Written expression

We are in the midst of not one, but two, revolutions in education. The first exemplified by the present OECD project, concerns the impact of New Information Technologies on teaching and on our understanding of the learning process. The second, one which seems at first to be far removed from the realm of NIT, is a radical reconception of the role of writing [by which we mean "written expression", not handwriting] in education and of how it should be taught. This report, one of four on NIT and Education, focuses on the confluence of these two revolutions. Despite initial impressions to the contrary, we suspect that NIT may have a great, if not their greatest, impact in the area of writing.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Gate-tunable kinetic inductance parametric amplifier

Superconducting parametric amplifiers play a crucial role in the preparation and readout of quantum states at microwave frequencies, enabling high-fidelity measurements of superconducting qubits. Most existing implementations of these amplifiers rely on the nonlinearity from Josephson junctions, superconducting quantum interference devices or disordered superconductors. Additionally, frequency tunability arises typically from either flux or current biasing. In contrast, semiconductor-based parametric amplifiers are tunable by local electric fields, which impose a smaller thermal load on the cryogenic setup than current and flux biasing and lead to vanishing crosstalk to other on-chip quantum systems. In this work, we present a gate-tunable parametric amplifier that operates without Josephson junctions, utilizing a proximitized semiconducting nanowire. This design achieves near-quantum-limited performance, featuring more than 20 dB gain and a 30 MHz gain-bandwidth product. The absence of Josephson junctions allows for advantages, including substantial saturation powers of -120dBm, magnetic field compatibility up to 500 mT and frequency tunability over a range of 15 MHz. Our realization of a parametric amplifier supplements efforts towards gate-controlled superconducting electronics, further advancing the abilities for high-performing quantum measurements of semiconductor-based and superconducting quantum devices.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figure

Improved Understanding of the Inflammatory Response in Synovial Fluid and Serum after Traumatic Knee Injury, Excluding Fractures of the Knee:A Systematic Review

Background: Traumatic knee injury results in a 4- to 10-fold increased risk of post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA). Currently, there are no successful interventions for preventing PTOA after knee injury. The aim of this study is to identify inflammatory proteins that are increased in serum and synovial fluid after acute knee injury, excluding intra-articular fractures. Methods: A literature search was done according to the PRISMA guidelines. Articles reporting about inflammatory proteins after knee injury, except fractures, up to December 8, 2021 were collected. Inclusion criteria were as follows: patients younger than 45 years, no radiographic signs of knee osteoarthritis at baseline, and inflammatory protein measurement within 1 year after trauma. Risk of bias was assessed of the included studies. The level of evidence was determined by the Strength of Recommendation Taxonomy. Results: Ten studies were included. All included studies used a healthy control group or the contralateral knee as healthy control. Strong evidence for interleukin 6 (IL-6) and limited evidence for CCL4 show elevated concentrations of these proteins in synovial fluid (SF) after acute knee injury; no upregulation in SF for IL-2, IL-10, CCL3, CCL5, CCL11, granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF), and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) was found. Limited evidence was found for no difference in serum concentration of IL-1β, IL-6, IL-10, CCL2, and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) after knee injury. Conclusion: Interleukin 6 and CCL4 are elevated in SF after acute knee injury. Included studies failed to demonstrate increased concentration of inflammatory proteins in SF samples taken 6 weeks after trauma. Future research should focus on SF inflammatory protein measurements taken less than 6 weeks after injury.</p

Chip-to-chip entanglement of transmon qubits using engineered measurement fields

© 2018 American Physical Society. While the on-chip processing power in circuit QED devices is growing rapidly, an open challenge is to establish high-fidelity quantum links between qubits on different chips. Here, we show entanglement between transmon qubits on different cQED chips with 49% concurrence and 73% Bell-state fidelity. We engineer a half-parity measurement by successively reflecting a coherent microwave field off two nearly identical transmon-resonator systems. By ensuring the measured output field does not distinguish |01) from |10), unentangled superposition states are probabilistically projected onto entangled states in the odd-parity subspace. We use in situ tunability and an additional weakly coupled driving field on the second resonator to overcome imperfect matching due to fabrication variations. To demonstrate the flexibility of this approach, we also produce an even-parity entangled state of similar quality, by engineering the matching of outputs for the |00) and |11) states. The protocol is characterized over a range of measurement strengths using quantum state tomography showing good agreement with a comprehensive theoretical model

Strong tunable coupling between two distant superconducting spin qubits

Superconducting (or Andreev) spin qubits have recently emerged as an alternative qubit platform with realizations in semiconductor-superconductor hybrid nanowires. In these qubits, the spin degree of freedom is intrinsically coupled to the supercurrent across a Josephson junction via the spin-orbit interaction, which facilitates fast, high-fidelity spin readout using circuit quantum electrodynamics techniques. Moreover, this spin-supercurrent coupling has been predicted to facilitate inductive multi-qubit coupling. In this work, we demonstrate a strong supercurrent-mediated coupling between two distant Andreev spin qubits. This qubit-qubit interaction is of the longitudinal type and we show that it is both gate- and flux-tunable up to a coupling strength of 178 MHz. Finally, we find that the coupling can be switched off in-situ using a magnetic flux. Our results demonstrate that integrating microscopic spin states into a superconducting qubit architecture can combine the advantages of both semiconductors and superconducting circuits and pave the way to fast two-qubit gates between remote spins.Comment: 26 pages, 27 figure

Dynamical polarization of the fermion parity in a nanowire Josephson junction

Josephson junctions in InAs nanowires proximitized with an Al shell can host gate-tunable Andreev bound states. Depending on the bound state occupation, the fermion parity of the junction can be even or odd. Coherent control of Andreev bound states has recently been achieved within each parity sector, but it is impeded by incoherent parity switches due to excess quasiparticles in the superconducting environment. Here, we show that we can polarize the fermion parity dynamically using microwave pulses by embedding the junction in a superconducting LC resonator. We demonstrate polarization up to 94% $\pm$ 1% (89% $\pm$ 1%) for the even (odd) parity as verified by single shot parity-readout. Finally, we apply this scheme to probe the flux-dependent transition spectrum of the even or odd parity sector selectively, without any post-processing or heralding

Ternary Blends of Vegetable Oils: Thermal Profile Predictions for Product Design

This work deals with Product Design by means of theoretical predictions of the Solid Fat Content of different formulations using 3 vegetable oils. A Soli-Liquid Equilibrium (SLE) model was implemented and integrated into an optimization algorithm based on the Generalized Reduced Gradient method. A total of 3,696 SLE problems are solved, covering 57 binary blends, 3 pure vegetable oils and 171 ternary blends problems, before and after chemical interesterification reaction and at 8 different temperatures. A combinatorial random distribution of fatty acids in the glycerol structure is used to simulate the effect of the reaction. The results were compared with 256 experimental points, giving an average absolute error of 5.4 and 4.4 in Solid Fat Content for systems before and after reaction, respectively. Computer-aided tools can be useful to deal with the large combinatorial problem faced by product design, especially when desired product performance is related to a phase behavior in multicomponent mixtures