1,844 research outputs found
Mega-blowouts in QinghaiâTibet Plateau: morphology, distribution and initiation.
Blowouts are windâeroded landforms that are widely distributed in the northâeastern part in QinghaiâTibet Plateau (QTP), China. These blowouts are thought to form in response to climate change and/or human activity but little is known about their morphodynamics. Using field surveys, remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) spatial analysis, the distribution and morphology of blowouts are analysed and their initiation considered. Results show the QTP megaâblowouts are some of the largest in the world. The orientations of the trough shaped blowouts are parallel with the prevailing wind, but the saucer and bowlâshaped blowouts are influenced by biâdirectional transport. Whilst regional patterns of blowout shape and size were observed to reflect the extent of aeolian sediments and wind regimes, the relationship between the different morphological parameters showed consistency. During initial stages of development, the length to width ratios of blowouts increase rapidly with area but after they reach a mega size this relationship stabilizes as blowouts widen. Initial luminescence dating shows that blowouts appear to have initiated ~100 to 500âyears ago, coinciding with the Little Ice Age (LIA) climate event when northwest winds are known to have intensified. Further work is required to confirm this initiation period and establish the significance of mega blowouts for landscape degradation and human activities
Surveying adjustment datum and relative deformation accuracy analysis
In the surveying adjustment, unknown parameters are usually not direct observations, but the elements related to these direct observations. In order to determine the unknown parameters adequate known data should be provided, and these necessarily required known data are used to form the adjustment datum. Under different datums, different results will be obtained even with the same direct observations. However, in the practical adjustment calculation, the datum and its effect on the results are always ignored. In this paper, the adjustment datum is firstly discussed and defined as datum equations. Then an adjustment method based on the datum equations and least squares is presented. This method is a generic one, not only suited for the case in an ordinary datum but also in the gravity centre datum or a quasi-datum, and can be easily used to analyse different deformations. Based on this method, the transformation between different reference frames is derived. It shows that the calculation results, deformation and positioning accuracy under one kind of datum are relative and generic. A case study is further introduced and used to test this new method. Based on the case study, the conclusions are reached. It is found that the relative positional root mean square error of each point becomes bigger as the distance between the point and the datum increases, and the relative deformation offsets under different kinds of datum are helpful for reliable deformation analysis
Observation of anomalous decoherence effect in a quantum bath at room temperature
Decoherence of quantum objects is critical to modern quantum sciences and
technologies. It is generally believed that stronger noises cause faster
decoherence. Strikingly, recent theoretical research discovers the opposite
case for spins in quantum baths. Here we report experimental observation of the
anomalous decoherence effect for the electron spin-1 of a nitrogen-vacancy
centre in high-purity diamond at room temperature. We demonstrate that under
dynamical decoupling, the double-transition can have longer coherence time than
the single-transition, even though the former couples to the nuclear spin bath
as twice strongly as the latter does. The excellent agreement between the
experimental and the theoretical results confirms the controllability of the
weakly coupled nuclear spins in the bath, which is useful in quantum
information processing and quantum metrology.Comment: 22 pages, related paper at http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.557
Spatio-Temporal Characteristics of Global Warming in the Tibetan Plateau during the Last 50 Years Based on a Generalised Temperature Zone - Elevation Model
