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IntroductionChildhood and adolescent maltreatment (CAM) is associated with many psychiatric conditions, including obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, it remains unclear whether the severity of OCD symptoms vary according to the type of stress encountered in early life.MethodA sample of 345 participants (174 of whom had OCD) completed online measures of CAM (Child Abuse and Trauma Scale; CATS), OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory-Revised; OCI-R), anxiety, and depression (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale; HADS).Regression analysis was used to examine associations between OCD symptoms and four subtypes of CAM: emotional abuse, neglect/home environment, punishment, and sexual abuse. Anxiety and depression were included as control variables.ResultsHigher levels of sexual abuse and punishment were significantly associated with more OCD symptoms irrespective of scores on measures of anxiety and depression. Emotional abuse and neglect/home environment were not significantly associated with OCD symptoms.DiscussionThese findings highlight the prospect of a specific role for harsh punishment and sexual abuse in the development of OCD. Future studies should examine this possibility using longitudinal designs. Health professionals should be mindful that individuals with OCD may have experienced heightened levels of CAM, especially in the domains of punishment and sexual abuse.

IntroductionThere is a lack of knowledge about the treatment experiences of people living with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).MethodParticipants with OCD (n= 202) took part in an online survey in which they answered questions about what treatment they had received. They also completed measures of current OCD, anxiety and depression.ResultsScores above the clinical cut-off for OCD were high (> 70%) across the sample, irrespective of what kind of treatment had been received. Despite this, most participants felt their OCD was better now than it had been pre-treatment. Mean OCD scores were similar between treatment groups (OCD-focused, partly OCD-focused, non-OCD focused, no treatment), though there was some evidence that OCD-focused treatment was associated with lower OCD scores, especially for symptoms of hoarding, neutralising and ordering.DiscussionThese findings contribute to evidence of unmet need in OCD care. Practitioners should be aware that OCD is often a chronic condition which requires specialist care, and may require more than one course of treatment.

We demonstrate that time-delayed nonlinear effects in exciton-polaritons can be used to construct neural networks where information is coded in optical pulses arriving consecutively on the sample. The highly nonlinear effects are induced by time-dependent interactions with the excitonic reservoir. These nonlinearities allow to create a nonlinear XOR logic gate that can perform operations on the picosecond timescale. An optoelectronic neural network based on the constructed logic gate performs classification of spoken digits with a high accuracy rate.

The rapid development of artificial neural networks and applied artificial intelligence has led to many applications. However, current software implementation of neural networks is severely limited in terms of performance and energy efficiency. It is believed that further progress requires the development of neuromorphic systems, in which hardware directly mimics the neuronal network structure of a human brain. Here, we propose theoretically and realize experimentally an optical network of nodes performing binary operations. The nonlinearity required for efficient computation is provided by semiconductor microcavities in the strong quantum light-matter coupling regime, which exhibit exciton–polariton interactions. We demonstrate the system performance against a pattern recognition task, obtaining accuracy on a par with state-of-the-art hardware implementations. Our work opens the way to ultrafast and energy-efficient neuromorphic systems taking advantage of ultrastrong optical nonlinearity of polaritons.

Purpose: After a thorough study of literature it is concluded that the studies related to unskirted/skirted octagonal footings on sand have not yet been investigated. Thus, this paper presents a numerical analysis to assess the ultimate bearing capacity of the unskirted, unskirted-embedded, singly and doubly skirted octagonal footings resting on different sands (S1, S2, and S3). The length of skirt and depth of the embedded footing were varied from 0.0B to 1.5B. Design/methodology/approach: The numerical square and octagonal footing with singly and doubly skirted footing models were developed using Plaxis 3D software. Findings: The results of the doubly skirted octagonal footings ultimate bearing capacity were marginally higher in comparison to the singly skirted footing at all normalised skirt depths as well as for all sands up to a Ds/B ratio 0.25 beyond which the increase in the ultimate bearing capacity in case of doubly skirted footing was appreciable. Research limitations/implications: The results presented in this paper were based on numerical analysis. However, for the actual footings the soil placement and compaction, details of skirt construction and the stress level will be different from the numerical analysis. Further investigations using full-scale numerical models simulating field size footings were recommended to generalize the results. Originality/value: No such study on singly and doubly skirted octagonal shaped footings were conducted so far. Hence, an attempt was made in this article to predict the bearing capacity of those footings using Plaxis 3D.

