Academic Art and the Twentieth Century: The Royal Academy of Arts 1910-1951

This thesis examines the art shown at the Royal Academy of Arts in London between 1910 and 1951. It attempts to demonstrate that this often neglected body of works was a highly prominent element of British visual culture of the time and was often seen to meet the social needs of the twentieth century. While most studies of this period concentrate on the modernist movements the Academy is equally deserving of attention: its annual Summer Exhibitions were the most popular shows of contemporary art and were widely reviewed in the press. This study explains why academic painting and sculpture were thought to be important phenomena and how they were perceived by their makers, the critics and gallerygoers. Academic art is examined by considering the aesthetic concepts and artistic genres that were most prominent in the critical discourses surrounding Burlington House. The first chapter explores the functions performed by naturalism, the artistic approach that was seen to define academic culture. The second chapter treats the importance of formalism, a concept that is now usually associated with modernism but played an equally important role at the Summer Exhibitions. The third chapter shows how and why landscape and portraiture became the dominant academic genres of the first half of the twentieth century and also explains the decline of narrative painting. The fourth chapter demonstrates that modernist art itself often engaged with the Academy, either by criticising it or by claiming it could perform some of its traditional functions. Academic art was still impossible to ignore in this period and this thesis attempts to show what scholars can learn from its continuing importance

Demographic Determinants And Challenges To Social Protection For Maternity In Bulgaria

The starting point of this study is the understanding of maternity as a condition related to the biological and social function of women for the reproduction of human race, performed by the mother with the birth and upbringing of children in early childhood and to acquire the ability for economically independent living alone or together - in the family or the parents’ household. Placed on this basis, the issue of social protection in maternity becomes extremely relevant in the context of demographic and socio-economic challenges to the development of modern society. The study attempts to substantiate the thesis that the system of social payments for pregnancy, childbirth and child-rearing has unused potential to become a working tool of demographic policy with a significant contribution to improving the demographic profile of the Bulgarian population, in connection with which ideas are presented about the possibilities for their organisational development and improvement

Quantum computational chemistry methods for early-stage quantum computers

One of the first practical applications of quantum computers is expected to be molecular modelling. Performing this task would profoundly affect areas such as chemistry, materials science and drug synthesis. Modelling of molecules, which are classically intractable, can be achieved with just over $30$ qubits, whereas state of the art quantum computers already have more than $50$ qubits. The Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) algorithm and VQE based protocols, are promising candidates to enable this task on emerging Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) computers. These protocols require short quantum circuits and short coherence times, and are particularly resilient to quantum errors. Nevertheless, there is still a significant gap between the accuracy and the coherence times of current NISQ computers, and the hardware requirements of VQE protocols to simulate practically interesting molecules. In this thesis, I present my contribution to narrowing this gap by developing VQE protocols for molecular modelling that are less demanding on quantum hardware. The VQE relies on the Rayleigh-Ritz variational principle to estimate the eigenvalues of a Hamiltonian operator, by minimizing its expectation value with respect to a trial quantum state, prepared by an ansatz. A major challenge for the practical realisation of VQE protocols on NISQ computers is to construct an ansatz that: (1) can accurately approximate the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian; (2) is easy to optimize; and (3) can be implemented by a shallow circuit, within the capabilities of a NISQ computer. The most widely used, unitary coupled cluster (UCC), type of ans\"atze mathematically correspond to a product of unitary evolutions of fermionic excitation operators. Owing to their fermionic structure, UCC ans\"atze preserve the symmetries of electronic wavefunctions, and thus are accurate and easy to optimize. Nevertheless, UCC ans\"atze are implemented by high depth circuits, which severely limit the size of the molecules that can be reliably simulated on NISQ computers. In this thesis, I begin by constructing efficient quantum circuits to perform evolutions of fermionic excitation operators. The circuits are optimized in the number of two-qubit entangling gates, which are the current bottleneck of NISQ computers. Compared to the standard circuits used to implement evolutions of fermionic excitation operators, the circuits derived in this thesis reduce the number of two-qubit entangling gates by more than $70\%$ on average. As an intermediate result, I also derive efficient circuits to perform evolutions of qubit excitation operators (excitation operators that account for qubit, rather than fermionic commutation relations). Even with the fermionic-excitation-evolution circuits derived here, UCC ans\"atze still require very long circuits, with a particularly large number of two-qubit entangling gates. In this thesis, I consider the use of alternative VQE ans\"atze, based on evolutions of qubit excitation operators. Due to not accounting for fermionic anticommutation, evolutions of qubit excitation operators can be performed by circuits that require asymptotically fewer two-qubit entangling gates. Furthermore, qubit excitation operators preserve many of the physical properties of fermionic excitation operators. Performing a number of classical numerical VQE simulations for small molecules, I show that qubit-excitation-based ans\"atze can approximate molecular electronic wavefunctions almost as accurately as fermionic-excitation-based ans\"atze. Hence, I argue that evolutions of qubit excitation operators are more suitable to construct molecular ans\"atze than evolutions of fermionic excitation operators, especially in the era of NISQ computers. Motivated by the advantage of qubit-excitation-based ans\"atze, I introduce the qubit-excitation-based adaptive variational quantum eigensolver (QEB-ADAPT-VQE). The QEB-ADAPT-VQE belongs to a family of ADAPT-VQE protocols for molecular modelling that grow a problem-tailored ansatz by iteratively appending unitary operators sampled from a predefined finite-size pool of operators. The operator at each iteration is sampled based on an ansatz-growing strategy, which aims to achieve the lowest estimate for the Hamiltonian expectation value at each iteration. In this way, ADAPT-VQE protocols construct shallow-circuit, few-parameter ans\"atze tailored specifically to the molecular systems of interest. In the case of the QEB-ADAPT-VQE, the operator pool is defined by a set of evolutions of single and double qubit excitation operators. I benchmark the performance of the QEB-ADAPT-VQE, by performing classical numerical simulations. I demonstrate that it can construct ans\"atze that are several orders of magnitude more accurate, and require significantly shallower circuits, than standard UCC ans\"atze. I also compare the QEB-ADAPT-VQE against the original fermionic-ADAPT-VQE, which utilizes a pool of fermionic excitation evolutions, and the qubit-ADAPT-VQE, which utilizes a pool of Pauli-string evolutions. I demonstrate that, in terms of circuit efficiency and convergence speed, the QEB-ADAPT-VQE systematically outperforms the qubit-ADAPT-VQE, which to my knowledge was the previous most circuit-efficient, scalable VQE protocol for molecular modeling. The QEB-ADAPT-VQE protocol, therefore represents a significant improvement in the field of VQE protocols for molecular modelling and brings us closer to achieving practical quantum advantage. Lastly, I outline a modified version of the QEB-ADAPT-VQE, the excited-QEB-ADAPT-VQE, designed to estimate energies of excited molecular states. The excited-QEB-ADAPT-VQE is more robust to initial simulation conditions, at the expense of increased computational complexity.I acknowledge the funding I received from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and Hitachi Cambridge Laborator

