 hours of
operation with 15 mW CW input power. In addition it is shown that
implementation of the fiber in a trapped ion experiment significantly increases
the coherence times of the internal state transfer due to an increase in beam
pointing stability
Extreme State Aggregation Beyond MDPs
We consider a Reinforcement Learning setup where an agent interacts with an
environment in observation-reward-action cycles without any (esp.\ MDP)
assumptions on the environment. State aggregation and more generally feature
reinforcement learning is concerned with mapping histories/raw-states to
reduced/aggregated states. The idea behind both is that the resulting reduced
process (approximately) forms a small stationary finite-state MDP, which can
then be efficiently solved or learnt. We considerably generalize existing
aggregation results by showing that even if the reduced process is not an MDP,
the (q-)value functions and (optimal) policies of an associated MDP with same
state-space size solve the original problem, as long as the solution can
approximately be represented as a function of the reduced states. This implies
an upper bound on the required state space size that holds uniformly for all RL
problems. It may also explain why RL algorithms designed for MDPs sometimes
perform well beyond MDPs.Comment: 28 LaTeX pages. 8 Theorem
Anisotropic s-wave superconductivity in single crystals CaAlSi from penetration depth measurements
In- and out-of-plane London penetration depths were measured in single
crystals CaAlSi (T_{c}=6.2 K and 7.3 K) using a tunnel-diode resonator. A full
3D BCS analysis of the superfluid density is consistent with a prolate
spheroidal gap, with a weak-coupling BCS value in the ab-plane and stronger
coupling along the c-axis. The gap anisotropy was found to significantly
decrease for higher T_{c} samples.Comment: 4 page
Evaluation of the Galalpha1-3Gal epitope as a host modification factor eliciting natural humoral immunity to enveloped viruses
Human sera contain high levels of natural antibody (Ab) to Galalpha1-3Gal, a terminal glycosidic structure expressed on the surface of cells of mammals other than Old World primates. Incorporation of this determinant onto retroviral membranes by passage of viruses in cells encoding alpha-1-3-galactosyltransferase (GT) renders retroviruses sensitive to lysis by natural Ab and complement in normal human serum (NHS). Plasma membrane-budding viruses representing four additional virus groups were examined for their sensitivities to serum inactivation after passage through human cell lines that lack a functional GT or human cells expressing recombinant porcine GT. The inactivation of lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) by NHS directly correlated with host modification of the virus via expression of Galalpha1-3Gal and was blocked by incorporation of soluble Galalpha1-3Gal disaccharide into the inactivation assay. GT-deficient mice immunized to make high levels of Ab to Galalpha1-3Gal (anti-Gal Ab) were tested for resistance to LCMV passaged in GT-expressing cells. Resistance was not observed, but in vitro analyses of the mouse immune sera revealed that the antiviral activity of the sera was insufficient to eliminate LCMV infectivity on its natural targets of infection, macrophages, which express receptors for Ab and complement. Newcastle disease virus and vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) were inactivated by NHS regardless of cell passage history, whereas Sindbis virus (SV) passaged in human cells resisted inactivation. Both VSV and SV passaged in Galalpha1-3Gal-expressing human cells incorporated this sugar moiety onto their major envelope glycoproteins. SV passaged in mouse cells expressing Galalpha1-3Gal was moderately sensitive to inactivation by NHS. These results indicate that enveloped viruses expressing Galalpha1-3Gal differ in their sensitivities to NHS and that a potent complement source, such as that in NHS, is required for efficient inactivation of sensitive viruses in vitro and in vivo
Capillary Filling of Anodized Alumina Nanopore Arrays
The filling behavior of a room temperature solvent,
perfluoromethylcyclohexane, in approximately 20 nm nanoporous alumina membranes
was investigated in situ with small angle x-ray scattering. Adsorption in the
pores was controlled reversibly by varying the chemical potential between the
sample and a liquid reservoir via a thermal offset, T. The system
exhibited a pronounced hysteretic capillary filling transition as liquid was
condensed into the nanopores. These results are compared with Kelvin-Cohan
theory, with a modified Derjaguin approximation, as well as with predictions by
Cole and Saam.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, pre-proof
Individualised risk assessment for diabetic retinopathy and optimisation of screening intervals: a scientific approach to reducing healthcare costs.
To access publisher's full text version of this article, please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links field or click on the hyperlink at the top of the page marked Files.
This article is open access.To validate a mathematical algorithm that calculates risk of diabetic retinopathy progression in a diabetic population with UK staging (R0-3; M1) of diabetic retinopathy. To establish the utility of the algorithm to reduce screening frequency in this cohort, while maintaining safety standards.The cohort of 9690 diabetic individuals in England, followed for 2 years. The algorithms calculated individual risk for development of preproliferative retinopathy (R2), active proliferative retinopathy (R3A) and diabetic maculopathy (M1) based on clinical data. Screening intervals were determined such that the increase in risk of developing certain stages of retinopathy between screenings was the same for all patients and identical to mean risk in fixed annual screening. Receiver operating characteristic curves were drawn and area under the curve calculated to estimate the prediction capability.The algorithm predicts the occurrence of the given diabetic retinopathy stages with area under the curve =80% for patients with type II diabetes (CI 0.78 to 0.81). Of the cohort 64% is at less than 5% risk of progression to R2, R3A or M1 within 2 years. By applying a 2 year ceiling to the screening interval, patients with type II diabetes are screened on average every 20 months, which is a 40% reduction in frequency compared with annual screening.The algorithm reliably identifies patients at high risk of developing advanced stages of diabetic retinopathy, including preproliferative R2, active proliferative R3A and maculopathy M1. Majority of patients have less than 5% risk of progression between stages within a year and a small high-risk group is identified. Screening visit frequency and presumably costs in a diabetic retinopathy screening system can be reduced by 40% by using a 2 year ceiling. Individualised risk assessment with 2 year ceiling on screening intervals may be a pragmatic next step in diabetic retinopathy screening in UK, in that safety is maximised and cost reduced by about 40%.Icelandic Research Counci
- …