241 research outputs found
New Zealand Agribusiness Success: An Approach to exploring the role of strategy, structure and conduct on firm performance
This paper presents a framework to explore agribusiness success in New Zealand. The framework provides the basis for historical analysis. It draws on existing theory based on the structure-conduct-performance paradigm but expanded to take account of firm strategy and the analysis of value chains.Agribusiness, structure, conduct, performance, history, Agribusiness,
The development of the Canberra symptom scorecard: a tool to monitor the physical symptoms of patients with advanced tumours
BACKGROUND: Patients with advanced (incurable) tumours usually experience a diverse burden of
symptoms. Although many symptom assessment instruments are available, we examined whether
these addressed tumour-related symptoms.
METHODS: We reviewed existing symptom assessment instruments and found a number of
deficiencies such as instruments being too long or burdensome, too short, or measuring quality of
life rather than tumour-related symptoms. Others focused on emotional, rather than physical
symptoms. Therefore, we decided to devise a new symptom instrument. A list of 20 symptoms
common in patients with advanced tumours generated from the literature and existing instruments,
was ranked according to prevalence by 202 Australian clinicians. Following clinicians' responses, the
list was revised and two severity assessment scales (functional severity and distress severity) added.
The resultant 18-item list was assessed in 44 outpatients with advanced tumours.
RESULTS: Patient responses indicated that a shorter questionnaire of 11 items, reflecting three main
symptom clusters, provided a good representation of physical symptoms. An additional symptom
that is an important predictor of survival was added, making a 12-item questionnaire, which was
entitled "The Canberra Symptom Scorecard" (CSS). For symptom severity, the distress severity
scale was more appropriate than the functional severity scale.
CONCLUSION: The CSS focuses on tumour-related physical symptoms. It is about to be assessed in
patients with advanced tumours receiving palliative treatments, when it will also be validated against
existing instruments
Reconfigurable controlled two-qubit operation on a quantum photonic chip
Integrated quantum photonics is an appealing platform for quantum information
processing, quantum communication and quantum metrology. In all these
applications it is necessary not only to be able to create and detect Fock
states of light but also to program the photonic circuits that implements some
desired logical operation. Here we demonstrate a reconfigurable controlled
two-qubit operation on a chip using a multiwaveguide interferometer with a
tunable phase shifter. We find excellent agreement between theory and
experiment, with a 0.98 \pm 0.02 average similarity between measured and ideal
operations
Salmonella Typhimurium in the Australian egg industry: multidisciplinary approach to addressing the public health challenge and future directions
In Australia, numerous egg related human Salmonella Typhimurium outbreaks have prompted significant interest amongst public health authorities and the egg industry to jointly address this human health concern. Nationwide workshops on Salmonella and eggs were conducted in Australia for egg producers and regulatory authorities. State and National regulators representing Primary Production, Communicable Disease Control, Public Health and Food Safety and Food Standards Australia and New Zealand. All attendees participated in discussions aimed at evaluating current evidence based information, issues related to quality egg production and how to ensure safe eggs in the supply chain, identifying research gaps and practical recommendations. The perceptions from egg producers and regulatory authorities from various states were recorded during the workshops. We presented the issues discussed during the workshops including Salmonella in the farm environment, Salmonella penetration across egg shell, virulence in humans, food/egg handling in the supply chain and intervention strategies. We also discussed the perceptions from egg producers and regulators. Recommendations placed emphasis on future research needs, communication between industry and regulatory authorities and education of food handlers. Communication between regulators and industry is pivotal to control egg borne S. Typhimurium outbreaks and collaborative efforts are required to design effective and appropriate control strategies.Kapil K. Chousalkar, Margaret Sexton, Andrea McWhorter, Kylie Hewson, Glen Martin, Craig Shadbolt & Paul Goldsmit
Towards a killer app for the Semantic Web
Killer apps are highly transformative technologies that create new markets and widespread patterns of behaviour. IT generally, and the Web in particular, has benefited from killer apps to create new networks of users and increase its value. The Semantic Web community on the other hand is still awaiting a killer app that proves the superiority of its technologies. There are certain features that distinguish killer apps from other ordinary applications. This paper examines those features in the context of the Semantic Web, in the hope that a better understanding of the characteristics of killer apps might encourage their consideration when developing Semantic Web applications
Witnessing eigenstates for quantum simulation of Hamiltonian spectra
The efficient calculation of Hamiltonian spectra, a problem often intractable
on classical machines, can find application in many fields, from physics to
chemistry. Here, we introduce the concept of an "eigenstate witness" and
through it provide a new quantum approach which combines variational methods
and phase estimation to approximate eigenvalues for both ground and excited
states. This protocol is experimentally verified on a programmable silicon
quantum photonic chip, a mass-manufacturable platform, which embeds entangled
state generation, arbitrary controlled-unitary operations, and projective
measurements. Both ground and excited states are experimentally found with
fidelities >99%, and their eigenvalues are estimated with 32-bits of precision.
