Anthropogenic activity shapes the assemble and co-occurrence pattern of microbial communities in fishing harbors around the Bohai Economic Circle.

This study aimed to elucidate the effects of coastal environmental stress on the composition of sediment bacterial communities and their cooccurrence patterns in fishing harbors around the Bohai Economic Circle, China. Compared with the natural sea area, fishing harbors contained higher levels of organic pollution (organic pollution index = 0.12±0.026) and considerably reduced bacterial richness and evenness. The distributions of sediment microbial communities clustered along the pollutant concentration gradients across fishing harbors. Betaproteobacteria dominated (76%) organically polluted fishing harbors, which were mostly disturbed by anthropogenic activities. However, the harbors also revealed the absence of numerous pathogenic (Coxiella and Legionella) and photosynthetic (Synechococcus and Leptolyngbya) bacteria. Abundant genera, including Thiobacillus and Arenimonas, exhibited a positive correlation with total phosphorus and a negative correlation with total nitrogen in sediments. Meanwhile, Sulfurovum, Psychrobacter, and Woeseia showed the opposite trend. Pollutant accumulation and anthropogenic activities caused the decrease in the sediment microbial diversity and dispersal ability and promoted convergent evolution. Severely polluted harbors with simplified cooccurrence networks revealed the presence of destabilized microbial communities. In addition, the modularity of bacterial networks decreased with organic pollution. Our results provide important insights into the adjustment mechanism of microbial communities to community organization and functions under environmental pollution stress. Overall, this study enhanced our understanding of how microbial communities in coastal sediments adapted and survived amidst anthropogenic activities like oily effluent discharges from large ships, wash water, domestic sewage, garbage, and fisheries wastes. It also examined their resilience to future contamination.

Impact of Enhanced Emergency Nursing Processes on the Rescue Outcomes of Emergency Patients with Chest Pain.

Background: Chest pain, a sudden and perilous symptom, is frequently encountered in the emergency department. Prompt and efficient first-aid measures and nursing interventions are crucial for effectively rescuing emergency patients experiencing chest pain. Objective: This study aims to investigate the impact of an enhanced emergency nursing process on the rescue outcomes of emergency patients with chest pain. Design: A randomized controlled study was conducted. Setting: The research was conducted at Suzhou Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine. Participants: A total of 90 emergency chest pain patients admitted between December 2021 and June 2022 were selected and divided into two groups, with 45 cases in each group. Interventions: The control group received routine emergency nursing, while the observation group underwent an improved emergency nursing protocol. Primary Outcome Measures: (1) Treatment initiation time, emergency rescue time, recovery time of vital signs, and hospital stay; (2) curative effect; (3) pain scores; (4) incidence of adverse events; and (5) patient satisfaction. Results: Compared to the control group, the observation group exhibited shorter treatment initiation time, emergency rescue time, recovery time of vital signs, and hospital stay (P < .05). The effective rate in the observation group was higher (P < .05), and pain scores were lower at 30 min, 60 min, 120 min, and 240 min post-rescue (P < .05). The occurrence of adverse events was reduced in the observation group (P = .005), and patient satisfaction was higher at discharge (P < .05). Conclusion: The enhanced emergency nursing process effectively reduces the clinical rescue time for emergency patients with chest pain, enhances rescue efficiency, seizes crucial opportunities for saving lives, and improves patient satisfaction. These findings have significant positive implications for clinical applications.

Telecom-wavelength conversion in a high optical depth cold atomic system.

We experimentally investigate the frequency down-conversion through the four-wave mixing (FWM) process in a cold 85Rb atomic ensemble, with a diamond-level configuration. An atomic cloud with a high optical depth (OD) of 190 is prepared to achieve a high efficiency frequency conversion. Here, we convert a signal pulse field (795 nm) attenuated to a single-photon level, into a telecom light at 1529.3 nm within near C-band range and the frequency-conversion efficiency can reach up to 32%. We find that the OD is an essential factor affecting conversion efficiency and the efficiency may exceed 32% with an improvement in the OD. Moreover, we note the signal-to-noise ratio of the detected telecom field is higher than 10 while the mean signal count is larger than 0.2. Our work may be combined with quantum memories based on cold 85Rb ensemble at 795 nm and serve for long-distance quantum networks.

