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Nuclear Materials Stewardship Within the DOE Environmental Management Program
The Department of Energy (DOE) Environmental Management (EM) Program has made significant progress in planning disposition of its excess nuclear materials and has recently completed several noteworthy studies. Since establishment in 1997, the EM Nuclear Material Stewardship Program has developed disposition plans for excess nuclear materials to support facility deactivation. All nuclear materials have been removed from the Miamisburg Environmental Management Project (Mound), and disposition planning is nearing completion for the Fernald Environmental Management Project and the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site. Only a few issues remain for materials at the Hanford and Idaho sites. Recent trade studies include the Savannah River Site Canyons Nuclear Materials Identification Study, a Cesium/Strontium Management Alternatives Trade Study, a Liquid Technical Standards Trade Study, an Irradiated Beryllium Reflectors with Tritium study, a Special Performance Assessment Required Trade Study, a Neutron Source Trade Study, and development of discard criteria for uranium. A Small Sites Workshop was also held. Potential and planned future activities include updating the Plutonium-239 storage study, developing additional packaging standards, developing a Nuclear Material Disposition Handbook, determining how to recover or dispose of Pu-244 and U-233, and working with additional sites to define disposition plans for their nuclear materials
Primary prevention of beta-cell autoimmunity and type 1 diabetes - The Global Platform for the Prevention of Autoimmune Diabetes (GPPAD) perspectives.
OBJECTIVE: Type 1 diabetes can be identified by the presence of beta-cell autoantibodies that often arise in the first few years of life. The purpose of this perspective is to present the case for primary prevention of beta-cell autoimmunity and to provide a study design for its implementation in Europe. METHODS: We examined and summarized recruitment strategies, enrollment rates, and outcomes in published TRIGR, FINDIA and BABYDIET primary prevention trials, and the TEDDY intensive observational study. A proposal for a recruitment and implementation strategy to perform a phase II/III primary prevention randomized controlled trial in infants with genetic risk for developing beta-cell autoimmunity is outlined. RESULTS: Infants with a family history of type 1 diabetes (TRIGR, BABYDIET, TEDDY) and infants younger than age 3 months from the general population (FINDIA, TEDDY) were enrolled into these studies. All studies used HLA genotyping as part of their eligibility criteria. Predicted beta-cell autoimmunity risk in the eligible infants ranged from 3% (FINDIA, TEDDY general population) up to 12% (TRIGR, BABYDIET). Amongst eligible infants, participation was between 38% (TEDDY general population) and 97% (FINDIA). Outcomes, defined as multiple beta-cell autoantibodies, were consistent with predicted risks. We subsequently modeled recruitment into a randomized controlled trial (RCT) that could assess the efficacy of oral insulin treatment as adapted from the Pre-POINT pilot trial. The RCT would recruit infants with and without a first-degree family history of type 1 diabetes and be based on general population genetic risk testing. HLA genotyping and, for the general population, genotyping at additional type 1 diabetes susceptibility SNPs would be used to identify children with around 10% risk of beta-cell autoimmunity. The proposed RCT would have 80% power to detect a 50% reduction in multiple beta-cell autoantibodies by age 4 years at a two-tailed alpha of 0.05, and would randomize around 1160 infants to oral insulin or placebo arms in order to fulfill this. It is estimated that recruitment would require testing of between 400,000 and 500,000 newborns or infants. CONCLUSION: It is timely and feasible to establish a platform for primary prevention trials for type 1 diabetes in Europe. This multi-site European infrastructure would perform RCTs, supply data coordination and biorepository, provide cohorts for mechanistic and observational studies, and increase awareness for autoimmune diabetes.This work was supported by The Leona M. & Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust Grants #2015PG-T1D072 and #2015PG-T1D071.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.molmet.2016.02.00
First experimental test of Bell inequalities performed using a non-maximally entangled state
We report on the realisation of a new test of Bell inequalities using the
superposition of type I parametric down conversion produced in two different
non-linear crystals pumped by the same laser, but with different polarisation.
The produced state is non-maximally entangled. We discuss the advantages and
the possible developments of this configuration
Bell State Preparation using Pulsed Non-Degenerate Two-Photon Entanglement
We report a novel Bell state preparation experiment. High-purity Bell states
are prepared by using femtosecond pulse pumped \emph{nondegenerate} collinear
spontaneous parametric down-conversion. The use of femtosecond pump pulse {\em
does not} result in reduction of quantum interference visibility in our scheme
in which post-selection of amplitudes and other traditional mechanisms, such
as, using thin nonlinear crystals or narrow-band spectral filters are not used.
