5,051 research outputs found
School-based curriculum development as reflective practice: a case study in Hong Kong
This paper examines a school-based curriculum development (SBCD) experience in Hong Kong. Traditionally, curriculum change in Hong Kong has normally been bureaucratic with teachers’ actions monitored. This qualitative case study investigates the lived experience of an SBCD practice. Semi-structured interviews were utilized to examine teachers’ perceptions of the reflective SBCD experience in their school and what adaptations they had made when delivering the school-based materials. The findings identified that all teachers held a positive attitude towards this reflective approach to SBCD and emphasized artistry in their teaching practice. Teachers also exercised discretion in response to their students’ level and interests when implementing the school-based curriculum at the classroom level. This research concludes that a reflective approach to curriculum planning with a bottom-up implementation can empower teachers reflecting their creativity, artistry, knowledge of the subject and related pedagogy, and knowledge of their students. The findings of this case study thus contrast sharply with previous research relating to Hong Kong government-led SBCD programs which focus more on meeting the requirements of the intended curriculum than on personalizing the curriculum to meet to learners’ needs
Scheme for teleportation of quantum states onto a mechanical resonator
We propose an experimentally feasible scheme to teleport an unkown quantum
state onto the vibrational degree of freedom of a macroscopic mirror. The
quantum channel between the two parties is established by exploiting radiation
pressure effects.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, in press on PR
Patterns of antihypertensive prescribing, discontinuation and switching among a Hong Kong Chinese population from over one million prescriptions
Hypertension is an alarming public health problem among Chinese. The present study evaluated the prescribing patterns, discontinuation and switching profiles of antihypertensive agents and their associated factors in one Hong Kong Chinese population. Data were retrieved from computerized records for patients prescribed anti-hypertensive agents in government primary care clinics of Hong Kong from January, 2004 to June, 2007. A total of 1,069,836 antihypertensive drug visits, representing 67,028 patients, were analyzed. The most commonly prescribed drugs were Calcium Channel Blockers (CCBs) (49%), b-Blockers (BBs) (46%) and Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitors (ACEIs) (19%). Thiazide diuretic prescribing was low (13%) and on the decline (14% in 2004 to 12% in 2007). Prescribing of ACEIs was rising (16% in 2004 to 23% in 2007). Patients’ age, gender, and socio-economic status were independent predictors of class of anti-hypertensive prescribed but explained less than 3.5% of the variation observed. Drug discontinuation was highest for BBs (21%) and lowest for CCBs (12%). The high rates of discontinuation in BBs remained apparent after controlling for confounding variables. Switching was less common than discontinuation and was most likely with thiazide diuretics. To summarize, prescribing of CCBs and BBs were high and that of thiazide diuretics particularly low in this Chinese population when compared with international trends. CCBs may be a particularly favorable antihypertensive treatment in Chinese, given the high discontinuation rates of BBs and international guidelines advising against the use of BBs as first-line therapy. The low use of thiazide diuretics warrants further clinical and cost effectiveness studies among Chinese
Adaptive phase estimation is more accurate than non-adaptive phase estimation for continuous beams of light
We consider the task of estimating the randomly fluctuating phase of a
continuous-wave beam of light. Using the theory of quantum parameter
estimation, we show that this can be done more accurately when feedback is used
(adaptive phase estimation) than by any scheme not involving feedback
(non-adaptive phase estimation) in which the beam is measured as it arrives at
the detector. Such schemes not involving feedback include all those based on
heterodyne detection or instantaneous canonical phase measurements. We also
demonstrate that the superior accuracy adaptive phase estimation is present in
a regime conducive to observing it experimentally.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, submitted to PR
Operational Theory of Homodyne Detection
We discuss a balanced homodyne detection scheme with imperfect detectors in
the framework of the operational approach to quantum measurement. We show that
a realistic homodyne measurement is described by a family of operational
observables that depends on the experimental setup, rather than a single field
quadrature operator. We find an explicit form of this family, which fully
characterizes the experimental device and is independent of a specific state of
the measured system. We also derive operational homodyne observables for the
setup with a random phase, which has been recently applied in an ultrafast
measurement of the photon statistics of a pulsed diode laser. The operational
formulation directly gives the relation between the detected noise and the
intrinsic quantum fluctuations of the measured field. We demonstrate this on
two examples: the operational uncertainty relation for the field quadratures,
and the homodyne detection of suppressed fluctuations in photon statistics.Comment: 7 pages, REVTe
Distinguishing between optical coherent states with imperfect detection
Several proposed techniques for distinguishing between optical coherent
states are analyzed under a physically realistic model of photodetection.