We investigate the spin polarization of localized exciton-polariton condensates. We demonstrate the presence of an effective magnetic field leading to the formation of elliptically polarized condensates. We show that this synthetic field has an entirely photonic origin, which we believe is unique for the CdTe-based microcavities. Moreover, the degree of spin polarization of localized polariton condensates in samples with magnetic ions depends on the excitation power or polarization of the non-resonant excitation laser. In an external magnetic field, the semimagnetic condensate spontaneously builds up strong spin polarization. Based on the magnetic field behavior of the condensate in the presence of magnetic ions, we apply a model that allows us to estimate the polariton-polariton interaction strength in a CdTe-system to approx. 0.8 $\mu \text{eV}\!\cdot\!\mu \text{m}^2$.

Spin-orbit interactions which couple the spin of a particle with its momentum degrees of freedom lie at the center of spintronic applications. Of special interest in semiconductor physics are Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling. When equal in strength, the Rashba and Dresselhaus fields result in SU(2) spin rotation symmetry and emergence of the persistent spin helix only investigated for charge carriers in semiconductor quantum wells. Recently, a synthetic Rashba-Dresselhaus Hamiltonian was shown to describe cavity photons confined in a microcavity filled with optically anisotropic liquid crystal. In this Letter, we present a purely optical realization of two types of spin patterns corresponding to the persistent spin helix and the Stern-Gerlach experiment in such a cavity. We show how the symmetry of the Hamiltonian results in spatial oscillations of the spin orientation of photons traveling in the plane of the cavity.

Background There is an urgent need for more effective treatment strategies against gliomas. At present, even though various drugs have potent anti-tumor activity in vitro, their application in vivo is limited by ineffective delivery and systemic toxicity. Therefore, novel strategies are needed to deliver these drugs effectively and safely to the tumor site. Here, we developed an adoptive transfer strategy against malignant brain tumors utilizing macrophages that are loaded with ferritin-protein cages containing drugs or other proteins and transfer these nanocarriers to cancer cells in vitro and in vivo. Material and Methods Live-time imaging, microscopy and flow cytometry were utilized to investigate the transfer of ferritin cages from loaded macrophages to human or mouse glioma cells. Co-cultures of glioma cells and macrophages loaded with ferritin-drug cages were used to study the anti-glioma activity in vitro and orthotopic immunocompetent mouse glioma models were used to study the anti-glioma activity in vivo. Affinity purification-mass spectrometry (AP-MS) was used to elucidate the mechanisms of transfer by characterizing the interactome of ferritin cages within macrophages and cancer cells. Results We observed a high transfer efficiency of ferritin-cages from loaded macrophages into human and mouse glioma cells in vitro in co-culture assays and confirmed the transfer from macrophages to glioma cells also in vivo upon intravenous or intratumoral treatment of GL-261 or CT-2A glioma-bearing mice. To study the anti-glioma activity with therapeutically active payloads, we loaded murine/human macrophages with ferritin cages carrying cytotoxic payloads. Co-culture of these loaded macrophages with murine or human glioma cells in vitro revealed a time- and concentration-dependent cytotoxicity to glioma cells. In vivo, intravenous or intratumoral administration of ferritin-drug protein cages was tolerated without toxicities and conferred a survival benefit in two orthotopic murine glioma models (GL-261 and CT-2A). Interactome studies of ferritin-cage-binding proteins revealed phagocytic and cytoskeleton re-arrangement pathways to be involved in uptake and transfer of ferritin-cages from macrophages to glioma cells. Conclusion This ‘Trojan Horse’ approach constitutes a promising platform to deliver cytotoxic drugs effectively and safely to gliomas and provides a rationale for clinical translation.

The spin Hall effect, a key enabler in the field of spintronics, underlies the capability to control spin currents over macroscopic distances. The effect was initially predicted by D'Yakonov and Perel1 and has been recently brought to the foreground by its realization in paramagnetic metals by Hirsch2 and in semiconductors3 by Sih et al. Whereas the rapid dephasing of electrons poses severe limitations to the manipulation of macroscopic spin currents, the concept of replacing fermionic charges with neutral bosons such as photons in stratified media has brought some tangible advances in terms of comparatively lossless propagation and ease of detection4–7. These advances have led to several manifestations of the spin Hall effect with light, ranging from semiconductor microcavities8,9 to metasurfaces10. To date the observations have been limited to built-in effective magnetic fields that underpin the formation of spatial spin currents. Here we demonstrate external control of spin currents by modulating the splitting between transverse electric and magnetic fields in liquid crystals integrated in microcavities.

