Tools for Arabic Natural Language Processing: a case study in qalqalah prosody

In this paper, we focus on the prosodic effect of qalqalah or "vibration" applied to a subset of Arabic consonants under certain constraints during correct Qur'anic recitation or taǧwīd, using our Boundary-Annotated Qur’an dataset of 77430 words (Brierley et al 2012; Sawalha et al 2014). These qalqalah events are rule-governed and are signified orthographically in the Arabic script. Hence they can be given abstract definition in the form of regular expressions and thus located and collected automatically. High frequency qalqalah content words are also found to be statistically significant discriminators or keywords when comparing Meccan and Medinan chapters in the Qur'an using a state-of-the-art Visual Analytics toolkit: Semantic Pathways. Thus we hypothesise that qalqalah prosody is one way of highlighting salient items in the text. Finally, we implement Arabic transcription technology (Brierley et al under review; Sawalha et al forthcoming) to create a qalqalah pronunciation guide where each word is transcribed phonetically in IPA and mapped to its chapter-verse ID. This is funded research under the EPSRC "Working Together" theme

Automatically generated, phonemic Arabic-IPA pronunciation tiers for the boundary annotated Qur'an dataset for machine learning (version 2.0)

In this paper, we augment the Boundary Annotated Qur?an dataset published at LREC 2012 (Brierley et al 2012; Sawalha et al 2012a) with automatically generated phonemic transcriptions of Arabic words. We have developed and evaluated a comprehensive grapheme-phoneme mapping from Standard Arabic \ensuremath> IPA (Brierley et al under review), and implemented the mapping in Arabic transcription technology which achieves 100% accuracy as measured against two gold standards: one for Qur?anic or Classical Arabic, and one for Modern Standard Arabic (Sawalha et al [1]). Our mapping algorithm has also been used to generate a pronunciation guide for a subset of Qur?anic words with heightened prosody (Brierley et al 2014). This is funded research under the EPSRC " Working Together" theme

Limited professional guidance and literature are available to guide the safe use of neuromuscular block in infants

Aim Neuromuscular blocking agents (NMBAs) are used in a range of critical illnesses in neonates and infants, despite a lack of guidelines and professional standards. This study reviewed the current evidence base and ascertained UK practice regarding the continuous use of these agents in this age range. Methods We reviewed the literature and carried out a telephone questionnaire of all tertiary units in England and specialist children's hospital neonatal units in the UK. Results No best practice guidelines or general consensus statements were found, and the only randomised trial to feature an NMBA protocol expressed concerns about its use in such young babies. Of the 56 units contacted, 54 (96.4%) shared information. Only three of the 56 (5.4%) used intermittent boluses of NMBAs, 91.1% used NMBA infusions, 11 (19.6%) routinely used regular neuromuscular blocker pause to assess depth, and only one (1.8%) used peripheral nerve stimulation monitoring. All the units carried out clinical assessments, but only one (1.8%) had a written protocol. Conclusion There is a paucity of literature and professional standards to guide the safe use of NMBAs in infants. Of the 54 units who participated in the survey, only one had a protocol for using NMBAs in babies

Extreme UK rainfall and natural climate variability: combining models and data

The return periods for extreme events are estimated from observational datasets. Often those datasets are relatively short in comparison to timescales of natural climate variability; potentially introducing a systematic bias into the extreme estimates. Here we combine observations with global climate models to show that this bias is statistically insignificant for the case of extreme UK-wide rainfall estimates. This is unlikely to hold for other locations and spatial scales, yet the methodology we have developed provides a simple approach to quantify the bias for other cases

Global ensemble of temperatures over 1850-2018: quantification of uncertainties in observations, coverage, and spatial modeling (GETQUOCS)

