917 research outputs found
A Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser
This paper reports a "delayed choice quantum eraser" experiment proposed by
Scully and Dr\"{u}hl in 1982. The experimental results demonstrated the
possibility of simultaneously observing both particle-like and wave-like
behavior of a quantum via quantum entanglement. The which-path or both-path
information of a quantum can be erased or marked by its entangled twin even
after the registration of the quantum.Comment: twocolumn, 4pages, submitted to PR
Exploring the measurement of markedness and its relationship with other linguistic variables
Antonym pair members can be differentiated by each word's markedness-that distinction attributable to the presence or absence of features at morphological or semantic levels. Morphologically marked words incorporate their unmarked counterpart with additional morphs (e.g., "unlucky" vs. "lucky"); properties used to determine semantically marked words (e.g., "short" vs. "long") are less clearly defined. Despite extensive theoretical scrutiny, the lexical properties of markedness have received scant empirical study. The current paper employs an antonym sequencing approach to measure markedness: establishing markedness probabilities for individual words and evaluating their relationship with other lexical properties (e.g., length, frequency, valence). Regression analyses reveal that markedness probability is, as predicted, related to affixation and also strongly related to valence. Our results support the suggestion that antonym sequence is reflected in discourse, and further analysis demonstrates that markedness probabilities, derived from the antonym sequencing task, reflect the ordering of antonyms within natural language. In line with the Pollyanna Hypothesis, we argue that markedness is closely related to valence; language users demonstrate a tendency to present words evaluated positively ahead of those evaluated negatively if given the choice. Future research should consider the relationship of markedness and valence, and the influence of contextual information in determining which member of an antonym pair is marked or unmarked within discourse
Quantitative conditional quantum erasure in two-atom resonance fluorescence
We present a conditional quantum eraser which erases the a priori knowledge
or the predictability of the path a photon takes in a Young-type double-slit
experiment with two fluorescent four-level atoms. This erasure violates a
recently derived erasure relation which must be satisfied for a conventional,
unconditional quantum eraser that aims to find an optimal sorting of the system
into subensembles with particularly large fringe visibilities. The conditional
quantum eraser employs an interaction-free, partial which-way measurement which
not only sorts the system into optimal subsystems with large visibility but
also selects the appropriate subsystem with the maximum possible visibility. We
explain how the erasure relation can be violated under these circumstances.Comment: Revtex4, 12pages, 4 eps figures, replaced with published version,
changes in Sec. 3, to appear in Physical Review
Unique Interplay between Sugar and Lipid in Determining the Antigenic Potency of Bacterial Antigens for NKT Cells
Structural and biophysical studies reveal the induced-fit mechanism underlying the stringent specificity of invariant natural killer T cells for unique glycolipid antigens from the pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae
Why I tense up when you watch me: inferior parietal cortex mediates an audience’s influence on motor performance
The presence of an evaluative audience can alter skilled motor performance through changes in force output. To investigate how this is mediated within the brain, we emulated real-time social monitoring of participants’ performance of a fine grip task during functional magnetic resonance neuroimaging. We observed an increase in force output during social evaluation that was accompanied by focal reductions in activity within bilateral inferior parietal cortex. Moreover, deactivation of the left inferior parietal cortex predicted both inter- and intra-individual differences in socially-induced change in grip force. Social evaluation also enhanced activation within the posterior superior temporal sulcus, which conveys visual information about others’ actions to the inferior parietal cortex. Interestingly, functional connectivity between these two regions was attenuated by social evaluation. Our data suggest that social evaluation can vary force output through the altered engagement of inferior parietal cortex; a region implicated in sensorimotor integration necessary for object manipulation, and a component of the action-observation network which integrates and facilitates performance of observed actions. Social-evaluative situations may induce high-level representational incoherence between one’s own intentioned action and the perceived intention of others which, by uncoupling the dynamics of sensorimotor facilitation, could ultimately perturbe motor output
Double-slit interference pattern from single-slit screen and its gravitational analogues
The double slit experiment (DSE) is known as an important cornerstone in the
foundations of physical theories such as Quantum Mechanics and Special
Relativity. A large number of different variants of it were designed and
performed over the years. We perform and discuss here a new verion with the
somewhat unexpected results of obtaining interference pattern from single-slit
screen. This outcome, which shows that the routes of the photons through the
array were changed, leads one to discuss it, using the equivalence principle,
in terms of geodesics mechanics. We show using either the Brill's version of
the canonical formulation of general relativity or the linearized version of it
that one may find corresponding and analogous situations in the framework of
general relativity.Comment: 51 pages, 12 Figures five of them contain two subfigures and thus the
number of figures is 17, 1 Table. Some minor changes introduced, especially,
in the reference
Observation of off-diagonal geometric phase in polarized neutron interferometer experiments
Off-diagonal geometric phases acquired in the evolution of a spin-1/2 system
have been investigated by means of a polarized neutron interferometer. Final
counts with and without polarization analysis enable us to observe
simultaneously the off-diagonal and diagonal geometric phases in two detectors.