We propose all-optical neural networks characterized by very high energy efficiency and performance density of inference. We argue that the use of microcavity exciton-polaritons allows to take advantage of the properties of both photons and electrons in a seamless manner. This results in strong optical nonlinearity without the use of optoelectronic conversion. We propose a design of a realistic neural network and estimate energy cost to be at the level of attojoules per bit, also when including the optoelectronic conversion at the input and output of the network, several orders of magnitude below state-of-the-art hardware implementations. We propose two kinds of nonlinear binarized nodes based either on optical phase shifts and interferometry or on polariton spin rotations. Ministry of Education (MOE) Published version M.M. acknowledges support from National Science Center, Poland Grant No. 2017/25/Z/ST3/03032 under the QuantERA program. A.O. acknowledges support from National Science Center, Poland Grant No. 2016/22/E/ ST3/00045. R.M. acknowledges support from National Science Center, Poland Grant No. 2019/33/N/ST3/02019. B.P. acknowldges support from National Science Center, Poland Grant No. 2020/37/B/ST3/01657. K.T. acknowldges support from National Science Center, Poland Grant No. 2020/04/X/ST7/01379. T.L. acknowledges the support of the Singapore Ministry of Education, via the Academic research fund project MOE2019-T2-1-004. D.B. and D.S. acknowledge support from the project FISR2020- COVID, WaveSense (FISR2020IP_04324), and the PRIN 2017 InPhoPOL.

The development of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) has been very rapid recently. The wide accessibility of UAVs has unlocked a great potential for the malicious or accidental damage or destruction of property or other aircraft in flight. UAVs can be used for espionage, contraband, and the trafficking or transport of arms and hazardous materials. Every month sees a growing number of reports of incidents that involve remote-controlled UAVs operated for aerial video recording. These incidents justify undertaking research into minimizing the hazards which UAVs may potentially cause. A concept was developed for a solution dedicated to this problem and comprising an integrated modular anti-UAV system for application in commercial (civilian) markets in the areas of security of mass events, strategic enterprises, and critical strategic infrastructure in Poland. The proposed system is intended to incapacitate any UAVs that breach a predefined air space and bring the incapacitated UAVs safely to the ground. The project is developed jointly by the Institute of Armament Technology at the Military University of Technology (Warsaw, Poland) and Polish company Ellipsis Sp. z o.o.

The three-point difference schemes of high order accuracy for the numerical solving boundary value problems on a semi-infinite interval for systems of second order nonlinear ordinary differential equations with a not self-conjugate operator are constructed and justified. We proved the existence and uniqueness of solutions of the three-point difference schemes and obtained the estimate of their accuracy. The results of numerical experiments which confirm the theoretical results are given.

New algorithmic realization of exact three-point difference schemes via the three-point difference schemes of high order of accuracy is proposed for the numerical solution of boundary-value problems for systems of nonlinear ordinary differential equations on the semiaxis. We study the existence and uniqueness of the solution of three-point difference schemes and estimate the rate of convergence. The results of numerical experiments are also presented.

Due to high binding energy and oscillator strength, excitons in thin flakes of transition metal dichalcogenides constitute a perfect foundation for realizing a strongly coupled light-matter system. In this paper we investigate mono- and few-layer WSe$_2$ flakes encapsulated in hexagonal boron nitride and incorporated into a planar dielectric cavity. We use an open cavity design which provides tunability of the cavity mode energy by as much as 150 meV. We observe a strong coupling regime between the cavity photons and the neutral excitons in direct-bandgap monolayer WSe$_2$, as well as in few-layer WSe$_2$ flakes exhibiting indirect bandgap. We discuss the dependence of the exciton's oscillator strength and resonance linewidth on the number of layers and predict the exciton-photon coupling strength.

Inducing optical spin-orbit coupling The coupling of the spin-orbit interactions in solid-state systems can give rise to a wide range of exotic electronic transport effects. But solid-state systems tend to be somewhat limited in their flexibility because the spin-orbit coupling is fixed. By contrast, optical systems have recently been shown to mimic complex solid-state systems, with flexibility in design providing the ability to control and manipulate the system properties. Using a liquid crystal–filled photonic cavity, Rechcińska et al. emulated an artificial Rashba-Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling in a photonic system and showed control of an artificial Zeeman splitting. The results illustrate a powerful approach of engineering synthetic Hamiltonians with photons for the simulation of nontrivial condensed matter and quantum phenomena. Science , this issue p. 727

We realized a tunable planar microcavity containing a 2D-layered perovskite (C6H5(CH2)2NH3)2PbI4. A strong light-matter coupling regime between the perovskite exciton and the confined photon mode is evidenced at room temperature in angular-resolved reflectivity and photoluminescence experiments.