Optical memory for arbitrary perfect Poincaré states in an atomic ensemble.

Inherent spin angular momentum (SAM) and orbital angular momentum (OAM), which manifest as polarization and spatial degrees of freedom (DOFs) of photons, hold a promise of large capability for applications in classical and quantum information processing. To enable these photonic spin and orbital dynamic properties strongly coupled with each other, Poincaré states have been proposed and offer advantages in data multiplexing, information encryption, precision metrology, and quantum memory. However, since the transverse size of Laguerre-Gaussian beams strongly depends on their topological charge numbers | l |, it is difficult to store asymmetric Poincaré states due to the significantly different light-matter interaction for distinct spatial modes. Here, we experimentally realize the storage of perfect Poincaré states with arbitrary OAM quanta using the perfect optical vortex, in which 121 arbitrarily selected perfect Poincaré states have been stored with high fidelity. The reported work has great prospects in optical communication and quantum networks for dramatically increased encoding flexibility of information.

Highly Efficient Storage of 25-Dimensional Photonic Qudit in a Cold-Atom-Based Quantum Memory.

Building an efficient quantum memory in high-dimensional Hilbert spaces is one of the fundamental requirements for establishing high-dimensional quantum repeaters, where it offers many advantages over two-dimensional quantum systems, such as a larger information capacity and enhanced noise resilience. To date, it remains a challenge to develop an efficient high-dimensional quantum memory. Here, we experimentally realize a quantum memory that is operational in Hilbert spaces of up to 25 dimensions with a storage efficiency of close to 60% and a fidelity of 84.2±0.6%. The proposed approach exploits the spatial-mode-independent interaction between atoms and photons which are encoded in transverse-size-invariant vortex modes. In particular, our memory features uniform storage efficiency and low crosstalk disturbance for 25 individual spatial modes of photons, thus allowing the storing of qudit states programmed from 25 eigenstates within the high-dimensional Hilbert spaces. These results have great prospects for the implementation of long-distance high-dimensional quantum networks and quantum information processing.

Genetic variants associated with expression of TCF19 contribute to the risk of head and neck cancer in Chinese population.

BACKGROUND: Squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN) is one of the most common cancers worldwide and includes cancers arising from the oral cavity, pharynx and larynx. Genome-wide association studies have found several genetic variants related to the risk of SCCHN; however, they could only explain a small fraction of the heritability. Thus, more susceptibility loci associated with SCCHN need to be identified. METHODS: An association study was conducted by genotyping 555 patients with SCCHN and 1367 controls in a Chinese population. Single-variant association analysis was conducted on 63 373 SNPs, and the promising variants were then confirmed by a two-stage validation with 1875 SCCHN cases and 4637 controls. Bioinformatics analysis and functional assays were applied to uncover the potential pathogenic mechanism of the promising variants and genes associated with SCCHN. RESULTS: We first identified three novel genetic variants significantly associated with the risk of SCCHN (p=7.45×10-7 for rs2517611 at 6p22.1, p=1.76×10-9 for rs2524182 at 6p21.33 and p=2.17×10-10 for rs3131018 at 6p21.33). Further analysis and biochemical assays showed that rs3094187, which was in a region in high linkage disequilibrium with rs3131018, could modify TCF19 expression by regulating the binding affinity of the transcription factor SREBF1 to the promoter of TCF19. In addition, experiments revealed that the inhibition of TCF19 may affect several important pathways involved in tumourigenesis and attenuate the cell proliferation and migration of SCCHN. CONCLUSION: These findings offer important evidence that functional genetic variants could contribute to development of SCCHN and that TCF19 may function as a putative susceptibility gene for SCCHN.

The Impact of a Humanized Nursing Model on the Nursing Outcomes of Emergency Transfusion Patients.

