Quantum optomechanics of a multimode system coupled via photothermal and radiation pressure force

We provide a full quantum description of the optomechanical system formed by a Fabry-Perot cavity with a movable micro-mechanical mirror whose center-of-mass and internal elastic modes are coupled to the driven cavity mode by both radiation pressure and photothermal force. Adopting a quantum Langevin description, we investigate simultaneous cooling of the micromirror elastic and center-of-mass modes, and also the entanglement properties of the optomechanical multipartite system in its steady state.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

DSS Untuk Menganalisis PH Kesuburan Tanah Menggunakan Metode Single Linkage

PH tanah merupakan ukuran jumlah ion hidrogen dalam suatu larutan di dalam tanah. pH tanah sangat berpengaruh terhadap kesuburan pada tanah untuk kelangsungan hidup pada tanaman. Pada penelitian ini akan ditampilkan hasil perbandingan Algoritma Hierarchical Clustering (HC) menggunakan metode Single Linkage dengan metode Complete Linkage dan Average Linkage. Algoritma ini digunakan untuk menganalisis pH tanah yang selanjutnya dimanfaatkan dalam Decision Support System (DSS). Sistem ini dapat membantu para penyuluh pertanian dalam membantu memberikan saran jenis tanaman yang cocok kepada para petani. Sistem dirancang sebagai aplikasi berbasis web. Hasil perbandingan ketiga algoritma Hierarchical Clustering tersebut menunjukkan bahwa jarak antar cluster terpendek, yaitu 5,10593 diperoleh menggunakan metode Single Linkage. Metode Complete Linkage memberi jarak antar cluster sebesar 13,506813, sedangkan metode Average Lingkage menghasilkan jarak antar cluster sebesar 11,663673. Dengan demikian dapat disimpulkan jarak antar cluster yang semakin pendek akan memperoleh waktu penggabungan antar cluster yang semakin cepat untuk mencapai hasil akhir.Kata Kunci—Hierarchical clustering, pH tanah, single linkage, jarak antar cluster

Marketing authorization procedures for advanced cancer drugs: exploring the views of patients, oncologists, healthcare decision makers and citizens in France

International audienceBackground. The past decades have seen advances in cancer treatments in terms of toxicity and side effects but progress in the treatment of advanced cancer has been modest. New drugs have emerged improving progression free survival but with little impact on overall survival, raising questions about the criteria on which to base decisions to grant marketing authorizations and about the authorization procedure itself. For decisions to be fair, transparent and accountable, it is necessary to consider the views of those with relevant expertise and experience. Methods. We conducted a Q-study to explore the views of a range of stakeholders in France, involving: 54 patients (18 months after diagnosis); 50 members of the general population; 27 oncologists; 19 healthcare decision makers; and 2 individuals from the pharmaceutical industry. Results. Three viewpoints emerged, focussing on different dimensions entitled: 1) ‘Quality of life (QoL), opportunity cost and participative democracy’; 2)‘QoL and patient-centeredness’; and 3) ‘Length of life’. Respondents from all groups were associated with each viewpoint, except for healthcare decision makers, who were only associated with the first one. Conclusion. Our results highlight plurality in the views of stakeholders, emphasize the need for transparency in decision making processes, and illustrate the importance of a re-evaluation of treatments for all 3 viewpoints. In the context of advanced cancer, our results suggest that QoL should be more prominent amongst authorization criteria, as it is a concern for 2 of the 3 viewpoints

Recommendations on multiple testing adjustment in multi-arm trials with a shared control group

Multi-arm clinical trials assessing multiple experimental treatments against a shared control group can offer efficiency advantages over independent trials through assessing an increased number of hypotheses. Published opinion is divided on the requirement for multiple testing adjustment to control the family-wise type-I error rate (FWER). The probability of a false positive error in multi-arm trials compared to equivalent independent trials is affected by the correlation between comparisons due to sharing control data. We demonstrate that this correlation in fact leads to a reduction in the FWER, therefore FWER adjustment is not recommended solely due to sharing control data. In contrast, the correlation increases the probability of multiple false positive outcomes across the hypotheses, although standard FWER adjustment methods do not control for this. A stringent critical value adjustment is proposed to maintain equivalent evidence of superiority in two correlated comparisons to that obtained within independent trials. FWER adjustment is only required if there is an increased chance of making a single claim of effectiveness by testing multiple hypotheses, not due to sharing control data. For competing experimental therapies, the correlation between comparisons can be advantageous as it eliminates bias due to the experimental therapies being compared to different control populations

Cognitive functions in epileptic patients on lamotrigine and other antiepileptic drugs

