julilili42/papers huggingface dataset:
Quantum metrology with a non-linear kicked Mach–Zehnder interferometer
2022-07-20

Abstract We study the sensitivity of a Mach–Zehnder interferometer that contains in addition to the phase shifter a non-linear element. By including both elements in a cavity or a loop that the light transverses many times, a non-linear kicked version of the interferometer arises. We study its sensitivity as function of the phase shift, the kicking strength, the maximally reached average number of photons, and damping due to photon loss for an initial coherent state. We find that for vanishing damping Heisenberg-limited scaling of the sensitivity arises if squeezing dominates the total photon number. For small to moderate damping rates the non-linear kicks can considerably increase the sensitivity as measured by the quantum Fisher information per unit time.
Applicability of open science practices to completed research projects from different disciplines and research paradigms
2022-07-20

<ns4:p>The purpose of this data collection was to uncover the extent to which communities have emerged that cultivate a shared understanding of open science. In a cross-sectional survey, we assessed the applicability of 13 open science practices over different disciplines and research paradigms. Focusing on completed research projects, participants were able to draw informed evaluations concerning the applicability of open science practices. The total sample is N=295 researchers, with approximately equal numbers from six broad disciplines (between 42 and 52 participants per discipline). The survey included an attention check.</ns4:p>
Latest observations on the low energy excess in CRESST-III
2022-07-20

The CRESST experiment observes an unexplained excess of events at low energies. In the current CRESST-III data-taking campaign we are operating detector modules with different designs to narrow down the possible explanations. In this work, we show first observations of the ongoing measurement, focusing on the comparison of time, energy and temperature dependence of the excess in several detectors. These exclude dark matter, radioactive backgrounds and intrinsic sources related to the crystal bulk as a major contribution.
Trichophyton indotineae—An Emerging Pathogen Causing Recalcitrant Dermatophytoses in India and Worldwide—A Multidimensional Perspective
2022-07-21

Trichophyton (T.) indotineae is a newly identified dermatophyte species that has been found in a near-epidemic form on the Indian subcontinent. There is evidence of its spread from the Indian subcontinent to a number of countries worldwide. The fungus is identical to genotype VIII within the T. mentagrophytes/T. interdigitale species complex, which was described in 2019 by sequencing the Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) region of ribosomal DNA of the dermatophyte. More than 10 ITS genotypes of T. interdigitale and T. mentagrophytes can now be identified. T. indotineae causes inflammatory and itchy, often widespread, dermatophytosis affecting the groins, gluteal region, trunk, and face. Patients of all ages and genders are affected. The new species has largely displaced other previously prevalent dermatophytes on the Indian subcontinent. T. indotineae has become a problematic dermatophyte due to its predominantly in vitro genetic resistance to terbinafine owing to point mutations of the squalene epoxidase gene. It also displays in vivo resistance to terbinafine. The most efficacious drug currently available for this terbinafine-resistant dermatophytoses, based on sound evidence, is itraconazole.
Assuring the quality of VGI on land use and land cover: experiences and learnings from the LandSense project
2022-07-21

The potential of citizens as a source of geographical information has been recognized for many years. Such activity has grown recently due to the proliferation of inexpensive location aware devices and an ability to share data over the internet. Recently, a series of major projects, often cast as citizen observatories, have helped explore and develop this potential for a wide range of applications. Here, some of the experiences and learnings gained from part of one such project, which aimed to further the role of citizen science within Earth observation and help address environmental challenges, LandSense, are shared. The key focus is on quality assurance of citizen generated data on land use and land cover especially to support analyses of remotely sensed data and products. Particular focus is directed to quality assurance checks on photographic image quality, privacy, polygon overlap, positional accuracy and offset, contributor agreement, and categorical accuracy. The discussion aims to provide good practice advice to aid future studies and help fulfil the full potential of citizens as a source of volunteered geographical information (VGI).
Fluctuations in children’s self-regulation and parent-child interaction in everyday life: An ambulatory assessment study
2022-07-21

