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A perspective on studying electronic structure of batteries through soft X-ray spectroscopy
Understanding electronic structure is crucial to enhance the battery performance. Soft X-ray spectroscopy (SXS) is one of the most effective methods to provide direct probe of electronic states. Here, spectroscopic measurements of transition metal 3d and oxygen 2p states are simply reviewed. Then, we mainly focus on the perspective of the development direction of modern SXS techniques. Although the true power of recently developed high efficiency mapping of resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (mRIXS) has been apparent for materials and chemistry studies, great challenges remain for mRIXS spectroscopic interpretation, and the understanding of the battery materials on novel redox activities remains elusive
Holographic Dark Energy Characterized by the Total Comoving Horizon and Insights to Cosmological Constant and Coincidence Problem
The observed acceleration of the present universe is shown to be well
explained by the holographic dark energy characterized by the total comoving
horizon of the universe (HDE). It is of interest to notice that the very
large primordial part of the comoving horizon generated by the inflation of
early universe makes the HDE behave like a cosmological constant. As a
consequence, both the fine-tuning problem and the coincidence problem can
reasonably be understood with the inflationary universe and holographical
principle. We present a systematic analysis and obtain a consistent
cosmological constraint on the HDE model based on the recent cosmological
observations. It is found that the HDE model gives the best-fit result
() and the minimal
which is compatible with for the CDM model.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, two eqs. (26)(27) added for the consistent
approximate solution of dark energy in early universe, references added,
published version in PR
Spin Transport Properties in Heisenberg Antiferromagnetic Spin Chains: Spin Current induced by Twisted Boundary Magnetic Fields
Spin transport properties of the one-dimensional Heisenberg antiferromagnetic
spin systems for both and S=1 are studied by applying twisted boundary
magnetic field. The spin current displays significantly different behavior of
the spin transport properties between and S=1 cases. For the spin-half
case, a London equation for the current and the detection of an alternating
electric field are proposed for the linear response regime. The correlation
functions reveal the spiral nature of spin configuration for both ground state
and the spinon excitations. For the spin-one chain otherwise, a kink is
generated in the ground state for the size is larger than the correlation
length, leading to an exponential dependence of spin current with respect to
the chains length. The midgap state emerges from the degenerate ground state
even for small boundary fields.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
Quantum generalized Reed-Solomon codes: Unified framework for quantum MDS codes
We construct a new family of quantum MDS codes from classical generalized
Reed-Solomon codes and derive the necessary and sufficient condition under
which these quantum codes exist. We also give code bounds and show how to
construct them analytically. We find that existing quantum MDS codes can be
unified under these codes in the sense that when a quantum MDS code exists,
then a quantum code of this type with the same parameters also exists. Thus as
far as is known at present, they are the most important family of quantum MDS
codes.Comment: 9 pages, no figure
Intermittency and electron heating in kinetic-Alfv\'en-wave turbulence
We report analytical and numerical investigations of sub-ion-scale turbulence
in low-beta plasmas, focusing on the spectral properties of the fluctuations
and electron heating. In the isothermal limit, the numerical results strongly
support a description of the turbulence as a critically-balanced
Kolmogorov-like cascade of kinetic Alfv\'en wave fluctuations, as amended by
Boldyrev & Perez (Astrophys. J. Lett. 758, L44 (2012)) to include intermittent
effects. When the constraint of isothermality is removed (i.e., with the
inclusion of electron kinetic physics), the energy spectrum is found to steepen
due to electron Landau damping, which is enabled by the local weakening of
advective nonlinearities around current sheets, and yields significant energy
dissipation via a velocity-space cascade. The use of a Hermite-polynomial
representation to express the velocity-space dependence of the electron
distribution function allows us to obtain an analytical, lowest-order solution
for the Hermite moments of the distribution, which is borne out by numerical
simulations.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figure
Cortical plasticity as a new endpoint measurement for chronic pain
Animal models of chronic pain are widely used to investigate basic mechanisms of chronic pain and to evaluate potential novel drugs for treating chronic pain. Among the different criteria used to measure chronic pain, behavioral responses are commonly used as the end point measurements. However, not all chronic pain conditions can be easily measured by behavioral responses such as the headache, phantom pain and pain related to spinal cord injury. Here I propose that cortical indexes, that indicate neuronal plastic changes in pain-related cortical areas, can be used as endpoint measurements for chronic pain. Such cortical indexes are not only useful for those chronic pain conditions where a suitable animal model is lacking, but also serve as additional screening methods for potential drugs to treat chronic pain in humans. These cortical indexes are activity-dependent immediate early genes, electrophysiological identified plastic changes and biochemical assays of signaling proteins. It can be used to evaluate novel analgesic compounds that may act at peripheral or spinal sites. I hope that these new cortical endpoint measurements will facilitate our search for new, and more effective, pain medicines, and help to reduce false lead drug targets
The 9th Conference on Metal Toxicity and Carcinogenesis: The Conference Overview
Heavy metals, such as arsenic, chromium, cadmium, nickel, mercury, and uranium are known to cause many human diseases and health complications after occupational or environmental exposure. Consequently, metals are environmental health concerns. This manuscript is an overview of the 9th Conference on Metal Toxicity and Carcinogenesis held in October 2016 in Lexington, Kentucky. Since 2000, this biennial meeting brings together experts in the field to discuss current and prospective research in an effort to advance research pertaining to metal toxicity and carcinogenesis. In this review we summarize the major topics discussed and provide insight regarding current research in the field and an account of the direction in which the field is progressing
Consistency of shared reference frames should be reexamined
In a recent Letter [G. Chiribella et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 120501
(2007)], four protocols were proposed to secretly transmit a reference frame.
Here We point out that in these protocols an eavesdropper can change the
transmitted reference frame without being detected, which means the consistency
of the shared reference frames should be reexamined. The way to check the above
consistency is discussed. It is shown that this problem is quite different from
that in previous protocols of quantum cryptography.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure, comments are welcom
Analysis of Longitudinal Marginal Structural Models
In this article we construct and study estimators of the causal effect of a time-dependent treatment on survival in longitudinal studies. We employ a particular marginal structural model (MSM), and follow a general methodology for constructing estimating functions in censored data models. The inverse probability of treatment weighted (IPTW) estimator is used as an initial estimator and the corresponding treatment-orthogonalized, one-step estimator is consistent and asymptotically linear when the treatment mechanism is consistently estimated. We extend these methods to handle informative censoring. A simulation study demonstrates that the the treatment-orthogonalized, one-step estimator is superior to the IPTW estimator in terms of efficiency. The proposed methodology is employed to estimate the causal effect of exercise on mortality in a longitudinal study of seniors in Sonoma County
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