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We present an excerpt of the document "Quantum Information Processing and Communication: Strategic report on current status, visions and goals for research in Europe", which has been recently published in electronic form at the website of FET (the Future and Emerging Technologies Unit of the Directorate General Information Society of the European Commission, http://www.cordis.lu/ist/fet/qipc-sr.htm). This document has been elaborated, following a former suggestion by FET, by a committee of QIPC scientists to provide input towards the European Commission for the preparation of the Seventh Framework Program. Besides being a document addressed to policy makers and funding agencies (both at the European and national level), the document contains a detailed scientific assessment of the state-of-the-art, main research goals, challenges, strengths, weaknesses, visions and perspectives of all the most relevant QIPC sub-fields, that we report here
Awards
(2013)
A series of 9,10-diarylanthracenes with various substituents at the ortho positions have been synthesised by palladium-catalysed cross-coupling reactions. Such compounds exhibit interesting physical properties and can be applied as molecular switches. Despite the high steric demand of the substituents, products were formed in moderate-to-good yields. In some cases, microwave conditions further improved yields. Bis-coupling afforded two isomers (syn and anti) that do not interconvert at room temperature. These products were easily separated and their relative stereochemistries were unequivocally assigned by NMR spectroscopy and X-ray analysis. The syn and anti isomers exhibit different physical properties (e.g., melting points and solubilities) and interconversion by rotation around the aryl-aryl axis commences at <100 °C for fluoro-substituted diarylanthracenes and at >300 °C for alkyl- or alkoxy-substituted diarylanthracenes. The reactions with singlet oxygen were studied separately and revealed different reactivities and reaction pathways. The yields and reactivities depend on the size and electronic nature of the substituents. The anti isomers form the same 9,10-endoperoxides as the syn species, occasionally accompanied by unexpected 1,4-endoperoxides as byproducts. Thermolysis of the endoperoxides exclusively yielded the syn isomers. The interesting rotation around the aryl-aryl axis allows the application of 9,10-diarylanthracenes as molecular switches, which are triggered by light and air under mild conditions. Finally, the oxygenation and thermolysis sequence provides a simple, synthetic access to a single stereoisomer (syn) from an unselective coupling step.
Intransitive competition is widespread in plant communities and maintains their species richness
(2015)
Intransitive competition networks, those in which there is no single best competitor, may ensure species coexistence. However, their frequency and importance in maintaining diversity in real-world ecosystems remain unclear. We used two large data sets from drylands and agricultural grasslands to assess: (1) the generality of intransitive competition, (2) intransitivity-richness relationships and (3) effects of two major drivers of biodiversity loss (aridity and land-use intensification) on intransitivity and species richness. Intransitive competition occurred in >65% of sites and was associated with higher species richness. Intransitivity increased with aridity, partly buffering its negative effects on diversity, but was decreased by intensive land use, enhancing its negative effects on diversity. These contrasting responses likely arise because intransitivity is promoted by temporal heterogeneity, which is enhanced by aridity but may decline with land-use intensity. We show that intransitivity is widespread in nature and increases diversity, but it can be lost with environmental homogenisation.
Global change, especially land-use intensification, affects human well-being by impacting the delivery of multiple ecosystem services (multifunctionality). However, whether biodiversity loss is a major component of global change effects on multifunctionality in real-world ecosystems, as in experimental ones, remains unclear. Therefore, we assessed biodiversity, functional composition and 14 ecosystem services on 150 agricultural grasslands differing in land-use intensity. We also introduce five multifunctionality measures in which ecosystem services were weighted according to realistic land-use objectives. We found that indirect land-use effects, i.e. those mediated by biodiversity loss and by changes to functional composition, were as strong as direct effects on average. Their strength varied with land-use objectives and regional context. Biodiversity loss explained indirect effects in a region of intermediate productivity and was most damaging when land-use objectives favoured supporting and cultural services. In contrast, functional composition shifts, towards fast-growing plant species, strongly increased provisioning services in more inherently unproductive grasslands.
Twenty-three scientists met at Krobielowice, Poland to discuss the role of growth, nutrition and economy on body size. Contrasting prevailing concepts, re-analyses of studies in Indonesian and Guatemalan school children with high prevalence of stunting failed to provide evidence for an association between nutritional status and body height. Direct effects of parental education on growth that were not transmitted via nutrition were shown in Indian datasets using network analysis and novel statistical methods (St. Nicolas House Analysis) that translate correlation matrices into network graphs. Data on Polish children suggest significant impact of socioeconomic sensitivity on child growth, with no effect of maternal money satisfaction. Height and maturation tempo affect the position of a child among its peers. Correlations also exist between mood disorders and height. Secular changes in height and weight varied across decades independent of population size. Historic and recent Russian data showed that height of persons whose fathers performed manual work were on average four cm shorter than persons whose fathers were high-degree specialists. Body height, menarcheal age, and body proportions are sensitive to socioeconomic variables. Additional topics included delayed motherhood and its associations with newborn size; geographic and socioeconomic indicators related to low birth weight, prematurity and stillbirth rate; data on anthropometric history of Brazil, 1850-1950; the impact of central nervous system stimulants on the growth of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder; and pituitary development and growth hormone secretion. Final discussions debated on reverse causality interfering between social position, and adolescent growth and developmental tempo.