Background and purpose: Anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs) can affect cognitive functions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of lamotrigine (LT) on cognitive functions of patients with epilepsy. Materials and methods: A study with retrospective cohort design was carried out in which we assessed cognitive functions of 20 IGE patients attending Sari Bu Ali Hospital, and 12 healthy subjects. The control group was matched for age, sex, and educational level. Standardized neuropsychological tests were used to evaluate cognitive functions. The study was analyzed applying one-way ANOVA and Tukey Test in SPSS. Results: Compared with the control group, LT group showed poor performance in Stroop test and verbal fluency test-semantic test (P<0.05). The group on other drugs were also found to have poor performance in verbal fluency test (phonetic and semantic), forward digit span task, and Stroop test compared with those of the control group (P<0.05). Conclusion: Compared with LT, other AEDs had more adverse effects on cognitive functions which could be due to their effect on channels and release changing stimulatory neurotransmitters. © 2019, Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved

Thermoluminescence behavior of KClXBr1−X: in mixed crystals exposed to gamma radiation

In-doped KClXBr1−X (X=1, 0.75, 0.5, 0.25 and 0) mixed crystal has been grown by the Czochralski method. The segregation coefficient of In was studied by the inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). The crystal structure has been determined using X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. The thermoluminescence (TL) characterization of KClXBr1−X mixed crystals, exposed to gamma radiation has been performed. The results show the introduction of the dopants ions induced changes in the TL glow curve structure. The TL results suggest that doped KClXBr1−X mixed crystal has good potential active dosimeter applications for gamma ray irradiation

Co‐foundress confinement elicits kinship effects in a naturally sub‐social parasitoid

Kinship among interacting individuals is often associated with sociality and also with sex ratio effects. Parasitoids in the bethylid genus Goniozus are sub-social, with single foundress females exhibiting post-ovipositional maternal care via short-term aggressive host and brood defence against conspecific females. Due to local mate competition (LMC) and broods normally being produced by a single foundress, sex ratios are female biased. Contests between adult females are, however, not normally fatal and aggression is reduced when competing females are kin, raising the possibility of multi-foundress reproduction on some hosts. Here we screen for further life-history effects of kinship by varying the numbers and relatedness of foundresses confined together with a host resource and also by varying the size of host. We confined groups of 1 to 8 Goniozus nephantidis females together with a host for 5+ days. Multi-foundress groups were either all siblings or all non-siblings. Our chief expectations included that that competition for resources would be more intense among larger foundress groups but diminished by both larger host size and closer foundress relatedness, affecting both foundress mortality and reproductive output. From classical LMC theory, we expected that offspring group sex ratios would be less female biased when there were more foundresses and from extended LMC theory we expected that sex ratios would be more female biased when foundresses were close kin. We found that confinement led to the death of some females (11% overall) but only when host resources were most limiting. Mortality of foundresses was less common when foundresses were siblings. Developmental mortality among offspring was considerably higher in multi-foundress clutches but was unaffected by foundress relatedness. Groups of sibling foundresses collectively produced similar numbers of offspring to non-sibling groups. There was little advantage for individual females to reproduce in multi-foundress groups: single foundresses suppressed even the largest hosts presented and had the highest per capita production of adult offspring. Despite single-foundress reproduction being the norm, G. nephantidis females in multi-foundress groups appear to attune sex allocation according to both foundress number and foundress relatedness: broods produced by sibling foundresses had sex ratios similar to broods produced by single foundresses (ca. 11% males) whereas the sex ratios of broods produced by non-sibling females were approximately 20% higher and broadly increased with foundress number. We conclude that relatedness and host size may combine to reduce selection against communal reproduction on hosts and that, unlike other studied parasitoids, G. nephantidis sex ratios conform to predictions of both classical and extended LMC theor

Effect of Age on Variability in the Production of Text-Based Global Inferences

As we age, our differences in cognitive skills become more visible, an effect especially true for memory and problem solving skills (i.e., fluid intelligence). However, by contrast with fluid intelligence, few studies have examined variability in measures that rely on one’s world knowledge (i.e., crystallized intelligence). The current study investigated whether age increased the variability in text based global inference generation–a measure of crystallized intelligence. Global inference generation requires the integration of textual information and world knowledge and can be expressed as a gist or lesson. Variability in generating two global inferences for a single text was examined in young-old (62 to 69 years), middle-old (70 to 76 years) and old-old (77 to 94 years) adults. The older two groups showed greater variability, with the middle elderly group being most variable. These findings suggest that variability may be a characteristic of both fluid and crystallized intelligence in aging

Visualizing dimensionality reduction of systems biology data

One of the challenges in analyzing high-dimensional expression data is the detection of important biological signals. A common approach is to apply a dimension reduction method, such as principal component analysis. Typically, after application of such a method the data is projected and visualized in the new coordinate system, using scatter plots or profile plots. These methods provide good results if the data have certain properties which become visible in the new coordinate system and which were hard to detect in the original coordinate system. Often however, the application of only one method does not suffice to capture all important signals. Therefore several methods addressing different aspects of the data need to be applied. We have developed a framework for linear and non-linear dimension reduction methods within our visual analytics pipeline SpRay. This includes measures that assist the interpretation of the factorization result. Different visualizations of these measures can be combined with functional annotations that support the interpretation of the results. We show an application to high-resolution time series microarray data in the antibiotic-producing organism Streptomyces coelicolor as well as to microarray data measuring expression of cells with normal karyotype and cells with trisomies of human chromosomes 13 and 21