Decoherence of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering

We consider two systems A and B that share Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering correlations and study how these correlations will decay, when each of the systems are independently coupled to a reservoir. EPR steering is a directional form of entanglement, and the measure of steering can change depending on whether the system A is steered by B, or vice versa. First, we examine the decay of the steering correlations of the two-mode squeezed state. We find that if the system B is coupled to a reservoir, then the decoherence of the steering of A by B is particularly marked, to the extent that there is a sudden death of steering after a finite time. We find a different directional effect, if the reservoirs are thermally excited. Second, we study the decoherence of the steering of a Schr\"odinger cat state, modeled as the entangled state of a spin and harmonic oscillator, when the macroscopic system (the cat) is coupled to a reservoir

Half-Monopole and Multimonopole

We would like to present some exact SU(2) Yang-Mills-Higgs monopole solutions of half-integer topological charge. These solutions can be just an isolated half-monopole or a multimonopole with topological magnetic charge, ${1/2}m$, where $m$ is a natural number. These static monopole solutions satisfy the first order Bogomol'nyi equations. The axially symmetric one-half monopole gauge potentials possess a Dirac-like string singularity along the negative z-axis. The multimonopole gauge potentials are also singular along the z-axis and possess only mirror symmetries.Comment: 12 pages and 4 figures; typos corrected, reference adde

Decay and coherence of two-photon excited yellow ortho-excitons in Cu2O

Photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy has revealed a novel, highly efficient two-photon excitation method to produce a cold, uniformly distributed high density excitonic gas in bulk cuprous oxide. A study of the time evolution of the density, temperature and chemical potential of the exciton gas shows that the so called quantum saturation effect that prevents Bose-Einstein condensation of the ortho-exciton gas originates from an unfavorable ratio between the cooling and recombination rates. Oscillations observed in the temporal decay of the ortho-excitonic luminescence intensity are discussed in terms of polaritonic beating. We present the semiclassical description of polaritonic oscillations in linear and non-linear optical processes.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figure

Mechanical signatures of microbial biofilms in micropillar-embedded growth chambers

Biofilms are surface-attached communities of microorganisms embedded in an extracellular matrix and are essential for the cycling of organic matter in natural and engineered environments. They are also the leading cause of many infections, for example, those associated with chronic wounds and implanted medical devices. The extracellular matrix is a key biofilm component that determines its architecture and defines its physical properties. Herein, we used growth chambers embedded with micropillars to study the net mechanical forces (differential pressure) exerted during biofilm formation in situ. Pressure from the biofilm is transferred to the micropillars via the extracellular matrix, and reduction of major matrix components decreases the magnitude of micropillar deflections. The spatial arrangement of micropillar deflections caused by pressure differences in the different biofilm strains may potentially be used as mechanical signatures for biofilm characterization. Hence, we submit that micropillar-embedded growth chambers provide insights into the mechanical properties and dynamics of the biofilm and its matrix.Singapore. National Research Foundation (Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART)

Retrovirology: 3 at age 2

Retrovirology announces new editorial board members and reprises progress over the first two years of publishing

An immunotherapy survivor population: health-related quality of life and toxicity in patients with metastatic melanoma treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors

© The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.Purpose The immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have resulted in subgroups of patients with metastatic melanoma achievinghigh-quality durable responses. Metastatic melanoma survivors are a new population in the era of cancer survivorship. The aimofthis study was to evaluate metastatic melanoma survivors in terms of health-related quality of life (HRQoL), immune-relatedadverse events (irAEs) and exposure to immunosuppressive agents in a large single centre in the UK.Methods We defined the survivor population as patients with a diagnosis of metastatic melanoma who achieved a durableresponse to an ICI and had been followed-up for a minimum of 12 months from initiation of ICI without disease progression.HRQoL was assessed using SF-36. Electronic health records were accessed to collect data on demographics, treatments, irAEsand survival. HRQoL data was compared with two norm-based datasets.Results Eighty-four metastatic melanoma survivors were eligible and 87% (N = 73) completed the SF-36. ICI-related toxicity ofany grade occurred in 92%of patients and 43%had experienced a grade 3 or 4 toxicity. Almost half (49%) of the patients requiredsteroids for the treatment of ICI-related toxicity, whilst 14% required treatment with an immunosuppressive agent beyondsteroids.Melanoma survivors had statistically significant lower HRQoL scores with regard to physical, social and physical rolefunctioning and general health compared with the normative population. There was a trend towards inferior scores in patientswith previous exposure to ipilimumab compared with those never exposed to ipilimumab.Conclusions Our results show that metastatic melanoma survivors have potentially experienced significant ICI-related toxicityand experience significant impairments in specific HRQoL domains. Future service planning is required to meet this population’sunique survivorship needs.Peer reviewe

Deep learning classification of treatment response in diabetic painful neuropathy: a combined machine learning and magnetic resonance neuroimaging methodological study

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been shown successfully to assess and stratify patients with painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy (pDPN). This supports the idea of using neuroimaging as a mechanism-based technique to individualise therapy for patients with painful DPN. The aim of this study was to use deep learning to predict treatment response in patients with pDPN using resting state functional imaging (rs-fMRI). We divided 43 painful pDPN patients into responders and non-responders to lidocaine treatment (responders n = 29 and non-responders n = 14). We used rs-fMRI to extract functional connectivity features, using group independent component analysis (gICA), and performed automated treatment response deep learning classification with three-dimensional convolutional neural networks (3D-CNN). Using gICA we achieved an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 96.60% and F1-Score of 95% in a ten-fold cross validation (CV) experiment using our described 3D-CNN algorithm. To our knowledge, this is the first study utilising deep learning methods to classify treatment response in pDPN

Sustainable Smart Transportation System: Through the Lens of a Smart City in an Emerging Country

Environmental and social sustainability continue to challenge urban development agendas, especially in emerging markets. Past literature on the topic of smart, sustainable cities has focused relatively less on developing countries – however, during the transient phase, such economies undergo several stages of development which this paper endeavors to investigate. The goal is to define key dimensions essential for evolving existing urban sites into a sustainable ecosystem. In this context, this study puts forward a framework consisting of five pillars: Scalability, Connection, Availability, Productivity, and Environment (SCAPE) to guide the implementation of sustainable cities in developing and tropical countries