9,173 research outputs found
"It isn't just consultants that need a BSc": student experiences of an Intercalated BSc
More medical schools are moving towards a compulsory intercalated BSc. These courses have not traditionally been aimed at those students interested in general practice and have tended to have limited clinical relevance. This paper explores the perceptions of students who undertook a BSc in primary health care using qualitative methodology comprising semi-structured interviews with students just before completion of their course. Interviews were undertaken with 24 of the 26 students who started the course over a 4-year period. All the students have finished the course and have graduated with good honours degrees. Students refine existing skills and develop new, relevant skills for medicine. The students discussed the prestige (or lack) of a BSc in this field and how the course has impacted on their career decisions. A Primary Health Care BSc such as this appears to give students an in depth and to some, a positive view of general practice and primary care. The course allowed students to develop a more critical approach to medicine and enabled them to develop skills in addition to those acquired from their undergraduate medicine course. They perceived that these skills will serve them throughout their career in whatever branch of medicine they choose
The informal housing development process in Nigeria: the case of Kaduna
Housing developments in informal areas usually occur in the emerging parts of a Nigerian city, on the periphery. Land in customary tenure/ownership is being sold on the ‘free’ market and turned into ‘informal’ layouts without the official recognition of or approval by government. This report is based on research carried out in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna over a number of years.
Kaduna, together with Kano, the two wealthiest and largest cities in the North West Zone of Nigeria, despite the current economic and political problems , are still expanding rapidly though natural growth combined with in-migration. The evidence is that informal housing development on the urban periphery in both cities is increasing at a stupendous rate and this is where most new households in these cities are being housed.
Informal housing currently meets around 90% of Nigeria's housing demand. The report argues in favour of new forms of, and attitudes to urban governance that work with the and manage the informal housing supply system rather than against it
Schemes for Parallel Quantum Computation Without Local Control of Qubits
Typical quantum computing schemes require transformations (gates) to be
targeted at specific elements (qubits). In many physical systems, direct
targeting is difficult to achieve; an alternative is to encode local gates into
globally applied transformations. Here we demonstrate the minimum physical
requirements for such an approach: a one-dimensional array composed of two
alternating 'types' of two-state system. Each system need be sensitive only to
the net state of its nearest neighbors, i.e. the number in state 1 minus the
number in state 2. Additionally, we show that all such arrays can perform quite
general parallel operations. A broad range of physical systems and interactions
are suitable: we highlight two potential implementations.Comment: 12 pages + 3 figures. Several small corrections mad
Universal simulation of Hamiltonian dynamics for qudits
What interactions are sufficient to simulate arbitrary quantum dynamics in a
composite quantum system? Dodd et al. (quant-ph/0106064) provided a partial
solution to this problem in the form of an efficient algorithm to simulate any
desired two-body Hamiltonian evolution using any fixed two-body entangling
N-qubit Hamiltonian, and local unitaries. We extend this result to the case
where the component systems have D dimensions. As a consequence we explain how
universal quantum computation can be performed with any fixed two-body
entangling N-qudit Hamiltonian, and local unitaries.Comment: 13 pages, an error in the "Pauli-Euclid-Gottesman Lemma" fixed, main
results unchange
Quantum Process Tomography of the Quantum Fourier Transform
The results of quantum process tomography on a three-qubit nuclear magnetic
resonance quantum information processor are presented, and shown to be
consistent with a detailed model of the system-plus-apparatus used for the
experiments. The quantum operation studied was the quantum Fourier transform,
which is important in several quantum algorithms and poses a rigorous test for
the precision of our recently-developed strongly modulating control fields. The
results were analyzed in an attempt to decompose the implementation errors into
coherent (overall systematic), incoherent (microscopically deterministic), and
decoherent (microscopically random) components. This analysis yielded a
superoperator consisting of a unitary part that was strongly correlated with
the theoretically expected unitary superoperator of the quantum Fourier
transform, an overall attenuation consistent with decoherence, and a residual
portion that was not completely positive - although complete positivity is
required for any quantum operation. By comparison with the results of computer
simulations, the lack of complete positivity was shown to be largely a
consequence of the incoherent errors during the quantum process tomography
procedure. These simulations further showed that coherent, incoherent, and
decoherent errors can often be identified by their distinctive effects on the
spectrum of the overall superoperator. The gate fidelity of the experimentally
determined superoperator was 0.64, while the correlation coefficient between
experimentally determined superoperator and the simulated superoperator was
0.79; most of the discrepancies with the simulations could be explained by the
cummulative effect of small errors in the single qubit gates.Comment: 26 pages, 17 figures, four tables; in press, Journal of Chemical
Physic
Implementation of a Deutsch-like quantum algorithm utilizing entanglement at the two-qubit level, on an NMR quantum information processor
We describe the experimental implementation of a recently proposed quantum
algorithm involving quantum entanglement at the level of two qubits using NMR.
The algorithm solves a generalisation of the Deutsch problem and distinguishes
between even and odd functions using fewer function calls than is possible
classically. The manipulation of entangled states of the two qubits is
essential here, unlike the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm and the Grover's search
algorithm for two bits.Comment: 4 pages, two eps figure
Investigating geographical variation in the use of mental health services by area of England: a cross-sectional ecological study
BACKGROUND:
There is evidence of geographical variation in the use of mental health services in the UK and in international settings. It is important to understand whether this variation reflects differences in the prevalence of mental disorders, or if there is evidence of variation related to other factors, such as population socioeconomic status and access to primary care services.
METHODS:
This is a cross-sectional ecological study using Public Health England data. The unit of analysis was the population served by clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), National Health Service (NHS) catchment areas. The analysis explored associations between area characteristics and the number of people in contact with mental health services using regression modelling. Explanatory variables included age, gender, prevalence of severe mental illness (SMI), prevalence of common mental disorder (CMD), index of multiple deprivation (IMD), unemployment, proportion of the population who are Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME), population density, access to and recovery in primary care psychological therapies. Unadjusted results are reported, as well as estimates adjusted for age, prevalence of CMD and prevalence of SMI.
RESULTS:
The populations of 194 CCGs were included, clustered within 62 trusts (NHS providers of mental health services). The number of people in contact with mental health services showed wide variation by area (range from 1131 to 5205 per 100,000 population). Unemployment (adjusted IRR 1.11; 95% CI 1.05 to 1.17; p < 0.001) and deprivation (adjusted IRR 1.02 95% CI 1.01 to 1.04; p < 0.001) were associated with more people being in contact with mental health services. Areas with a higher proportion of the population who are BAME (IRR 0.95 95% CI 0.92 to 0.99 p = 0.007) had lower service use per 100,000 population. There was no evidence for association with access to primary care psychological therapies.
CONCLUSIONS:
There is substantial variation in the use of mental health services by area of England. Social factors including deprivation, unemployment and population ethnicity continued to be associated with the outcome after controlling for the prevalence of mental illness. This suggests that there are factors that influence the local population use of mental health services in addition to the prevalence of mental disorder
Specializing Interpreters using Offline Partial Deduction
We present the latest version of the Logen partial evaluation system for logic programs. In particular we present new binding-types, and show how they can be used to effectively specialise a wide variety of interpreters.We show how to achieve Jones-optimality in a systematic way for several interpreters. Finally, we present and specialise a non-trivial interpreter for a small functional programming language. Experimental results are also presented, highlighting that the Logen system can be a good basis for generating compilers for high-level languages
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