Self-regulation has mostly been studied as an intrapersonal trait which fluctuates across time and impacts everyday behavior related to individual goal pursuit and achievement. Although it is plausible that self-regulation affects not only individuals but also their social network, there is less research on how self-regulation levels and fluctuations are linked to social processes in daily life, such as interactions between children and their parents. To this end, this study tracked children’s (aged 9 to 11 years; N = 70) self-regulation, and their daily interaction quality with parents, across 54 days, using child and parental self-reports. Participants reported higher interaction quality in dyads in which children showed higher self-regulation levels in comparison to others, as well as on days on which children showed higher self-regulation compared to their typical levels. The extent of this association varied between dyads, which needs to be addressed in future studies. As self-regulation and parent-child interaction quality fluctuate in parallel, this study suggests that researchers should aim to understand the underlying mechanisms in order to develop dynamic self-regulation interventions in family contexts and improve family well-being.
CYP2C19 and CYP2D6 Genotypes and Metabolizer Status Distribution in a Bulgarian Psychiatric Cohort
2022-07-21

CYP2D6 and CYP2C19 are enzymes of essential significance for the pharmacokinetics of a multitude of commonly used antidepressants, antipsychotics, antiemetics, β-blockers, opioids, antiestrogen, antacids, etc. Polymorphisms in the respective genes are well established as resulting in functional differences, which in turn can impact safety and efficacy. Importantly, the prevalence of genetic CYP2D6 and CYP2C19 variability differs drastically between populations. Drawing on the limited information concerning genotype frequencies in Bulgaria, we here analyzed 742 Bulgarian psychiatric patients predominantly diagnosed with depression and/or anxiety. Specifically, we analyzed frequencies of CYPC19*2, *4 and *17, as well as of CYP2D6*2, *3, *4, *5, *6, *10 and *41. In total, 571 out of 742 patients (77%) carried at least one variant which impacts metabolizer status. Overall, 48.6% of the studied individuals were classified as non-normal metabolizers of CYP2D6 with most exhibiting reduced function (38.2% intermediate metabolizers and 6.6% poor metabolizers). In contrast, for CYP2C19, the majority of non-normal metabolizers showed increased functionality (28.9% rapid and 5.5% ultrarapid metabolizers), while reduced activity metabolizer status accounted for 25.6% (23.8% intermediate and 1.8% poor metabolizers). These results provide an important resource to assess the genetically encoded functional variability of CYP2D6 and CYP2C19 which may have significant implications for precision medicine in Bulgarian psychiatry practice.
Digital images are hard to resist: Teaching viewers about the effects of camera angle does not reduce the camera angle's impact on power judgments
2022-07-21

Digital images on the internet are often designed to manipulate viewers' interpretations. Therefore, it is important to educate viewers regarding potential effects of such techniques. We investigated whether two interventions addressing potential effects of camera angle affect the technique's effect on participants' power-related judgments of depicted persons. In two experiments, participants were assigned to one of two conditions with introductory information that either included information about the effect of camera angle or did not include such information. In Experiment 2, we additionally varied whether participants engaged in a task practicing the detection of camera angles or not. None of the interventions affected how participants rated digital pictures of persons that were shot from different camera angles. However, both experiments demonstrated that the interventions were successful in making viewers aware of the potential effects of camera angles - as evident in the participants' responses to open-ended questions. Potential reasons for the lack of effects on the participants' power-related judgments of the depicted persons are discussed.
The Application of Bony Labyrinth Methods for Forensic Affinity Estimation
2022-07-21

