Hard limits on the postselectability of optical graph states

Coherent control of large entangled graph states enables a wide variety of quantum information processing tasks, including error-corrected quantum computation. The linear optical approach offers excellent control and coherence, but today most photon sources and entangling gates---required for the construction of large graph states---are probabilistic and rely on postselection. In this work, we provide proofs and heuristics to aid experimental design using postselection. We derive a fundamental limitation on the generation of photonic qubit states using postselected entangling gates: experiments which contain a cycle of postselected gates cannot be postselected. Further, we analyse experiments that use photons from postselected photon pair sources, and lower bound the number of classes of graph state entanglement that are accessible in the non-degenerate case---graph state entanglement classes that contain a tree are are always accessible. Numerical investigation up to 9-qubits shows that the proportion of graph states that are accessible using postselection diminishes rapidly. We provide tables showing which classes are accessible for a variety of up to nine qubit resource states and sources. We also use our methods to evaluate near-term multi-photon experiments, and provide our algorithms for doing so.Comment: Our manuscript comprises 4843 words, 6 figures, 1 table, 47 references, and a supplementary material of 1741 words, 2 figures, 1 table, and a Mathematica code listin

Time-Series Satellite Imagery Demonstrates the Progressive Failure of a City Master Plan to Control Urbanization in Abuja, Nigeria

Urbanization is a global phenomenon, but its negative effects are most pronounced in developing countries. While much urbanization in the global South is unplanned, there have been occasional attempts at strategic, large-scale urban planning. One example is Abuja, Nigeria, a new city with origins in a 1970s Master Plan. Here, we use multi-temporal remote sensing to investigate four decades of urbanization in Abuja, showing the extent to which urban development has matched original intentions. Seven Landsat images from 1975 to 2014 were selected to correspond with Master Plan milestones and turning points in Nigeria’s socio-political development. Land cover classification and change detection results show built-up land increasing rapidly, from 1,167 ha in 1975 to 18,623 ha in 2014, mostly converted from grassland, often via a pioneer bare soil class. Comparing image analysis against the Master Plan shows that, in the early years, Abuja’s development matched broad planning intentions fairly closely. Later, though, unplanned development proliferated, and the city’s resemblance to the Master Plan diminished progressively. Level of adherence to the Master Plan varied widely according to the system of government. Notably, after long-term military rule was replaced by a democratic government around the turn of the millennium, unplanned development increased sharply

Generating Indicators of Disruptive Innovation using Big Data: Can big data approaches exploit the wealth of information on the internet help in prediction of disruption relating to innovation of disruption relating to innovation

Technological evolution and its potential impacts are of significant interest to govern-10 ments, corporate organizations and for academic enquiry; but assessments of technology progres-11 sion are often highly subjective. This paper prototypes potential objective measures to assess tech-12 nology progression using internet-based data. These measures may help reduce the subjective na-13 ture of such assessments and, in conjunction with other techniques, reduce the uncertainty of tech-14 nology progression assessment. The paper examines one part of the technology ecosystem, namely, 15 academic research and publications. It uses analytics performed against a large body of academic 16 paper abstracts and metadata published over 20 years to propose and demonstrate candidate indi-17 cators of technology progression. Measures prototyped are: (i) overall occurrence of technologies 18 used over time in research, (ii) the fields in which this use was made; (iii) the geographic spread of 19 specific technologies within research and (iv) the clustering of technology research over time. An 20 outcome of the analysis is an ability to assess the measures of technology progression against a set 21 of inputs and a set of commentaries and forecasts made publicly in the subject area over the last 20 22 years. The potential automated indicators of research are discussed together with other indicators 23 which might help working groups in assessing technology progression using more quantitative 24 methods. 2

Data driven estimation of building interior plans

This work investigates constructing plans of building interiors using learned building measurements. In particular, we address the problem of accurately estimating dimensions of rooms when measurements of the interior space have not been captured. Our approach focuses on learning the geometry, orientation and occurrence of rooms from a corpus of real-world building plan data to form a predictive model. The trained predictive model may then be queried to generate estimates of room dimensions and orientations. These estimates are then integrated with the overall building footprint and iteratively improved using a two-stage optimisation process to form complete interior plans. The approach is presented as a semi-automatic method for constructing plans which can cope with a limited set of known information and constructs likely representations of building plans through modelling of soft and hard constraints. We evaluate the method in the context of estimating residential house plans and demonstrate that predictions can effectively be used for constructing plans given limited prior knowledge about the types of rooms and their topology

A survey of factors associated with the successful recognition of agonal breathing and cardiac arrest by 9-1-1 call takers: design and methodology

