Impact of Common Reflecting and Absorbing Building Materials on THz Multipath Channels

THz band communication has the potential to meet the high data rate demands of many current and future applications. However, before these networks are realized, extensive channel measurements are needed in order to characterize the wireless channel at these frequencies, in order to inform system design and deployment. In the current paper, we present a set of double-directional channel measurements that are conducted in several relevant indoor and outdoor scenarios. Our aim is to see the effect of common building materials that might be particularly reflective or absorptive (such as energy-saving glass, window blinds, or metallic reflectors), and how their presence changes the channel characteristics. Among other effects we find that - depending on the considered dynamic range - presence/absence of these materials can increase the required equalizer length by an order of magnitude.

Deep Characterization of the Human Antibody Response to Natural Infection Using Longitudinal Immune Repertoire Sequencing

Human antibody response studies are largely restricted to periods of high immune activity (e.g. vaccination). To comprehensively understand the healthy B cell immune repertoire and how this changes over time and through natural infection, we conducted immune repertoire RNA sequencing on flow cytometry-sorted B cell subsets to profile a single individual's antibodies over 11 months through two periods of natural viral infection. We found that 1) a baseline of healthy variable (V) gene usage in antibodies exists and is stable over time, but antibodies in memory cells consistently have a different usage profile relative to earlier B cell stages; 2) a single complementarity-determining region 3 (CDR3) is potentially generated from more than one VJ gene combination; and 3) IgG and IgA antibody transcripts are found at low levels in early human B cell development, suggesting that class switching may occur earlier than previously realized. These findings provide insight into immune repertoire stability, response to natural infections, and human B cell development.