Mitochondrial Genome Evolution in Pupillid Land Snails

Pupillid land snails (Family Pupillidae) are small (\u3c6mm) snails with a broad geographic distribution and often found in very high density in their habitat. The sequencing of the mitochondrial genome (mt genome) of three pupillid taxa has been undertaken to understand their genome evolution more fully. The Gastrocopta cristata mitochondrial genome is 14,060 bp in length and contains 13 protein coding genes, 2 rRNA genes and 22 tRNA genes. The Pupilla muscorum, and Vertigo pusilla genomes contain all of the same genes but are of differing total sizes, 14,149 bp and 14,078 bp respectively. The AT content of the three genomes is similar at ~71% A+T which is comparable to their closest sequenced relatives. There are no major gene rearrangements among the mt genomes of the three pupillids, but the positions of many tRNA genes differ from those of Albinaria caerulea. There is a genomic sequence region of high concentration of thymine on the leading strand of the mt genome that is shared among all three genomes as well as their relatives

Veteran\u27s Deaths Due to Suicide Have Increased to an Alarming Rate

With Veterans Suicide rates at an all-time high there is more to be done. Twenty or more Veterans in the United States commit suicide on a daily basis with no end in sight. Despite all of the research being done, there are still no clear answers to why this epidemic continues. The facts currently are that there are not an adequate number of mental heal providers to meet the needs of the general population let alone the Veteran population. There are an overwhelming number of risk factors that can lead to suicide like stress, guilt, alcohol and substance abuse, mental health conditions like depression. Even though with treatment this risk can be minimized it still leads back to the issue that there is not enough providers in the Veterans network along with the reality that traditional psychological theories are not tailored to the lives and stress that Veterans and members of the military have experienced

Mesoscopic Spin-Boson Models of Trapped Ions

Trapped ions arranged in Coulomb crystals provide us with the elements to study the physics of a single spin coupled to a boson bath. In this work we show that optical forces allow us to realize a variety of spin-boson models, depending on the crystal geometry and the laser configuration. We study in detail the Ohmic case, which can be implemented by illuminating a single ion with a travelling wave. The mesoscopic character of the phonon bath in trapped ions induces new effects like the appearance of quantum revivals in the spin evolution.Comment: 4.4 pages, 5 figure

Full photon statistics of a light beam transmitted through an optomechanical system

In this paper, we study the full statistics of photons transmitted through an optical cavity coupled to nanomechanical motion. We analyze the entire temporal evolution of the photon correlations, the Fano factor, and the effects of strong laser driving, all of which show pronounced features connected to the mechanical backaction. In the regime of single-photon strong coupling, this allows us to predict a transition from sub-Poissonian to super-Poissonian statistics for larger observation time intervals. Furthermore, we predict cascades of transmitted photons triggered by multi-photon transitions. In this regime, we observe Fano factors that are drastically enhanced due to the mechanical motion.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

Coupled multimode optomechanics in the microwave regime

The motion of micro- and nanomechanical resonators can be coupled to electromagnetic fields. This allows to explore the mutual interaction and introduces new means to manipulate and control both light and mechanical motion. Such optomechanical systems have recently been implemented in nanoelectromechanical systems involving a nanomechanical beam coupled to a superconducting microwave resonator. Here, we propose optomechanical systems that involve multiple, coupled microwave resonators. In contrast to similar systems in the optical realm, the coupling frequency governing photon exchange between microwave modes is naturally comparable to typical mechanical frequencies. For instance this enables new ways to manipulate the microwave field, such as mechanically driving coherent photon dynamics between different modes. In particular we investigate two setups where the electromagnetic field is coupled either linearly or quadratically to the displacement of a nanomechanical beam. The latter scheme allows to perform QND Fock state detection. For experimentally realistic parameters we predict the possibility to measure an individual quantum jump from the mechanical ground state to the first excited state.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl

Controlled Dephasing of Electrons by Non-Gaussian Shot Noise

In a 'controlled dephasing' experiment [1-3], an interferometer loses its coherence due to entanglement with a controlled quantum system ('which path' detector). In experiments that were conducted thus far in mesoscopic systems only partial dephasing was achieved. This was due to weak interactions between many detector electrons and the interfering electron, resulting in a Gaussian phase randomizing process [4-10]. Here, we report the opposite extreme: a complete destruction of the interference via strong phase randomization only by a few electrons in the detector. The realization was based on interfering edge channels (in the integer quantum Hall effect regime, filling factor 2) in a Mach-Zehnder electronic interferometer, with an inner edge channel serving as a detector. Unexpectedly, the visibility quenched in a periodic lobe-type form as the detector current increased; namely, it periodically decreased as the detector current, and thus the detector's efficiency, increased. Moreover, the visibility had a V-shape dependence on the partitioning of the detector current, and not the expected dependence on the second moment of the shot noise, T(1-T), with T the partitioning. We ascribe these unexpected features to the strong detector-interferometer coupling, allowing only 1-3 electrons in the detector to fully dephase the interfering electron. Consequently, in this work we explored the non-Gaussian nature of noise [11], namely, the direct effect of the shot noise full counting statistics [12-15].Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure

Naturally-phasematched second harmonic generation in a whispering gallery mode resonator

We demonstrate for the first time natural phase matching for optical frequency doubling in a high-Q whispering gallery mode resonator made of Lithium Niobate. A conversion efficiency of 9% is achieved at 30 micro Watt in-coupled continuous wave pump power. The observed saturation pump power of 3.2 mW is almost two orders of magnitude lower than the state-of-the-art. This suggests an application of our frequency doubler as a source of non-classical light requiring only a low-power pump, which easily can be quantum noise limited. Our theoretical analysis of the three-wave mixing in a whispering gallery mode resonator provides the relative conversion efficiencies for frequency doubling in various modes