Fast delivery of meteorites to Earth after a major asteroid collision

Very large collisions in the asteroid belt could lead temporarily to a substantial increase in the rate of impacts of meteorites on Earth. Orbital simulations predict that fragments from such events may arrive considerably faster than the typical transit times of meteorites falling today, because in some large impacts part of the debris is transferred directly into a resonant orbit with Jupiter. Such an efficient meteorite delivery track, however, has not been verified. Here we report high-sensitivity measurements of noble gases produced by cosmic rays in chromite grains from a unique suite of fossil meteorites preserved in approximately 480 million year old sediments. The transfer times deduced from the noble gases are as short as approximately 10(5) years, and they increase with stratigraphic height in agreement with the estimated duration of sedimentation. These data provide powerful evidence that this unusual meteorite occurrence was the result of a long-lasting rain of meteorites following the destruction of an asteroid, and show that at least one strong resonance in the main asteroid belt can deliver material into the inner Solar System within the short timescales suggested by dynamical models.     

Effect and fate of intravenously administered porphobilin in rats

Summary It rats after i.v. prophobilin, blood pressure and pulse rate remained stable, the animals were calm and moved freely with no symptoms or signs of nervous effect. Prophobilin was rapidly excreted in the urine.     

Fehlerkorrekturen bei stereologischen Messungen an menschlichen Plazenten:2. Die Schnittstauchung

Summary Irreversible compression of the sections, due to cutting on the microtome, which may attain up to 20% in thin paraffin sections, does not influence stereological measurings of volume per cm³ of human placental villi. The measured villous surface, however, must be corrected by multiplication with 1/(1+q/2), whereq means the percentage of compression, expressed as decimal fraction.

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Arbeit mit Unterstützung durch die Deutsche Forschungs-gemeinschaft.     

Climbing the Jaynes-Cummings ladder and observing its nonlinearity in a cavity QED system

The field of cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED), traditionally studied in atomic systems, has gained new momentum by recent reports of quantum optical experiments with solid-state semiconducting and superconducting systems. In cavity QED, the observation of the vacuum Rabi mode splitting is used to investigate the nature of matter-light interaction at a quantum-mechanical level. However, this effect can, at least in principle, be explained classically as the normal mode splitting of two coupled linear oscillators. It has been suggested that an observation of the scaling of the resonant atom-photon coupling strength in the Jaynes-Cummings energy ladder with the square root of photon number n is sufficient to prove that the system is quantum mechanical in nature. Here we report a direct spectroscopic observation of this characteristic quantum nonlinearity. Measuring the photonic degree of freedom of the coupled system, our measurements provide unambiguous spectroscopic evidence for the quantum nature of the resonant atom-field interaction in cavity QED. We explore atom-photon superposition states involving up to two photons, using a spectroscopic pump and probe technique. The experiments have been performed in a circuit QED set-up, in which very strong coupling is realized by the large dipole coupling strength and the long coherence time of a superconducting qubit embedded in a high-quality on-chip microwave cavity. Circuit QED systems also provide a natural quantum interface between flying qubits (photons) and stationary qubits for applications in quantum information processing and communication.     

Implementation of a Toffoli gate with superconducting circuits

The Toffoli gate is a three-quantum-bit (three-qubit) operation that inverts the state of a target qubit conditioned on the state of two control qubits. It makes universal reversible classical computation possible and, together with a Hadamard gate, forms a universal set of gates in quantum computation. It is also a key element in quantum error correction schemes. The Toffoli gate has been implemented in nuclear magnetic resonance, linear optics and ion trap systems. Experiments with superconducting qubits have also shown significant progress recently: two-qubit algorithms and two-qubit process tomography have been implemented, three-qubit entangled states have been prepared, first steps towards quantum teleportation have been taken and work on quantum computing architectures has been done. Implementation of the Toffoli gate with only single- and two-qubit gates requires six controlled-NOT gates and ten single-qubit operations, and has not been realized in any system owing to current limits on coherence. Here we implement a Toffoli gate with three superconducting transmon qubits coupled to a microwave resonator. By exploiting the third energy level of the transmon qubits, we have significantly reduced the number of elementary gates needed for the implementation of the Toffoli gate, relative to that required in theoretical proposals using only two-level systems. Using full process tomography and Monte Carlo process certification, we completely characterize the Toffoli gate acting on three independent qubits, measuring a fidelity of 68.5?±?0.5 per cent. A similar approach to realizing characteristic features of a Toffoli-class gate has been demonstrated with two qubits and a resonator and achieved a limited characterization considering only the phase fidelity. Our results reinforce the potential of macroscopic superconducting qubits for the implementation of complex quantum operations with the possibility of quantum error correction.     

Fehlerkorrekturen bei stereologischen Messungen an menschlichen Plazenten: 1. Die Schrumpfung

Summary In sterological measurings on human placental chorionic villi the measured volume per cm³ is shown not to be influenced by shrinking of the tissue. The measured villous surface per cm³, however, must be corrected by multiplication with the factor 1–p, wherep means the percentage of linear shrinking expressed as decimal fraction.

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Arbeit mit Unterstützung durch die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.     

Susceptibility variants for male-pattern baldness on chromosome 20p11

We carried out a genome-wide association study in 296 individuals with male-pattern baldness (androgenetic alopecia) and 347 controls. We then investigated the 30 best SNPs in an independent replication sample and found highly significant association for five SNPs on chromosome 20p11 (rs2180439 combined P = 2.7 x 10(-15)). No interaction was detected with the X-chromosomal androgen receptor locus, suggesting that the 20p11 locus has a role in a yet-to-be-identified androgen-independent pathway.     

Resveratrol improves health and survival of mice on a high-calorie diet

Resveratrol (3,5,4'-trihydroxystilbene) extends the lifespan of diverse species including Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila melanogaster. In these organisms, lifespan extension is dependent on Sir2, a conserved deacetylase proposed to underlie the beneficial effects of caloric restriction. Here we show that resveratrol shifts the physiology of middle-aged mice on a high-calorie diet towards that of mice on a standard diet and significantly increases their survival. Resveratrol produces changes associated with longer lifespan, including increased insulin sensitivity, reduced insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-I) levels, increased AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma coactivator 1alpha (PGC-1alpha) activity, increased mitochondrial number, and improved motor function. Parametric analysis of gene set enrichment revealed that resveratrol opposed the effects of the high-calorie diet in 144 out of 153 significantly altered pathways. These data show that improving general health in mammals using small molecules is an attainable goal, and point to new approaches for treating obesity-related disorders and diseases of ageing.     

Egg-species recognition in cannibalistic hatchlings of the land snailsArianta arbustorum andHelix pomatia

Summary Laboratory experiments were conducted to determine whether cannibalistic hatchling of the land snailsArianta arbustorum andHelix pomatia discriminate between eggs of the two species. Hatchlings from both species showed a significant choice for conspecific eggs and consumed on average 1 egg in 4 days. Eggs from the other species were only occasionally eaten.