Whose value is it anyway? A neo-institutionalist approach to articulating and evaluating artistic value

The neoliberal agenda which has dominated the creative industries for the past few decades has engendered a range of problems for arts and cultural managers and policymakers. This article critiques the wholesale application of economic, business and management tools, theory and principles to arts and cultural organizations; it then proposes solutions to assist these organizations in creating, identifying and evaluating value on their own terms and in line with their missions and organizational objectives. The solutions proposed are generated by an application of the literature on arts management and evaluation, cultural policy and sociology and through qualitative research into audiences’ articulations of value. The article reports and analyzes the responses of 34 semi-structured depth interviews on the value of theatre with participants drawn from audiences in the UK and Australia. It highlights the discrepancies between the neo-liberal, instrumental methods of evaluating value imposed on arts organizations by governments and the personal, intrinsic insights provided by audiences themselves. It argues ultimately for a balanced, neo-institutionalist approach to arts management and evaluation, which would evaluate organizational performance in line with artistic goals and objectives. In so doing, it makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate about cultural value and provides a creative, alternative evaluation framework for arts managers, marketers and cultural policymakers

Photon engineering for quantum information processing

We study distinguishing information in the context of quantum interference involving more than one parametric downconversion (PDC) source and in the context of polarization-entangled photon pairs based on PDC. We arrive at specific design criteria for two-photon sources so that when used as part of complex optical systems, such as photon-based quantum information processing schemes, distinguishing information between the photons is eliminated guaranteeing high visibility interference. We propose practical techniques which lead to suitably engineered two-photon states that can be realistically implemented with available technology. Finally, we study an implementation of the nonlinear-sign shift (NS) logic gate with PDC sources and show the effect of distinguishing information on the performance of the gate.Comment: 23 pages, 13 figures. submitted to Quantum Information & Computatio

Best Mode: A Plea to Repair or Sacrifice this Broken Requirement of United States Patent Law

An inventor\u27s obligation to disclose the best mode of her invention is strong consideration in the U.S. patent bargain, but the courts paradoxically define the scope of that obligation, thus rendering the enforcement of U.S. patents unreasonably unpredictable. If an inventor cannot reasonably foresee the scope of her obligation to disclose invention details, then she is subjected to the costs and risks of either overcompliance or undercompliance with the best mode requirement. The scope of the best mode requirement should either be reliably defined by an en banc ruling of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, or the requirement should be discarded entirely by legislative action, preferably as a sacrificial bargaining chip during future international patent law harmonization efforts. Until then, however, an inventor should overcomply with the best mode requirement to avoid having her patent claims invalidated, or worse. In light of the disservice that the best mode requirement currently does to patent law, this article advocates a drastic legal change, either to stabilize the scope of the best mode requirement and thus render it fit for the purpose it was intended to serve, or to discard the requirement altogether. In addition, this article provides guidance for inventors in complying with the unpredictable best mode requirement. Section II of this article traces the evolution of the best mode requirement. Section III extracts a plain language definition of best mode from the current statutory and regulatory provisions. Then, the different standards of law regarding the scope of invention disclosure are chronologically culled from the case law in Section IV. Sections V and VI set forth a set of conclusions and recommendations, and, finally, Section VII provides a summary of the key points of this article. The Appendix provides aids for visualizing the author\u27s suggested definition and scope of the best mode requirement

Fail fast, fail often…but don’t fail this course! Business and enterprise education through the lens of theatre and the creative arts

This paper considers business and enterprise education through the lens of theatre and the creative arts, and identifies new pathways towards an interdisciplinary way of supporting the young innovators of the future, placing higher education as a central catalyst. Following a review of key criticism directed at traditional business and management approaches in the academy, the article problematizes the notion of experiential enterprise education in the curriculum and poses the question as to where and when students are afforded the opportunity to fail. Through an autoethnographic account, the key themes of authenticity, risk and failure, experiential approaches and embeddedness are presented. There is an urgent need for further and higher education institutions to develop a much more holistic and interdisciplinary approach to developing entrepreneurship in their students. These institutions are currently perpetuating pedagogical hypocrisy in that they preach productive failure while practising assessment success. An effective 21st-century approach would champion risk-taking and productive failure, place processes over outputs and acknowledge the important role of the post-course curriculum

Optimal experiment design revisited: fair, precise and minimal tomography

Given an experimental set-up and a fixed number of measurements, how should one take data in order to optimally reconstruct the state of a quantum system? The problem of optimal experiment design (OED) for quantum state tomography was first broached by Kosut et al. [arXiv:quant-ph/0411093v1]. Here we provide efficient numerical algorithms for finding the optimal design, and analytic results for the case of 'minimal tomography'. We also introduce the average OED, which is independent of the state to be reconstructed, and the optimal design for tomography (ODT), which minimizes tomographic bias. We find that these two designs are generally similar. Monte-Carlo simulations confirm the utility of our results for qubits. Finally, we adapt our approach to deal with constrained techniques such as maximum likelihood estimation. We find that these are less amenable to optimization than cruder reconstruction methods, such as linear inversion.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure

Large-Alphabet Time-Frequency Entangled Quantum Key Distribution by means of Time-to-Frequency Conversion

We introduce a novel time-frequency quantum key distribution (TFQKD) scheme based on photon pairs entangled in these two conjugate degrees of freedom. The scheme uses spectral detection and phase modulation to enable measurements in the temporal basis by means of time-to-frequency conversion. This allows large-alphabet encoding to be implemented with realistic components. A general security analysis for TFQKD with binned measurements reveals a close connection with finite-dimensional QKD protocols and enables analysis of the effects of dark counts on the secure key size.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, submitte

Integrated Photonic Sensing

Loss is a critical roadblock to achieving photonic quantum-enhanced technologies. We explore a modular platform for implementing integrated photonics experiments and consider the effects of loss at different stages of these experiments, including state preparation, manipulation and measurement. We frame our discussion mainly in the context of quantum sensing and focus particularly on the use of loss-tolerant Holland-Burnett states for optical phase estimation. In particular, we discuss spontaneous four-wave mixing in standard birefringent fibre as a source of pure, heralded single photons and present methods of optimising such sources. We also outline a route to programmable circuits which allow the control of photonic interactions even in the presence of fabrication imperfections and describe a ratiometric characterisation method for beam splitters which allows the characterisation of complex circuits without the need for full process tomography. Finally, we present a framework for performing state tomography on heralded states using lossy measurement devices. This is motivated by a calculation of the effects of fabrication imperfections on precision measurement using Holland-Burnett states.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figure