Antimicrobial peptide expression in a wild tobacco plant reveals the limits of host-microbe-manipulations in the field

Plant-microbe associations are thought to be beneficial for plant growth and resistance against biotic or abiotic stresses, but for natural ecosystems, the ecological analysis of microbiome function remains in its infancy. We used transformed wild tobacco plants (Nicotiana attenuata) which constitutively express an antimicrobial peptide (Mc-AMP1) of the common ice plant, to establish an ecological tool for plant-microbe studies in the field. Transgenic plants showed in planta activity against plant-beneficial bacteria and were phenotyped within the plants´ natural habitat regarding growth, fitness and the resistance against herbivores. Multiple field experiments, conducted over 3 years, indicated no differences compared to isogenic controls. Pyrosequencing analysis of the root-associated microbial communities showed no major alterations but marginal effects at the genus level. Experimental infiltrations revealed a high heterogeneity in peptide tolerance among native isolates and suggests that the diversity of natural microbial communities can be a major obstacle for microbiome manipulations in nature

Generation of mechanical interference fringes by multi-photon counting

Exploring the quantum behaviour of macroscopic objects provides an intriguing avenue to study the foundations of physics and to develop a suite of quantum-enhanced technologies. One prominent path of study is provided by quantum optomechanics which utilizes the tools of quantum optics to control the motion of macroscopic mechanical resonators. Despite excellent recent progress, the preparation of mechanical quantum superposition states remains outstanding due to weak coupling and thermal decoherence. Here we present a novel optomechanical scheme that significantly relaxes these requirements allowing the preparation of quantum superposition states of motion of a mechanical resonator by exploiting the nonlinearity of multi-photon quantum measurements. Our method is capable of generating non-classical mechanical states without the need for strong single photon coupling, is resilient against optical loss, and offers more favourable scaling against initial mechanical thermal occupation than existing schemes. Moreover, our approach allows the generation of larger superposition states by projecting the optical field onto NOON states. We experimentally demonstrate this multi-photon-counting technique on a mechanical thermal state in the classical limit and observe interference fringes in the mechanical position distribution that show phase superresolution. This opens a feasible route to explore and exploit quantum phenomena at a macroscopic scale.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures. v1: submitted for review on 28 Jan 2016. v2: significantly revised manuscript. v3: some further revisions and some extra results included. v3: new results added, extra author added, close to published version, supplementary material available with published versio

Manipulating biphotonic qutrits

Quantum information carriers with higher dimension than the canonical qubit offer significant advantages. However, manipulating such systems is extremely difficult. We show how measurement induced non-linearities can be employed to dramatically extend the range of possible transforms on biphotonic qutrits; the three level quantum systems formed by the polarisation of two photons in the same spatio-temporal mode. We fully characterise the biphoton-photon entanglement that underpins our technique, thereby realising the first instance of qubit-qutrit entanglement. We discuss an extension of our technique to generate qutrit-qutrit entanglement and to manipulate any bosonic encoding of quantum information.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Experimental demonstration of Shor's algorithm with quantum entanglement

Shor's powerful quantum algorithm for factoring represents a major challenge in quantum computation and its full realization will have a large impact on modern cryptography. Here we implement a compiled version of Shor's algorithm in a photonic system using single photons and employing the non-linearity induced by measurement. For the first time we demonstrate the core processes, coherent control, and resultant entangled states that are required in a full-scale implementation of Shor's algorithm. Demonstration of these processes is a necessary step on the path towards a full implementation of Shor's algorithm and scalable quantum computing. Our results highlight that the performance of a quantum algorithm is not the same as performance of the underlying quantum circuit, and stress the importance of developing techniques for characterising quantum algorithms.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures + half-page additional online materia

Demonstration of a simple entangling optical gate and its use in Bell-state analysis

We demonstrate a new architecture for an optical entangling gate that is significantly simpler than previous realisations, using partially-polarising beamsplitters so that only a single optical mode-matching condition is required. We demonstrate operation of a controlled-Z gate in both continuous-wave and pulsed regimes of operation, fully characterising it in each case using quantum process tomography. We also demonstrate a fully-resolving, nondeterministic optical Bell-state analyser based on this controlled-Z gate. This new architecture is ideally suited to guided optics implementations of optical gates.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. v2: additional author, improved data and figures (low res), some other minor changes. Accepted for publication in PR

Production of resonances in a thermal model: invariant-mass spectra and balance functions

We present a calculation of the pi+ pi- invariant-mass correlations and the pion balance functions in the single-freeze-out model. A satisfactory agreement with the data for Au+Au collisions is found.Comment: Contribution to QM 2004 (4 pages, 2 figures

Chemical composition and bioactivity of essential oils and extracts from Oregano from Madeira Island, Portugal

In the course of ongoing investigations on polymorphic Lamiaceae species, we studied Origanum vulgare spp. virens growing wild in several locations of Madeira Island, Portugal. Variation in essential oil composition with climate conditions was studied. The antimicrobial activity of the various essential oils was determined against 10 strains of bacteria and yeasts, usually found as human pathogenic or food contaminants. The essential oils inhibited all the bacteria tested excepting for P. aeruginosa. The most sensitive microorganism was M. smegmatis with MIC = 25 µg ml-1 for two of the oils. The results of this study suggest a potential application of these oils in preventing the human pathogenic and food contaminant microorganisms growth. Radical scavenging capacity of essential oils and solvent extract (hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate and methanol) were also determined, since interest of oregano resides in both non polar and polar fractions, all known by their very high antioxidant activity. From the hexane fraction, we obtained a large amount of 1-hexacosanol, C26H54O, a long chain alcohol, which was previously extracted in the non-esterified form only from Hygrophila erecta.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An Exact Fluctuating 1/2-BPS Configuration

This work explores the role of thermodynamic fluctuations in the two parameter giant and superstar configurations characterized by an ensemble of arbitrary liquid droplets or irregular shaped fuzzballs. Our analysis illustrates that the chemical and state-space geometric descriptions exhibit an intriguing set of exact pair correction functions and the global correlation lengths. The first principle of statistical mechanics shows that the possible canonical fluctuations may precisely be ascertained without any approximation. Interestingly, our intrinsic geometric study exemplifies that there exist exact fluctuating 1/2-BPS statistical configurations which involve an ensemble of microstates describing the liquid droplets or fuzzballs. The Gaussian fluctuations over an equilibrium chemical and state-space configurations accomplish a well-defined, non-degenerate, curved and regular intrinsic Riemannian manifolds for all physically admissible domains of black hole parameters. An explicit computation demonstrates that the underlying chemical correlations involve ordinary summations, whilst the state-space correlations may simply be depicted by standard polygamma functions. Our construction ascribes definite stability character to the canonical energy fluctuations and to the counting entropy associated with an arbitrary choice of excited boxes from an ensemble of ample boxes constituting a variety of Young tableaux.Comment: Minor changes, added references, 30 pages, 4 figures, PACS numbers: 04.70.-s: Physics of black holes; 04.70.-Bw: Classical black holes; 04.50.Gh Higher-dimensional black holes, black strings, and related objects; 04.60.Cf Gravitational aspects of string theory, accepted for publication in JHE