105 research outputs found

    A single photon produces general W state of N qubits and its application

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    Based on the Wu's scheme[1], We prepare the general N-qubit W state. We find that the concurrence of two qubits in general N-qubit W state is only related to their coefficients and we successfully apply the general N-qubit W state to quantum state transfer and quantum state prepare like that in two-qubit system

    Automated mechanism design for B2B e-commerce models

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    Business-to-business electronic marketplaces (B2B e-Marketplaces) have been in the limelight since 1999 with the commercialisation of the Internet and subsequent “dot.com” boom [1]. Literature is indicative of the growth of the B2B sectors in all industries, and B2B e-Marketplace is one of the sectors that have witnessed a rapid increase. Consequently, the importance of developing the B2B e-Commerce Model for improved value chain in B2B exchanges is extremely important for SMEs to expose to the world marketplace. There are three research objectives (ROs) in this study; first (RO1) to critical review the concepts of the B2B e-Marketplace including their technologies, operations, business relationships and functionalities; second (RO2) to design an automated mechanism of B2B e-Marketplace for Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs); and third (RO3) to propose a conceptual B2B e-Commerce model for SMEs. The proposed model is constructed by the analytical findings obtained from the contemporary B2B e-Marketplace literature

    J Interpers Violence

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    Homicide-suicide incidents involving child victims can have a detrimental impact on survivors of the violence, family members and friends of the decedents, and other community members, but the rare occurrence of these acts makes using quantitative data to examine their associated antecedents challenging. Therefore, using qualitative data from the 2003-2011 National Violent Death Reporting System, we examined 175 cases of homicide-suicide involving child victims in an effort to better understand the complex situational factors of these events. Our findings indicate that 98% of homicide-suicides with child victims are perpetrated by adults (mostly parents) and propelled by the perpetrators' intimate partner problems, mental health problems, and criminal/legal problems. These events are often premeditated, and plans for the violence are sometimes disclosed prior to its occurrence. Findings provide support for several theoretical perspectives, and implications for prevention are discussed.CC999999/Intramural CDC HHS/United States2019-02-01T00:00:00Z26385898PMC4795978vault:1634

    An evaluation of medication appropriateness and frailty among residents of aged care homes in Malaysia: A cross-sectional study

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    Aging is significantly associated with the development of comorbid chronic conditions. These conditions indicate the use of multiple medications, and are often warranted by clinical guidelines. The aim of the present study was to evaluate medication appropriateness and frailty among Malaysian aged care home residents with chronic disease. The participants were 202 elderly (≥65 years) individuals, a cross-sectional sample from 17 aged care homes. After ethics approval, each participant was interviewed to collect data on sociodemographics, frailty status (Groningen Frailty Indicator [GFI]), medication appropriateness (Medication Appropriateness Index (MAI), the 2015 Beers’ criteria (Potentially Inappropriate Medication [PIM]), and 2014 STOPP criteria (Potentially Inappropriate Prescribing [PIP]). The findings show that 81% (n = 164) and 42% (n = 85) were taking medications for cardiovascular and central nervous system-related conditions, respectively, and 34% were using medications for diabetes (n = 69). Each participant had a mean of 2.9 ± 1.5 chronic diseases, with an average GFI score of 6.4 ± 3.6. More than three-quarters of the participants (76%) were frail and polypharmacy was a factor in nearly half (48%); 41% and 36% were prescribed at least one PIP and PIM, respectively, whereas the average MAI score was 0.6 (range: 0–6). The number of medications used per participant correlated significantly and positively (0.21, P = .002) with GFI score. These findings reinforce the need for participants of aged care homes to receive periodic medication review aimed at minimizing morbidity associated with inappropriate pharmacotherapy

    Mutations in PROSC Disrupt Cellular Pyridoxal Phosphate Homeostasis and Cause Vitamin B6-Dependent Epilepsy

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    Pyridoxal 5'-phosphate (PLP), the active form of vitamin B6, functions as a cofactor in humans for more than 140 enzymes, many of which are involved in neurotransmitter synthesis and degradation. A deficiency of PLP can present, therefore, as seizures and other symptoms which are treatable with PLP and/or pyridoxine. Deficiency of PLP in the brain can be caused by inborn errors affecting B6 vitamer metabolism or by inactivation of PLP; by compounds accumulating as a result of inborn errors of other pathways or by ingested small molecules. Whole exome sequencing of 2 children from a consanguineous family with pyridoxine-dependent epilepsy revealed a homozygous nonsense mutation in proline synthetase co-transcribed homolog (bacterial) (PROSC), a PLPbinding protein of hitherto unknown function. Subsequent sequencing of 29 unrelated indivduals with pyridoxine-responsive epilepsy identified 4 additional children with biallelic PROSC mutations. Pretreatment cerebrospinal fluid samples showed low PLP concentrations and evidence of reduced activity of PLP-dependent enzymes. However, cultured fibroblasts showed excessive PLP accumulation. An E.coli mutant, lacking the PROSC homologue (ΔYggS) is pyridoxine-sensitive; complementation with human PROSC restored growth whilst hPROSC bearing p.Leu175Pro, p.Arg241Gln and p.Ser78Ter did not. PLP, a highly reactive aldehyde, poses a problem for cells - how to supply enough PLP for apoenzymes while maintaining free PLP concentrations low enough to avoid unwanted reactions with other important cellular nucleophiles. Whilst the mechanism involved is not fully understood our studies suggest that PROSC is involved in intracellular homeostatic regulation of PLP, supplying this cofactor to apoenzymes while minimizing any toxic side reactions

    Clinical and molecular characterisation of KCNT1-related severe early onset epilepsy

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    Objective: To characterise the phenotypic spectrum, molecular genetic findings and functional consequences of pathogenic variants in early onset KCNT1-epilepsy. Methods: We identified a cohort of 31 patients with epilepsy of infancy with migrating focal seizures (EIMFS) and screened for variants in KCNT1 using direct Sanger sequencing, a multiple gene next generation sequencing panel and whole exome sequencing. Additional patients with non-EIMFS early onset epilepsy in whom we identified KCNT1 variants on local diagnostic multiple gene panel testing were also included. Where possible, we performed homology modelling to predict putative effects of variants on protein structure and function. We undertook electrophysiological assessment of mutant KCNT1 channels in a Xenopus oocyte model system. Results: We identified pathogenic variants in KCNT1 in 12 patients, four of which are novel. Most variants occurred de novo. Ten had a clinical diagnosis of EIMFS and the other two presented with early onset severe nocturnal frontal lobe seizures. Three patients had a trial of quinidine with good clinical response in one. Computational modelling analysis implicates abnormal pore function (F346L) and impaired tetramer formation (F502V) as putative disease mechanisms. All evaluated KCNT1 variants resulted in marked gain-of-function, with significantly increased channel amplitude and variable blockade by quinidine. Conclusions: Gain-of-function KCNT1 pathogenic variants cause a spectrum of severe focal epilepsies with onset in early infancy. Currently, genotype-phenotype correlations are unclear, though clinical outcome is poor for the majority of cases. Further elucidation of disease mechanisms may facilitate the development of targeted treatments, much needed for this pharmacoresistant genetic epilepsy

    Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

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    Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

    Building-in reliability for silver die attached light emitting diodes

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    Microelectronics Reliability343495-507MCRL

    Linear stability of boundary-layer flow over compliant walls: effects of boundary-layer growth

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    Journal of Fluid Mechanics280199-225JFLS
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