Loophole-Free Test of Local Realism via Hardy's Violation.

Bell's theorem states that the quantum mechanical description of physical quantities cannot be fully explained by local realistic theories, laying a solid basis for various quantum information applications. Hardy's paradox is celebrated as the simplest form of Bell's theorem concerning its "All versus Nothing" approach to test local realism. However, due to experimental imperfections, existing tests of Hardy's paradox require additional assumptions of the experimental systems, and these assumptions constitute potential loopholes for faithfully testing local realistic theories. Here, we experimentally demonstrate Hardy's nonlocality through a photonic entanglement source. By achieving a detection efficiency of 82.2%, a quantum state fidelity of 99.10%, and applying high-speed quantum random number generators for the measurement setting switching, the experiment is implemented in a loophole-free manner. During 6 h of running, a strong violation of P_{Hardy}=4.646×10^{-4} up to 5 standard deviations is observed with 4.32×10^{9} trials. A null hypothesis test shows that the results can be explained by local realistic theories with an upper bound probability of 10^{-16348}. These testing results provide affirmative evidence against local realism, and establish an advancing benchmark for quantum information applications based on Hardy's paradox.

Anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects on skin based on supramolecular hyaluronic acid-ectoin.

We addressed the damage caused by internal and external factors on the skin, as well as the aging phenomenon caused by delayed repair after damage. We prepared supramolecular hyaluronic acid-ectoin (HA-ECT) by combining theoretical calculations and experimental research, using intermolecular forces between hyaluronic acid and ectoin. This supramolecule has good stability, safety, and skin permeability and can penetrate the stratum corneum of the skin, reaching the epidermis and dermis of the skin. Compared with ectoin, the permeability of the supramolecule HA-ECT was 3.39-fold higher. Supramolecular HA-ECT can promote the proliferation of keratinocytes and fibroblasts, significantly increase the content of type collagen-I, reduce the expression of inflammatory factors in keratinocytes, and enhance skin hydration and repair effects. HA-ECT can reduce intracellular reactive oxygen species and inhibit the expression of matrix metalloproteinase-1 (reduced by 1.27-fold) to improve skin photoaging. Therefore, supramolecular HA-ECT has potential application in the field of cosmetics for skin antioxidants, anti-aging, and repair.

Data-free knowledge distillation via generator-free data generation for Non-IID federated learning.

Data heterogeneity (Non-IID) on Federated Learning (FL) is currently a widely publicized problem, which leads to local model drift and performance degradation. Because of the advantage of knowledge distillation, it has been explored in some recent work to refine global models. However, these approaches rely on a proxy dataset or a data generator. First, in many FL scenarios, proxy dataset do not necessarily exist on the server. Second, the quality of data generated by the generator is unstable and the generator depends on the computing resources of the server. In this work, we propose a novel data-Free knowledge distillation approach via generator-Free Data Generation for Non-IID FL, dubbed as FedF2DG. Specifically, FedF2DG requires only local models to generate pseudo datasets for each client, and can generate hard samples by adding an additional regularization term that exploit disagreements between local model and global model. Meanwhile, FedF2DG enables flexible utilization of computational resources by generating pseudo dataset locally or on the server. And to address the label distribution shift in Non-IID FL, we propose a Data Generation Principle that can adaptively control the label distribution and number of pseudo dataset based on client current state, and this allows for the extraction of more client knowledge. Then knowledge distillation is performed to transfer the knowledge in local models to the global model. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our proposed method significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art FL methods and can serve as plugin for existing Federated Learning methds such as FedAvg, FedProx, etc, and improve their performance.

Overview of the current procedures in synthesis of heparin saccharides.

Natural heparin, a glycosaminoglycan consisting of repeating hexuronic acid and glucosamine linked by 1 â†’ 4 glycosidic bonds, is the most widely used anticoagulant. To subvert the dependence on animal sourced heparin, alternative methods to produce heparin saccharides, i.e., either heterogenous sugar chains similar to natural heparin, or structurally defined oligosaccharides, are becoming hot subjects. Although the success by chemical synthesis of the pentasaccharide, fondaparinux, encourages to proceed through a chemical approach generating homogenous product, synthesizing larger oligos is still cumbersome and beyond reach so far. Alternatively, the chemoenzymatic pathway exhibited exquisite stereoselectivity of glycosylation and regioselectivity of modification, with the advantage to skip the tedious protection steps unavoidable in chemical synthesis. However, to a scale of drug production needed today is still not in sight. In comparison, a procedure of de novo biosynthesis in an organism could be an ultimate goal. The main purpose of this review is to summarize the current available/developing strategies and techniques, which is expected to provide a comprehensive picture for production of heparin saccharides to replenish or eventually to replace the animal derived products. In chemical and chemoenzymatic approaches, the methodologies are discussed according to the synthesis procedures: building block preparation, chain elongation, and backbone modification.