Population affinity identification is important for reconstructing the biological profile of human skeletal remains. Most anthropological methods for predicting population affinity rely on complete crania or cranial parts. However, complete parts are frequently not found in forensic and bioarchaeological contexts. In contrast, the petrous portion of the cranium presents a unique rate of preservation in the field. Therefore, this study aimed to develop stepwise discriminant function formulae to determine population affinity using measurements on three-dimensional models of the human adult bony labyrinth. The sample utilised consisted of 30 German, 38 African Zulu, and 30 Oneota individuals. A total of four function equations were developed. The function involving all three populations presented an average accuracy of 90.8%. Mathematical equations were also derived to discriminate between Zulu and Germans (91.2%), Zulu and Oneota (95.5%), as well as Oneota and Germans (96.7%). These results indicate this new method of population affinity identification is highly successful, even with fragmentary remains.
Simulation studies of the eROSITA particle-induced background using a highly detailed mass model
2022-07-21

A new eROSITA mass model is presented for particle background simulations as well as ray-tracing simulations using the Geant4 toolkit. The origin of the aluminum and iron fluorescence lines seen in the eROSITA spectrum was investigated using Monte Carlo simulations of the particle background for the filter wheel closed position with the new mass model. The geometry offers an unprecedented level of detail, especially close to the CCD. The mass model is written in the geometry description markup language (GDML) and consists mainly of Geant4 constructed solid geometry (CSG) volumes, which allows for fast simulation runtimes.
Ground States for Infrared Renormalized Translation-Invariant Non-Relativistic QED
2022-07-21

We consider a translation-invariant Pauli-Fierz model describing a non-relativistic charged quantum mechanical particle interacting with the quantized electromagnetic field. The charged particle may be spinless or have spin one half. We decompose the Hamiltonian with respect to the total momentum into a direct integral of so called fiber Hamiltonians. We perform an infrared renormalization, in the sense of norm resolvent convergence, for each fiber Hamiltonian, which has the physical interpretation of removing an infinite photon cloud. We show that the renormalized fiber Hamiltonians have a ground state for almost all values for the total momentum with modulus less than one.
Report on 2104.11160v2
2022-07-21

We study the dynamics of a one-dimensional Rydberg lattice gas under facilitation (anti-blockade) conditions which implements a so-called kinetically constrained spin system.Here an atom can only be excited to a Rydberg state when one of its neighbors is already excited.Once two or more atoms are simultaneously excited mechanical forces emerge, which couple the internal electronic dynamics of this many-body system to external vibrational degrees of freedom in the lattice.This electron-phonon coupling results in a so-called phonon dressing of many-body states which in turn impacts on the facilitation dynamics.In our theoretical study we focus on a scenario in which all energy scales are sufficiently separated such that a perturbative treatment of the coupling between electronic and vibrational states is possible.This allows to analytically derive an effective Hamiltonian for the evolution of consecutive clusters of Rydberg excitations in the presence of phonon dressing.We analyze the spectrum of this Hamiltonian and show -by employing Fano resonance theory -that the interaction between Rydberg excitations and lattice vibrations leads to the emergence of slowly decaying bound states that inhibit fast relaxation of certain initial states.
FindPFΔS: Non-Target Screening for PFAS─Comprehensive Data Mining for MS2 Fragment Mass Differences
2022-07-22

