Controlling periodic Fano resonances of quantum acoustic waves with a giant atom coupled to a microwave waveguide.

Nanoscale Fano resonances, with applications from telecommunications to ultra-sensitive biosensing, have prompted extensive research. We demonstrate that a superconducting qubit, jointly coupled to microwave waveguides and an inter-digital transducer composite device, can exhibit acoustic Fano resonances. Our analytical framework, leveraging the Taylor series approximation, elucidates the origins of these quantum acoustic resonances with periodic Fano-like interference. By analyzing the analytical Fano parameter, we demonstrate that the Fano resonances and their corresponding Fano widths near the resonance frequency of a giant atom can be precisely controlled and manipulated by adjusting the time delay. Moreover, not just the near-resonant Fano profiles, but the entire periodic Fano resonance features can be precisely modulated from Lorentz, Fano to quasi-Lorentz shapes by tuning the coupling strength of the microwave waveguide. Our analytical framework offers insights into the control and manipulation of periodic Fano resonances in quantum acoustic waves, thereby presenting significant potential for applications such as quantum information processing, sensing, and communication.

Association Between Ischemic Optic Neuropathy and Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A Population-Based Cohort Study in Taiwan.

Background: Ischemic optic neuropathy (ION) is a possible extraintestinal manifestation (EIM) of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We investigate the relation between IBD and ION and possible risk factors associated with their incidence. Methods: Medical records were extracted from the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) from January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2013. The main outcome was ION development. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses were performed. Results: We enrolled 22,540 individuals (4,508 with IBD, 18,032 without). The cumulative risk of developing ION was significantly greater for patients with IBD vs. patients without (Kaplan-Meier survival curve, p = 0.009; log-rank test). Seven (5%) and five (0.03%) patients developed ION in the IBD and control groups, respectively. Patients with IBD were significantly more likely to develop ION than those without IBD [adjusted hazard ratio (HR) = 4.135; 95% confidence interval: 1.312-11.246, p = 0.01]. Possible risk factors of ION development were age 30-39 years, diabetes mellitus (DM), hypertension, ischemic heart disease (IHD), atherosclerosis, and higher Charlson comorbidity index revised (CCI_R) value. Conclusion: Patients with IBD are at increased risk of subsequent ION development. Moreover, for patients with comorbidities, the risk of ION development is significantly higher in those with IBD than in those without.

Assessment of Expert-Level Automated Detection of Plasmodium falciparum in Digitized Thin Blood Smear Images.

Importance: Decades of effort have been devoted to establishing an automated microscopic diagnosis of malaria, but there are challenges in achieving expert-level performance in real-world clinical settings because publicly available annotated data for benchmark and validation are required. Objective: To assess an expert-level malaria detection algorithm using a publicly available benchmark image data set. Design, Setting, and Participants: In this diagnostic study, clinically validated malaria image data sets, the Taiwan Images for Malaria Eradication (TIME), were created by digitizing thin blood smears acquired from patients with malaria selected from the biobank of the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control from January 1, 2003, to December 31, 2018. These smear images were annotated by 4 clinical laboratory scientists who worked in medical centers in Taiwan and trained for malaria microscopic diagnosis at the national reference laboratory of the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control. With TIME, a convolutional neural network-based object detection algorithm was developed for identification of malaria-infected red blood cells. A diagnostic challenge using another independent data set within TIME was performed to compare the algorithm performance against that of human experts as clinical validation. Main Outcomes and Measures: Performance on detecting Plasmodium falciparum-infected blood cells was measured by average precision, and performance on detecting P falciparum infection at the image level was measured using sensitivity, specificity, and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). Results: The TIME data sets contained 8145 images of 36 blood smears from patients with suspected malaria (30 P falciparum-positive and 6 P falciparum-negative smears) that had reliable annotations. For clinical validation, the average precision was 0.885 for detecting P falciparum-infected blood cells and 0.838 for ring form. For detecting P falciparum infection on blood smear images, the algorithm had expert-level performance (sensitivity, 0.995; specificity, 0.900; AUC, 0.997 [95% CI, 0.993-0.999]), especially in detecting ring form (sensitivity, 0.968; specificity, 0.960; AUC, 0.995 [95% CI, 0.990-0.998]) compared with experienced microscopists (mean sensitivity, 0.995 [95% CI, 0.993-0.998]; mean specificity, 0.955 [95% CI, 0.885-1.000]). Conclusions and Relevance: The findings suggest that a clinically validated expert-level malaria detection algorithm can be developed by using reliable data sets.

Scattering of nanowire surface plasmons coupled to quantum dots with azimuthal angle difference.

Coherent scatterings of surface plasmons coupled to quantun dots have attracted great attention in plasmonics. Recently, an experiment has shown that the quantum dots located nearby a nanowire can be separated not only in distance, but also an angle ϕ along the cylindrical direction. Here, by using the real-space Hamiltonian and the transfer matrix method, we analytically obtain the transmission/reflection spectra of nanowire surface plasmons coupled to quantum dots with an azimuthal angle difference. We find that the scattering spectra can show completely different features due to different positions and azimuthal angles of the quantum dots. When additionally coupling a cavity to the dots, we obtain the Fano-like line shape in the transmission and reflection spectra due to the interference between the localized and delocalized modes.

Enhancing optical characteristics of InAs/InGaAsSb quantum dot structures with long-excited state emission at 1.31 µm.

In this study, the optical properties of InAs quantum dots (QDs) with various strain-reducing layers (SRLs) of GaAsSb and InGaAsSb are characterized using photoluminescence (PL) and time-resolved PL (TRPL) measurements. The room-temperature PL results for the InAs/InGaAsSb QDs revealed stronger emission intensities than InAs QDs capped with an GaAs(1-x)Sb(x) (x = 20%)SRL, although both samples were grown under the same Sb flux during the molecular beam epitaxy process. The InAs/InGaAsSb QDs showed a significant elongation of emission wavelengths to 1450 and 1310 nm for the ground and first-excited state at room temperature. The energy band alignment of the InAs QD heterostructures was found tailoring from type II to type I as the GaAsSb SRL was replaced by InGaAsSb layer, which improved the radiative efficiency and was verified by power-dependent PL and TRPL measurements. Post-growth rapid thermal annealing was applied on the InAs/InGaAsSb QDs to further enhance the QD quality and PL emission efficiency. The greatly improved PL intensity, reduced linewidth, shortened radiative lifetime, with increasing annealing temperature were demonstrated, and InAs/InGaAsSb QDs exhibited enhanced optical characteristics for long-wavelength emission applications.