Dubrovin Type Equations for Completely Integrable Systems Associated with a Polynomial Pencil

Dubrovin type equations for the N -gap solution of a completely integrable system associated with a polynomial pencil is constructed and then integrated to a system of functional equations. The approach used to derive those results is a generalization of the familiar process of finding the 1-soliton (1-gap) solution by integrating the ODE obtained from the soliton equation via the substitution u = u(x + λt)

Applying Free Microvascular Latissimus Dorsi Flaps for Reconstruction of Post-Ablative Defects Affecting the Skull Base

Introduction: Tumors of the head and neck area are complex and pose a significant challenge for radical resection and subsequent reconstruction especially when the skull base is affected. With evolution in surgical reconstructive techniques, better reconstruction of these complex post-ablative defects is now possible and facilitates more aggressive surgical management. The aim of this study was to investigate the course of reconstructive treatment and outcomes with use of free microvascular latissimus dorsi flaps after tumor ablation of skull base penetrating malignancies.Material and methods: All extensive skull base tumor resections with latissimus dorsi free flap reconstruction made in the General University hospital Gregorio Marañón, between January 2010 and December 2012 were reviewed.Results: Three different types of free latissimus dorsi flaps were used being the grafted muscle flap the most common one. Complications occurred in 44.4 % of patients but no flaps were lost. Two latissimus dorsi donor site seromas were observed (22.2%).Conclusion: For the reconstruction aim of extensive skull base defects, the latissimus dorsi free flap seems to be a reliable option

The Bulgarian Foreign and Domestic Debt – A No-Arbitrage Macrofinancial View

Bulgaria started the transition in the early 90’s with a sovereign default and debt restructuring. Later on, under a strict fiscal discipline, the country succeeded to reduce significantly its debt burden and is currently among the top EU performers in that respect. The current debt outstanding is composed mainly of local currency treasuries issued on the domestic market as well as Eurobonds and Global bonds on the international one. These instruments give rise to two risky spreads - credit and currency. The Currency Board Arrangement and the fixed exchange rate regime the country follows prevent from a discretionary monetary policy and this gives relative stability to the bonds’ yields and the risky spreads. Their financial role starts dominating over any macroeconomic one making them a natural object for investigation with financial engineering tools. The main focus of the paper is an analysis of the informational content of the risky spreads in a multifaceted way from noarbitrage,financial, and macroeconomic points of view.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133049/1/wp1032.pd

Breast augmentation and breast implants evolution

Female breast is a universal symbol of sexuality, motherhood and femininity today, dating back even to the time of ancient cave paintings. Historically, women have long sought breast enlargement to improve physical proportions, to foster a more feminine appearance, or to enhance self-image. When compared to the aesthetic norm, inadequate breast volume may lead to a negative body image, feelings of inadequacy, and low self-esteem. These disturbances may adversely affect a patient`s interpersonal relationships, sexual fulfillment, and quality of life. Since its introduction in 1962, modern breast augmentation with implants has become one of the most common aesthetic procedures, receiving more media attention than any other. It remains an increasingly popular surgical intervention today where the idealized female physique has morphed from the curvaceous Rubens type to one increasingly thin and androgynous, but with prominent breasts. The popularity of the procedure is thought to be based on the satisfaction of the patients` results. Breast enlargement and reshaping with breast implants nowadays is a safe, well-accepted technique, which can be undertaken with ever-less frequent complications thanks to continued advances in both surgical technique and implant design. The purpose of the present article is to make a brief review of the history of breast augmentation as a surgical procedure and the evolution of breast implants