The limited availability of analytical reference standards makes non-target screening approaches based on high-resolution mass spectrometry increasingly important for the efficient identification of unknown PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) and their TPs. We developed and optimized a vendor-independent open-source Python-based algorithm (FindPFΔS = FindPolyFluoroDeltas) to search for distinct fragment mass differences in MS/MS raw data (.ms2-files). Optimization with PFAS standards, two pre-characterized paper and soil samples (iterative data-dependent acquisition), revealed Δ(CF<sub>2</sub>)<sub><i>n</i></sub>, ΔHF, ΔC<sub><i>n</i></sub>H<sub>3</sub>F<sub>2<i>n</i>-3</sub>, ΔC<sub><i>n</i></sub>H<sub>2</sub>F<sub>2<i>n</i>-4</sub>, ΔC<sub><i>n</i></sub>HF<sub>2<i>n</i>-5</sub>, ΔC<sub><i>n</i></sub>F<sub>2<i>n</i></sub>SO<sub>3</sub>, ΔCF<sub>3</sub>, and ΔCF<sub>2</sub>O as relevant and selective fragment differences depending on applied collision energies. In a PFAS standard mix, 94% (36 of 38 compounds from 10 compound classes) could be found by FindPFΔS. The use of fragment differences was applicable to a wide range of PFAS classes and appears as a promising new approach for PFAS identification. The influence of mass tolerance and intensity threshold on the identification efficiency and on the detection of false positives was systematically evaluated with the use of selected HR-MS<sup>2</sup>-spectra (20,998) from MassBank. To this end, with the use of FindPFΔS, we could identify different unknown PFAS homologues in the paper extracts. FindPFΔS is freely available as both Python source code on GitHub (https://github.com/JonZwe/FindPFAS) and as an executable windows application (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6797353) with a graphical user interface on Zenodo.
Long-term follow-up of surgical intervention pattern in pediatric low-grade gliomas: report from the German SIOP-LGG 2004 cohort
2022-07-22

OBJECTIVE Neurosurgical treatment is an integral part of the treatment algorithms for pediatric low-grade glioma (LGG), yet patterns of surgical procedures are rarely challenged. The objective of this study was to evaluate surgical treatment patterns in pediatric LGG. METHODS The German Societé Internationale d’Oncologie Pédiatrique (SIOP)–LGG 2004 cohort was analyzed to identify relevant patient and tumor characteristics associated with time to death, next surgery, number of resections, and radiological outcome. RESULTS A total of 1271 patients underwent 1713 neurosurgical interventions (1 intervention in 947, 2 in 230, 3 in 70, and 4–6 in 24). The median age of the study population was 8.57 years at first surgery, and 46.1% were female. Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) was found in 4.4%, and 5.4% had tumor dissemination. Three hundred fifty-four patients (27.9%) had chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy. The cumulative incidence of second surgery at 10 years was 26%, and was higher for infants, those with spinal and supratentorial midline (SML) tumors, and those with pilomyxoid astrocytomas. The hazard ratio for subsequent surgery was higher given dissemination and noncomplete initial resection, and lower for caudal brainstem and SML tumors. Among 1225 patients with fully documented surgical records and radiological outcome, 613 reached complete remission during the observation period, and 50 patients died. Patients with pilocytic astrocytoma had higher chances for a final complete remission, whereas patients with initial partial or subtotal tumor resection, dissemination, NF1, or primary tumor sites in the spinal cord and SML had lower chances. CONCLUSIONS Neurosurgery is a key element of pediatric LGG treatment. In almost 50% of the patients, however, at least some tumor burden will remain during long-term follow-up. This study found that most of these patients reached a stable disease status without further surgeries. Multidisciplinary team decisions must balance the goal of complete resection, risk factors, repeated surgeries, and possible treatment alternatives in a wide range of heterogeneous entities. Procedural details and neurological outcome should be recorded to better assess their impact on long-term outcome.
Benchmarking the performance of portfolio optimization with QAOA
2022-07-22

We present a detailed study of portfolio optimization using different versions of the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA). For a given list of assets, the portfolio optimization problem is formulated as quadratic binary optimization constrained on the number of assets contained in the portfolio. QAOA has been suggested as a possible candidate for solving this problem (and similar combinatorial optimization problems) more efficiently than classical computers in the case of a sufficiently large number of assets. However, the practical implementation of this algorithm requires a careful consideration of several technical issues, not all of which are discussed in the present literature. The present article intends to fill this gap and thereby provide the reader with a useful guide for applying QAOA to the portfolio optimization problem (and similar problems). In particular, we will discuss several possible choices of the variational form and of different classical algorithms for finding the corresponding optimized parameters. Viewing at the application of QAOA on error-prone NISQ hardware, we also analyze the influence of statistical sampling errors (due to a finite number of shots) and gate and readout errors (due to imperfect quantum hardware). Finally, we define a criterion for distinguishing between "easy" and "hard" instances of the portfolio optimization problem
Children’s use of egocentric reference frames in spatial language is related to their numerical magnitude understanding
2022-07-22

