134 research outputs found
Committed
Between 1902 and 1934, the United States confined hundreds of adults and children from dozens of Native nations at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, a federal psychiatric hospital in South Dakota. But detention at the Indian Asylum, as families experienced it, was not the beginning or end of the story. For them, Canton Asylum was one of many places of imposed removal and confinement, including reservations, boarding schools, orphanages, and prison-hospitals. Despite the long reach of institutionalization for those forcibly held at the Asylum, the tenacity of relationships extended within and beyond institutional walls. In this accessible and innovative work, Susan Burch tells the story of the Indigenous people—families, communities, and nations, across generations to the present day—who have experienced the impact of this history. Drawing on oral history interviews, correspondence, material objects, and archival sources, Burch reframes the histories of institutionalized people and the places that held them. Committed expands the boundaries of Native American history, disability studies, and U.S. social and cultural history generally
Other Voices, Other Ways, Better Practices: Bridging Local and Professional Environmental Knowledge
Soil zinc content, groundwater usage, and prostate cancer incidence in South Carolina
Background Prostate cancer (PrCA) incidence in South Carolina (SC) exceeds the national average, particularly among African Americans (AAs). Though data are limited, low environmental zinc exposures and down-regulation of prostatic zinc transporter proteins among AAs may explain, in part, the racial PrCA disparity. Methods Age-adjusted PrCA rates were calculated by census tract. Demographic data were obtained from the 1990 census. Hazardous waste site locations and soil zinc concentrations were obtained from existing federal and state databases. A geographic information system and Poisson regression were used to test the hypothesis that census tracts with reduced soil zinc concentrations, elevated groundwater use, or more agricultural or hazardous waste sites had elevated PrCA risks. Results Census tracts with high groundwater use and low zinc concentrations had higher PrCA rate ratios (RR: 1.270; 95% confidence interval: 1.079, 1.505). This effect was not more apparent in areas populated primarily by AAs. Conclusion Increased PrCA rates were associated with reduced soil zinc concentrations and elevated groundwater use, although this observation is not likely to contribute to SC’s racial PrCA disparity. Statewide mapping and statistical modeling of relationships between environmental factors, demographics, and cancer incidence can be used to screen hypotheses focusing on novel PrCA risk factors
Quantum Computation of Hydrogen Bond Dynamics and Vibrational Spectra
Calculating the observable properties of chemical systems is often
classically intractable, and is widely viewed as a promising application of
quantum information processing. This is because a full description of chemical
behavior relies upon the complex interplay of quantum-mechanical electrons and
nuclei, demanding an exponential scaling of computational resources with system
size. While considerable progress has been made in mapping electronic-structure
calculations to quantum hardware, these approaches are unsuitable for
describing the quantum dynamics of nuclei, proton- and hydrogen-transfer
processes, or the vibrational spectra of molecules. Here, we use the QSCOUT
ion-trap quantum computer to determine the quantum dynamics and vibrational
properties of a shared proton within a short-strong hydrogen-bonded system. For
a range of initial states, we experimentally drive the ion-trap system to
emulate the quantum trajectory of the shared proton wavepacket as it evolves
along the potential surface generated by the nuclear frameworks and electronic
structure. We then extract the characteristic vibrational frequencies for the
shared proton motion to spectroscopic accuracy and determine all energy
eigenvalues of the system Hamiltonian to > 99.9% fidelity. Our approach offers
a new paradigm for studying the quantum chemical dynamics and vibrational
spectra of molecules, and when combined with quantum algorithms for electronic
structure, opens the possibility to describe the complete behavior of molecules
using exclusively quantum computation techniques.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure
Error mitigation, optimization, and extrapolation on a trapped ion testbed
Current noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) trapped-ion devices are
subject to errors around 1% per gate for two-qubit gates. These errors
significantly impact the accuracy of calculations if left unchecked. A form of
error mitigation called Richardson extrapolation can reduce these errors
without incurring a qubit overhead. We demonstrate and optimize this method on
the Quantum Scientific Computing Open User Testbed (QSCOUT) trapped-ion device
to solve an electronic structure problem. We explore different methods for
integrating this error mitigation technique into the Variational Quantum
Eigensolver (VQE) optimization algorithm for calculating the ground state of
the HeH+ molecule at 0.8 Angstrom. We test two methods of scaling noise for
extrapolation: time-stretching the two-qubit gates and inserting two-qubit gate
identity operations into the ansatz circuit. We find the former fails to scale
the noise on our particular hardware. Scaling our noise with global gate
identity insertions and extrapolating only after a variational optimization
routine, we achieve an absolute relative error of 0.363% +- 1.06 compared to
the true ground state energy of HeH+. This corresponds to an absolute error of
0.01 +- 0.02 Hartree; outside chemical accuracy, but greatly improved over our
non error mitigated estimate. We ultimately find that the efficacy of this
error mitigation technique depends on choosing the right implementation for a
given device architecture and sampling budget.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figure
Human-in-the-Loop Schema Induction
Schema induction builds a graph representation explaining how events unfold