In-depth characterization of 1,4-butanediol diglycidyl ether substituted hyaluronic acid hydrogels.

BDDE substituted HA hydrogels remain the most commonly used HA product in the biomedical field. The physical and biochemical properties of the hydrogels are dependent on the degree of modification and substitution patterns/positions, thus, characterizing their fine structure is of great importance for quality assurance. In this study, we developed novel LC-MS methods for accurate determination of MoD as well as in-depth characterization of the linkage network. Fragments resulted from enzymatic depolymerization were resolved by a porous graphitic carbon column followed by online tandem-MS for determining the modification site/residue. With high-resolution separation, two types of previously unknown structures were detected in the cross-linked fragments of 2-B-2 and 4-B-2. Based on the feature of resistance to NaBH4 reduction, these structures contain a GlcNAc residue modified at OH1. This special sugar unit likely derived from reducing end of the native polysaccharide could be a signature to discriminate subtle batch to batch variations.

Experimental Realization of Device-Independent Quantum Randomness Expansion.

Randomness expansion where one generates a longer sequence of random numbers from a short one is viable in quantum mechanics but not allowed classically. Device-independent quantum randomness expansion provides a randomness resource of the highest security level. Here, we report the first experimental realization of device-independent quantum randomness expansion secure against quantum side information established through quantum probability estimation. We generate 5.47×10^{8} quantum-proof random bits while consuming 4.39×10^{8} bits of entropy, expanding our store of randomness by 1.08×10^{8} bits at a latency of about 13.1 h, with a total soundness error 4.6×10^{-10}. Device-independent quantum randomness expansion not only enriches our understanding of randomness but also sets a solid base to bring quantum-certifiable random bits into realistic applications.

Intersections of Firearm Suicide, Drug-Related Mortality, and Economic Dependency in Rural America.

BACKGROUND: Rural counties in the United States have higher firearm suicide rates and opioid overdoses than urban counties. We sought to determine whether rural counties can be grouped based on these "diseases of despair." METHODS: Age-adjusted firearm suicide death rates per 100,000; drug-related death rates per 100,000; homicide rate per 100,000, opioid prescribing rate, %black, %Native American, and %veteran population, median home price, violent crime rates per 100,000, primary economic dependency (nonspecialized, farming, mining, manufacturing, government, and recreation), and economic variables (low education, low employment, retirement destination, persistent poverty, and persistent child poverty) were obtained for all rural counties and evaluated with hierarchical clustering using complete linkage. RESULTS: We identified five distinct rural county clusters. The firearm suicide rates in the clusters were 5.9, 6.8, 6.4, 8.5, and 3.8 per 100,000, respectively. The counties in cluster 1 were poor, mining dependent, with population loss, cluster 2 were nonspecialized economies, with high opioid prescription rates, cluster 3 were manufacturing and government economies with moderate unemployment, cluster 4 were recreational economies with substantial veterans and Native American populations, high median home price, drug death rates, opioid prescribing, and violent crime, and cluster 5 were farming economies, with high population loss, low median home price, low rates of drug mortality, opioid prescribing, and violent crime. Cluster 4 counties were spatially adjacent to urban counties. CONCLUSIONS: More than 300 counties currently face a disproportionate burden of diseases of despair. Interventions to reduce firearm suicides should be community-based and include programs to reduce other diseases of despair.

Experimental Quantum Switching for Exponentially Superior Quantum Communication Complexity.

Finding exponential separation between quantum and classical information tasks is like striking gold in quantum information research. Such an advantage is believed to hold for quantum computing but is proven for quantum communication complexity. Recently, a novel quantum resource called the quantum switch-which creates a coherent superposition of the causal order of events, known as quantum causality-has been harnessed theoretically in a new protocol providing provable exponential separation. We experimentally demonstrate such an advantage by realizing a superposition of communication directions for a two-party distributed computation. Our photonic demonstration employs d-dimensional quantum systems, qudits, up to d=2^{13} dimensions and demonstrates a communication complexity advantage, requiring less than (0.696±0.006) times the communication of any causally ordered protocol. These results elucidate the crucial role of the coherence of communication direction in achieving the exponential separation for the one-way processing task, and open a new path for experimentally exploring the fundamentals and applications of advanced features of indefinite causal structures.