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Cardiac arrest victims most often collapse at home, where only a modest proportion receives life-saving bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation. As many as 40% of all sudden cardiac arrest victims have agonal or abnormal breathing in the first minutes following cardiac arrest. 9-1-1 call takers may wrongly interpret agonal breathing as a sign of life, and not initiate telephone cardiopulmonary resuscitation instructions. Improving 9-1-1 call takers' ability to recognize agonal breathing as a sign of cardiac arrest could result in improved bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation and survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest victims.</p> <p>Methods/Design</p> <p>The overall goal of this study is to design and conduct a survey of 9-1-1 call takers in the province of Ontario to better understand the factors associated with the successful identification of cardiac arrest (including patients with agonal breathing) over the phone, and subsequent administration of cardiopulmonary resuscitation instructions to callers. This study will be conducted in three phases using the Theory of Planned Behaviour. In Phase One, we will conduct semi-structured qualitative interviews with a purposeful selection of 9-1-1 call takers from Ontario, and identify common themes and belief categories. In Phase Two, we will use the qualitative interview results to design and pilot a quantitative survey. In Phase Three, a final version of the quantitative survey will be administered via an electronic medium to all registered call takers in the province of Ontario. We will perform qualitative thematic analysis (Phase One) and regression modelling (Phases Two and Three), to determine direct and indirect relationship of behavioural constructs with intentions to provide cardiopulmonary resuscitation instructions.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>The results of this study will provide valuable insight into the factors associated with the successful recognition of agonal breathing and cardiac arrest by 9-1-1 call takers. This will guide future interventional studies, which may include continuing education and protocol changes, in order to help increase the number of callers appropriately receiving cardiopulmonary resuscitation instructions, and save the lives of more cardiac arrest victims.</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>Clinicaltrials.gov NCT00848588</p

Listening to patients: using verbal data in the validation of the Aberdeen Measures of Impairment, Activity Limitation and Participation Restriction (Ab-IAP)

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

TLR9 polymorphisms in African populations: no association with severe malaria, but evidence of cis-variants acting on gene expression

BACKGROUND: During malaria infection the Toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9) is activated through induction with plasmodium DNA or another malaria motif not yet identified. Although TLR9 activation by malaria parasites is well reported, the implication to the susceptibility to severe malaria is not clear. The aim of this study was to assess the contribution of genetic variation at TLR9 to severe malaria. METHODS: This study explores the contribution of TLR9 genetic variants to severe malaria using two approaches. First, an association study of four common single nucleotide polymorphisms was performed on both family- and population-based studies from Malawian and Gambian populations (n>6000 individual). Subsequently, it was assessed whether TLR9 expression is affected by cis-acting variants and if these variants could be mapped. For this work, an allele specific expression (ASE) assay on a panel of HapMap cell lines was carried out. RESULTS: No convincing association was found with polymorphisms in TLR9 for malaria severity, in either Gambian or Malawian populations, using both case-control and family based study designs. Using an allele specific expression assay it was observed that TLR9 expression is affected by cis-acting variants, these results were replicated in a second experiment using biological replicates. CONCLUSION: By using the largest cohorts analysed to date, as well as a standardized phenotype definition and study design, no association of TLR9 genetic variants with severe malaria was found. This analysis considered all common variants in the region, but it is remains possible that there are rare variants with association signals. This report also shows that TLR9 expression is potentially modulated through cis-regulatory variants, which may lead to differential inflammatory responses to infection between individuals

The Digital MIQE Guidelines Update: Minimum Information for Publication of Quantitative Digital PCR Experiments for 2020

Digital PCR (dPCR) has developed considerably since the publication of the Minimum Information for Publication of Digital PCR Experiments (dMIQE) guidelines in 2013, with advances in instrumentation, software, applications, and our understanding of its technological potential. Yet these developments also have associated challenges; data analysis steps, including threshold setting, can be difficult and preanalytical steps required to purify, concentrate, and modify nucleic acids can lead to measurement error. To assist independent corroboration of conclusions, comprehensive disclosure of all relevant experimental details is required. To support the community and reflect the growing use of dPCR, we present an update to dMIQE, dMIQE2020, including a simplified dMIQE table format to assist researchers in providing key experimental information and understanding of the associated experimental process. Adoption of dMIQE2020 by the scientific community will assist in standardizing experimental protocols, maximize efficient utilization of resources, and further enhance the impact of this powerful technology

A Rare Functional Noncoding Variant at the GWAS-Implicated MIR137/MIR2682 Locus Might Confer Risk to Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder

Schizophrenia (SZ) genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have identified common risk variants in >100 susceptibility loci; however, the contribution of rare variants at these loci remains largely unexplored. One of the strongly associated loci spans MIR137 (miR137) and MIR2682 (miR2682), two microRNA genes important for neuronal function. We sequenced ∼6.9 kb MIR137/MIR2682 and upstream regulatory sequences in 2,610 SZ cases and 2,611 controls of European ancestry. We identified 133 rare variants with minor allele frequency (MAF) <0.5%. The rare variant burden in promoters and enhancers, but not insulators, was associated with SZ (p = 0.021 for MAF < 0.5%, p = 0.003 for MAF < 0.1%). A rare enhancer SNP, 1:g.98515539A>T, presented exclusively in 11 SZ cases (nominal p = 4.8 × 10−4). We further identified its risk allele T in 2 of 2,434 additional SZ cases, 11 of 4,339 bipolar (BP) cases, and 3 of 3,572 SZ/BP study controls and 1,688 population controls; yielding combined p values of 0.0007, 0.0013, and 0.0001 for SZ, BP, and SZ/BP, respectively. The risk allele T of 1:g.98515539A>T reduced enhancer activity of its flanking sequence by >50% in human neuroblastoma cells, predicting lower expression of MIR137/MIR2682. Both empirical and computational analyses showed weaker transcription factor (YY1) binding by the risk allele. Chromatin conformation capture (3C) assay further indicated that 1:g.98515539A>T influenced MIR137/MIR2682, but not the nearby DPYD or LOC729987. Our results suggest that rare noncoding risk variants are associated with SZ and BP at MIR137/MIR2682 locus, with risk alleles decreasing MIR137/MIR2682 expression