Multicomponent Bose–Einstein condensates, quantum Hall systems, and chiral magnetic materials display twists and knots in the continuous symmetries of their order parameters known as skyrmions. Originally discovered as solutions to the nonlinear sigma model in quantum field theory, these vectorial excitations are quantified by a topological winding number dictating their interactions and global properties of the host system. Here, we report the experimental observation of a stable individual second-order meron and antimeron appearing in an electromagnetic field. We realize these complex textures by confining light into a liquid-crystal-filled cavity that, through its anisotropic refractive index, provides an adjustable artificial photonic gauge field that couples the cavity photon motion to its polarization, resulting in the formation of these fundamental vectorial vortex states of light. Our observations could help bring topologically robust room-temperature optical vector textures into the field of photonic information processing and storage.

Opaque substrates precluded, so far, transmission studies of II-VI semiconductor microcavities. This work presents the design and molecular beam epitaxy growth of semimagnetic (Cd,Zn,Mn)Te quantum wells embedded into a (Cd,Zn,Mg)Te-based microcavity, which can be easily separated from the GaAs substrate. Our lift-off process relies on the use of a MgTe sacrificial layer which stratifies in contact with water. This allowed us to achieve a II-VI microcavity prepared for transmission measurements. We evidence the strong light-matter coupling regime using photoluminescence, reflectivity, and transmission measurements at the same spot on the sample. By comparing a series of reflectance spectra before and after lift-off, we prove that the microcavity quality remains high. Thanks to Mn content in quantum wells we show the giant Zeeman splitting of semimagnetic exciton-polaritons in our transmitting structure.

Owing to their integer spin, exciton-polaritons in microcavities can be used for observation of non-equilibrium Bose-Einstein condensation in solid state. However, spin-related phenomena of such condensates are difficult to explore due to the relatively small Zeeman effect of standard semiconductor microcavity systems and the strong tendency to sustain an equal population of two spin components, which precludes the observation of condensates with a well defined spin projection along the axis of the system. The enhancement of the Zeeman splitting can be achieved by introducing magnetic ions to the quantum wells, and consequently forming semimagnetic polaritons. In this system, increasing magnetic field can induce polariton condensation at constant excitation power. Here we evidence the spin polarization of a semimagnetic polaritons condensate exhibiting a circularly polarized emission over 95% even in a moderate magnetic field of about 3 T. Furthermore, we show that unlike nonmagnetic polaritons, an increase on excitation power results in an increase of the semimagnetic polaritons condensate spin polarization. These properties open new possibilities for testing theoretically predicted phenomena of spin polarized condensate., 9 pages, 5 figures

The suppression of Zeeman energy splitting due to spin-dependent interactions within a Bose-Einstein condensate (the spin Meissner effect) was predicted to occur up to a certain value of magnetic field strength. We report a clear observation of this effect in semimagnetic microcavities which exhibit the giant Zeeman energy splitting between two spin-polarised polariton states as high as 2 meV, and demonstrate that partial suppression of energy difference occurs already in the uncondensed phase in a striking similarity to the up-critical superconductors in the fluctuation dominated regime. These observations are explained quantitatively by a kinetic model accounting for both the condensed and uncondensed polaritons and taking into account the non-equilibrium character of the system., Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures

Background High-dose chemotherapy followed by autologous peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (auto-PBSCT) remains the mainstay of treatment of eligible patients diagnosed multiple myeloma. The role of clonal plasma cell (CPC) contamination was found as a reason for relapse, but results in terms of survival, progression, and purging were ambiguous. Therefore, the aim of the study was to explore the influence of CPC contamination in the autograft on survival and progression after auto-PBSCT. Study Design The study included 59 patients diagnosed and treated for multiple myeloma in 1998–2004. Cells with coexpression of CD38+++CD138++CD56+ and lacking the expression of CD45, CD19, CD10, CD20, and CD23 were considered CPC in flow cytometry. Results The risk of death and progression after auto-PBSCT increased significantly by 10% (P Conclusions High clonal plasma cell contamination (>2.96 ×1 06/kg; 90th percentile of CPC number) is associated with the worst progression-free survival and overall survival. Therefore purging in vitro might be considered for the patients with the highest CPC contamination. Negative consequences of CPC contamination on the risk of death are observed for only 2 years after auto-PBSCT. Thereafter only those patients who had lower CPC contamination survived.

We evidence magnetic field triggered polariton lasing in a microcavity containing semimagnetic quantum wells. This effect is associated with a decrease of the polariton lasing threshold power in magnetic field. The observed magnetic field dependence of the threshold power systematically exhibits a minimum which only weakly depends on the zero-field photon-exciton detuning. These results are interpreted as a consequence of the polariton giant Zeeman splitting which in magnetic field leads to a decrease of the number of accessible states in the lowest polariton branch by a factor of 2, and substantially changes the photon-exciton detuning.

