Learning-based Calibration of Flux Crosstalk in Transmon Qubit Arrays

Superconducting quantum processors comprising flux-tunable data and coupler qubits are a promising platform for quantum computation. However, magnetic flux crosstalk between the flux-control lines and the constituent qubits impedes precision control of qubit frequencies, presenting a challenge to scaling this platform. In order to implement high-fidelity digital and analog quantum operations, one must characterize the flux crosstalk and compensate for it. In this work, we introduce a learning-based calibration protocol and demonstrate its experimental performance by calibrating an array of 16 flux-tunable transmon qubits. To demonstrate the extensibility of our protocol, we simulate the crosstalk matrix learning procedure for larger arrays of transmon qubits. We observe an empirically linear scaling with system size, while maintaining a median qubit frequency error below $300$ kHz

Heart valve disease: investigation by cardiovascular magnetic resonance

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) has become a valuable investigative tool in many areas of cardiac medicine. Its value in heart valve disease is less well appreciated however, particularly as echocardiography is a powerful and widely available technique in valve disease. This review highlights the added value that CMR can bring in valve disease, complementing echocardiography in many areas, but it has also become the first-line investigation in some, such as pulmonary valve disease and assessing the right ventricle. CMR has many advantages, including the ability to image in any plane, which allows full visualisation of valves and their inflow/outflow tracts, direct measurement of valve area (particularly for stenotic valves), and characterisation of the associated great vessel anatomy (e.g. the aortic root and arch in aortic valve disease). A particular strength is the ability to quantify flow, which allows accurate measurement of regurgitation, cardiac shunt volumes/ratios and differential flow volumes (e.g. left and right pulmonary arteries). Quantification of ventricular volumes and mass is vital for determining the impact of valve disease on the heart, and CMR is the 'Gold standard' for this. Limitations of the technique include partial volume effects due to image slice thickness, and a low ability to identify small, highly mobile objects (such as vegetations) due to the need to acquire images over several cardiac cycles. The review examines the advantages and disadvantages of each imaging aspect in detail, and considers how CMR can be used optimally for each valve lesion

Advocacy at the Eighth World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery

The Eighth World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery (WCPCCS) will be held in Washington DC, USA, from Saturday, 26 August, 2023 to Friday, 1 September, 2023, inclusive. The Eighth World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery will be the largest and most comprehensive scientific meeting dedicated to paediatric and congenital cardiac care ever held. At the time of the writing of this manuscript, The Eighth World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery has 5,037 registered attendees (and rising) from 117 countries, a truly diverse and international faculty of over 925 individuals from 89 countries, over 2,000 individual abstracts and poster presenters from 101 countries, and a Best Abstract Competition featuring 153 oral abstracts from 34 countries. For information about the Eighth World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery, please visit the following website: [www.WCPCCS2023.org]. The purpose of this manuscript is to review the activities related to global health and advocacy that will occur at the Eighth World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery. Acknowledging the need for urgent change, we wanted to take the opportunity to bring a common voice to the global community and issue the Washington DC WCPCCS Call to Action on Addressing the Global Burden of Pediatric and Congenital Heart Diseases. A copy of this Washington DC WCPCCS Call to Action is provided in the Appendix of this manuscript. This Washington DC WCPCCS Call to Action is an initiative aimed at increasing awareness of the global burden, promoting the development of sustainable care systems, and improving access to high quality and equitable healthcare for children with heart disease as well as adults with congenital heart disease worldwide

Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation for Acute Pediatric Respiratory Failure

This article is made available for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.The use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) to support children with acute respiratory failure has steadily increased over the past several decades, with major advancements having been made in the care of these children. There are, however, many controversies regarding indications for initiating ECMO in this setting and the appropriate management strategies thereafter. Broad indications for ECMO include hypoxia, hypercarbia, and severe air leak syndrome, with hypoxia being the most common. There are many disease-specific considerations when evaluating children for ECMO, but there are currently very few, if any, absolute contraindications. Venovenous rather than veno-arterial ECMO cannulation is the preferred configuration for ECMO support of acute respiratory failure due to its superior side-effect profile. The approach to lung management on ECMO is variable and should be individualized to the patient, with the main goal of reducing the risk of VILI. ECMO is a relatively rare intervention, and there are likely a minimum number of cases per year at a given center to maintain competency. Patients who have prolonged ECMO runs (i.e., greater than 21 days) are less likely to survive, though no absolute duration of ECMO that would mandate withdrawal of ECMO support can be currently recommended

Assumption-based argumentation with preferences and goals for patient-centric reasoning with interacting clinical guidelines

A paramount, yet unresolved issue in personalised medicine is that of automated reasoning with clinical guidelines in multimorbidity settings. This entails enabling machines to use computerised generic clinical guideline recommendations and patient-specific information to yield patient-tailored recommendations where interactions arising due to multimorbidities are resolved. This problem is further complicated by patient management desiderata, in particular the need to account for patient-centric goals as well as preferences of various parties involved. We propose to solve this problem of automated reasoning with interacting guideline recommendations in the context of a given patient by means of computational argumentation. In particular, we advance a structured argumentation formalism ABA+G (short for Assumption-Based Argumentation with Preferences (ABA+) and Goals) for integrating and reasoning with information about recommendations, interactions, patient’s state, preferences and prioritised goals. ABA+G combines assumption-based reasoning with preferences and goal-driven selection among reasoning outcomes. Specifically, we assume defeasible applicability of guideline recommendations with the general goal of patient well-being, resolve interactions (conflicts and otherwise undesirable situations) among recommendations based on the state and preferences of the patient, and employ patient-centered goals to suggest interaction-resolving, goal-importance maximising and preference-adhering recommendations. We use a well-established Transition-based Medical Recommendation model for representing guideline recommendations and identifying interactions thereof, and map the components in question, together with the given patient’s state, prioritised goals, and preferences over actions, to ABA+G for automated reasoning. In this, we follow principles of patient management and establish corresponding theoretical properties as well as illustrate our approach in realistic personalised clinical reasoning scenaria