949 research outputs found
Exploring projectification in the public sector: the case of the next stage review implementation programme in the department of health
Objective: Public projects are used to delivery policy objectives. From a financial
perspective, the Major Projects Authority (MPA) estimated a whole life investment
of £488 billion for 199 major projects in 2014, only a small subset of the total
number of public projects. Given the financial exposure, the impact of endemic
public project failures could put the economic health of the nation at risk. This
thesis studies the challenges facing public projects. It applies an organisational
capabilities lens to investigate projectification, when organisations shift away from
functional-based organising (FBO) toward project-based organising (PBO).
Research Design: This study adopts an interpretivist research paradigm, with a
constructionist epistemology and an idealist ontology, and employs an abductive
research strategy. Structurally, it follows the Cranfield Executive Doctorate in
Business Administration (DBA) methodology, with a linking document that
summarises three complementary research projects: a systematic literature
review (SLR) followed by two empirical studies that investigate the Department of
Health (DoH) during the early phases of the Next Stage Review Implementation
Programme (NSRIP). The findings are derived from over 250 academic literature
sources, 100 government publications and 41 semi-structured interviews. ...[cont.
Agile Data Offloading over Novel Fog Computing Infrastructure for CAVs
Future Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) will be supervised by
cloud-based systems overseeing the overall security and orchestrating traffic
flows. Such systems rely on data collected from CAVs across the whole city
operational area. This paper develops a Fog Computing-based infrastructure for
future Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) enabling an agile and reliable
off-load of CAV data. Since CAVs are expected to generate large quantities of
data, it is not feasible to assume data off-loading to be completed while a CAV
is in the proximity of a single Road-Side Unit (RSU). CAVs are expected to be
in the range of an RSU only for a limited amount of time, necessitating data
reconciliation across different RSUs, if traditional approaches to data
off-load were to be used. To this end, this paper proposes an agile Fog
Computing infrastructure, which interconnects all the RSUs so that the data
reconciliation is solved efficiently as a by-product of deploying the Random
Linear Network Coding (RLNC) technique. Our numerical results confirm the
feasibility of our solution and show its effectiveness when operated in a
large-scale urban testbed.Comment: To appear in IEEE VTC-Spring 201
Engineering Dynamical Sweet Spots to Protect Qubits from 1/ Noise
Protecting superconducting qubits from low-frequency noise is essential for
advancing superconducting quantum computation. Based on the application of a
periodic drive field, we develop a protocol for engineering dynamical sweet
spots which reduce the susceptibility of a qubit to low-frequency noise. Using
the framework of Floquet theory, we prove rigorously that there are manifolds
of dynamical sweet spots marked by extrema in the quasi-energy differences of
the driven qubit. In particular, for the example of fluxonium biased slightly
away from half a flux quantum, we predict an enhancement of pure-dephasing by
three orders of magnitude. Employing the Floquet eigenstates as the
computational basis, we show that high-fidelity single- and two-qubit gates can
be implemented while maintaining dynamical sweet-spot operation. We further
confirm that qubit readout can be performed by adiabatically mapping the
Floquet states back to the static qubit states, and subsequently applying
standard measurement techniques. Our work provides an intuitive tool to encode
quantum information in robust, time-dependent states, and may be extended to
alternative architectures for quantum information processing
Transfusion Rates in Emergency General Surgery: High but Modifiable
Background: Transfusion of red blood cells (RBC) increases morbidity and mortality, and emergency general surgery (EGS) cases have increased risk for transfusion and complication given case complexity and patient acuity. Transfusion reduction strategies and blood-conservation technology have been developed to decrease transfusions. This study explores whether transfusion rates in EGS have decreased as these new strategies have been implemented.
Methods: This is a retrospective review of the American College of Surgeons\u27 National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) data from three academic medical centers. Operations performed by general surgeons on adults (aged ≥18 years) were selected. Data were analyzed from two periods: 2011-2013 and 2014-2016. Cases were grouped by the first four digits of the primary procedure Current Procedural Terminology code. Transfusion was defined as any RBC transfusion during or within 72 hours following the operation. Composite morbidity was defined as any NSQIP complication within 30 days following the operation.
