925 research outputs found
Simultaneous manipulation of electromagnetic and elastic waves via glide symmetry phoxonic crystal waveguides
A phoxonic crystal waveguide with the glide symmetry is designed, in which
both electromagnetic and elastic waves can propagate along the glide plane at
the same time. Due to the band-sticking effect, super-cell bands of the
waveguide degenerate in pairs at the boundary of the Brillouin zone, causing
the appearance of gapless guided-modes in the bandgaps. The gapless
guided-modes are single-modes over a relatively large frequency range. By
adjusting the magnitude of the glide dislocation, the edge bandgaps of the
guided-modes can be further adjusted, so as to achieve photonic and phononic
single-mode guided-bands with relatively flat dispersion relationship. In
addition, there exists acousto-optic interaction in the cavity constructed by
the glide plane. The proposed waveguide has potential applications in the
design of novel optomechanical devices.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figure
HS-CAI: A Hybrid DCOP Algorithm via Combining Search with Context-based Inference
Search and inference are two main strategies for optimally solving
Distributed Constraint Optimization Problems (DCOPs). Recently, several
algorithms were proposed to combine their advantages. Unfortunately, such
algorithms only use an approximated inference as a one-shot preprocessing phase
to construct the initial lower bounds which lead to inefficient pruning under
the limited memory budget. On the other hand, iterative inference algorithms
(e.g., MB-DPOP) perform a context-based complete inference for all possible
contexts but suffer from tremendous traffic overheads. In this paper,
hybridizing search with context-based inference, we propose a complete
algorithm for DCOPs, named {HS-CAI} where the inference utilizes the contexts
derived from the search process to establish tight lower bounds while the
search uses such bounds for efficient pruning and thereby reduces contexts for
the inference. Furthermore, we introduce a context evaluation mechanism
to select the context patterns for the inference to further reduce the
overheads incurred by iterative inferences. Finally, we prove the
correctness of our algorithm and the experimental results demonstrate its
superiority over the state-of-the-art
Jitter analysis of a superconducting nanowire single photon detector
Jitter is one of the key parameters for a superconducting nanowire single
photon detector (SNSPD). Using an optimized time-correlated single photon
counting system for jitter measurement, we extensively studied the dependence
of system jitter on the bias current and working temperature. The
signal-to-noise ratio of the single-photon-response pulse was proven to be an
important factor in system jitter. The final system jitter was reduced to 18 ps
by using a high-critical-current SNSPD, which showed an intrinsic SNSPD jitter
of 15 ps. A laser ranging experiment using a 15-ps SNSPD achieved a record
depth resolution of 3 mm at a wavelength of 1550 nm.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure
Enhancing Faraday and Kerr rotations based on toroidal dipole mode in an all-dielectric magneto-optical metasurface
The magneto-optical Faraday and Kerr effects are widely used in modern
optical devices. In this letter, we propose an all-dielectric metasurface
composed of perforated magneto-optical thin films, which can support the highly
confined toroidal dipole resonance and provide full overlap between the
localized electromagnetic field and the thin film, and consequently enhance the
magneto-optical effects to an unprecedented degree. The numerical results based
on finite element method show that the Faraday and Kerr rotations can reach
-13.59 and 8.19 in the vicinity of toroidal dipole resonance,
which are 21.2 and 32.8 times stronger than those in the equivalent thickness
of thin films, respectively. In addition, we design an environment refractive
index sensor based on the resonantly enhanced Faraday and Kerr rotations, with
sensitivities of 62.96 nm/RIU and 73.16 nm/RIU, and the corresponding maximum
figures of merit 132.22/RIU and 429.45/RIU, respectively. This
work provides a new strategy for enhancing the magneto-optical effects at
nanoscale, and paves the way for the research and development of
magneto-optical metadevices such as sensors, memories, and circuits
A novel botybirnavirus with a unique satellite dsRNA causes latent infection in Didymella theifolia isolated from tea plants
© 2023 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/The unique, recently discovered fungus Didymella theifolia specifically infects local varieties of tea plant Camellia sinensis in China, and therefore, the characterization of its mycoviruses is important. Three double-stranded (ds) RNAs (1, 2, and 3, with 6,338, 5,910, and 727 bp in size, respectively) were identified in the avirulent D. theifolia strain CJP4-1, which exhibits normal growth and morphology. Characterization of these double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs) revealed that the two largest elements are the genomic components of a novel botybirnavirus, tentatively named Didymella theifolia botybirnavirus 1 (DtBRV1). Conversely, dsRNA3 shares no detectable similarity with sequences deposited in public databases but has high similarity with the 5′-terminal regions of dsRNAs 1 and 2 and contains a duplicated region encoding a putative small peptide. All three dsRNAs are encapsidated in isometric virions ca. 40 nm in diameter, supporting the notion that dsRNA3 is a DtBRV1 satellite. SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis in combination with peptide mass fingerprint analysis revealed that the DtBRV1 capsid protein consists of polypeptides encoded by the 5′-terminal regions of both genomic components dsRNA1 and dsRNA2. Vertical transmission of DtBRV1 through conidia is efficient, while its horizontal transmission from CJP4-1 to other strains was not detected. DtBRV1, with or without dsRNA3, has no obvious effects on fungal growth and virulence, as illustrated following transfection of the virulent D. theifolia strain JYC1-6. In summary, DtBRV1 exhibits unique molecular traits and contributes to our understanding of mycovirus diversity.Peer reviewe
