Earlier Detection of Antiphospholipid Syndrome

A 52-year-old man is sitting at home watching a baseball game when all of a sudden the vision in both his eyes went black. He described it as if someone pulled a “Venetian blind” over his eyes. He has a past medical history of aortic stenosis. He was taking Valsartan, Atorvastatin, B-12, Folic Acid, and Vitamin D-3 before the episode. He was prescribed Xarelto after the episode. It was found that he had an optical stroke. Since the pressure in the eye was relieved, partial eyesight returned. He now has full vision in his right eye, but only peripheral vision in his left eye. At first it was believed that the stiffened valve must have thrown the clot and it just traveled to the eye, but since the cardiologist refused to believe that it was his valve the actual cause was discovered, antiphospholipid disorder. It was found that the patient had elevated anti-cardiolipin antibodies that caused the blood clot to form. The patient’s life as a whole is now altered completely due to a preventable thrombolytic event. His children also had to be tested because this disease has a genetic component so it is not only him that is affected by this. If this man had been tested earlier for antiphospholipid syndrome then this whole event could have been avoided and his life would be different today

Vector magnetic field microscopy using nitrogen vacancy centers in diamond

The localized spin triplet ground state of a nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in diamond can be used in atomic-scale detection of local magnetic fields. Here we present a technique using these defects in diamond to image fields around magnetic structures. We extract the local magnetic field vector by probing resonant transitions of the four fixed tetrahedral NV orientations. In combination with confocal microscopy techniques, we construct a 2-dimensional image of the local magnetic field vectors. Measurements are done in external fields less than 50 G and under ambient conditions.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

Internal magnetic fields in thin ZnSe epilayers

Strain induced spin-splitting is observed and characterized using pump-probe Kerr rotation spectroscopy in n-ZnSe epilayers grown on GaAs substrates. The spin-splitting energies are mapped out as a function of pump-probe separation, applied voltage, and temperature in a series of samples of varying epilayer thicknesses and compressive strain arising from epilayer-substrate lattice mismatch. The strain is independently quantified using photoluminescence and x-ray diffraction measurements. We observe that the magnitude of the spin splitting increases with applied voltage and temperature, and is highly crystal direction dependent, vanishing along [1 1-bar 0].Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

Targeted Employee Retention: Performance-Based and Job-Related Differences in Reported Reasons for Staying

A content model of 12 retention factors is developed in the context of previous theory and research. Coding of open-ended responses from 24,829 employees in the leisure and hospitality industry lends support to the identified framework and reveals that job satisfaction, extrinsic rewards, constituent attachments, organizational commitment, and organizational prestige were the most frequently mentioned reasons for staying. Advancement opportunities and organizational prestige were more common reasons for staying among high performers and non-hourly workers, and extrinsic rewards was more common among low performers and hourly employees, providing support for ease/desirability of movement and psychological contract rationales. The findings highlight the importance of differentiating human resource management practices when the goal is to retain those employees valued most by the organization

Electrical control of spin coherence in ZnO

Electric field enhanced electron spin coherence is characterized using time-resolved Faraday rotation spectroscopy in n-type ZnO epilayers grown by molecular beam epitaxy. An in-plane dc electric field E almost doubles the transverse spin lifetime at 20 K, without affecting the effective g-factor. This effect persists till high temperatures, but decreases with increasing carrier concentration. Comparisons of the variations in the spin lifetime, the carrier recombination lifetime and photoluminescence lifetimes indicate that the applied E enhances the radiative recombination rate. All observed effects are independent of crystal directionality and are performed at low magnetic fields (B < 0.2 T).Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Charging Behavior of Electric Vehicles: Temporal Clustering Based on Real‐World Data

The increasing adoption of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) is leading to rising demand for electricity and, thus, leading to new challenges for the energy system and, particularly, the electricity grid. However, there is a broad consensus that the critical factor is not the additional energy demand, but the possible load peaks occurring from many simultaneous charging processes. Hence, sound knowledge about the charging behavior of BEVs and the resulting load profiles is required for a successful and smart integration of BEVs into the energy system. This requires a large amount of empirical data on charging processes and plug‐in times, which is still lacking in literature. This paper is based on a comprehensive data set of 2.6 million empirical charging processes and investigates the possibility of identifying different groups of charging processes. For this, a Gaussian mixture model, as well as a k‐means clustering approach, are applied and the results validated against synthetic load profiles and the original data. The identified load profiles, the flexibility potential and the charging locations of the clusters are of high relevance for energy system modelers, grid operators, utilities and many more. We identified, in this early market phase of BEVs, a surprisingly high number of opportunity chargers during daytime, as well as switching of users between charging clusters