We also investigate and discuss the scalability of the approach and study its
performance through numerical simulations of more complex Hamiltonians. This
result shows promising progress towards quantum chemistry on quantum computers.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, plus Supplementary Material [New version with
minor typos corrected.
Improving public services through open data: public toilets
Bichardâs work for the TACT3 project (Bichard REF Output 3) found that UK toilet provision is not centrally collated and no national map or database of toilets exists. In contrast, the UK governmentâs white paper Open Public Services (2011) emphasised its commitment to incorporating the use of Open Data in public services provision that could be tailored to community preferences, and therefore be more sustainable. Incorporating Open Data on public toilet provision, Bichard and Knight (RCA) developed The Great British Public Toilet Map (GBPTM). Whilst a number of other websites and applications map toilets by âcrowd surfingâ, GBPTM is entirely populated by Open Data, and not only uses the data as information for users, but informs members of the public that such information is available and accessible for their use.
This paper presents the development of the GBPTM, including inclusive design research and studies that compare accuracy of information directly provided by users with Open Data collected by local authorities. It suggests that, to meet the health and well-being of an ageing population, a sustainable and cost-effective solution must be found for âpublicly accessibleâ toilet provision, including opening up provision beyond that âfor customers onlyâ and providing accurate information on current public provision. The paper highlights the barriers encountered in the production of Open Data by local authorities. A review of the paper in the journal Civil Engineering (May 2013) described the design of the GBPTM as a âsimple and elegant solutionâ.
The development of a digital output and an understanding of digitally based research led to Bichardâs successful submission to an EPSRC Digital Economy sandpit, in which she developed an interdisciplinary project with the Universities of Newcastle, Bournemouth and the West of England. The project, Family Rituals 2.0, secured ÂŁ750,000 in research funding with Bichard as co-investigator (2013â15)
Language Models as a Service: Overview of a New Paradigm and its Challenges
Some of the most powerful language models currently are proprietary systems,
accessible only via (typically restrictive) web or software programming
interfaces. This is the Language-Models-as-a-Service (LMaaS) paradigm. In
contrast with scenarios where full model access is available, as in the case of
open-source models, such closed-off language models present specific challenges
for evaluating, benchmarking, and testing them. This paper has two goals: on
the one hand, we delineate how the aforementioned challenges act as impediments
to the accessibility, replicability, reliability, and trustworthiness of LMaaS.
We systematically examine the issues that arise from a lack of information
about language models for each of these four aspects. We conduct a detailed
analysis of existing solutions and put forth a number of considered
recommendations, and highlight the directions for future advancements. On the
other hand, it serves as a comprehensive resource for existing knowledge on
current, major LMaaS, offering a synthesized overview of the licences and
capabilities their interfaces offer
On the experimental verification of quantum complexity in linear optics
The first quantum technologies to solve computational problems that are
beyond the capabilities of classical computers are likely to be devices that
exploit characteristics inherent to a particular physical system, to tackle a
bespoke problem suited to those characteristics. Evidence implies that the
detection of ensembles of photons, which have propagated through a linear
optical circuit, is equivalent to sampling from a probability distribution that
is intractable to classical simulation. However, it is probable that the
complexity of this type of sampling problem means that its solution is
classically unverifiable within a feasible number of trials, and the task of
establishing correct operation becomes one of gathering sufficiently convincing
circumstantial evidence. Here, we develop scalable methods to experimentally
establish correct operation for this class of sampling algorithm, which we
implement with two different types of optical circuits for 3, 4, and 5 photons,
on Hilbert spaces of up to 50,000 dimensions. With only a small number of
trials, we establish a confidence >99% that we are not sampling from a uniform
distribution or a classical distribution, and we demonstrate a unitary specific
witness that functions robustly for small amounts of data. Like the algorithmic
operations they endorse, our methods exploit the characteristics native to the
quantum system in question. Here we observe and make an application of a
"bosonic clouding" phenomenon, interesting in its own right, where photons are
found in local groups of modes superposed across two locations. Our broad
approach is likely to be practical for all architectures for quantum
technologies where formal verification methods for quantum algorithms are
either intractable or unknown.Comment: Comments welcom
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