We have quantitatively measured the off-diagonal geometric phase for noncyclic
evolutions, confirming the theoretical predictions. We discuss the significance
of our experiment in terms of geometric phases (both diagonal and off-diagonal)
and in terms of the quantum erasing phenomenon.Comment: pdf, 22 pages + 8 figures (included in the pdf). In print on Phys.
Rev.
Quantitative wave-particle duality and non-erasing quantum erasure
The notion of wave-particle duality may be quantified by the inequality
V^2+K^2 <=1, relating interference fringe visibility V and path knowledge K.
With a single-photon interferometer in which polarization is used to label the
paths, we have investigated the relation for various situations, including
pure, mixed, and partially-mixed input states. A quantum eraser scheme has been
realized that recovers interference fringes even when no which-way information
is available to erase.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. To appear in Phys. Rev.
Collective emotions online and their influence on community life
E-communities, social groups interacting online, have recently become an
object of interdisciplinary research. As with face-to-face meetings, Internet
exchanges may not only include factual information but also emotional
information - how participants feel about the subject discussed or other group
members. Emotions are known to be important in affecting interaction partners
in offline communication in many ways. Could emotions in Internet exchanges
affect others and systematically influence quantitative and qualitative aspects
of the trajectory of e-communities? The development of automatic sentiment
analysis has made large scale emotion detection and analysis possible using
text messages collected from the web. It is not clear if emotions in
e-communities primarily derive from individual group members' personalities or
if they result from intra-group interactions, and whether they influence group
activities. We show the collective character of affective phenomena on a large
scale as observed in 4 million posts downloaded from Blogs, Digg and BBC
forums. To test whether the emotions of a community member may influence the
emotions of others, posts were grouped into clusters of messages with similar
emotional valences. The frequency of long clusters was much higher than it
would be if emotions occurred at random. Distributions for cluster lengths can
be explained by preferential processes because conditional probabilities for
consecutive messages grow as a power law with cluster length. For BBC forum
threads, average discussion lengths were higher for larger values of absolute
average emotional valence in the first ten comments and the average amount of
emotion in messages fell during discussions. Our results prove that collective
emotional states can be created and modulated via Internet communication and
that emotional expressiveness is the fuel that sustains some e-communities.Comment: 23 pages including Supporting Information, accepted to PLoS ON
Differing roles of CD1d2 and CD1d1 proteins in type I natural killer T cell development and function
MHC class I-like CD1 molecules have evolved to present lipid-based antigens to T cells. Differences in the antigen-binding clefts of the CD1 family members determine the conformation and size of the lipids that are presented, although the factors that shape CD1 diversity remain unclear. In mice, two homologous genes, CD1D1 and CD1D2, encode the CD1d protein, which is essential to the development and function of natural killer T (NKT) cells. However, it remains unclear whether both CD1d isoforms are equivalent in their antigen presentation capacity and functions. Here, we report that CD1d2 molecules are expressed in the thymus of some mouse strains, where they select functional type I NKT cells. Intriguingly, the T cell antigen receptor repertoire and phenotype of CD1d2-selected type I NKT cells in CD1D1−/− mice differed from CD1d1-selected type I NKT cells. The structures of CD1d2 in complex with endogenous lipids and a truncated acyl-chain analog of α-galactosylceramide revealed that its A′-pocket was restricted in size compared with CD1d1. Accordingly, CD1d2 molecules could not present glycolipid antigens with long acyl chains efficiently, favoring the presentation of short acyl chain antigens. These results indicate that the two CD1d molecules present different sets of self-antigen(s) in the mouse thymus, thereby impacting the development of invariant NKT cells
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