in a scenario. Existing approaches have been based on information retrieval
(IR) and information extraction(IE), often with limited human curation. We
demonstrate a human-in-the-loop schema induction system powered by GPT-3. We
first describe the different modules of our system, including prompting to
generate schematic elements, manual edit of those elements, and conversion of
those into a schema graph. By qualitatively comparing our system to previous
ones, we show that our system not only transfers to new domains more easily
than previous approaches, but also reduces efforts of human curation thanks to
our interactive interface.Comment: 10 pages, ACL2023 demo trac
Reduced level of arousal and increased mortality in adult acute medical admissions: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Abstract Background Reduced level of arousal is commonly observed in medical admissions and may predict in-hospital mortality. Delirium and reduced level of arousal are closely related. We systematically reviewed and conducted a meta-analysis of studies in adult acute medical patients of the relationship between reduced level of arousal on admission and in-hospital mortality. Methods We conducted a systematic review (PROSPERO: CRD42016022048), searching MEDLINE and EMBASE. We included studies of adult patients admitted with acute medical illness with level of arousal assessed on admission and mortality rates reported. We performed meta-analysis using a random effects model. Results From 23,941 studies we included 21 with 14 included in the meta-analysis. Mean age range was 33.4 - 83.8 years. Studies considered unselected general medical admissions (8 studies, n=13,039) or specific medical conditions (13 studies, n=38,882). Methods of evaluating level of arousal varied. The prevalence of reduced level of arousal was 3.1%-76.9% (median 13.5%). Mortality rates were 1.7%-58% (median 15.9%). Reduced level of arousal was associated with higher in-hospital mortality (pooled OR 5.71; 95% CI 4.21-7.74; low quality evidence: high risk of bias, clinical heterogeneity and possible publication bias). Conclusions Reduced level of arousal on hospital admission may be a strong predictor of in-hospital mortality. Most evidence was of low quality. Reduced level of arousal is highly specific to delirium, better formal detection of hypoactive delirium and implementation of care pathways may improve outcomes. Future studies to assess the impact of interventions on in-hospital mortality should use validated assessments of both level of arousal and delirium
MAGE-A cancer/testis antigens inhibit MDM2 ubiquitylation function and promote increased levels of MDM4
Melanoma antigen A (MAGE-A) proteins comprise a structurally and biochemically similar sub-family of Cancer/Testis antigens that are expressed in many cancer types and are thought to contribute actively to malignancy. MAGE-A proteins are established regulators of certain cancer-associated transcription factors, including p53, and are activators of several RING finger-dependent ubiquitin E3 ligases. Here, we show that MAGE-A2 associates with MDM2, a ubiquitin E3 ligase that mediates ubiquitylation of more than 20 substrates including mainly p53, MDM2 itself, and MDM4, a potent p53 inhibitor and MDM2 partner that is structurally related to MDM2. We find that MAGE-A2 interacts with MDM2 via the N-terminal p53-binding pocket and the RING finger domain of MDM2 that is required for homo/hetero-dimerization and for E2 ligase interaction. Consistent with these data, we show that MAGE-A2 is a potent inhibitor of the E3 ubiquitin ligase activity of MDM2, yet it does not have any significant effect on p53 turnover mediated by MDM2. Strikingly, however, increased MAGE-A2 expression leads to reduced ubiquitylation and increased levels of MDM4. Similarly, silencing of endogenous MAGE-A expression diminishes MDM4 levels in a manner that can be rescued by the proteasomal inhibitor, bortezomid, and permits increased MDM2/MDM4 association. These data suggest that MAGE-A proteins can: (i) uncouple the ubiquitin ligase and degradation functions of MDM2; (ii) act as potent inhibitors of E3 ligase function; and (iii) regulate the turnover of MDM4. We also find an association between the presence of MAGE-A and increased MDM4 levels in primary breast cancer, suggesting that MAGE-A-dependent control of MDM4 levels has relevance to cancer clinically
Sample-efficient verification of continuously-parameterized quantum gates for small quantum processors
Most near-term quantum information processing devices will not be capable of implementing quantum error correction and the associated logical quantum gate set. Instead, quantum circuits will be implemented directly using the physical native gate set of the device. These native gates often have a parameterization (e.g., rotation angles) which provide the ability to perform a continuous range of operations. Verification of the correct operation of these gates across the allowable range of parameters is important for gaining confidence in the reliability of these devices. In this work, we demonstrate a procedure for sample-efficient verification of continuously-parameterized quantum gates for small quantum processors of up to approximately 10 qubits. This procedure involves generating random sequences of randomly-parameterized layers of gates chosen from the native gate set of the device, and then stochastically compiling an approximate inverse to this sequence such that executing the full sequence on the device should leave the system near its initial state. We show that fidelity estimates made via this technique have a lower variance than fidelity estimates made via cross-entropy benchmarking. This provides an experimentally-relevant advantage in sample efficiency when estimating the fidelity loss to some desired precision. We describe the experimental realization of this technique using continuously-parameterized quantum gate sets on a trapped-ion quantum processor from Sandia QSCOUT and a superconducting quantum processor from IBM Q, and we demonstrate the sample efficiency advantage of this technique both numerically and experimentally
- …