Deep-Sequencing Analysis of the Mouse Transcriptome Response to Infection with Brucella melitensis Strains of Differing Virulence
Brucella melitensis is an important zoonotic pathogen that causes brucellosis, a disease that affects sheep, cattle and occasionally humans. B. melitensis strain M5-90, a live attenuated vaccine cultured from B. melitensis strain M28, has been used as an effective tool in the control of brucellosis in goats and sheep in China. However, the molecular changes leading to attenuated virulence and pathogenicity in B. melitensis remain poorly understood. In this study we employed the Illumina Genome Analyzer platform to perform genome-wide digital gene expression (DGE) analysis of mouse peritoneal macrophage responses to B. melitensis infection. Many parallel changes in gene expression profiles were observed in M28- and M5-90-infected macrophages, suggesting that they employ similar survival strategies, notably the induction of anti-inflammatory and antiapoptotic factors. Moreover, 1019 differentially expressed macrophage transcripts were identified 4 h after infection with the different B. melitensis strains, and these differential transcripts notably identified genes involved in the lysosome and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathways. Further analysis employed gene ontology (GO) analysis: high-enrichment GOs identified endocytosis, inflammatory, apoptosis, and transport pathways. Path-Net and Signal-Net analysis highlighted the MAPK pathway as the key regulatory pathway. Moreover, the key differentially expressed genes of the significant pathways were apoptosis-related. These findings demonstrate previously unrecognized changes in gene transcription that are associated with B. melitensis infection of macrophages, and the central signaling pathways identified here merit further investigation. Our data provide new insights into the molecular attenuation mechanism of strain M5-90 and will facilitate the generation of new attenuated vaccine strains with enhanced efficacy
Measurement of differential cross sections for top quark pair production using the lepton plus jets final state in proton-proton collisions at 13 TeV
National Science Foundation (U.S.
Identification of heavy-flavour jets with the CMS detector in pp collisions at 13 TeV
Many measurements and searches for physics beyond the standard model at the LHC rely on the efficient identification of heavy-flavour jets, i.e. jets originating from bottom or charm quarks. In this paper, the discriminating variables and the algorithms used for heavy-flavour jet identification during the first years of operation of the CMS experiment in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, are presented. Heavy-flavour jet identification algorithms have been improved compared to those used previously at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV. For jets with transverse momenta in the range expected in simulated events, these new developments result in an efficiency of 68% for the correct identification of a b jet for a probability of 1% of misidentifying a light-flavour jet. The improvement in relative efficiency at this misidentification probability is about 15%, compared to previous CMS algorithms. In addition, for the first time algorithms have been developed to identify jets containing two b hadrons in Lorentz-boosted event topologies, as well as to tag c jets. The large data sample recorded in 2016 at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV has also allowed the development of new methods to measure the efficiency and misidentification probability of heavy-flavour jet identification algorithms. The heavy-flavour jet identification efficiency is measured with a precision of a few per cent at moderate jet transverse momenta (between 30 and 300 GeV) and about 5% at the highest jet transverse momenta (between 500 and 1000 GeV)
Particle-flow reconstruction and global event description with the CMS detector
The CMS apparatus was identified, a few years before the start of the LHC operation at CERN, to feature properties well suited to particle-flow (PF) reconstruction: a highly-segmented tracker, a fine-grained electromagnetic calorimeter, a hermetic hadron calorimeter, a strong magnetic field, and an excellent muon spectrometer. A fully-fledged PF reconstruction algorithm tuned to the CMS detector was therefore developed and has been consistently used in physics analyses for the first time at a hadron collider. For each collision, the comprehensive list of final-state particles identified and reconstructed by the algorithm provides a global event description that leads to unprecedented CMS performance for jet and hadronic tau decay reconstruction, missing transverse momentum determination, and electron and muon identification. This approach also allows particles from pileup interactions to be identified and enables efficient pileup mitigation methods. The data collected by CMS at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV show excellent agreement with the simulation and confirm the superior PF performance at least up to an average of 20 pileup interactions
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