We present deep VERITAS observations of the blazar PKS 1424+240, along with contemporaneous Fermi Large Area Telescope, Swift X-ray Telescope, and Swift UV Optical Telescope data between 2009 February 19 and 2013 June 8. This blazar resides at a redshift of z >= 0.6035, displaying a significantly attenuated gamma-ray flux above 100 GeV due to photon absorption via pair-production with the extragalactic background light. We present more than 100 hr of VERITAS observations over three years, a multiwavelength light curve, and the contemporaneous spectral energy distributions. The source shows a higher flux of (2.1 +/- 0.3) x 10(-7) photons m(-2) s(-1) above 120 GeV in 2009 and 2011 as compared to the flux measured in 2013, corresponding to (1.02 +/- 0.08) x 10-7 photons m(-2) s(-1) above 120 GeV. The measured differential very high energy (VHE; E >= 100 GeV) spectral indices are Gamma = 3.8 +/- 0.3, 4.3 +/- 0.6 and 4.5 +/- 0.2 in 2009, 2011, and 2013, respectively. No significant spectral change across the observation epochs is detected. We find no evidence for variability at gamma-ray opacities of greater than tau = 2, where it is postulated that any variability would be small and occur on timescales longer than a year if hadronic cosmic-ray interactions with extragalactic photon fields provide a secondary VHE photon flux. The data cannot rule out such variability due to low statistics.
Background. The bay cat Catopuma badia is endemic to Borneo, whereas its sister species the Asian golden cat Catopuma temminckii is distributed from the Himalayas and southern China through Indochina, Peninsular Malaysia and Sumatra. Based onmorphological data, up to five subspecies of the Asian golden cat have been recognized, but a taxonomic assessment, including molecular data and morphological characters, is still lacking. Results. We combined molecular data (whole mitochondrial genomes), morphological data (pelage) and species distribution projections (up to the Late Pleistocene) to infer how environmental changes may have influenced the distribution of these sister species over the past 120 000 years. The molecular analysis was based on sequenced mitogenomes of 3 bay cats and 40 Asian golden cats derived mainly from archival samples. Our molecular data suggested a time of split between the two species approximately 3.16 Ma and revealed very low nucleotide diversity within the Asian golden cat population, which supports recent expansion of the population. Discussion. The low nucleotide diversity suggested a population bottleneck in the Asian golden cat, possibly caused by the eruption of the Toba volcano in Northern Sumatra (approx. 74 kya), followed by a continuous population expansion in the Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene. Species distribution projections, the reconstruction of the demographic history, a genetic isolation-by-distance pattern and a gradual variation of pelage pattern support the hypothesis of a post-Toba population expansion of the Asian golden cat from south China/Indochina to PeninsularMalaysia and Sumatra. Our findings reject the current classification of five subspecies for the Asian golden cat, but instead support either a monotypic species or one comprising two subspecies: (i) the Sunda golden cat, distributed south of the Isthmus of Kra: C. t. temminckii and (ii) Indochinese, Indian, Himalayan and Chinese golden cats, occurring north of the Isthmus: C. t. moormensis.
The inner region of the Milky Way halo harbors a large amount of dark matter (DM). Given its proximity, it is one of the most promising targets to look for DM. We report on a search for the annihilations of DM particles using gamma-ray observations towards the inner 300 pc of the Milky Way, with the H.E.S.S. array of ground-based Cherenkov telescopes. The analysis is based on a 2D maximum likelihood method using Galactic Center (GC) data accumulated by H.E.S.S. over the last 10 years (2004-2014), and does not show any significant gamma-ray signal above background. Assuming Einasto and Navarro-Frenk-White DM density profiles at the GC, we derive upper limits on the annihilation cross section <sigma nu >. These constraints are the strongest obtained so far in the TeV DM mass range and improve upon previous limits by a factor 5. For the Einasto profile, the constraints reach <sigma nu > values of 6 x 10(-26) cm(3) s(-1) in the W+W- channel for a DM particle mass of 1.5 TeV, and 2 x 10(-26) cm(3) s(-1) in the tau(+)tau(-) channel for a 1 TeV mass. For the first time, ground-based gamma-ray observations have reached sufficient sensitivity to probe <sigma nu > values expected from the thermal relic density for TeV DM particles.