7,316 research outputs found
Research competency and specialist registration: Quo vadis?
The requirement of ‘research completion’ as necessary for specialist registration with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) has recently been subject to legal action, with a court order potentially shifting requirements beyond those envisaged by the HPCSA. The research requirement is congruent with National Department of Health strategy in this regard, i.e. the strengthening of research as a stated priority. While the expectation of research competency is not in itself contentious, the capacity of institutions and the ability of registrars to facilitate and complete, respectively, have brought the issue into focus. Specifically, the apparent discrepancy between a court order and a regulation needs to be resolved to ensure that specialist registration is not unduly hampered, while ensuring that a potentially important contributor to a national priority is not prejudiced
Magnetotransport and the upper critical magnetic field in MgB2
Magnetotransport measurements are presented on polycrystalline MgB2 samples.
The resistive upper critical magnetic field reveals a temperature dependence
with a positive curvature from Tc = 39.3 K down to about 20 K, then changes to
a slightly negative curvature reaching 25 T at 1.5 K. The 25- Tesla upper
critical field is much higher than what is known so far on polycrystals of MgB2
but it is in agreement with recent data obtained on epitaxial MgB2 films. The
deviation of Bc2(T) from standard BCS might be due to the proposed two-gap
superconductivity in this compound. The observed quadratic normal-state
magnetoresistance with validity of Kohler's rule can be ascribed to classical
trajectory effects in the low-field limit.Comment: 6 pages, incl. 3 figure
A multideterminant assessment of mean field methods for the description of electron transfer in the weak coupling regime
Multideterminant calculations have been performed on model systems to
emphasize the role of many-body effects in the general description of charge
quantization experiments. We show numerically and derive analytically that a
closed-shell ansatz, the usual ingredient of mean-field methods, does not
properly describe the step-like electron transfer characteristic in weakly
coupled systems. With the multideterminant results as a benchmark, we have
evaluated the performance of common ab initio mean field techniques, such as
Hartree Fock (HF) and Density Functional Theory (DFT) with local and hybrid
exchange correlation functionals, with a special focus on spin-polarization
effects. For HF and hybrid DFT, a qualitatively correct open-shell solution
with distinct steps in the electron transfer behaviour can be obtained with a
spin-unrestricted (i.e., spin-polarized) ansatz though this solution differs
quantitatively from the multideterminant reference. We also discuss the
relationship between the electronic eigenvalue gap and the onset of charge
transfer for both HF and DFT and relate our findings to recently proposed
practical schemes for calculating the addition energies in the Coulomb blockade
regime for single molecule junctions from closed-shell DFT within the local
density approximation
General variational many-body theory with complete self-consistency for trapped bosonic systems
In this work we develop a complete variational many-body theory for a system
of trapped bosons interacting via a general two-body potential. In this
theory both the many-body basis functions {\em and} the respective expansion
coefficients are treated as variational parameters. The optimal variational
parameters are obtained {\em self-consistently} by solving a coupled system of
non-eigenvalue -- generally integro-differential -- equations to get the
one-particle functions and by diagonalizing the secular matrix problem to find
the expansion coefficients. We call this theory multi-configurational Hartree
for bosons or MCHB(M), where M specifies explicitly the number of one-particle
functions used to construct the configurations. General rules for evaluating
the matrix elements of one- and two-particle operators are derived and applied
to construct the secular Hamiltonian matrix. We discuss properties of the
derived equations. It is demonstrated that for any practical computation where
the configurational space is restricted, the description of trapped bosonic
systems strongly depends on the choice of the many-body basis set used, i.e.,
self-consistency is of great relevance. As illustrative examples we consider
bosonic systems trapped in one- and two-dimensional symmetric and asymmetric
double-well potentials. We demonstrate that self-consistency has great impact
on the predicted physical properties of the ground and excited states and show
that the lack of self-consistency may lead to physically wrong predictions. The
convergence of the general MCHB(M) scheme with a growing number M is validated
in a specific case of two bosons trapped in a symmetric double-well.Comment: 53 pages, 8 figure
Superconducting energy gap in MgCNi3 single crystals: Point-contact spectroscopy and specific-heat measurements
Specific heat has been measured down to 600 mK and up to 8 Tesla by the
highly sensitive AC microcalorimetry on the MgCNi3 single crystals with Tc ~ 7
K. Exponential decay of the electronic specific heat at low temperatures proved
that a superconducting energy gap is fully open on the whole Fermi surface, in
agreement with our previous magnetic penetration depth measurements on the same
crystals. The specific-heat data analysis shows consistently the strong
coupling strength 2D/kTc ~ 4. This scenario is supported by the direct gap
measurements via the point-contact spectroscopy. Moreover, the spectroscopy
measurements show a decrease in the critical temperature at the sample surface
accounting for the observed differences of the superfluid density deduced from
the measurements by different techniques
Quantum State Engineering Via Coherent-State Superpositions
The quantum interference between the two parts of the optical Schrodinger-cat state makes possible to construct a wide class of quantum states via discrete superpositions of coherent states. Even a small number of coherent states can approximate the given quantum states at a high accuracy when the distance between the coherent states is optimized, e. g. nearly perfect Fock state can be constructed by discrete superpositions of n + 1 coherent states lying in the vicinity of the vacuum state
D-Branes, Tachyons and K-Homology
We present an overview of the ways in which D-brane charges are classified in
terms of K-theory, emphasizing the natural physical interpretations of a
homological classification within a topological setting.Comment: 18 pages AMSTeX, 3 eps figures; Based on invited lecture given at the
Workshop on Algebraic Geometry and Physics ``K-Theory, Derived Categories and
Strings'', University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy, June 18-21 2002; V2: Clarifying
comments and reference adde
Host-Imposed Copper Poisoning Impacts Fungal Micronutrient Acquisition during Systemic Candida albicans Infections
This work was supported by the European Research Council (http://erc.europa.eu/: STRIFE Advanced Grant ERC-2009-AdG-249793). A.J.P.B. was also supported by the UK Biotechnology and Biological Research Council (www.bbsrc.ac.uk: Research Grants BB/F00513X/1, BB/K017365/1), the UK Medical Research Council (www.mrc.ac.uk: Programme Grant MR/M026663/1; Centre Grant MR/ N006364/1), and the Wellcome Trust (www.wellcome.ac.uk: Strategic Award 097377)Peer reviewedPublisher PD
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