Numerical magnitude information is assumed to be spatially represented in the form of a mental number line defined with respect to a body-centred, egocentric frame of reference. In this context, spatial language skills such as mastery of verbal descriptions of spatial position (e.g., in front of, behind, to the right/left) have been proposed to be relevant for grasping spatial relations between numerical magnitudes on the mental number line. We examined 4- to 5-year-old’s spatial language skills in tasks that allow responses in egocentric and allocentric frames of reference, as well as their relative understanding of numerical magnitude (assessed by a number word comparison task). In addition, we evaluated influences of children’s absolute understanding of numerical magnitude assessed by their number word comprehension (montring different numbers using their fingers) and of their knowledge on numerical sequences (determining predecessors and successors as well as identifying missing dice patterns of a series). Results indicated that when considering responses that corresponded to the egocentric perspective, children’s spatial language was associated significantly with their relative numerical magnitude understanding, even after controlling for covariates, such as children’s SES, mental rotation skills, and also absolute magnitude understanding or knowledge on numerical sequences. This suggests that the use of egocentric reference frames in spatial language may facilitate spatial representation of numbers along a mental number line and thus seem important for preschoolers’ relative understanding of numerical magnitude.
Slag characterization from the Roman vicus of Eisenberg (Germany)
2022-07-22

Abstract The Roman vicus of Eisenberg in Rhineland-Palatinate (Germany) has always been considered to be an important Roman iron smelting centre due to numerous slag finds and relicts of furnaces. Most excavations that revealed iron working debris have been performed in the nineteenth or early twentieth century. Their results and interpretations have been considered to be doubtful, but more recent excavations have brought to light further relics of iron working processes, which have not, however, helped to clarify the situation. Therefore, slag and ore fragments from two locations of discovery were selected for investigation, because no systematic investigations have been carried out on slags or other relics of iron working so far, despite the enormous importance of such a place. The first results of this investigation clearly prove the smelting of iron in slag-tapping furnaces during Roman times due to the morphology of the slag, but they also show that the metallurgical debris is obviously not in situ and has been used as filling material. In addition, the high-grade haematite ores also found on the ground could serve as a source for smelting.
Histone 4 lysine 5/12 acetylation provides a plasticity code with epigenetic memory of environmental exposure
2022-07-22

Abstract Development can be altered to match phenotypes with the environment, and the genetic mechanisms that direct such alternative phenotypes are beginning to be elucidated 1,2 . Yet, the rules that govern environmental sensitivity vs . invariant development (canalization), and potential epigenetic memory, remain unknown. Here, we show that plasticity of nematode mouth forms is determined by histone 4 lysine 5 and 12 acetylation (H4K5/12ac). Acetylation in early larval stages provides a permissive chromatin state at specific switch genes, which is susceptible to induction during the critical window of environmental sensitivity. As development proceeds deacetylation shuts off switch gene expression to end the critical period. We show that inhibiting deacetylase enzymes leads to long-term epigenetic memory, demonstrating that histone modifications in juveniles can carry environmental information to affect organismal traits in adults. This epigenetic regulation of plasticity appears to be derived from an ancient mechanism of licensing developmental speed that is conserved between flies and nematodes. Thus, H4K5/12ac provides a histone ‘plasticity’ code with epigenetic potential that can be stored and erased by acetylation and deacetylation, respectively. Highlights Reciprocal transplant experiments reveal a critical time window of mouth-form plasticity. Entry and exit of the critical window is determined by H4K5/12ac at the switch gene eud-1 . H4K12ac maintains transcriptional competence by supporting elongation. Inhibition of deacetylation freezes an initial developmental trajectory, resulting in long-term epigenetic memory. H4K5/12 acetylation control of plasticity was co-opted from an ancestral role in controlling developmental speed.