The emerging field of valleytronics aims to coherently manipulate an electron and/or hole's valley pseudospin as an information bearing degree of freedom (DOF). Monolayer transition metal ...dichalcogenides, due to their strongly bound excitons, their degenerate valleys and their seamless interfacing with photons are a promising candidate for room temperature valleytronics. Although the exciton binding energy suggests room temperature valley coherence should be possible, it has been elusive to-date. A potential solution involves the formation of half-light, half-matter cavity polaritons based on 2D material excitons. It has recently been discovered that cavity polaritons can inherit the valley DOF. Here, we demonstrate the room temperature valley coherence of valley-polaritons by embedding a monolayer of tungsten diselenide in a monolithic dielectric cavity. The extra decay path introduced by the exciton-cavity coupling, which is free from decoherence, is the key to room temperature valley coherence preservation. These observations paves the way for practical valleytronic devices.
Context.
Narrowband imaging spectropolarimetry is one of the most powerful tools available to infer information about the intensity and topology of the magnetic fields present in extended plasma ...structures in the solar atmosphere.
Aims.
We describe the instrumental set-up and the observing procedure that we have developed and optimized at the Istituto Ricerche Solari Locarno in order to perform imaging spectropolarimetry. A measurement that highlights the potential of the ensuing observations for magnetic field diagnostics in solar prominences is presented.
Methods.
Monochromatic images of solar prominences were obtained by combining a tunable narrowband filter, based on two Fabry-Perot etalons, with a Czerny-Turner spectrograph. Linear and circular polarization were measured at every pixel of the monochromatic image with the Zurich Imaging Polarimeter, ZIMPOL. A wavelength scan was performed across the profile of the considered spectral line. The HAZEL inversion code was applied to the observed Stokes profiles to infer a series of physical properties of the observed structure.
Results.
We carried out a spectropolarimetric observation of a prominence, consisting of a set of quasi-monochromatic images across the He
I
D
3
line at 5876 Å in the four Stokes parameters. The map of observed Stokes profiles was inverted with HAZEL, finding magnetic fields with intensities between 15 and 30 G and directed along the spine of the prominence, which is in agreement with the results of previous works.
Ethical and moral issues rule out the use of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) in chimera studies that would determine the full extent of their reprogrammed state, instead relying on less ...rigorous assays such as teratoma formation and differentiated cell types. To date, only mouse iPSC lines are known to be truly pluripotent. However, initial mouse iPSC lines failed to form chimeric offspring, but did generate teratomas and differentiated embryoid bodies, and thus these specific iPSC lines were not completely reprogrammed or truly pluripotent. Therefore, there is a need to address whether the reprogramming factors and process used eventually to generate chimeric mice are universal and sufficient to generate reprogrammed iPSC that contribute to chimeric offspring in additional species. Here we show that porcine mesenchymal stem cells transduced with 6 human reprogramming factors (POU5F1, SOX2, NANOG, KLF4, LIN28, and C-MYC) injected into preimplantation-stage embryos contributed to multiple tissue types spanning all 3 germ layers in 8 of 10 fetuses. The chimerism rate was high, 85.3% or 29 of 34 live offspring were chimeras based on skin and tail biopsies harvested from 2- to 5-day-old pigs. The creation of pluripotent porcine iPSCs capable of generating chimeric offspring introduces numerous opportunities to study the facets significantly affecting cell therapies, genetic engineering, and other aspects of stem cell and developmental biology.
The strong coupling of excitons to optical cavities has provided new insights into cavity quantum electrodynamics as well as opportunities to engineer nanoscale light–matter interactions1,2,3,4,5,6. ...Here we study the interaction between out-of-equilibrium cavity photons and both neutral and negatively charged excitons, by embedding a single layer of the atomically thin semiconductor molybdenum diselenide in a monolithic optical cavity based on distributed Bragg reflectors. The interactions lead to multiple cavity polariton resonances and anomalous band inversion for the lower, trion-derived, polariton branch—the central result of the present work. Our theoretical analysis reveals that many-body effects in an out-of-equilibrium setting result in an effective level attraction between the exciton-polariton and trion-polariton accounting for the experimentally observed inverted trion-polariton dispersion. Our results suggest a pathway for studying interesting regimes in quantum many-body physics yielding possible new phases of quantum matter7,8,9,10,11 as well as fresh possibilities for polaritonic device architectures12,13,14,15.