Results: Overall general surgery transfusion rates decreased from 6.4% to 4.8% from period 1 to period 2 (emergent: 16.6%–11.5%; non-emergent 4.9%–3.7%; Fisher’s exact p values \u3c 0.001). Among patients transfused, the number of units received decreased slightly (median 2 U (IQR 2–3) to median 2 U (IQR 1–3), Mann-Whitney U test p = 0.005). Morbidity decreased (overall: 13.8%–12.3%, p = 0.001; emergent: 26.3%–20.6%, p \u3c 0.001) while mortality did not change.
Discussion: Rates of RBC transfusion decreased in both emergent and non-emergent cases. Efforts to reduce transfusion may have been successful in the EGS population. Morbidity improved over the time periods while mortality was unchanged.
Level of Evidence: Level III
Moving beyond the transmon: Noise-protected superconducting quantum circuits
Artificial atoms realized by superconducting circuits offer unique
opportunities to store and process quantum information with high fidelity.
Among them, implementations of circuits that harness intrinsic noise protection
have been rapidly developed in recent years. These noise-protected devices
constitute a new class of qubits in which the computational states are largely
decoupled from local noise channels. The main challenges in engineering such
systems are simultaneously guarding against both bit- and phase-flip errors,
and also ensuring high-fidelity qubit control. Although partial noise
protection is possible in superconducting circuits relying on a single quantum
degree of freedom, the promise of complete protection can only be fulfilled by
implementing multimode or hybrid circuits. This Perspective reviews the
theoretical principles at the heart of these new qubits, describes recent
experiments, and highlights the potential of robust encoding of quantum
information in superconducting qubits
Universal gates for protected superconducting qubits using optimal control
We employ quantum optimal control theory to realize quantum gates for two
protected superconducting circuits: the heavy-fluxonium qubit and the 0-
qubit. Utilizing automatic differentiation facilitates the simultaneous
inclusion of multiple optimization targets, allowing one to obtain
high-fidelity gates with realistic pulse shapes. For both qubits, disjoint
support of low-lying wave functions prevents direct population transfer between
the computational-basis states. Instead, optimal control favors dynamics
involving higher-lying levels, effectively lifting the protection for a
fraction of the gate duration. For the 0- qubit, offset-charge dependence
of matrix elements among higher levels poses an additional challenge for gate
protocols. To mitigate this issue, we randomize the offset charge during the
optimization process, steering the system towards pulse shapes insensitive to
charge variations. Closed-system fidelities obtained are 99% or higher, and
show slight reductions in open-system simulations.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure
Down-regulation of Plasminogen Activator Inhibitor 1 Expression Promotes Myocardial Neovascularization by Bone Marrow Progenitors
Human adult bone marrow–derived endothelial progenitors, or angioblasts, induce neovascularization of infarcted myocardium via mechanisms involving both cell surface urokinase-type plasminogen activator, and interactions between β integrins and tissue vitronectin. Because each of these processes is regulated by plasminogen activator inhibitor (PAI)-1, we selectively down-regulated PAI-1 mRNA in the adult heart to examine the effects on postinfarct neovascularization and myocardial function. Sequence-specific catalytic DNA enzymes inhibited rat PAI-1 mRNA and protein expression in peri-infarct endothelium within 48 h of administration, and maintained down-regulation for at least 2 wk. PAI-1 inhibition enhanced vitronectin-dependent transendothelial migration of human bone marrow–derived CD34+ cells, and resulted in a striking augmentation of angioblast-dependent neovascularization. Development of large, thin-walled vessels at the peri-infarct region was accompanied by induction of proliferation and regeneration of endogenous cardiomyocytes and functional cardiac recovery. These results identify a causal relationship between elevated PAI-1 levels and poor outcome in patients with myocardial infarction through mechanisms that directly inhibit bone marrow–dependent neovascularization. Strategies that reduce myocardial PAI-1 expression appear capable of enhancing cardiac neovascularization, regeneration, and functional recovery after ischemic insult
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