Instrumental global temperature records are derived from the network of in situ measurements of land and sea surface temperatures. This observational evidence is seen as being fundamental to climate science. Therefore, the accuracy of these measurements is of prime importance for the analysis of temperature variability. There are spatial gaps in the distribution of instrumental temperature measurements across the globe. This lack of spatial coverage introduces coverage error. An approximate Bayesian computation based multi-resolution lattice kriging is developed and used to quantify the coverage errors through the variance of the spatial process at multiple spatial scales. It critically accounts for the uncertainties in the parameters of this advanced spatial statistics model itself, thereby providing, for the first time, a full description of both the spatial coverage uncertainties along with the uncertainties in the modeling of these spatial gaps. These coverage errors are combined with the existing estimates of uncertainties due to observational issues at each station location. It results in an ensemble of 100 000 monthly temperatures fields over the entire globe that samples the combination of coverage, parametric and observational uncertainties from 1850 to 2018 over a 5∘×5∘ grid

Implementing and characterizing precise multi-qubit measurements

There are two general requirements to harness the computational power of quantum mechanics: the ability to manipulate the evolution of an isolated system and the ability to faithfully extract information from it. Quantum error correction and simulation often make a more exacting demand: the ability to perform non-destructive measurements of specific correlations within that system. We realize such measurements by employing a protocol adapted from [S. Nigg and S. M. Girvin, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 243604 (2013)], enabling real-time selection of arbitrary register-wide Pauli operators. Our implementation consists of a simple circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) module of four highly-coherent 3D transmon qubits, collectively coupled to a high-Q superconducting microwave cavity. As a demonstration, we enact all seven nontrivial subset-parity measurements on our three-qubit register. For each we fully characterize the realized measurement by analyzing the detector (observable operators) via quantum detector tomography and by analyzing the quantum back-action via conditioned process tomography. No single quantity completely encapsulates the performance of a measurement, and standard figures of merit have not yet emerged. Accordingly, we consider several new fidelity measures for both the detector and the complete measurement process. We measure all of these quantities and report high fidelities, indicating that we are measuring the desired quantities precisely and that the measurements are highly non-demolition. We further show that both results are improved significantly by an additional error-heralding measurement. The analyses presented here form a useful basis for the future characterization and validation of quantum measurements, anticipating the demands of emerging quantum technologies.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, plus supplemen

Affine Constellations Without Mutually Unbiased Counterparts

It has been conjectured that a complete set of mutually unbiased bases in a space of dimension d exists if and only if there is an affine plane of order d. We introduce affine constellations and compare their existence properties with those of mutually unbiased constellations, mostly in dimension six. The observed discrepancies make a deeper relation between the two existence problems unlikely.Comment: 8 page

Pastoralism may have delayed the end of the green Sahara

The climate deterioration after the most recent African humid period (AHP) is a notable past example of desertification. Evidence points to a human population expansion in northern Africa prior to this, associated with the introduction of pastoralism. Here we consider the role, if any, of this population on the subsequent ecological collapse. Using a climate-vegetation model, we estimate the natural length of the most recent AHP. The model indicates that the system was most susceptible to collapse between 7 and 6 ka; at least 500 years before the observed collapse. This suggests that the inclusion of increasing elements of pastoralism was an effective adaptation to the regional environmental changes. Pastoralism also appears to have slowed the deterioration caused by orbitally-driven climate change. This supports the view that modern pastoralism is not only sustainable, but beneficial for the management of the world's dryland environments

How standard is standard care? Exploring control group outcomes in behaviour change interventions for young people with type 1 diabetes

Objective: Poor descriptions of standard care may compromise interpretation of results in randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of health interventions. We investigated quality of standard care in RCTs of behaviour change interventions for young people with type 1 diabetes and consider implications for evaluating trial outcomes. Design: We conducted systematic searches for articles published between 1999 and 2012. We extracted standard care descriptions and contacted trial authors to complete a checklist of standard care activities. The relationship between standard care quality and outcomes was examined via subgroup meta-analyses and meta-regression. Main outcome measures: Standard care descriptions, standard care quality, and relationships between standard care quality with medical and psychological outcomes. Results: We identified 20 RCTs described across 26 articles. Published descriptions of standard care were limited to service-level features. Author responses indicated standard care provision extended beyond published accounts. Subgroup analyses suggested control groups receiving higher standard care quality showed larger improvements in both medical and psychological outcomes, although standard care quality did not predict outcomes significantly. Conclusion: The quality of care delivered to control group participants can influence outcomes of RCTs. Inadequate reporting exacerbates this issue by masking variations between trials. We argue for increased clarity in reporting standard care in future trials