Another distinct feature of this scheme is that the pump, the signal, and the
idler wavelengths are all distinguishable, which is very useful for quantum
communications.Comment: 4 pages, submitted to PR
Generic entanglement generation, quantum statistics and complementarity
A general and an arbitrarily efficient scheme for entangling the spins (or
any spin-like degree of freedom) of two independent uncorrelated identical
particles by a combination of two particle interferometry and which way
detection is formulated. It is shown that the same setup could be used to
identify the quantum statistics of the incident particles from either the sign
or the magnitude of measured spin correlations. Our setup also exhibits a
curious complementarity between particle distinguishability and the amount of
generated entanglement.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev. Let
On Preparing Entangled Pairs of Polarization Qubits in the Frequency Non-Degenerate Regime
The problems associated with practical implementation of the scheme proposed
for preparation of arbitrary states of polarization ququarts based on biphotons
are discussed. The influence of frequency dispersion effects are considered,
and the necessity of group velocities dispersion compensation in the frequency
non-degenerate case even for continuous pumping is demonstrated. A method for
this compensation is proposed and implemented experimentally. Physical
restrictions on the quality of prepared two-photon states are revealed.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure
Contradiction of Quantum Mechanics with Local Hidden Variables for Continuous Variable Quadrature Phase Amplitude Measurements
We demonstrate a contradiction of quantum mechanics with local hidden
variable theories for continuous variable quadrature phase amplitude
(``position'' and ``momentum'') measurements, by way of a violation of a Bell
inequality. For any quantum state, this contradiction is lost for situations
where the quadrature phase amplitude results are always macroscopically
distinct. We show that for optical realisations of this experiment, where one
uses homodyne detection techniques to perform the quadrature phase amplitude
measurement, one has an amplification prior to detection, so that macroscopic
fields are incident on photodiode detectors. The high efficiencies of such
detectors may open a way for a loophole-free test of local hidden variable
theories.Comment: 9 pages,4 figures, previously publishe
Review of recent experimental progresses in Foundations of Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Information obtained in Parametric Down Conversion Experiments at IENGF
We review some recent experimental progresses concerning Foundations of
Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Information obtained in Quantum Optics Laboratory
"Carlo Novero" at IENGF.
More in details, after a short presentation of our polarization entangled
photons source (based on precise superposition of two Type I PDC emission) and
of the results obtained with it, we describe an innovative double slit
experiment where two degenerate photons produced by PDC are sent each to a
specific slit. Beyond representing an interesting example of relation between
visibility of interference and "welcher weg" knowledge, this configuration has
been suggested for testing de Broglie-Bohm theory against Standard Quantum
Mechanics. Our results perfectly fit SQM results, but disagree with dBB
predictions.
Then, we discuss a recent experiment addressed to clarify the issue of which
wave-particle observables are really to be considered when discussing wave
particle duality. This experiments realises the Agarwal et al. theoretical
proposal, overcoming limitations of a former experiment.
Finally, we hint to the realization of a high-intensity
high-spectral-selected PDC source to be used for quantum information studies
Violations of Bell Inequalities for Measurements with Macroscopic Uncertainties: What does it Mean to Violate Macroscopic Local Realism?
We suggest to test the premise of ``macroscopic local realism'' which is
sufficient to derive Bell inequalities when measurements of photon number are
only accurate to an uncertainty of order photons, where is macroscopic.
Macroscopic local realism is only sufficient to imply, in the context of the
original Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument, fuzzy ``elements of reality'' which
have a macroscopic indeterminacy. We show therefore how the violation of local
realism in the presence of macroscopic uncertainties implies the failure of
``macroscopic local realism''. Quantum states violating this macroscopic local
realism are presented.Comment: 28 pages, 5 figures- new version is unchanged but tightened-20 pages,
5 figure
A tomographic approach to quantum nonlocality
We propose a tomographic approach to study quantum nonlocality in continuous
variable quantum systems. On one hand we derive a Bell-like inequality for
measured tomograms. On the other hand, we introduce pseudospin operators whose
statistics can be inferred from the data characterizing the reconstructed
state, thus giving the possibility to use standard Bell's inequalities.
Illuminating examples are also discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, IOP style, to appear in the Special Issue of J
Opt.B connected with Wigner Centennial conference (references added and
updated
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