Background: Emergency transfusion is a frequently performed invasive medical procedure. Patients often experience negative emotions and exhibit poor compliance during transfusion. Therefore, it is imperative to proactively implement effective nursing interventions. Objective: This study aims to investigate the impact of a humanized nursing model on the nursing outcomes of emergency transfusion patients. Design: This research was conducted as a randomized controlled experiment. Setting: The study was conducted in the emergency department of Suzhou Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine. Participants: A total of 120 patients who underwent emergency transfusion treatment in our hospital from February 2021 to October 2022 were selected. They were divided into two groups, the control group, and the observation group, using a random number table method, with 60 patients in each group. Interventions: The control group received standard nursing care, while the observation group received humanized nursing. Primary Outcome Measures: The primary outcome measures included (1) assessment of psychological states, (2) evaluation of physical and mental comfort, (3) assessment of transfusion compliance, (4) incidence of adverse transfusion events, and (5) assessment of nursing satisfaction. Results: Prior to nursing interventions, anxiety and depression scores were not significantly different between the two groups (P > .05). After nursing interventions, both groups exhibited a decrease in scores, with the observation group showing a more significant reduction compared to the control group (P < .05). In all aspects of physical and mental comfort, the observation group scored significantly higher than the control group (P < .05). Transfusion compliance and nursing satisfaction were significantly higher in the observation group compared to the control group (P < .01). The incidence of adverse transfusion events in the observation group was significantly lower than in the control group (P < .01). Conclusions: Humanized nursing significantly improves anxiety and depression in emergency transfusion patients, enhances their physical and mental comfort, and increases transfusion compliance while reducing adverse transfusion events. It leads to high patient satisfaction with nursing services.

Effect of the molecular weight of DOM on the indirect photodegradation of fluoroquinolone antibiotics.

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is ubiquitous and widespread in natural water and influences the transformation and removal of antibiotics. Nevertheless, the influence of DOM molecular weight (MW) on the indirect photodegradation of antibiotics has rarely been reported. This study attempted to explore the influence of the molecular weight of DOM on the indirect photodegradation of two fluoroquinolone antibiotics (FQs), ofloxacin (OFL) and norfloxacin (NOR), by using UV-vis absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy. The results showed that indirect photodegradation was considered the main photodegradation pathway of FQs in DOM fractions. Triplet-state excited organic matter (3DOM*) and singlet oxygen (1O2) were the main reactive intermediates (RIs) that affected the indirect photodegradation of FQs. The indirect photodegradation rate of FQs was significantly promoted in DOM fractions, especially in the low molecular weight DOM fractions (L-MW DOM, MW < 10 kDa). The results of excitation-emission matrix spectroscopy combined with parallel factor analysis (EEM-PARAFAC) showed that terrestrial humic-like substances had a higher humification degree and fluorophore content in L- MW DOM fractions, which could produce more 3DOM* and 1O2 to promote the indirect photodegradation of FQs. This study provided new insight into the effects of DOM at the molecular weight level on the indirect photodegradation of antibiotics in natural water.

Long-Lived Memory for Orbital Angular Momentum Quantum States.

Quantum memories that are capable of storing multiple spatial modes offer advantages in speed and robustness when incorporated into quantum networks. When it comes to spatial degrees of freedom, orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes have received widespread attention since they enable encoding with inherent infinite number of dimensions. Although the faithful storage of OAM qubits or qutrits has been realized in previous works, the achieved lifetimes are still on the order of a few microseconds as limited by the spatially dependent decoherence. We here demonstrate a long-lived quantum memory for OAM qutrits by suppressing the decoherence in the transverse and longitude direction simultaneously; the achieved fidelity beats the quantum-classical criteria after a storage time of 400 µs, which is 2 orders of magnitude longer than earlier works. The present work is promising for establishing high-dimensional quantum networks.

Different responses of phytoplankton and zooplankton communities to current changing coastal environments.

Marine plankton are faced with novel challenges associated with environmental changes such as ocean acidification, warming, and eutrophication. However, data on the effects of simultaneous environmental changes on complex natural communities in coastal ecosystems are relatively limited. Here we made a systematic analysis of biological and environmental parameters in the Bohai Sea over the past three years to suggest that plankton communities responded differently to current changing coastal environments, with the increase of phytoplankton and the decrease of zooplankton. These different changes of phyto- and zooplankton potentially resulted from the fact that both the effect of acidification as a result of pH decline and the effect of warming as a consequence of increasing temperature favored phytoplankton over zooplankton at present. Furthermore, water eutrophication and salinity as well as heavy metals Hg, Zn, and As had more or less diverse consequences for the dynamics of phytoplankton and zooplankton. Differently, with ongoing climate change, we also revealed that both phytoplankton and zooplankton would decrease in the future under the influence of interactions between acidification and warming.

