Multiplexed readout of kinetic inductance bolometer arrays

Kinetic inductance bolometer (KIB) technology is a candidate for passive sub-millimeter wave and terahertz imaging systems. Its benefits include scalability into large 2D arrays and operation with intermediate cryogenics in the temperature range of 5 -- 10 K. We have previously demonstrated the scalability in terms of device fabrication, optics integration, and cryogenics. In this article, we address the last missing ingredient, the readout. The concept, serial addressed frequency excitation (SAFE), is an alternative to full frequency-division multiplexing at microwave frequencies conventionally used to read out kinetic inductance detectors. We introduce the concept, and analyze the criteria of the multiplexed readout avoiding the degradation of the signal-to-noise ratio in the presence of a thermal anti-alias filter inherent to thermal detectors. We present a practical scalable realization of a readout system integrated into a prototype imager with 8712 detectors. This is used for demonstrating the noise properties of the readout. Furthermore, we present practical detection experiments with a stand-off laboratory-scale imager.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Amicus Brief: Kumho Tire v. Carmichael

This brief addresses the issue of jury performance and jury responses to expert testimony. It reviews and summaries a substantial body of research evidence about jury behavior that has been produced over the past quarter century. The great weight of that evidence challenges the view that jurors abdicate their responsibilities as fact finders when faced with expert evidence or that they are pro-plaintiff, anti-defendant, and anti-business. The Petitioners and amici on behalf of petitioners make a number of overlapping, but empirically unsupported, assertions about jury behavior in response to expert testimony, namely that juries are frequently incapable of critically evaluation expert testimony, are easily confused, give inordinate weight to expert testimony, are awed by science, defer to the opinions of unreliable experts, and, implicitly, that in civil trials juries tilt in favor of plaintiffs and against corporations

Off-Diagonal Deformations of Kerr Metrics and Black Ellipsoids in Heterotic Supergravity

Geometric methods for constructing exact solutions of motion equations with first order $\alpha ^{\prime}$ corrections to the heterotic supergravity action implying a non-trivial Yang-Mills sector and six dimensional, 6-d, almost-K\"ahler internal spaces are studied. In 10-d spacetimes, general parametrizations for generic off-diagonal metrics, nonlinear and linear connections and matter sources, when the equations of motion decouple in very general forms are considered. This allows us to construct a variety of exact solutions when the coefficients of fundamental geometric/physical objects depend on all higher dimensional spacetime coordinates via corresponding classes of generating and integration functions, generalized effective sources and integration constants. Such generalized solutions are determined by generic off-diagonal metrics and nonlinear and/or linear connections. In particular, as configurations which are warped/compactified to lower dimensions and for Levi-Civita connections. The corresponding metrics can have (non) Killing and/or Lie algebra symmetries and/or describe (1+2)-d and/or (1+3)-d domain wall configurations, with possible warping nearly almost-K\"ahler manifolds, with gravitational and gauge instantons for nonlinear vacuum configurations and effective polarizations of cosmological and interaction constants encoding string gravity effects. A series of examples of exact solutions describing generic off-diagonal supergravity modifications to black hole/ ellipsoid and solitonic configurations are provided and analyzed. We prove that it is possible to reproduce the Kerr and other type black solutions in general relativity (with certain types of string corrections) in 4-d and to generalize the solutions to non-vacuum configurations in (super) gravity/ string theories.Comment: latex2e, 44 pages with table of content, v2 accepted to EJPC with minor typos modifications requested by editor and referee and up-dated reference

Tai Chi on psychological well-being: systematic review and meta-analysis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Physical activity and exercise appear to improve psychological health. However, the quantitative effects of Tai Chi on psychological well-being have rarely been examined. We systematically reviewed the effects of Tai Chi on stress, anxiety, depression and mood disturbance in eastern and western populations.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Eight English and 3 Chinese databases were searched through March 2009. Randomized controlled trials, non-randomized controlled studies and observational studies reporting at least 1 psychological health outcome were examined. Data were extracted and verified by 2 reviewers. The randomized trials in each subcategory of health outcomes were meta-analyzed using a random-effects model. The quality of each study was assessed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Forty studies totaling 3817 subjects were identified. Approximately 29 psychological measurements were assessed. Twenty-one of 33 randomized and nonrandomized trials reported that 1 hour to 1 year of regular Tai Chi significantly increased psychological well-being including reduction of stress (effect size [ES], 0.66; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.23 to 1.09), anxiety (ES, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.29 to 1.03), and depression (ES, 0.56; 95% CI, 0.31 to 0.80), and enhanced mood (ES, 0.45; 95% CI, 0.20 to 0.69) in community-dwelling healthy participants and in patients with chronic conditions. Seven observational studies with relatively large sample sizes reinforced the beneficial association between Tai Chi practice and psychological health.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Tai Chi appears to be associated with improvements in psychological well-being including reduced stress, anxiety, depression and mood disturbance, and increased self-esteem. Definitive conclusions were limited due to variation in designs, comparisons, heterogeneous outcomes and inadequate controls. High-quality, well-controlled, longer randomized trials are needed to better inform clinical decisions.</p

Inflation Physics from the Cosmic Microwave Background and Large Scale Structure

Fluctuations in the intensity and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe each contain clues about the nature of the earliest moments of time. The next generation of CMB and large-scale structure (LSS) experiments are poised to test the leading paradigm for these earliest moments---the theory of cosmic inflation---and to detect the imprints of the inflationary epoch, thereby dramatically increasing our understanding of fundamental physics and the early universe. A future CMB experiment with sufficient angular resolution and frequency coverage that surveys at least 1% of the sky to a depth of 1 uK-arcmin can deliver a constraint on the tensor-to-scalar ratio that will either result in a 5-sigma measurement of the energy scale of inflation or rule out all large-field inflation models, even in the presence of foregrounds and the gravitational lensing B-mode signal. LSS experiments, particularly spectroscopic surveys such as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, will complement the CMB effort by improving current constraints on running of the spectral index by up to a factor of four, improving constraints on curvature by a factor of ten, and providing non-Gaussianity constraints that are competitive with the current CMB bounds.Astronom

Mass calibration of optically selected DES clusters using a measurement of CMB-cluster lensing with SPTpol data

We use cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature maps from the 500 deg2 SPTpol survey to measure the stacked lensing convergence of galaxy clusters from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Year-3 redMaPPer (RM) cluster catalog. The lensing signal is extracted through a modified quadratic estimator designed to be unbiased by the thermal Sunyaev-Zel{'}dovich (tSZ) effect. The modified estimator uses a tSZ-free map, constructed from the SPTpol 95 and 150 GHz datasets, to estimate the background CMB gradient. For lensing reconstruction, we employ two versions of the RM catalog: a flux-limited sample containing 4003 clusters and a volume-limited sample with 1741 clusters. We detect lensing at a significance of 8.7 σ (6.7σ) with the flux(volume)-limited sample. By modeling the reconstructed convergence using the Navarro-Frenk-White profile, we find the average lensing masses to be M200m = (1.62 +0.32 −0.25 [stat.] ± 0.04 [sys.]) and (1.28 +0.14 −0.18 [stat.] ±0.03 [sys.])×1014 M⊙for the volume- and flux-limited samples respectively. The systematic error budget is much smaller than the statistical uncertainty and is dominated by the uncertainties in the RM cluster centroids. We use the volume-limited sample to calibrate the normalization of the mass-richness scaling relation, and find a result consistent with the galaxy weak-lensing measurements from DES (Mcclintock et al. 2018)