1,148 research outputs found
Three-fermion problems in optical lattices
We present exact results for the spectra of three fermionic atoms in a single
well of an optical lattice. For the three lowest hyperfine states of Li6 atoms,
we find a Borromean state across the region of the distinct pairwise Feshbach
resonances. For K40 atoms, nearby Feshbach resonances are known for two of the
pairs, and a bound three-body state develops towards the positive
scattering-length side. In addition, we study the sensitivity of our results to
atomic details. The predicted few-body phenomena can be realized in optical
lattices in the limit of low tunneling.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, minor changes, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let
Characterization of the virulence of phytopathogenic fungal isolates from a native Nicotiana attenuata population
Incorporating Environmental Impacts in the Measurement of Agricultural Productivity Growth
Agricultural production is known to have environmental impacts, both adverse and beneficial, and it is desirable to incorporate at least some of these impacts in an environmentally sensitive productivity index. In this paper, we construct indicators of water contamination from the use of agricultural chemicals. These environmental indicators are merged with data on marketed outputs and purchased inputs to form a state-by-year panel of relative levels of outputs and inputs, including environmental impacts. We do not have prices for these undesirable by products, since they are not marketed. Consequently, we calculate a series of Malmquist productivity indexes, which do not require price information. Our benchmark scenario is a conventional Malmquist productivity index based on marketed outputs and purchased inputs only. Our comparison scenarios consist of environmentally sensitive Malmquist productivity indexes that include indicators of risk to human health and to aquatic life from chronic exposure to pesticides. In addition, we derive a set of virtual prices of the undesirable by-products that can be used to calculate an environmentally sensitive Fisher index of productivity change.environmental impacts, productivity growth, Environmental Economics and Policy,
Efficient broadband highly dispersive HfO<sub>2</sub>/SiO<sub>2</sub> multilayer mirror for pulse compression in near ultraviolet
Comparison of the Whole Cell Proteome and Secretome of Epidemic Bordetella pertussis Strains From the 2008-2012 Australian Epidemic Under Sulfate-Modulating Conditions.
Sulfate is an important modulator for virulence factor expression in Bordetella pertussis, the causative organism for whooping cough. During infection, sulfate is released when respiratory epithelial cells are damaged which can affect gene expression. The current predominant strains in Australia are found in single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) cluster I (ptxP3/prn2). It has been reported that ptxP3 strains have higher mRNA expression of virulence genes than ptxP1 strains under intermediate sulfate-modulating conditions (5 mM MgSO4). Our previous proteomic study compared L1423 (cluster I, ptxP3) and L1191 (cluster II, ptxP1) in Thalen-IJssel (THIJS) media without sulfate modulation and identified an upregulation of transport proteins and a downregulation of immunogenic proteins. To determine whether proteomic differences exist between cluster I and cluster II strains in intermediate modulating conditions, this study compared the whole cell proteome and secretome between L1423 and L1191 grown in THIJS media with 5 mM MgSO4 using iTRAQ and high-resolution multiple reaction monitoring (MRM-hr). Two proteins (BP0200 and BP1175) in the whole cell were upregulated in L1423 [fold change (FC) >1.2, false discovery rate (FDR) <0.05]. In the secretome, four proteins from the type III secretion system (T3SS) effectors were downregulated (FC < 0.8, FDR < 0.05) while six proteins, including two adhesins, pertactin (Prn) and tracheal colonization factor A (TcfA), were upregulated which were consistent with our previous proteomic study. The upregulation of Prn and TcfA in SNP cluster I may result in improved adhesion while the downregulation of the T3SS and other immunogenic proteins may reduce immune recognition, which may contribute to the increased fitness of cluster I B. pertussis strains
Semi-supervised Convolutional Neural Networks for Flood Mapping using Multi-modal Remote Sensing Data
When floods hit populated areas, quick detection of flooded areas is crucial for initial response by local government, residents, and volunteers. Space-borne polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) is an authoritative data sources for flood mapping since it can be acquired immediately after a disaster even at night time or cloudy weather. Conventionally, a lot of domain-specific heuristic knowledge has been applied for PolSAR flood mapping, but their performance still suffers from confusing pixels caused by irregular reflections of radar waves. Optical images are another data source that can be used to detect flooded areas due to their high spectral correlation with the open water surface. However, they are often affected by day, night, or severe weather conditions (i.e., cloud). This paper presents a convolution neural network (CNN) based multimodal approach utilizing