Coherent control of quantum systems as a resource theory

Control at the interface between the classical and the quantum world is fundamental in quantum physics. In particular, how classical control is enhanced by coherence effects is an important question both from a theoretical as well as from a technological point of view. In this work, we establish a resource theory describing this setting and explore relations to the theory of coherence, entanglement and information processing. Specifically, for the coherent control of quantum systems the relevant resources of entanglement and coherence are found to be equivalent and closely related to a measure of discord. The results are then applied to the DQC1 protocol and the precision of the final measurement is expressed in terms of the available resources.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, final version. Discussions were improved and some points were clarified. The title was slightly changed to agree with the published versio

An illustrated approach to Soft Textual Cartography

Soft textual cartography is an approach aimed at extracting clusters of regions taking into account both their spatial relationships and a their textual description within a corpus. The strategy consists in constructing a complex weighted network, reflecting the geographical layout, and whose nodes are further characterized by their thematic dissimilarity, extracted form topic modelling. A soft k-means procedure, taking into account both aspects through expectation maximisation on Gaussian mixture models and label propagation, converges towards a soft membership, to be further compared with expert knowledge on regions. Application on the Wikipedia pages of Swiss municipalities demonstrate the potential of the approach, revealing textual autocorrelation and associations with official classifications. The synergy of the spatial and textual aspects appears promising in topic interpretation and geographical information retrieval, and able to incorporate expert knowledge through the choice of the initial membership

Soft Textual Cartography Based on Topic Modeling and Clustering of Irregular, Multivariate Marked Networks

Soft textual cartography is an original approach aimed to study communities on spatially embedded and textually defined complex weighted networks. The present approach relies on the integration of topic modeling and soft clustering procedures. These two aspects can be combined using topic distances, and weighted unoriented networks representing the spatial configuration; their synergy is promising in topic interpretation and geographical information retrieval. This paper proposes an unified formalism, underlining the compatibility of the two aspects, as illustrated on the textual descriptions of the municipalities of the canton of Vaud, Switzerland. It also points to possible extensions and applications of the method, potentially useful for dealing with the ever growing amount of georeferenced textual content

Isolated aortic valve replacement with the Björk-Shiley tilting disc prosthesis and the porcine bioprosthesis

Between 1977 and 1978, 239 patients underwent aortic valve replacement with either a bioprosthesis (100, BIO) or a Björk-Shiley tilling disc prosthesis (139, BS). Early mortality was 2%, late mortality 4%. There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups. Anticoagulation was maintained indefinitively in patients with a BS, after implantation of a BIO only for three months except in the presence of atrial fibrillation or a history ofeinboli. Thromboembolic complications and anticoagulant hemorrhages were almost twice as frequent in patients with BS than with BIO (5.3 versus 2.8 episodes/100 patient years). This difference however is statistically not significant. There were an equal number (two) of reoperations because of paravalvular leaks due to endocarditis or torn sutures in the two groups. A regurgitant murmur, though hemodynamically not significant, occurred more frequently in patients with BIO than with BS (10% versus 2%, P < 0.05). Its cause and importance cannot yet be determined. Postoperative results judged by the NYHA classification and reduction of heart size were similar in both groups. Of all patients, 13% with preoperative valvular incompetence and 15% with stenosis showed little or no reduction of the cardiothoracic ratio on X-ray indicating a worse long-term prognosis. The porcine BIO has become our preferred valvular substitute because of its low thromboembolic complication rate. The BS is mainly reserved for patients already on anticoagulants for other reaso

Minor and inconsistent differences in Big Five personality traits between vegetarians and vegans

Most research examining individuals who follow different diets has combined vegetarians and vegans into a single group. To investigate whether this consolidation is justified, we analyzed possible differences between vegetarians and vegans for the Big Five personality traits in two studies. In our pre-study, we used data from a German convenience sample of 400 vegetarians and 749 vegans and found that vegans reported slightly higher scores in Openness compared to vegetarians (d = 0.22). In the preregistered main study, we used data provided by 1203 vegetarians and 128 vegans from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study; we found that vegetarians reported slightly higher scores in Neuroticism compared to vegans (d = 0.18) but did not differ in Openness. We found no differences in Conscientiousness, Extraversion, or Agreeableness in either study. Controlling for the socio-demographic variables of age, gender, and socio-economic status did not alter the pattern of results. Overall, these results suggest that there are no or only small differences in Openness or Neuroticism between vegetarians and vegans. Further studies utilizing very large, representative samples are needed to better understand the relationship between personality and diet groups

In your eyes only? Discrepancies and agreement between self- and other-reports of personality from age 14 to 29

Do others perceive the personality changes that take place between the ages of 14 and 29 in a similar fashion as the aging person him- or herself? This cross-sectional study analyzed age trajectories in self- versus other-reported Big Five personality traits and in self-other agreement in a sample of more than 10,000 individuals from the myPersonality Project. Results for self-reported personality showed maturation effects (increases in extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience, and emotional stability), and this pattern was generally also reflected in other-reports, albeit with discrepancies regarding timing and magnitude. Age differences found for extraversion were similar between the self- and other-reports, but the increase found in self-reported conscientiousness was delayed in other-reports, and the curvilinear increase found in self-reported openness was slightly steeper in other-reports. Only emotional stability showed a distinct mismatch with an increase in self-reports, but no significant age effect in other-reports. Both the self- and other-reports of agreeableness showed no significant age trends. The trait correlations between the self- and other-reports increased with age for emotional stability, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness; by contrast, agreement regarding extraversion remained stable. The profile correlations confirmed increases in self-other agreement with age. We suggest that these gains in agreement are a further manifestation of maturation. Taken together, our analyses generally show commonalities but also some divergences in age-associated mean level changes between self- and other-reports of the Big Five, as well as an age trend towards increasing self-other agreement