QuEST and High Performance Simulation of Quantum Computers

We introduce QuEST, the Quantum Exact Simulation Toolkit, and compare it to ProjectQ, qHipster and a recent distributed implementation of Quantum++. QuEST is the first open source, OpenMP and MPI hybridised, GPU accelerated simulator of universal quantum circuits. Embodied as a C library, it is designed so that a user's code can be deployed seamlessly to any platform from a laptop to a supercomputer. QuEST is capable of simulating generic quantum circuits of general single-qubit gates and multi-qubit controlled gates, on pure and mixed states, represented as state-vectors and density matrices, and under the presence of decoherence. Using the ARCUS Phase-B and ARCHER supercomputers, we benchmark QuEST's simulation of random circuits of up to 38 qubits, distributed over up to 2048 compute nodes, each with up to 24 cores. We directly compare QuEST's performance to ProjectQ's on single machines, and discuss the differences in distribution strategies of QuEST, qHipster and Quantum++. QuEST shows excellent scaling, both strong and weak, on multicore and distributed architectures.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures; fixed typos; updated QuEST URL and fixed typo in Fig. 4 caption where ProjectQ and QuEST were swapped in speedup subplot explanation; added explanation of simulation algorithm, updated bibliography; stressed technical novelty of QuEST; mentioned new density matrix suppor

Cochrane acute respiratory infections group's stakeholder engagement project identified systematic review priority areas

Objective: Cochrane acute respiratory infections (ARIs) group conducts systematic reviews of the evidence for treatment and prevention of ARIs. We report the results of a prioritization project, aiming to identify highest priority systematic review topics. Study Design/Setting: The project consisted of two phases. Phase 1 analyzed the gap between existing randomized controlled trials and Cochrane systematic reviews (reported previously). Phase 2 (reported here) consisted of a two-round survey. In round 1, respondents prioritized 68 topics and suggested up to 10 additional topics; in round 2, respondents prioritized top 25 topics from round 1. Results: Respondents included clinicians, researchers, systematic reviewers, allied health, patients, and carers, from 33 different countries. In round 1, 154 respondents identified 20 priority topics, most commonly selecting topics in nonspecific ARIs, influenza, and common cold. Fifty respondents also collectively suggested 134 additional topics. In round 2, 78 respondents prioritized top 25 topics, most commonly in the areas of nonspecific ARIs, pneumonia, and influenza. Conclusion: We generated a list of priority systematic review topics to guide the Cochrane ARI group's systematic review work for the next 24 months. Stakeholder involvement enhanced the transparency of the process and will increase the usability and relevance of the group's work to stakeholders

Picture Me Like This: A Short Story Collection

Picture Me Like This is a short story collection that explores our racialized imaginations surrounding Blackness and whiteness, and the implications those have for our intimacies with each other

Impact of Student Leader Role on a Study Abroad Trip

This research looks specifically at a college-level course associated with the EDTL 4900: Ireland! Crossing Borders and Building Bridges study abroad program. The ideals of expeditionary learning guided the development of the course assignments and curriculum, the choice of field experiences, and the teaching styles that were utilized while abroad. The paper is an analysis based upon the experiences the student leader had while abroad taking into the duel role the student leader had while experiencing the expeditions and culture of a new country and leading a group of students through their first venture abroad. Due to the need for a reflection-based way of analyzing the student leader’s experience, the process of autoethnography was selected as the method of research for this study

The interpretation of spikes and trends in concentration of nitrate in polar ice cores, based on evidence from snow and atmospheric measurements

Nitrate is frequently measured in ice cores, but its interpretation remains immature. Using daily snow surface concentrations of nitrate at Halley (Antarctica) for 2004 - 2005, we show that sharp spikes (> factor 2) in nitrate concentration can occur from day to day. Some of these spikes will be preserved in ice cores. Many of them are associated with sharp increases in the concentration of sea salt in the snow. There is also a close association between the concentrations of aerosol nitrate and sea salt aerosol. This evidence is consistent with many of the spikes in deposited nitrate being due to the conversion or trapping of gas- phase nitrate, i. e. to enhanced deposition rather than enhanced atmospheric concentrations of NOy. Previously, sharp spikes in nitrate concentration (with concentration increases of up to a factor 4 seen in probably just one snowfall) have been assigned to sharp production events such as solar proton events (SPEs). We find that it is unlikely that SPEs can produce spikes of the kind seen. Taken together with our evidence that such spikes can be produced depositionally, we find that it is not possible to track past SPEs without carrying out a new multi- site and multi- analyte programme. Seasonal and interannual trends in nitrate concentration in cores from any single site cannot be interpreted in terms of production changes until the recycling of nitrate from central Antarctica to coastal Antarctica is better quantified. It might be possible to assess the interannual input of NOy to the Antarctic lower troposphere by using a network of cores to estimate variability in the total annual deposition across the continent (which we estimate to be 9 +/- 2 x 10(7) kg/a - as NO3-), but it will first have to be established that the outflow across the coast can be ignored