the advantages of both PolSAR and optical images for flood mapping. First, reference training data is retrieved from optical images by manual annotation. Since clouds may appear in the optical image, only areas with a clear view of flooded or non-flooded are annotated. Then, a semisupervised polarimetric-features-aided CNN is utilized for flood mapping using PolSAR data. The proposed model not only can handle the issue of learning with incomplete ground truth but also can leverage a large portion of unlabelled pixels for learning. Moreover, our model takes the advantages of expert knowledge on scattering interpretation to incorporate polarimetric-features as the input. Experiments results are given for the flood event that occurred in Sendai, Japan, on 12th March 2011. The experiments show that our framework can map flooded area with high accuracy (F1 = 96:12) and outperform conventional flood mapping methods
Extended depth-of-field light-sheet microscopy improves imaging of large volumes at high numerical aperture
Light-sheet microscopes must compromise between field of view, optical
sectioning, resolution, and detection efficiency. High-numerical-aperture (NA)
detection objective lenses provide high resolution but their narrow depth of
field fails to capture effectively the fluorescence signal generated by the
illumination light sheets, in imaging large volumes. Here, we present ExD-SPIM
(extended depth-of-field selective-plane illumination microscopy), an improved
light-sheet microscopy strategy that solves this limitation by extending the
depth of field (DOF) of high-NA detection objectives to match the thickness of
the illumination light sheet. This extension of the DOF uses a phase mask to
axially stretch the point-spread function of the objective lens while largely
preserving lateral resolution. This matching of the detection DOF to the
illumination-sheet thickness increases total fluorescence collection, reduces
background, and improves the overall signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). We
demonstrate, through numerical simulations and imaging of bead phantoms as well
as living animals, that ExD-SPIM increases the SNR by more than three-fold and
dramatically reduces the rate of fluorescence photobleaching, when compared to
a low-NA system with an equivalent depth of field. Compared to conventional
high-NA detection, ExD-SPIM improves the signal sensitivity and volumetric
coverage of whole-brain activity imaging, increasing the number of detected
neurons by over a third.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures; supplementary material include
Accretion in the Early Kuiper Belt II. Fragmentation
We describe new planetesimal accretion calculations in the Kuiper Belt that
include fragmentation and velocity evolution. All models produce two power law
cumulative size distributions, N_C propto r^{-q}, with q = 2.5 for radii less
than 0.3-3 km and q = 3 for radii exceeding 1-3 km. The power law indices are
nearly independent of the initial mass in the annulus, the initial eccentricity
of the planetesimal swarm, and the initial size distribution of the
planetesimal swarm. The transition between the two power laws moves to larger
radii as the initial eccentricity increases. The maximum size of objects
depends on their intrinsic tensile strength; Pluto formation requires a
strength exceeding 300 erg per gram. Our models yield formation timescales for
Pluto-sized objects of 30-40 Myr for a minimum mass solar nebula. The
production of several `Plutos' and more than 10^5 50 km radius Kuiper Belt
objects leaves most of the initial mass in 0.1-10 km radius objects that can be
collisionally depleted over the age of the solar system. These results resolve
the puzzle of large Kuiper Belt objects in a small mass Kuiper Belt.Comment: to appear in the Astronomical Journal (July 1999); 54 pages including
7 tables and 13 figure
Analysis of the rotational properties of Kuiper belt objects
We use optical data on 10 Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) to investigate their
rotational properties. Of the 10, three (30%) exhibit light variations with
amplitude delta_m >= 0.15 mag, and 1 out of 10 (10%) has delta_m >= 0.40 mag,
which is in good agreement with previous surveys. These data, in combination
with the existing database, are used to discuss the rotational periods, shapes,
and densities of Kuiper Belt objects. We find that, in the sampled size range,
Kuiper Belt objects have a higher fraction of low amplitude lightcurves and
rotate slower than main belt asteroids. The data also show that the rotational
properties and the shapes of KBOs depend on size. If we split the database of
KBO rotational properties into two size ranges with diameter larger and smaller
than 400 km, we find that: (1) the mean lightcurve amplitudes of the two groups
are different with 98.5% confidence, (2) the corresponding power-law shape
distributions seem to be different, although the existing data are too sparse
to render this difference significant, and (3) the two groups occupy different
regions on a spin period vs. lightcurve amplitude diagram. These differences
are interpreted in the context of KBO collisional evolution.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figures, LaTeX. Astronomical Journal in pres
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