We demonstrate the existence of the excited state of an exciton-polariton in a semiconductor microcavity. The strong coupling of the quantum well heavy-hole exciton in an excited 2s state to the cavity photon is observed in non-zero magnetic field due to surprisingly fast increase of Rabi energy of the 2s exciton-polariton in magnetic field. This effect is explained by a strong modification of the wave-function of the relative electron-hole motion for the 2s exciton state., 5 pages, 5 figures

The observation of spin-related phenomena of microcavity polaritons has been limited due to the weak Zeeman effect of nonmagnetic semiconductors. We demonstrate that the incorporation of magnetic ions into quantum wells placed in a nonmagnetic microcavity results in enhanced effects of magnetic field on exciton-polaritons. We show that in such a structure the Zeeman splitting of exciton-polaritons strongly depends on the photon-exciton detuning and polariton wave vector. Our experimental data are explained by a model where the impact of magnetic field on the lower polariton state is directly inherited from the excitonic component, and the coupling strength to the cavity photon is modified by an external magnetic field.

We demonstrate the existence of a novel quasiparticle: an exciton in a semiconductor doubly dressed with two photons of different wavelengths: near infrared cavity photon and terahertz (THz) photon, with the THz coupling strength approaching the ultra-strong coupling regime. This quasiparticle is composed of three different bosons, being a mixture of a matter-light quasiparticle. Our observations are confirmed by a detailed theoretical analysis, treating quantum mechanically all three bosonic fields. The doubly dressed quasiparticles retain the bosonic nature of their constituents, but their internal quantum structure strongly depends on the intensity of the applied terahertz field., Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures

The exponential stability of evolution differential equations obtained on the basis of heat conduction equations is studied. To determine the boundaries of stochastic stability of the solution of these equations, we use the method of construction of a Lyapunov functional.

This work presents an influence of cooling rate on crystallization process, structure and mechanical properties of MCMgAl6Zn1 castmagnesium alloy. The experiments were performed using the novel Universal Metallurgical Simulator and Analyzer Platform. Theapparatus enabled recording the temperature during refrigerate magnesium alloy with three different cooling rates, i.e. 0.6, 1.2 and2.4°C/s and calculate a first derivative. Based on first derivative results, nucleation temperature, beginning of nucleation of eutecticand solidus temperature were described. It was fund that the formation temperatures of various thermal parameters, mechanicalproperties (hardness and ultimate compressive strength) and grain size are shifting with an increasing cooling rate.

This work presents effect of cooling rate on the grain size, mechanical properties and thermal characteristic results of MCMgAl9Zn1 cast alloy. The solidification process was studied using the cooling curve and crystallization curve at solidification rate ranging from 0.6°C/s up to 2.4°C/s. It was determined that the higher solidification rate increases the magnesium dendrite nucleation temperature. In addition, it was observed that the non-equilibrium solidus temperature and the grain size constituent decreases when the solidification rate increases.

Concrete structures are constantly moving in the direction of improving the durability. This main feature depends on many factors, which are the composition of concrete mix, the usage of additives and admixtures and the place, where material will work and carry the load. The introduction of new geopolymer binders for geopolymer structures adds a new aspect that is type of used activator. This substance with strongly alkaline reaction is divided because of the physical state, the alkaline degree and above all the chemical composition. Taking into account, that at present the geopolymer binders are made essentially from waste materials or by products from the combustion of coal or iron ore smelting, unambiguous determination of the effect of the activator on the properties of the geopolymer material requires a number of trials, researches and observation. This paper shows the influence of the most alkaline activators on the basic parameters of the durability of geopolymer binders. In this study there were used a highly alkaline hydroxides, water glasses and granules, which are waste materials in a variety of processes taking place in a chemical plants. As the substrate of geopolymer binders there were used fly ash which came from coal and high calcium ash from the burning of lignite.

We detail the influence of a magnetic field on exciton-polaritons inside a semiconductor microcavity. Magnetic field can be used as a tuning parameter for exciton and photon resonances. We discuss the change of the exciton energy, the oscillator strength, and redistribution of the polariton density along the dispersion curves due to the magnetically induced detuning. We have observed that field-induced shrinkage of the exciton wave function has a direct influence not only on the exciton oscillator strength, which is observed to increase with the magnetic field, but also on the polariton linewidth. We discuss the effect of the Zeeman splitting on polaritons the magnitude of which changes with the exciton Hopfield coefficient and can be modeled by independent coupling of the two spin components of excitons with cavity photons.