Temperature is one of the primary factors influencing the climate and ecosystem, and examining its change and fluctuation could elucidate the formation of novel climate patterns and trends. In this study, we constructed a generalised temperature zone elevation model (GTEM) to assess the trends of climate change and temporal-spatial differences in the Tibetan Plateau (TP) using the annual and monthly mean temperatures from 1961-2010 at 144 meteorological stations in and near the TP. The results showed the following: (1) The TP has undergone robust warming over the study period, and the warming rate was 0.318°C/decade. The warming has accelerated during recent decades, especially in the last 20 years, and the warming has been most significant in the winter months, followed by the spring, autumn and summer seasons. (2) Spatially, the zones that became significantly smaller were the temperature zones of -6°C and -4°C, and these have decreased 499.44 and 454.26 thousand sq km from 1961 to 2010 at average rates of 25.1% and 11.7%, respectively, over every 5-year interval. These quickly shrinking zones were located in the northwestern and central TP. (3) The elevation dependency of climate warming existed in the TP during 1961-2010, but this tendency has gradually been weakening due to more rapid warming at lower elevations than in the middle and upper elevations of the TP during 1991-2010. The higher regions and some low altitude valleys of the TP were the most significantly warming regions under the same categorizing criteria. Experimental evidence shows that the GTEM is an effective method to analyse climate changes in high altitude mountainous regions
True Neutrality as a New Type of Flavour
A classification of leptonic currents with respect to C-operation requires
the separation of elementary particles into the two classes of vector C-even
and axial-vector C-odd character. Their nature has been created so that to each
type of lepton corresponds a kind of neutrino. Such pairs are united in
families of a different C-parity. Unlike the neutrino of a vector type, any
C-noninvariant Dirac neutrino must have his Majorana neutrino. They constitute
the purely neutrino families. We discuss the nature of a corresponding
mechanism responsible for the availability in all types of axial-vector
particles of a kind of flavour which distinguishes each of them from others by
a true charge characterized by a quantum number conserved at the interactions
between the C-odd fermion and the field of emission of the corresponding types
of gauge bosons. This regularity expresses the unidenticality of truly neutral
neutrino and antineutrino, confirming that an internal symmetry of a
C-noninvariant particle is described by an axial-vector space. Thereby, a true
flavour together with the earlier known lepton flavour predicts the existence
of leptonic strings and their birth in single and double beta decays as a unity
of flavour and gauge symmetry laws. Such a unified principle explains the
availability of a flavour symmetrical mode of neutrino oscillations.Comment: 19 pages, LaTex, Published version in IJT
Decadal changes of the Western Arabian sea ecosystem
Historical data from oceanographic expeditions and remotely sensed data on outgoing longwave radiation, temperature, wind speed and ocean color in the western Arabian Sea (1950â2010) were used to investigate decadal trends in the physical and biochemical properties of the upper 300 m. 72 % of the 29,043 vertical profiles retrieved originated from USA and UK expeditions. Increasing outgoing longwave radiation, surface air temperatures and sea surface temperature were identified on decadal timescales. These were well correlated with decreasing wind speeds associated with a reduced Siberian High atmospheric anomaly. Shoaling of the oxycline and nitracline was observed as well as acidification of the upper 300 m. These physical and chemical changes were accompanied by declining chlorophyll-a concentrations, vertical macrofaunal habitat compression, declining sardine landings and an increase of fish kill incidents along the Omani coast
Quantum teleportation using active feed-forward between two Canary Islands
Quantum teleportation [1] is a quintessential prerequisite of many quantum
information processing protocols [2-4]. By using quantum teleportation, one can
circumvent the no-cloning theorem [5] and faithfully transfer unknown quantum
states to a party whose location is even unknown over arbitrary distances. Ever
since the first experimental demonstrations of quantum teleportation of
independent qubits [6] and of squeezed states [7], researchers have
progressively extended the communication distance in teleportation, usually
without active feed-forward of the classical Bell-state measurement result
which is an essential ingredient in future applications such as communication
between quantum computers. Here we report the first long-distance quantum
teleportation experiment with active feed-forward in real time. The experiment
employed two optical links, quantum and classical, over 143 km free space
between the two Canary Islands of La Palma and Tenerife. To achieve this, the
experiment had to employ novel techniques such as a frequency-uncorrelated
polarization-entangled photon pair source, ultra-low-noise single-photon
detectors, and entanglement-assisted clock synchronization. The average
teleported state fidelity was well beyond the classical limit of 2/3.