Highly efficient vortex four-wave mixing in asymmetric semiconductor quantum wells.

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) is an important property of vortex light, which provides a valuable tool to manipulate the light-matter interaction in the study of classical and quantum optics. Here we propose a scheme to generate vortex light fields via four-wave mixing (FWM) in asymmetric semiconductor quantum wells. By tailoring the probe-field and control-field detunings, we can effectively manipulate the helical phase and intensity of the FWM field. Particularly, when probe field and control field have identical detuning, we find that both the absorption and phase twist of the generated FWM field are significantly suppressed. Consequently, the highly efficient vortex FWM is realized, where the maximum conversion efficiency reaches around 50%. Our study provides a tool to transfer vortex wavefronts from input to output fields in an efficient way, which may find potential applications in solid-state quantum optics and quantum information processing.

Entangled qutrits generated in four-wave mixing without post-selection.

High-dimensional entangled states and quantum repeaters are important elements in efficient long-range quantum communications. The high-dimensional property associated with the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of each photon improves the bandwidth of the quantum communication network. However, the generation of high-dimensional entangled states by the concentration method reduces the brightness of the entangled light source, making extensions to these higher dimensions difficult. To overcome this difficulty, we propose to generate entangled qutrits in the OAM space by loading the pump light with OAM. Compared with the concentration method, our experimental results show that the rate of generation of photon pairs improves significantly with an observed 5.5-fold increase. The increased generation rate provides the system with the ability to resist the noise and improve the fidelity of the state. The S value of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality increases from 2.48 ± 0.07 to 2.69 ± 0.04 under the same background noise, and the fidelity of the reconstructed density matrix improves from 57.8 ± 0.14% to 70 ± 0.17%. These achievements exhibit the enormous advantages of high-dimensional entanglement generation.

Ultraslow vortex four-wave mixing via multiphoton quantum interference.

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) light is nowadays an intriguing resource in classical and quantum optics due to the richness of physical properties it shows in interaction with matter. A key ingredient needed to exploit the full potential of OAM light is the control of quantum interference, a crucial resource in fields like quantum communication and quantum optics. Here, we study the vortex four-wave mixing (FWM) via multi-photon quantum interference in an ultraslow propagation regime. We find that the structured information can be manipulated via two-photon detuning and three photon detuning, which manifests itself as a spatial modulation. The detailed explanations based on the dispersion relation are given, which are in good agreement with our simulations. Furthermore, in order to clearly show the modulated mechanism, we perform the interference between the FWM field and a same-frequency Gaussian beam. It is found that the interference patterns are also manipulated by adjusting the multi-photon detunings. This work may have some potential applications in quantum control based on OAM light.

Experimental realization of optical storage of vector beams of light in warm atomic vapor.

Vector beams have drawn considerable interest recently because of their unique properties in the transverse plane. Here we experimentally realize optical storage of a vector beam of light in a warm cell. The vector beam is tailored using a Sagnac interferometer containing an internal vortex phase plate, and the light pulse is stored in warm rubidium vapor. The preservation of both the spatial structure and the phase information is verified after retrieval. The implementation of vector beam storage in a room-temperature memory has potential for use in the fabrication of versatile vortex-based quantum networks.

Two-color hyper-entangled photon pairs generation in a cold 85Rb atomic ensemble.

Hyper-entangled photon pairs are very promising in the quantum information field for enhancing the channel capacity in communication and improving compatibility for networks. Here we report on the experimental generation of a hyper-entangled photon pair at a wavelength of 795 nm and 1475 nm via the spontaneous four-wave mixing process in a cold 85Rb atomic ensemble. The photons in each pair generated are entangled in both the time-frequency and polarization degrees of freedom. Such hyper-entangled photon pairs with special wavelength have potential applications in high-dimensional quantum communication and quantum physics.