Quantum error probabilities are derived for the Kennedy receiver, the Dolinar
receiver and the unitary rotation scheme proposed by Sasaki and Hirota for
sub-unity detector efficiency. Monte carlo simulations are performed to assess
the effects of detector dark counts, dead time, signal processing bandwidth and
phase noise in the communication channel. The feedback strategy employed by the
Dolinar receiver is found to achieve the Helstrom bound for sub-unity detection
efficiency and to provide robustness to these other detector imperfections
making it more attractive for laboratory implementation than previously
believed
Does nonlinear metrology offer improved resolution? Answers from quantum information theory
A number of authors have suggested that nonlinear interactions can enhance
resolution of phase shifts beyond the usual Heisenberg scaling of 1/n, where n
is a measure of resources such as the number of subsystems of the probe state
or the mean photon number of the probe state. These suggestions are based on
calculations of `local precision' for particular nonlinear schemes. However, we
show that there is no simple connection between the local precision and the
average estimation error for these schemes, leading to a scaling puzzle. This
puzzle is partially resolved by a careful analysis of iterative implementations
of the suggested nonlinear schemes. However, it is shown that the suggested
nonlinear schemes are still limited to an exponential scaling in \sqrt{n}.
(This scaling may be compared to the exponential scaling in n which is
achievable if multiple passes are allowed, even for linear schemes.) The
question of whether nonlinear schemes may have a scaling advantage in the
presence of loss is left open.
Our results are based on a new bound for average estimation error that
depends on (i) an entropic measure of the degree to which the probe state can
encode a reference phase value, called the G-asymmetry, and (ii) any prior
information about the phase shift. This bound is asymptotically stronger than
bounds based on the variance of the phase shift generator. The G-asymmetry is
also shown to directly bound the average information gained per estimate. Our
results hold for any prior distribution of the shift parameter, and generalise
to estimates of any shift generated by an operator with discrete eigenvalues.Comment: 8 page
An end-to-end hyperspectral scene simulator with alternate adjacency effect models and its comparison with cameoSim
In this research, we developed a new rendering-based end to end Hyperspectral scene simulator CHIMES (Cranfield Hyperspectral Image Modelling and Evaluation System), which generates nadir images of passively illuminated 3-D outdoor scenes in Visible, Near Infrared (NIR) and Short-Wave Infrared (SWIR) regions, ranging from 360 nm to 2520 nm. MODTRAN TM (MODerate resolution TRANsmission), is used to generate the sky-dome environment map which includes sun and sky radiance along with the polarisation effect of the sky due to Rayleigh scattering. Moreover, we perform path tracing and implement ray interaction with medium and volumetric backscattering at rendering time to model the adjacency effect. We propose two variants of adjacency models, the first one incorporates a single spectral albedo as the averaged background of the scene, this model is called the Background One-Spectra Adjacency Effect Model (BOAEM), which is a CameoSim like model created for performance comparison. The second model calculates background albedo from a pixel’s neighbourhood, whose size depends on the air volume between sensor and target, and differential air density up to sensor altitude. Average background reflectance of all neighbourhood pixel is computed at rendering time for estimating the total upwelled scattered radiance, by volumetric scattering. This model is termed the Texture-Spectra Incorporated Adjacency Effect Model (TIAEM). Moreover, for estimating the underlying atmospheric condition MODTRAN is run with varying aerosol optical thickness and its total ground reflected radiance (TGRR) is compared with TGRR of known in-scene material. The Goodness of fit is evaluated in each iteration, and MODTRAN’s output with the best fit is selected. We perform a tri-modal validation of simulators on a real hyperspectral scene by varying atmospheric condition, terrain surface models and proposed variants of adjacency models. We compared results of our model with Lockheed Martin’s well-established scene simulator CameoSim and acquired Ground Truth (GT) by Hyspex cameras. In clear-sky conditions, both models of CHIMES and CameoSim are in close agreement, however, in searched overcast conditions CHIMES BOAEM is shown to perform better than CameoSim in terms of ℓ1 -norm error of the whole scene with respect to GT. TIAEM produces better radiance shape and covariance of background statistics with respect to Ground Truth (GT), which is key to good target detection performance. We also report that the results of CameoSim have a many-fold higher error for the same scene when the flat surface terrain is replaced with a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) based rugged one
Locally Accessible Information of Multisite Quantum Ensembles Violates Monogamy
Locally accessible information is a useful information-theoretic physical
quantity of an ensemble of multiparty quantum states. We find it has properties
akin to quantum as well as classical correlations of single multiparty quantum
states. It satisfies monotonicity under local quantum operations and classical
communication. However we show that it does not follow monogamy, an important
property usually satisfied by quantum correlations, and actually violates any
such relation to the maximal extent. Violation is obtained even for locally
indistinguishable, but globally orthogonal, multisite ensembles. The results
assert that while single multiparty quantum states are monogamous with respect
to their shared quantum correlations, ensembles of multiparty quantum states
may not be so. The results have potential implications for quantum
communication systems.Comment: 6 pages, RevTeX
Growth, processing, and optical properties of epitaxial Er_2O_3 on silicon
Erbium-doped materials have been investigated for generating and amplifying light in low-power chip-scale optical networks on silicon, but several effects limit their performance in dense microphotonic applications. Stoichiometric ionic crystals are a potential alternative that achieve an Er^(3+) density 100Ă— greater. We report the growth, processing, material characterization, and optical properties of single-crystal Er_2O_3 epitaxially grown on silicon. A peak Er^(3+) resonant absorption of 364 dB/cm at 1535nm with minimal background loss places a high limit on potential gain. Using high-quality microdisk resonators, we conduct thorough C/L-band radiative efficiency and lifetime measurements and observe strong upconverted luminescence near 550 and 670 nm
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