The present article gives an overview of the current state of applications of Total reflection X-Ray Fluorescence (TXRF) spectrometry for the analytical characterization of nuclear materials. The ...features of TXRF such as, requirement of very small sample amount, non consumptive and sometimes non-destructive nature of analysis, simple quantification methodology, negligible matrix and no memory effect, fast and simultaneous determination of almost all the elements of the periodic table including metals and non-metals alike, makes this technique very much suitable and attractive, for the analysis of radioactive, biological and precious materials. In this review article, we have discussed the up-to-date developments in TXRF analytical methods for elemental determinations and speciation studies of ultra trace, trace, minor and major constituents in nuclear fuel and related materials.
•Benefits of TXRF for elemental characterization of nuclear materials highlighted.•The major advantage of very less sample requirement makes TXRF attractive.•Major and minor elemental determinations with no sample preparation is feasible.•Elements: C to Pu can be determined using spectral and instrumental modifications.
Unlike other malignancies, therapeutic options in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) are largely limited to cytotoxic chemotherapy without the benefit of molecular markers predicting response. ...Here we report tumor-cell-intrinsic chromatin accessibility patterns of treatment-naïve surgically resected PDAC tumors that were subsequently treated with (Gem)/Abraxane adjuvant chemotherapy. By ATAC-seq analyses of EpCAM
PDAC malignant epithelial cells sorted from 54 freshly resected human tumors, we show here the discovery of a signature of 1092 chromatin loci displaying differential accessibility between patients with disease free survival (DFS) < 1 year and patients with DFS > 1 year. Analyzing transcription factor (TF) binding motifs within these loci, we identify two TFs (ZKSCAN1 and HNF1b) displaying differential nuclear localization between patients with short vs. long DFS. We further develop a chromatin accessibility microarray methodology termed "ATAC-array", an easy-to-use platform obviating the time and cost of next generation sequencing. Applying this methodology to the original ATAC-seq libraries as well as independent libraries generated from patient-derived organoids, we validate ATAC-array technology in both the original ATAC-seq cohort as well as in an independent validation cohort. We conclude that PDAC prognosis can be predicted by ATAC-array, which represents a low-cost, clinically feasible technology for assessing chromatin accessibility profiles.
Abstract Human neural progenitor cells differentiated from human embryonic stem cells offer a potential cell source for studying neurodegenerative diseases and for drug screening assays. Previously, ...we demonstrated that human neural progenitors could be maintained in a proliferative state with the addition of leukemia inhibitory factor and basic fibroblast growth factor. Here we demonstrate that 96 h after removal of basic fibroblast growth factor the neural progenitor cell culture was significantly altered and cell replication halted. Fourteen days after the removal of basic fibroblast growth factor, most cells expressed microtubule-associated protein 2 and TUJ1, markers characterizing a post-mitotic neuronal phenotype as well as neural developmental markers Cdh2 and Gbx2. Real-time PCR was performed to determine the ionotropic receptor subunit expression profile. Differentiated neural progenitors express subunits of glutamatergic, GABAergic, nicotinic, purinergic and transient receptor potential receptors. In addition, sodium and calcium channel subunits were also expressed. Functionally, virtually all the hNP cells tested under whole-cell voltage clamp exhibited delayed rectifier potassium channel currents and some differentiated cells exhibited tetrodotoxin-sensitive, voltage-dependent sodium channel current. Action potentials could also be elicited by currents injection under whole-cell current clamp in a minority of cells. These results indicate that removing basic fibroblast growth factor from the neural progenitor cell cultures leads to a post-mitotic state, and has the capability to produce excitable cells that can generate action potentials, a landmark characteristic of a neuronal phenotype. This is the first report of an efficient and simple means of generating human neuronal cells for ionotropic receptor assays and ultimately for electrically active human neural cell assays for drug discovery.
There are limited data examining healthcare resource utilization in patients with recurrent Clostridium difficile infection (CDI).
Patients with CDI at a tertiary-care hospital in Houston, TX, were ...prospectively enrolled into an observational cohort study. Recurrence was assessed via follow-up phone calls. Patients with one or more recurrence were included in this study. The location at which healthcare was obtained by patients with recurrent CDI was identified along with hospital length of stay. CDI-attributable readmissions, defined as a positive toxin test within 48 hours of admission and a primary CDI diagnosis, were also assessed.
372 primary cases of CDI were identified of whom 64 (17.2%) experienced at least one CDI recurrence. Twelve of 64 patients experienced 18 further episodes of CDI recurrence. Of these 64 patients, 33 (50.8%) patients with recurrent CDI were readmitted of which 6 (18.2%) required ICU care, 29 (45.3%) had outpatient care only, and 2 (3.1%) had an ED visit. Nineteen (55.9%) readmissions were defined as CDI-attributable. For patients with CDI-attributable readmission, the average length of stay was 6 ± 6 days.
Recurrent CDI leads to significant healthcare resource utilization. Methods of reducing the burden of recurrent CDI should be further studied.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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