Inbreeding depression affects captive populations and those that have been recently impacted by anthropogenic disturbance. However, the evolutionary importance of inbreeding depression in natural populations is not well understood. This study focuses on a naturally small population of Cyclura carinata, the Turks and Caicos Rock Iguana, that has likely been stable for hundreds of generations. Genotypic data at 13 polymorphic microsatellite loci, along with fitness proxies, were collected from 188 individuals across three age classes. Multi-locus heterozygosity is strongly predictive of age class (p < 0.03), and is significantly lower in hatchlings than in juveniles or adults. Estimates for intensity of selection favoring heterozygosity range from 0.498-0.627, indicating that this proportion of individuals fail to survive due to inbreeding depression. The heterozygosityitness correlation among adults is significant (p < 0.01), suggesting outbred individuals have higher reproduction success. Hence, the lifetime influence of inbreeding on fitness is extremely high.

<p> A method is described by which spins of nuclear energy levels might be determined, which is a combination of coincidence experiments with Sodium Iodide detectors and angular distribution measurements with high resolution solid state detectors. The method is applied to the 8.87 MeV level in Mg24. </p> / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

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This research attempt further analyzes implications of statistical correlations regarding specific relationships between the extremity-intensity variables, as defined by the social judgment instrument, and the polarity variable, as defined by the semantic differential scale.

Quantum mechanics and atomic, molecular, optical (AMO) physics have been widely studied in the past century. This dissertation covers several topics in the field of AMO physics that were the focus of my Ph.D. studies, both theoretical and computational.<div><br></div><div>The first topic is related to trapping of Rydberg atoms inside an optical trap. The study focuses on the trapping energy and state mixing of Rydberg atoms based on different angular momentum state and spin-orbit coupling of the Rydberg electron. </div><div><br></div><div>The second topic is the two-electron correlations in an atom, especially double Rydberg wave packets. We have focused on the rapid autoionization and angular momentum exchanges between the double Rydberg wave packets. Then, the study of two-electron correlation is extended to the post-collision interaction (PCI) in Auger decay and a sequential ionization model. Quantum interference patterns can be found in the final correlated distributions. In the PCI study, quantum calculations and semiclassical calculations are performed to interpret the interference patterns. </div><div><br></div><div>The last topic is the ionization behavior of one-electron Rydberg atoms from a terahertz single-cycle pulse. We investigate and compare the different ionization probabilities of a Rydberg electron from an initial stationary state and a wave packet. Also, studies of the ionization behavior are extended to scaled parameters, where all physical parameters of the electron and field pulses are scaled.</div>

The two-particle correlation function is measured for neutral current DIS events with 5 < Q2 < 100 GeV2 with data taken by the H1 detector at HERA with -vFs = 300 GeV during the 1994 run period corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.3 pb-1. The diffractive and non-diffractive selections of the data are analysed separately, and both exhibit an enhanced correlation for small 4-momentum difference for like-sign pairs as expected from Bose-Einstein interference in the production amplitudes for identical boson pairs. Fits using a Gaussian parametrisation of the enhancement yield no statistically significant difference between the diffractive and non-diffractive samples. The non-diffractive data sample is further separately analysed in three bins of each of the kinematic variables x, Q2, and W as well as mean particle density, (dn/dry*), in the hadronic centre of mass frame. Of these a strong evolution of the Gaussian fit parameters is observed with increasing particle density only. The non-diffractive data are also compared to three fit parameterisations: Gaussian, exponential, and power-law. The most favourable X2 is obtained for the exponential fit, though the power-law attains a similarly successful description of the data in the region of low 4-momentum difference.

When light encounters scattering materials such as biological tissue, white paint or clouds, it gets randomly scattered in all directions, which traditionally has been seen as a barrier for imaging techniques (reducing their resolution) or sensing, due to the reduction of the penetration depth of light. However, in recent years it has been shown that scattering might not necessarily be an impediment, and that the knowledge of the properties of multiple scattering can be indeed useful for imaging, sensing and other applications. In the first part of this thesis (Chapters 2 to 5) we study the implications of manipulating the light incident on a multiply scattering material. We experimentally show how by actively controlling the output light of a bad quality laser we manage to not only improve its beam quality, but also in an energy-efficient way, in comparison with traditional methods. In a different experiment presented in this thesis, we show how the active control of the light incident on a scattering material can be useful to improve sensing through scattering media, by means of increasing the transmission and energy deposited inside (Chapter 5). In the final part of the thesis we present the first experimental observation of intensity correla- tions between transmitted and reflected patterns from a scattering material (Chapter 6), exploring how it depends on the parameters of the scattering medium. In the last part of the thesis (Chapter 7) we present a new imaging technique based on the use of the intensity correlations described in the previous chapter, opening new possibilities to non-invasive imaging through highly scattering materials.

Graduation date: 1991

This thesis studies three topics in quantum computation and information: The approximability of quantum problems, quantum proof systems, and non-classical correlations in quantum systems. Our first area of study concerns the approximability of computational problems which are complete for quantum complexity classes. In the classical setting, the study of approximation algorithms and hardness of approximation is one of the main research areas of theoretical computer science. Yet, little is known regarding approximability in the quantum setting. We first demonstrate a polynomial-time approximation algorithm for dense instances of the canonical QMA-complete quantum constraint satisfaction problem, the local Hamiltonian problem. We next go in the opposite direction by first introducing a quantum generalization of the polynomial-time hierarchy. We then introduce problems which are not only complete for the second level of this hierarchy, but are in fact hard to approximate. Our second area of study concerns quantum proof systems. Here, an interesting question which remains open despite much effort is whether a proof system with multiple unentangled quantum provers is equal in expressive power to a proof system with a single quantum prover (i.e. is QMA(poly) equal to QMA?). Our results here study variants of this question, and include a proof that the class BellQMA(poly) collapses to QMA. We also give an alternate proof that SepQMA(m) admits perfect parallel repetition. This proof is novel in that it utilizes cone programming duality. Our final area of study concerns non-classical correlations in quantum systems. Specifically, there exist genuinely quantum correlations beyond entanglement in mixed quantum states which may prove useful from a computing and information theoretic perspective. We first explore the presence of such correlations in the locking of classical correlations and the DQC1 model of mixed-state quantum computing. Our second result introduces a novel scheme for quantifying non-classical correlations using local unitary operations. Our third result introduces a protocol through which non-classical correlations in a starting system can be “activated”' into distillable entanglement with an ancilla system. Our last result determines when the entanglement generated in the activation protocol above can be mapped back onto the starting state via entanglement swapping.