Flow-preserving ZX-calculus Rewrite Rules for Optimisation and Obfuscation

In the one-way model of measurement-based quantum computation (MBQC), computation proceeds via measurements on a resource state. So-called flow conditions ensure that the overall computation is deterministic in a suitable sense, with Pauli flow being the most general of these. Computations, represented as measurement patterns, may be rewritten to optimise resource use and for other purposes. Such rewrites need to preserve the existence of flow to ensure the new pattern can still be implemented deterministically. The majority of existing work in this area has focused on rewrites that reduce the number of qubits, yet it can be beneficial to increase the number of qubits for certain kinds of optimisation, as well as for obfuscation. In this work, we introduce several ZX-calculus rewrite rules that increase the number of qubits and preserve the existence of Pauli flow. These rules can be used to transform any measurement pattern into a pattern containing only (general or Pauli) measurements within the XY-plane. We also give the first flow-preserving rewrite rule that allows measurement angles to be changed arbitrarily, and use this to prove that the `neighbour unfusion' rule of Staudacher et al. preserves the existence of Pauli flow. This implies it may be possible to reduce the runtime of their two-qubit-gate optimisation procedure by removing the need to regularly run the costly gflow-finding algorithm.Comment: In Proceedings QPL 2023, arXiv:2308.15489. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2205.0200

Women Journalists in the Russian Revolutions and Civil Wars: Case Studies of Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams and Larisa Reisner, 1917–1926

PhDThis thesis examines the work and experience of women journalists in the Russian Revolutions and Civil Wars, 1917–1926. Adopting a comparative approach, it focuses on case studies of the Russian writer, journalist and liberal politician Ariadna Vladimirovna Tyrkova-Williams (1869–1962) and the young Bolshevik writer Larisa Mikhailovna Reisner (1895–1926) in order to examine and compare how women from opposing sides of the revolutions and civil wars used the press to shape the outcome of these conflicts. While women in Russia had contributed to the press in a range of roles, including as editors and publishers, since at least the eighteenth century and had long used journalism as a tool for social and political change, the revolutions and civil wars presented new opportunities for women to use journalism as a form of activism and, in some cases, to combine it with military and/or policy-making roles. At a time when the task of describing and participating in war, or indeed journalism in general, was predominantly viewed as a male pursuit in the West, the work of these women was particularly ground-breaking and unique in the context of journalism and women’s history. However, despite their seemingly emancipated position and the vital roles they played during this period, many Russian women working in the press (as well as in other historically male wartime roles) were nevertheless viewed by their contemporaries along traditional gender lines. By examining how and why women became, or continued to be, involved in journalism during the revolutions and civil wars, the opportunities and challenges they experienced, and how they were perceived by their contemporaries, this study provides a fresh perspective on the relationship between gender, activism and journalism during this period of conflict.This research was funded through an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Collaborative Doctoral Partnership between Queen Mary University of London and the British Library

Persistence of Innate Immune Pathways in Late Stage Human Bacterial and Fungal Keratitis: Results from a Comparative Transcriptome Analysis

Microbial keratitis (MK) is a major cause of blindness worldwide. Despite adequate antimicrobial treatment, tissue damage can ensue. We compared the human corneal transcriptional profile in late stage MK to normal corneal tissue to identify pathways involved in pathogenesis. Total RNA from MK tissue and normal cadaver corneas was used to determine transcriptome profiles with Illumina HumanHT-12 v4 beadchips. We performed differential expression and network analysis of genes in bacterial keratitis (BK) and fungal keratitis (FK) compared with control (C) samples. Results were validated by RTqPCR for 45 genes in an independent series of 183 MK patients. For the microarray transcriptome analysis, 27 samples were used: 12 controls, 7 BK culture positive for Streptococcus pneumoniae (n = 6), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (n = 1), and 8 FK, culture positive for Fusarium sp. (n = 5), Aspergillus sp. (n = 2), or Lasiodiplodia sp. (n = 1). There were 185 unique differentially expressed genes in BK, 50 in FK, and 339 common to both [i.e., genes with fold-change (FC) < −4 or ≥4 and false discovery rate (FDR) adjusted P < 0.05]. MMP9 had the highest FC in BK (91 FC, adj p = 3.64 E-12) and FK (FC 64, adj. p = 6.10 E-11), along with other MMPs (MMP1, MMP7, MMP10, MMP12), pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL1B, TNF), and PRRs (TLR2, TLR4). HIF1A and its induced genes were upregulated uniquely in BK. Immune/defense response and extracellular matrix terms were the most enriched Gene Ontology terms in both BK and FK. In the network analysis, chemokines were prominent for FK, and actin filament reorganization for BK. Microarray and RTqPCR results were highly correlated for the same samples tested with both assays, and with the larger RTqPCR series. In conclusion, we found a great deal of overlap in the gene expression profile of late stage BK and FK, however genes unique to fungal infection highlighted a corneal epithelial wound healing response and for bacterial infection the prominence of HIF1A-induced genes. These sets of genes may provide new targets for future research into therapeutic agents

Complete flow-preserving rewrite rules for MBQC patterns with Pauli measurements

In the one-way model of measurement-based quantum computation (MBQC), computation proceeds via measurements on some standard resource state. So-called flow conditions ensure that the overall computation is deterministic in a suitable sense, with Pauli flow being the most general of these. Existing work on rewriting MBQC patterns while preserving the existence of flow has focused on rewrites that reduce the number of qubits. In this work, we show that introducing new $Z$-measured qubits, connected to any subset of the existing qubits, preserves the existence of Pauli flow. Furthermore, we give a unique canonical form for stabilizer ZX-diagrams inspired by recent work of Hu & Khesin [arXiv:2109.10210]. We prove that any MBQC-like stabilizer ZX-diagram with Pauli flow can be rewritten into this canonical form using only rules which preserve the existence of Pauli flow and that each of these rules can be reversed while also preserving the existence of Pauli flow. Hence we have complete graphical rewriting for MBQC-like stabilizer ZX-diagrams with Pauli flow.Comment: Removed use of \cite command in abstract metadata, fixed typos. To appear in the proceedings of Quantum Physics and Logic, 202

Flow-preserving ZX-calculus rewrite rules for optimisation and obfuscation

In the one-way model of measurement-based quantum computation (MBQC), computation proceeds via measurements on a resource state. So-called flow conditions ensure that the overall computation is deterministic in a suitable sense, with Pauli flow being the most general of these. Computations, represented as measurement patterns, may be rewritten to optimise resource use and for other purposes. Such rewrites need to preserve the existence of flow to ensure the new pattern can still be implemented deterministically. The majority of existing work in this area has focused on rewrites that reduce the number of qubits, yet it can be beneficial to increase the number of qubits for certain kinds of optimisation, as well as for obfuscation. In this work, we introduce several ZX-calculus rewrite rules that increase the number of qubits and preserve the existence of Pauli flow. These rules can be used to transform any measurement pattern into a pattern containing only (general or Pauli) measurements within the XY-plane. We also give the first flow-preserving rewrite rule that allows measurement angles to be changed arbitrarily, and use this to prove that the `neighbour unfusion' rule of Staudacher et al. preserves the existence of Pauli flow. This implies it may be possible to reduce the runtime of their two-qubit-gate optimisation procedure by removing the need to regularly run the costly gflow-finding algorithm.Comment: In Proceedings QPL 2023, arXiv:2308.15489. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2205.0200