Tinctorial Cartographies: Plant, Dye & Place

We live in a plant-dominated biosphere, and yet the relevance and meaning of vegetal life, beyond its contribution to human existence, is rarely considered. This way of thinking has led us to see nature as external to ourselves, as “other,” as that mysterious realm beyond the human sphere of being. As in visual culture, plant life possesses signifiers and coded meanings in its contextual configurations. Botanical literacy offers insight into environmental, sociocultural, and historical narratives of place, as the forests and herbaceous margins of our communities speak of complex past, a parallel history of survival and adaptation. Plants and textiles, the world over, tell complicated stories of colonization, migration, industrialization, and the evolving nature of local and global systems. This presentation will discuss these ideas through the lens of my MFA thesis work (Tinctorial Cartographies), which was created in the interest of developing a regional lexicon of color. The project houses one hundred and fifty hand-woven swatches (each comprised of five fibers and three mordanting variables), which were dyed with a selection in indigenous, naturalized, and invasive plants harvested over a twelve-month period from across the province of Nova Scotia. The work is in one sense an explanation of the terroir of color, of that which was extracted directly from the local landscape, and yet it also strives to consider the contextual meanings held within the plant life growing in the province and, by extrapolation, within Canada. In my practice, working with plants becomes a point of entry in considering the complex meaning held within botanical life forms. The acts of harvesting, extracting, and dyeing become a way of exploring the difficult histories that are etched into the vegetal and mineral layers of this land

Tinctorial Cartographies: Plant, Dye & Place

We live in a plant-dominated biosphere, and yet the relevance and meaning of vegetal life, beyond its contribution to human existence, is rarely considered. This way of thinking has led us to see nature as external to ourselves, as “other,” as that mysterious realm beyond the human sphere of being. As in visual culture, plant life possesses signifiers and coded meanings in its contextual configurations. Botanical literacy offers insight into environmental, sociocultural, and historical narratives of place, as the forests and herbaceous margins of our communities speak of complex past, a parallel history of survival and adaptation. Plants and textiles, the world over, tell complicated stories of colonization, migration, industrialization, and the evolving nature of local and global systems. This presentation will discuss these ideas through the lens of my MFA thesis work (Tinctorial Cartographies), which was created in the interest of developing a regional lexicon of color. The project houses one hundred and fifty hand-woven swatches (each comprised of five fibers and three mordanting variables), which were dyed with a selection in indigenous, naturalized, and invasive plants harvested over a twelve-month period from across the province of Nova Scotia. The work is in one sense an explanation of the terroir of color, of that which was extracted directly from the local landscape, and yet it also strives to consider the contextual meanings held within the plant life growing in the province and, by extrapolation, within Canada. In my practice, working with plants becomes a point of entry in considering the complex meaning held within botanical life forms. The acts of harvesting, extracting, and dyeing become a way of exploring the difficult histories that are etched into the vegetal and mineral layers of this land

Preface: "On Revenge"

When Robert Mannion, the scheming villain of Wilkie Collins's sensation novel Basil, reveals his revenge plot to the eponymous narrator, it might appear at first that he has thrown off the mantle of middle-class respectability to expose his "true" monstrous self: rapacious, violent, motivated equally by perverse appetites and the desire for vengeance. Yet, I would suggest that the relationship between Mannion's persona as socially-productive, disciplined, and efficient self-made man and his role as a stealthily, indefatigably vengeful plotter is much more synergistic than antagonistic. Mannion stakes a claim to revenge based on his very rights as a man. The fear that Basil explores is that the "good citizen" of modern liberal society might also be the mauvais sujet of revenge, not because the semblance of the former masks the latter, but, more disturbingly, because Mannion's "right to injure" is fundamental to the very social order that he ostensibly threatens. In other words, it is no coincidence that a villain like Mannion emerges at the same historical moment as some of the most enthusiastic articulations of liberal ideals of self-determining, autonomous subjectivity. Mannion not only embodies the very qualities that, according to Samuel Smiles's runaway bestseller Self-Help, "make the man"- "great perseverance, application, and energy" (30)-but these qualities are explicitly the products of his "desire for revenge." So, what might that intersection of revenge fantasies with the liberal dream of self-determination and economic success that Smiles's book pedaled in 1850s England have to tell us about revenge as a cultural phenomenon and a fictional device? What is happening at the interstices between revenge and rights, in other words