Coherent oscillations and incoherent tunnelling in one - dimensional asymmetric double - well potential

For a model 1d asymmetric double-well potential we calculated so-called survival probability (i.e. the probability for a particle initially localised in one well to remain there). We use a semiclassical (WKB) solution of Schroedinger equation. It is shown that behaviour essentially depends on transition probability, and on dimensionless parameter which is a ratio of characteristic frequencies for low energy non-linear in-well oscillations and inter wells tunnelling. For the potential describing a finite motion (double-well) one has always a regular behaviour. For the small value of the parameter there is well defined resonance pairs of levels and the survival probability has coherent oscillations related to resonance splitting. However for the large value of the parameter no oscillations at all for the survival probability, and there is almost an exponential decay with the characteristic time determined by Fermi golden rule. In this case one may not restrict oneself to only resonance pair levels. The number of perturbed by tunnelling levels grows proportionally to the value of this parameter (by other words instead of isolated pairs there appear the resonance regions containing the sets of strongly coupled levels). In the region of intermediate values of the parameter one has a crossover between both limiting cases, namely the exponential decay with subsequent long period recurrent behaviour.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures, Revtex, revised version. Accepted to Phys. Rev.

Entangling power and operator entanglement in qudit systems

We establish the entangling power of a unitary operator on a general finite-dimensional bipartite quantum system with and without ancillas, and give relations between the entangling power based on the von Neumann entropy and the entangling power based on the linear entropy. Significantly, we demonstrate that the entangling power of a general controlled unitary operator acting on two equal-dimensional qudits is proportional to the corresponding operator entanglement if linear entropy is adopted as the quantity representing the degree of entanglement. We discuss the entangling power and operator entanglement of three representative quantum gates on qudits: the SUM, double SUM, and SWAP gates.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure. Version 3: Figure was improved and the MS was a bit shortene

Application of the National Osteoporosis Foundation Guidelines to postmenopausal women and men: the Framingham Osteoporosis Study.

Summary We applied the 2008 National Osteoporosis Foundation (NOF) Guidelines to Framingham Osteoporosis Study participants and found nearly one half of Caucasian postmenopausal women and one sixth of men aged 50 years and older would be recommended for osteoporosis treatment. Given the high proportion of persons recommended for treatment, NOF Guidelines may need to be re-evaluated with respect to budget impact. Introduction Little is known about the public health impact of the NOF Guidelines. Therefore, we determined the proportion of US Caucasians recommended for treatment of osteoporosis according to NOF Guidelines (2003 and 2008). Methods One thousand nine hundred and forty-six postmenopausal women and 1,681 men aged ≥50 years from the Framingham Study with information on bone mineral density (1987–2001) were included. Information on clinical predictors was used to estimate the 10-year probability of hip and major osteoporotic fracture by FRAX® (version 3.0). Results Overall proportion of women meeting treatment criterion was less when the 2008 NOF Guidelines were applied (41.1%) compared with 2003 Guidelines (47.8%). The proportion of women aged 75 years increased slightly (78.3% in 2003, 86.0% in 2008). Seventeen percent of men aged ≥50 years met treatment criterion (2.5% aged 50–64 years, 49.8% aged >75 years). Conclusions Nearly one half of Caucasian postmenopausal women and one sixth of men aged 50 years and older would be recommended for osteoporosis treatment according to 2008 NOF Guidelines. Given the high proportion of persons recommended for treatment, NOF Guidelines may need to be re-evaluated with respect to budget impact

Perceptions of COVID-19 vaccines among healthcare assistants: A national survey

Background: Limited COVID-19 vaccination acceptance among healthcare assistants (HCAs) may adversely impact older adults, who are at increased risk for severe COVID-19 infections. Our study objective was to evaluate the perceptions of COVID-19 vaccine safety and efficacy in a sample of frontline HCAs, overall and by race and ethnicity. Methods: An online survey was conducted from December 2020 to January 2021 through national e-mail listserv and private Facebook page for the National Association of Health Care Assistants. Responses from 155 HCAs, including certified nursing assistants, home health aides, certified medical assistants, and certified medication technicians, were included. A 27-item survey asked questions about experiences and perceptions of COVID-19 vaccines, including how confident they were that COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and adequately tested in people of color. Multivariable regression was used to identify associations with confidence in COVID-19 vaccines. Results: We analyzed data from 155 completed responses. Among respondents, 23.9% were black and 8.4% Latino/a. Most respondents worked in the nursing home setting (53.5%), followed by hospitals (12.9%), assisted living (11.6%), and home care (10.3%). Respondents expressed low levels of confidence in COVID-19 vaccines, with fewer than 40% expressing at least moderate confidence in safety (38.1%), effectiveness (31.0%), or adequate testing in people of color (27.1%). Non-white respondents reported lower levels of confidence in adequate testing of vaccines compared to white respondents. In bivariate and adjusted models, respondents who gave more favorable scores of organizational leadership at their workplace expressed greater confidence in COVID-19 vaccines. Conclusion: Frontline HCAs reported low confidence in COVID-19 vaccines. Stronger organizational leadership in the workplace appears to be an important factor in influencing HCA's willingness to be vaccinated. Action is needed to enhance COVID-19 vaccine uptake in this important population with employers playing an important role to build vaccine confidence and trust among employees. © 2021 The American Geriatrics Society