Furthermore, we confirmed the quality of the quantum teleportation procedure
(without feed-forward) by complete quantum process tomography. Our experiment
confirms the maturity and applicability of the involved technologies in
real-world scenarios, and is a milestone towards future satellite-based quantum
teleportation
Observation of eight-photon entanglement
Using ultra-bright sources of pure-state entangled photons from parametric
down conversion, an eight-photon interferometer and post-selection detection,
we demonstrate the ability to experimentally manipulate eight individual
photons and report the creation of an eight-photon Schr\"odinger cat state with
an observed fidelity of .Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure
Identifying Ligand Binding Conformations of the ÎČ2-Adrenergic Receptor by Using Its Agonists as Computational Probes
Recently available G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) structures and biophysical studies suggest that the difference between the effects of various agonists and antagonists cannot be explained by single structures alone, but rather that the conformational ensembles of the proteins need to be considered. Here we use an elastic network model-guided molecular dynamics simulation protocol to generate an ensemble of conformers of a prototypical GPCR, ÎČ2-adrenergic receptor (ÎČ2AR). The resulting conformers are clustered into groups based on the conformations of the ligand binding site, and distinct conformers from each group are assessed for their binding to known agonists of ÎČ2AR. We show that the select ligands bind preferentially to different predicted conformers of ÎČ2AR, and identify a role of ÎČ2AR extracellular region as an allosteric binding site for larger drugs such as salmeterol. Thus, drugs and ligands can be used as "computational probes" to systematically identify protein conformers with likely biological significance. © 2012 Isin et al
A Trial of Early Antiretrovirals and Isoniazid Preventive Therapy in Africa
BACKGROUND: In sub-Saharan Africa, the burden of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-associated tuberculosis is high. We conducted a trial with a 2-by-2 factorial design to assess the benefits of early antiretroviral therapy (ART), 6-month isoniazid preventive therapy (IPT), or both among HIV-infected adults with high CD4+ cell counts in Ivory Coast. METHODS: We included participants who had HIV type 1 infection and a CD4+ count of less than 800 cells per cubic millimeter and who met no criteria for starting ART according to World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups: deferred ART (ART initiation according to WHO criteria), deferred ART plus IPT, early ART (immediate ART initiation), or early ART plus IPT. The primary end point was a composite of diseases included in the case definition of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), non-AIDS-defining cancer, non-AIDS-defining invasive bacterial disease, or death from any cause at 30 months. We used Cox proportional models to compare outcomes between the deferred-ART and early-ART strategies and between the IPT and no-IPT strategies. RESULTS: A total of 2056 patients (41% with a baseline CD4+ count of â„500 cells per cubic millimeter) were followed for 4757 patient-years. A total of 204 primary end-point events were observed (3.8 events per 100 person-years; 95% confidence interval [CI], 3.3 to 4.4), including 68 in patients with a baseline CD4+ count of at least 500 cells per cubic millimeter (3.2 events per 100 person-years; 95% CI, 2.4 to 4.0). Tuberculosis and invasive bacterial diseases accounted for 42% and 27% of primary end-point events, respectively. The risk of death or severe HIV-related illness was lower with early ART than with deferred ART (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.56; 95% CI, 0.41 to 0.76; adjusted hazard ratio among patients with a baseline CD4+ count of â„500 cells per cubic millimeter, 0.56; 95% CI, 0.33 to 0.94) and lower with IPT than with no IPT (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.65; 95% CI, 0.48 to 0.88; adjusted hazard ratio among patients with a baseline CD4+ count of â„500 cells per cubic millimeter, 0.61; 95% CI, 0.36 to 1.01). The 30-month probability of grade 3 or 4 adverse events did not differ significantly among the strategies. CONCLUSIONS: In this African country, immediate ART and 6 months of IPT independently led to lower rates of severe illness than did deferred ART and no IPT, both overall and among patients with CD4+ counts of at least 500 cells per cubic millimeter. (Funded by the French National Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis; TEMPRANO ANRS 12136 ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00495651.)
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