Giant Quantum Reflection of Neon Atoms from a Ridged Silicon Surface

The specular reflectivity of slow, metastable neon atoms from a silicon surface was found to increase markedly when the flat surface was replaced by a grating structure with parallel narrow ridges. For a surface with ridges that have a sufficiently narrow top, the reflectivity was found to increase more than two orders of magnitude at the incident angle of 10 mRad from the surface. The slope of the reflectivity vs the incident angle near zero was found to be nearly an order of magnitude smaller than that of a flat surface. A grating with 6.5% efficiency for the first-order diffraction was fabricated by using the ridged surface structure.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. To be published in J. Phys. Soc. Jp

Brands in international and multi‐platform expansion strategies: economic and management issues

Powerful media branding has historically facilitated successful international expansion on the part of magazine and other content forms including film and TV formats. Multi-platform expansion is now increasingly central to the strategies of media companies and, as this chapter argues, effective use of branding in order to engage audiences effectively and to secure a prominent presence across digital platforms forms a core part of this. Drawing on original research into the experience of UK media companies, this chapter highlights some of the key economic, management and socio-cultural issues raised by the ever-increasing role of brands and branding in the strategies of international and multi-platform expansion that are increasingly common- place across media

Large Scale Spectral Clustering Using Approximate Commute Time Embedding

Spectral clustering is a novel clustering method which can detect complex shapes of data clusters. However, it requires the eigen decomposition of the graph Laplacian matrix, which is proportion to $O(n^3)$ and thus is not suitable for large scale systems. Recently, many methods have been proposed to accelerate the computational time of spectral clustering. These approximate methods usually involve sampling techniques by which a lot information of the original data may be lost. In this work, we propose a fast and accurate spectral clustering approach using an approximate commute time embedding, which is similar to the spectral embedding. The method does not require using any sampling technique and computing any eigenvector at all. Instead it uses random projection and a linear time solver to find the approximate embedding. The experiments in several synthetic and real datasets show that the proposed approach has better clustering quality and is faster than the state-of-the-art approximate spectral clustering methods

Use of Risk Factors to Alter Management for Reduction of Neonatal Calf Diarrhea Incidence

Risk factors associated with calf diarrhea were identified and management strategies were developed to reduce the impact of these risk factors on the incidence of disease. Five hundred forty-one females were bred to calve between March 3 and May 15, 1998. Risk factors identified included: parity, the different origin of the groups of cattle, weather, poor body condition score, and intensity of calving. These cattle were forty-six percent first calf heifers, the remainder of the cattle were mature cows. The heifers were from five different sources, and the mature cows were from the ISU Rhodes farm. The groups had never been commingled. The body condition scores of the cattle averaged below five, and there was a high maintenance requirement because of muddy conditions and frequent wet hair coats due to the continuing rains. Two hundred of the heifers were bred to calve in twenty-six days, and the first one hundred ninety-five cows were due to calve in a total of thirty days. Procedures were developed to allow a one-way flow of the cow/calf pairs through calving areas to reduce the contact of the calves with possible large numbers of pathogens and separate first parity heifers from the mature cows

A spatially resolved limb flare on Algol B observed with XMM-Newton

We report XMM-Newton observations of the eclipsing binary Algol A (B8V) and B (K2III). The XMM-Newton data cover the phase interval 0.35 - 0.58, i.e., specifically the time of optical secondary minimum, when the X-ray dark B-type star occults a major fraction of the X-ray bright K-type star. During the eclipse a flare was observed with complete light curve coverage. The decay part of the flare can be well described with an exponential decay law allowing a rectification of the light curve and a reconstruction of the flaring plasma region. The flare occurred near the limb of Algol B at a height of about 0.1R with plasma densities of a few times 10^11 cm^-3 consistent with spectroscopic density estimates. No eclipse of the quiescent X-ray emission is observed leading us to the conclusion that the overall coronal filling factor of Algol B is small.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, accepted by A&

Discriminating between elderly and young using a fractal dimension analysis of centre of pressure

The aim of this project was to evaluate the use of a new analysis technique, fractal dimension analysis, for quantification of quiet stance centre of pressure (COP). By using a fractal dimension analysis of COP, it might be possible to gain more information about control during quiet stance than traditional analyses have previously allowed. The current project considered a group of young healthy participants and a group of elderly healthy participants to compare traditional measures of COP against a fractal dimension analysis of COP. Results indicated that both types of analyses are able to distinguish between eyes open and eyes closed in the elderly group. However, the fractal dimension analysis more accurately detected differences between the participant groups when standing with their eyes closed. Based on these results it is suggested that fractal dimension analysis is more informative about posture control than traditional measures. It is suggested that a fractal dimension type of analysis can be incorporated into clinical testing to identify patients with pathologies

Isolation of polymorphic microsatellites in the stemless thistle (Cirsium acaule) and their utility in other Cirsium species

The genus Cirsium includes species with both widespread and restricted geographical distributions, several of which are serious weeds. Nine polymorphic microsatellite loci were isolated from the stemless thistle Cirsium acaule. Eight were polymorphic in C. acaule, six in C. arvense and seven in C. heterophyllum. One locus monomorphic in C. acaule showed polymorphism in C. heterophyllum. The mean number of alleles per locus was 4.1 in C. acaule, 6.2 in C. arvense and 2.9 in C. heterophyllum. These nine loci were also amplified in C. eriophorum and C. vulgare, suggesting that these markers may be of use throughout the genus

Single-bit Feedback and Quantum Dynamical Decoupling

Synthesizing an effective identity evolution in a target system subjected to unwanted unitary or non-unitary dynamics is a fundamental task for both quantum control and quantum information processing applications. Here, we investigate how single-bit, discrete-time feedback capabilities may be exploited to enact or to enhance quantum procedures for effectively suppressing unwanted dynamics in a finite-dimensional open quantum system. An explicit characterization of the joint unitary propagators correctable by a single-bit feedback strategy for arbitrary evolution time is obtained. For a two-dimensional target system, we show how by appropriately combining quantum feedback with dynamical decoupling methods, concatenated feedback-decoupling schemes may be built, which can operate under relaxed control assumptions and can outperform purely closed-loop and open-loop protocols.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure