Statistical Assertions for Validating Patterns and Finding Bugs in Quantum Programs

In support of the growing interest in quantum computing experimentation, programmers need new tools to write quantum algorithms as program code. Compared to debugging classical programs, debugging quantum programs is difficult because programmers have limited ability to probe the internal states of quantum programs; those states are difficult to interpret even when observations exist; and programmers do not yet have guidelines for what to check for when building quantum programs. In this work, we present quantum program assertions based on statistical tests on classical observations. These allow programmers to decide if a quantum program state matches its expected value in one of classical, superposition, or entangled types of states. We extend an existing quantum programming language with the ability to specify quantum assertions, which our tool then checks in a quantum program simulator. We use these assertions to debug three benchmark quantum programs in factoring, search, and chemistry. We share what types of bugs are possible, and lay out a strategy for using quantum programming patterns to place assertions and prevent bugs.Comment: In The 46th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA '19). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1811.0544

Beowulf's Tears of Fatherhood

The figure of Hrothgar, aging king of the Danes, forces an analysis of the relationships among age, maleness, and masculinity in Beowulf. Masculine characters, while enacting the poem's complex reciprocities and social transactions in the hall and on the battlefield, accrue status and power through assertions of control and dominance, through knowledge and use of the rituals of hierarchy, and through manipulation of the variety of relationships that exists in the social world of Beowulf. Two specific incidents within the text exhibit Hrothgar's growing inability to exert power over others and to enact this masculine heroic ethos. The first is heterosexual, a departure to and return from his wife's bed; the second is homosocial, his leave-taking of Beowulf

Towards code generation from design models

With the growing in size and complexity of modern computer systems, the need for improving the quality at all stages of software development has become a critical issue. The current software production has been largely depended on manual code development. Despite the slow development process, the errors introduced by the programmers contribute to a substantial portion of defects in the final software product. This paper explores the possibility of generating code and assertion constraints from formal design models and use them to verify the implementation. We translate Z formal models into their OCL counter-parts and Java assertions. With the help of existing tools, we demonstrate various checking at different levels to enhance correctness

Public access to environmental information: Past, present and future

Since the late 1960s and the "environmental revolution", information and information systems have been an integral part of the environmental debate. In the decade that has passed since the Rio conference and the establishment of the "sustainable development" principle, there have been legislative and practical moves to open access to environmental information for all stakeholders that are involved in environmental decision making processes. In this paper, the origins of environmental information and public environmental information systems are explored and scrutinised. The paper questions the current state of the art in environmental information provision, and offers some directions for possible improvements. © 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd

Politics of Identity and Oppression in Rhys’s Voyage in the Dark

In this essay, “Politics of Identity and Oppression in Rhys’s Voyage in the Dark” I aim to explore the ways in which identity and the idea of the constructed ‘self’ are both created and continuously transformed by one’s experiences and memories. I argue that the protagonist of Rhys’s novel’s identity is ultimately shaped by her racialized experiences of growing up in the West Indies. In my discussion I analyze the color metaphors Rhys utilizes and the impact they have upon readers’ unconscious perceptions about race, ultimately aiming to deconstruct the commonly assumed/utilized dichotomy between white/black. I use these notions of metaphor and identity construction to challenge the assertions of previous scholars regarding Rhys’s protagonist’s supposed lack of agency within the white supremacist, patriarchal political structure of London

Strongly barycentrically associative and preassociative functions

We study the property of strong barycentric associativity, a stronger version of barycentric associativity for functions with indefinite arities. We introduce and discuss the more general property of strong barycentric preassociativity, a generalization of strong barycentric associativity which does not involve any composition of functions. We also provide a generalization of Kolmogoroff-Nagumo's characterization of the quasi-arithmetic mean functions to strongly barycentrically preassociative functions.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1406.434

Public access to environmental information - challenges and research directions: a review of current issues with environmental information provision

September 2-

The Impact of Working at Home on Career Outcomes of Professional Employees

This research examines the claim that working at home adversely affects employees\u27 career progress, by comparing the career achievements of professional employees who work at home and those who do not. The findings contradict assertions of negative consequences of working at home. Implications for research and practice are discussed

Checking-in on Network Functions

When programming network functions, changes within a packet tend to have consequences---side effects which must be accounted for by network programmers or administrators via arbitrary logic and an innate understanding of dependencies. Examples of this include updating checksums when a packet's contents has been modified or adjusting a payload length field of a IPv6 header if another header is added or updated within a packet. While static-typing captures interface specifications and how packet contents should behave, it does not enforce precise invariants around runtime dependencies like the examples above. Instead, during the design phase of network functions, programmers should be given an easier way to specify checks up front, all without having to account for and keep track of these consequences at each and every step during the development cycle. In keeping with this view, we present a unique approach for adding and generating both static checks and dynamic contracts for specifying and checking packet processing operations. We develop our technique within an existing framework called NetBricks and demonstrate how our approach simplifies and checks common dependent packet and header processing logic that other systems take for granted, all without adding much overhead during development.Comment: ANRW 2019 ~ https://irtf.org/anrw/2019/program.htm