Coupled plasmon - phonon excitations in extrinsic monolayer graphene

The existence of an acoustic plasmon in extrinsic (doped or gated) monolayer graphene was found recently in an {\it ab initio} calculation with the frozen lattice [M. Pisarra {\it et al.}, arXiv:1306.6273, 2013]. By the {\em fully dynamic} density-functional perturbation theory approach, we demonstrate a strong coupling of the acoustic plasmonic mode to lattice vibrations. Thereby, the acoustic plasmon in graphene does not exist as an isolated excitation, but it is rather bound into a combined plasmon-phonon mode. We show that the coupling provides a mechanism for the {\em bidirectional} energy exchange between the electronic and the ionic subsystems with fundamentally, as well as practically, important implications for the lattice cooling and heating by electrons in graphene.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Deterministic creation of stationary entangled states by dissipation

We propose a practical physical system for creation of a stationary entanglement by dissipation without employing the environment engineering techniques. The system proposed is composed of two perfectly distinguishable atoms, through their significantly different transition frequencies, with only one atom addressed by an external laser field. We show that the arrangement would easily be realized in practice by trapping the atoms at the distance equal to the quarter-wavelength of a standing-wave laser field and locating one of the atoms at a node and the other at the successive antinode of the wave. The undesirable dipole-dipole interaction between the atoms, that could be large at this small distance, is adjusted to zero by a specific initial preparation of the atoms or by a specific polarization of the atomic dipole moments. Following this arrangement, we show that the dissipative relaxation can create a stationary entanglement on demand by tuning the Rabi frequency of the laser field to the difference between the atomic transition frequencies. The laser field dresses the atom and we identify that the entangled state occurs when the frequency of one of the Rabi sidebands of the driven atom tunes to frequency of the undriven atom. It is also found that this system behaves as a cascade open system where the fluorescence from the dressed atom drives the other atom with no feedback.Comment: Published versio

The USFD Spoken Language Translation System for IWSLT 2014

The University of Sheffield (USFD) participated in the International Workshop for Spoken Language Translation (IWSLT) in 2014. In this paper, we will introduce the USFD SLT system for IWSLT. Automatic speech recognition (ASR) is achieved by two multi-pass deep neural network systems with adaptation and rescoring techniques. Machine translation (MT) is achieved by a phrase-based system. The USFD primary system incorporates state-of-the-art ASR and MT techniques and gives a BLEU score of 23.45 and 14.75 on the English-to-French and English-to-German speech-to-text translation task with the IWSLT 2014 data. The USFD contrastive systems explore the integration of ASR and MT by using a quality estimation system to rescore the ASR outputs, optimising towards better translation. This gives a further 0.54 and 0.26 BLEU improvement respectively on the IWSLT 2012 and 2014 evaluation data

Hypocycloid-shaped hollow-core photonic crystal fiber Part I: Arc curvature effect on confinement loss

We report on numerical and experimental studies showing the influence of arc curvature on the confinement loss in hypocycloid-core Kagome hollow-core photonic crystal fiber. The results prove that with such a design the optical performances are strongly driven by the contour negative curvature of the core-cladding interface. They show that the increase in arc curvature results in a strong decrease in both the confinement loss and the optical power overlap between the core mode and the silica core-surround, including a modal content approaching true single-mode guidance. Fibers with enhanced negative curvature were then fabricated with a record loss-level of 17 dB/km at 1064 nm

Problems of using a discount rate as monetary regulator

Originally published in Optics Letters on 01 May 2012 (ol-37-9-1430

Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Performance: Does Financial Reporting Quality Matter?

This study aims to analyze the role of social responsibility in times of crisis, where the study examines whether the role of social responsibility in the corporate performance will depend on its interaction with other basic aspects of the corporate business environment. In the contemporary economic context, information environment considers important aspects of the business environment, therefore, it can be suggested that the impact of social responsibility on the company’s performance will be clearer when considering its interaction with financial reporting quality. To test this argument, data from the Saudi business environment for the year 2020 was collected to explore the relationship between social responsibility and the company’s financial performance during the Corona pandemic, and the role of the financial reporting quality in that relationship. The results were largely consistent with the general argument of the study, the results showed that social responsibility does not affect the financial performance, but the interaction between it and the financial reporting quality positively affects the financial performance of the company during the pandemic period. Therefore, financial reporting quality play a major role in the extent to which social responsibility affects performance. The results represent a motivation for the various parties in the business environment to pay attention to the general framework of the companys business aspects when analyzing performance

Molecular identification of adenoviruses associated with respiratory infection in Egypt from 2003 to 2010.

BACKGROUND: Human adenoviruses of species B, C, and E (HAdV-B, -C, -E) are frequent causative agents of acute respiratory infections worldwide. As part of a surveillance program aimed at identifying the etiology of influenza-like illness (ILI) in Egypt, we characterized 105 adenovirus isolates from clinical samples collected between 2003 and 2010. METHODS: Identification of the isolates as HAdV was accomplished by an immunofluorescence assay (IFA) and confirmed by a set of species and type specific polymerase chain reactions (PCR). RESULTS: Of the 105 isolates, 42% were identified as belonging to HAdV-B, 60% as HAdV-C, and 1% as HAdV-E. We identified a total of six co-infections by PCR, of which five were HAdV-B/HAdV-C co-infections, and one was a co-infection of two HAdV-C types: HAdV-5/HAdV-6. Molecular typing by PCR enabled the identification of eight genotypes of human adenoviruses; HAdV-3 (n = 22), HAdV-7 (n = 14), HAdV-11 (n = 8), HAdV-1 (n = 22), HAdV-2 (20), HAdV-5 (n = 15), HAdV-6 (n = 3) and HAdV-4 (n = 1). The most abundant species in the characterized collection of isolates was HAdV-C, which is concordant with existing data for worldwide epidemiology of HAdV respiratory infections. CONCLUSIONS: We identified three species, HAdV-B, -C and -E, among patients with ILI over the course of 7 years in Egypt, with at least eight diverse types circulating

Isomer Spectroscopy of Neutron-rich 165,167Tb

Open Access JournalWe present information on the excited states in the prolate-deformed, neutron-rich nuclei 165;167Tb100;102. The nuclei of interest were synthesized following in-flight fission of a 345 MeV per nucleon 238U primary beam on a 2 mm 9Be target at the Radioactive Ion-Beam Factory (RIBF), RIKEN, Japan. The exotic nuclei were separated and identified event-by-event using the BigRIPS separator, with discrete energy gamma-ray decays from isomeric states with half-lives in the _s regime measured using the EURICA gamma-ray spectrometer. Metastable-state decays are identified in 165Tb and 167Tb and interpreted as arising from hindered E1 decay from the 7/2-[523] single quasi-proton Nilsson configuration to rotational states built on the 3/2-[411] single quasi-proton ground state. These data correspond to the first spectroscopic information in the heaviest, odd-A terbium isotopes reported to date and provide information on proton Nilsson configurations which reside close to the Fermi surface as the 170Dy doubly-midshell nucleus is approached.postprin