Quantum walk on distinguishable non-interacting many-particles and indistinguishable two-particle

We present an investigation of many-particle quantum walks in systems of non-interacting distinguishable particles. Along with a redistribution of the many-particle density profile we show that the collective evolution of the many-particle system resembles the single-particle quantum walk evolution when the number of steps is greater than the number of particles in the system. For non-uniform initial states we show that the quantum walks can be effectively used to separate the basis states of the particle in position space and grouping like state together. We also discuss a two-particle quantum walk on a two- dimensional lattice and demonstrate an evolution leading to the localization of both particles at the center of the lattice. Finally we discuss the outcome of a quantum walk of two indistinguishable particles interacting at some point during the evolution.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, To appear in special issue: "quantum walks" to be published in Quantum Information Processin

The Intentional Use of Service Recovery Strategies to Influence Consumer Emotion, Cognition and Behaviour

Service recovery strategies have been identified as a critical factor in the success of. service organizations. This study develops a conceptual frame work to investigate how specific service recovery strategies influence the emotional, cognitive and negative behavioural responses of . consumers., as well as how emotion and cognition influence negative behavior. Understanding the impact of specific service recovery strategies will allow service providers' to more deliberately and intentionally engage in strategies that result in positive organizational outcomes. This study was conducted using a 2 x 2 between-subjects quasi-experimental design. The results suggest that service recovery has a significant impact on emotion, cognition and negative behavior. Similarly, satisfaction, negative emotion and positive emotion all influence negative behavior but distributive justice has no effect

Greater physical activity is associated with neuroretinal thinning in glaucomatous and normative cohorts

Ella Claire Berry, Henry Marshall, Sean Mullany, Santiago Diaz Torres, Joshua Schmidt, Daniel Thomson, Mark Hassall, Stewart R Lake, Richard A Mills, John Landers, Stuart MacGregor, Robert Casson, Owen Siggs, Jamie E Crai

Quantum walks: a comprehensive review

Quantum walks, the quantum mechanical counterpart of classical random walks, is an advanced tool for building quantum algorithms that has been recently shown to constitute a universal model of quantum computation. Quantum walks is now a solid field of research of quantum computation full of exciting open problems for physicists, computer scientists, mathematicians and engineers. In this paper we review theoretical advances on the foundations of both discrete- and continuous-time quantum walks, together with the role that randomness plays in quantum walks, the connections between the mathematical models of coined discrete quantum walks and continuous quantum walks, the quantumness of quantum walks, a summary of papers published on discrete quantum walks and entanglement as well as a succinct review of experimental proposals and realizations of discrete-time quantum walks. Furthermore, we have reviewed several algorithms based on both discrete- and continuous-time quantum walks as well as a most important result: the computational universality of both continuous- and discrete- time quantum walks.Comment: Paper accepted for publication in Quantum Information Processing Journa

Interiorized Feminism and Gendered Nostalgia of The ‘Daughter Generation’ in Ning Ying's Perpetual Motion

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The original publication is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/jcc.5.3.253_1Ning Ying’s 2006 film Wuqiong dong/Perpetual Motion can be regarded as her first attempt to explore the genre of ‘women’s film’. Deviating from her previous neo-realist style, this film seeks to cultivate an alternative cinematic practice through developing a heavy-handed negative aesthetics. Ning Ying interiorizes the filmic exploration of female subjectivity in an enclosed time and space, which is constantly haunted by a spectral aesthetics characterized by audio-visual allusions to loss, grave, ruins and ghosts. However, the film’s radical content and alternative aesthetics are, ironically, packaged in prevailing consumer aesthetics and commodity fetishism on and off the silver screen. All these competing drives and accounts render the film a contested narrative constantly oscillating between avant-garde feminism and domestic melodrama, and between a register of disintegrating sisterhood and a celebrity scandal of adultery. This article examines the discursive and aesthetic innovations, contradictions and limits of Ning Ying’s cinematic feminism

Search for a W' boson decaying to a bottom quark and a top quark in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

Results are presented from a search for a W' boson using a dataset corresponding to 5.0 inverse femtobarns of integrated luminosity collected during 2011 by the CMS experiment at the LHC in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV. The W' boson is modeled as a heavy W boson, but different scenarios for the couplings to fermions are considered, involving both left-handed and right-handed chiral projections of the fermions, as well as an arbitrary mixture of the two. The search is performed in the decay channel W' to t b, leading to a final state signature with a single lepton (e, mu), missing transverse energy, and jets, at least one of which is tagged as a b-jet. A W' boson that couples to fermions with the same coupling constant as the W, but to the right-handed rather than left-handed chiral projections, is excluded for masses below 1.85 TeV at the 95% confidence level. For the first time using LHC data, constraints on the W' gauge coupling for a set of left- and right-handed coupling combinations have been placed. These results represent a significant improvement over previously published limits.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters B. Replaced with version publishe