Obesity in pregnancy: maternal and perinatal outcome

Background: The objective of this study was to find out the spectrum of complications during pregnancy due to maternal obesity with incidence and to assess the neonatal outcome.Methods: Retrospective study of antenatal patients was done in Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (SVPIMSR), Ahmedabad from June 2019 to December 2019. Antenatal patients were categorized into 3 classes based on body mass index (BMI): class I=30-34.9 kg/m2, class II=35-39.9 kg/m2, and class III ≥40 kg/m2. The maternal and perinatal outcome of the patients was evaluated in relation to BMI.Results: A total of 61 women were included in the study, with 44 belonging to class I, 15 women to class II and 2 women to class III. In class I, 27% women had pre-eclampsia and its incidence increased with class II (69.2%) and class III (100%). The incidence of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) increases with increase in BMI (class I=5.4%, class II=7.6% and class III=50%). Incidence of fetal growth restriction (FGR) (7.6% and 2.7%) and post term pregnancy (38% and 16.2%) more in class II compared to class I respectively. Lower segment caesarean section (LSCS) rates are seen to be highest in class III (100%) as compared to class II (53%) and class I (50%). Class III (50%) women were more likely to have macrosomic babies than class II (40%) and class I (34.1%).Conclusions: Interventions directed towards weight loss and prevention of excessive weight gain must begin in the preconceptional period. Obese mothers must be counselled regarding risk and complications of obesity and importance of weight loss

Excitation of Forbidden Electronic Transitions in Atoms by Hermite–Gaussian Modes

Photoexcitation of trapped ions by Hermite–Gaussian (HG) modes from guided beam structures is proposed and investigated theoretically. In particular, simple analytical expressions for the matrix elements of induced atomic transitions are derived that depend both on the parameters of HG beams and on the geometry of an experiment. By using these general expressions, the (Formula presented.) electric octupole (E3) transition is investigated in an Yb+ ion, localized in the low–intensity center of the HG10 and HG01 beams. It is shown how the corresponding Rabi frequency can be enhanced by properly choosing the polarization of incident light and the orientation of an external magnetic field, which defines the quantization axis of a target ion. The calculations, performed for experimentally feasible beam parameters, indicate that the achieved Rabi frequencies can be comparable or even higher than those observed for the conventional Laguerre–Gaussian (LG) modes. Since HG-like modes can be relatively straightforwardly generated with high purity and stability from integrated photonics, these results suggest that they may form a novel tool for investigating highly-forbidden atomic transitions

Integrated optical multi-ion quantum logic

Practical and useful quantum information processing (QIP) requires significant improvements with respect to current systems, both in error rates of basic operations and in scale. Individual trapped-ion qubits' fundamental qualities are promising for long-term systems, but the optics involved in their precise control are a barrier to scaling. Planar-fabricated optics integrated within ion trap devices can make such systems simultaneously more robust and parallelizable, as suggested by previous work with single ions. Here we use scalable optics co-fabricated with a surface-electrode ion trap to achieve high-fidelity multi-ion quantum logic gates, often the limiting elements in building up the precise, large-scale entanglement essential to quantum computation. Light is efficiently delivered to a trap chip in a cryogenic environment via direct fibre coupling on multiple channels, eliminating the need for beam alignment into vacuum systems and cryostats and lending robustness to vibrations and beam pointing drifts. This allows us to perform ground-state laser cooling of ion motion, and to implement gates generating two-ion entangled states with fidelities $>99.3(2)\%$. This work demonstrates hardware that reduces noise and drifts in sensitive quantum logic, and simultaneously offers a route to practical parallelization for high-fidelity quantum processors. Similar devices may also find applications in neutral atom and ion-based quantum-sensing and timekeeping

Scientific Workflow Applications on Amazon EC2

The proliferation of commercial cloud computing providers has generated significant interest in the scientific computing community. Much recent research has attempted to determine the benefits and drawbacks of cloud computing for scientific applications. Although clouds have many attractive features, such as virtualization, on-demand provisioning, and "pay as you go" usage-based pricing, it is not clear whether they are able to deliver the performance required for scientific applications at a reasonable price. In this paper we examine the performance and cost of clouds from the perspective of scientific workflow applications. We use three characteristic workflows to compare the performance of a commercial cloud with that of a typical HPC system, and we analyze the various costs associated with running those workflows in the cloud. We find that the performance of clouds is not unreasonable given the hardware resources provided, and that performance comparable to HPC systems can be achieved given similar resources. We also find that the cost of running workflows on a commercial cloud can be reduced by storing data in the cloud rather than transferring it from outside

High-Q CMOS-integrated photonic crystal microcavity devices

Integrated optical resonators are necessary or beneficial in realizations of various functions in scaled photonic platforms, including filtering, modulation, and detection in classical communication systems, optical sensing, as well as addressing and control of solid state emitters for quantum technologies. Although photonic crystal (PhC) microresonators can be advantageous to the more commonly used microring devices due to the former's low mode volumes, fabrication of PhC cavities has typically relied on electron-beam lithography, which precludes integration with large-scale and reproducible CMOS fabrication. Here, we demonstrate wavelength-scale polycrystalline silicon (pSi) PhC microresonators with Qs up to 60,000 fabricated within a bulk CMOS process. Quasi-1D resonators in lateral p-i-n structures allow for resonant defect-state photodetection in all-silicon devices, exhibiting voltage-dependent quantum efficiencies in the range of a few 10 s of %, few-GHz bandwidths, and low dark currents, in devices with loaded Qs in the range of 4,300–9,300; one device, for example, exhibited a loaded Q of 4,300, 25% quantum efficiency (corresponding to a responsivity of 0.31 A/W), 3 GHz bandwidth, and 30 nA dark current at a reverse bias of 30 V. This work demonstrates the possibility for practical integration of PhC microresonators with active electro-optic capability into large-scale silicon photonic systems.United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Photonically Optimized Embedded MicroprocessorsUnited States. Dept. of Energy (Science Graduate Fellowship