Experimental realization of narrowband four-photon Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state in a single cold atomic ensemble.

Multi-photon entangled states not only play a crucial role in research on quantum physics but also have many applications in quantum information fields such as quantum computation, quantum communication, and quantum metrology. To fully exploit the multi-photon entangled states, it is important to establish the interaction between entangled photons and matter, which requires that photons have narrow bandwidth. Here, we report on the experimental generation of a narrowband four-photon Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state with a fidelity of 64.9% through multiplexing two spontaneous four-wave mixings in a cold Rb85 atomic ensemble. The full bandwidth of the generated GHZ state is about 19.5 MHz. Thus, the generated photons can effectively match the atoms, which are very suitable for building a quantum computation and quantum communication network based on atomic ensembles.

Quantum Secure Direct Communication with Quantum Memory.

Quantum communication provides an absolute security advantage, and it has been widely developed over the past 30 years. As an important branch of quantum communication, quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) promotes high security and instantaneousness in communication through directly transmitting messages over a quantum channel. The full implementation of a quantum protocol always requires the ability to control the transfer of a message effectively in the time domain; thus, it is essential to combine QSDC with quantum memory to accomplish the communication task. In this Letter, we report the experimental demonstration of QSDC with state-of-the-art atomic quantum memory for the first time in principle. We use the polarization degrees of freedom of photons as the information carrier, and the fidelity of entanglement decoding is verified as approximately 90%. Our work completes a fundamental step toward practical QSDC and demonstrates a potential application for long-distance quantum communication in a quantum network.

Transcoder for the spatial and temporal modes of a photon.

Encoding information in light with orbital angular momentum (OAM) enables networks to increase channel capacity significantly. However, light in only the fundamental Gaussian mode is suitable for fibre transmission, and not higher order Laguerre Gaussian modes, which carry OAM. Therefore, building a bridge to interface light with OAM and Gaussian mode time-binning is crucially important. Here, we report the realization of a photonic transcoder, by which light with an arbitrary OAM superposition is experimentally converted into a time-bin Gaussian pulse, and vice versa. Furthermore, we clearly demonstrate that coherence is well conserved and there is no cross-talk between orthogonal modes. This photonic device is simple and can be built with scalable architecture. Our experimental demonstration paves the way towards a mixed optical communication in free-space and optical fibre.

Non-destructive splitter of twisted light based on modes splitting in a ring cavity.

Efficiently discriminating beams carrying different orbital angular momentum (OAM) is of fundamental importance for various applications including high capacity optical communication and quantum information processing. We design and experimentally verify a distinguished method for effectively splitting different OAM-carried beams by introducing Dove prisms in a ring cavity. Because of rotational symmetry broken of two OAM-carried beams with opposite topological charges, their transmission spectra will split. When mode and impedance matches between the cavity and one OAM-carried beam are achieved, this beam will transmit through the cavity and other beam will be reflected, both beams keep their spatial shapes. In this case, the cavity acts like a polarized beam splitter. Besides, the transmitting beam can be selected at your will, the splitting efficiency can reach unity if the cavity is lossless and it completely matches the beam. Furthermore, beams carry multi-OAMs can also be split by cascading ring cavities.

Orbital Angular Momentum-Entanglement Frequency Transducer.

Entanglement is a vital resource for realizing many tasks such as teleportation, secure key distribution, metrology, and quantum computations. To effectively build entanglement between different quantum systems and share information between them, a frequency transducer to convert between quantum states of different wavelengths while retaining its quantum features is indispensable. Information encoded in the photon's orbital angular momentum (OAM) degrees of freedom is preferred in harnessing the information-carrying capacity of a single photon because of its unlimited dimensions. A quantum transducer, which operates at wavelengths from 1558.3 to 525 nm for OAM qubits, OAM-polarization hybrid-entangled states, and OAM-entangled states, is reported for the first time. Nonclassical properties and entanglements are demonstrated following the conversion process by performing quantum tomography, interference, and Bell inequality measurements. Our results demonstrate the capability to create an entanglement link between different quantum systems operating in a photon's OAM degrees of freedom, which will be of great importance in building a high-capacity OAM quantum network.