Quantum algorithms for subset finding

Recently, Ambainis gave an O(N^(2/3))-query quantum walk algorithm for element distinctness, and more generally, an O(N^(L/(L+1)))-query algorithm for finding L equal numbers. We point out that this algorithm actually solves a much more general problem, the problem of finding a subset of size L that satisfies any given property. We review the algorithm and give a considerably simplified analysis of its query complexity. We present several applications, including two algorithms for the problem of finding an L-clique in an N-vertex graph. One of these algorithms uses O(N^(2L/(L+1))) edge queries, and the other uses \tilde{O}(N^((5L-2)/(2L+4))), which is an improvement for L <= 5. The latter algorithm generalizes a recent result of Magniez, Santha, and Szegedy, who considered the case L=3 (finding a triangle). We also pose two open problems regarding continuous time quantum walk and lower bounds.Comment: 7 pages; note added on related results in quant-ph/031013

Complementary and alternative medical therapy utilization by people with chronic fatiguing illnesses in the United States

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Chronic fatiguing illnesses, including chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), pose a diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. Previous clinical reports addressed the utilization of health care provided to patients with CFS by a variety of practitioners with other than allopathic training, but did not examine the spectrum of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies used. This study was designed to measure CAM therapy use by persons with fatiguing illnesses in the United States population.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>During a random-digit dialing survey to estimate the prevalence of CFS-like illness in urban and rural populations from different geographic regions of the United States, we queried the utilization of CAM including manipulation or body-based therapies, alternative medical systems, mind-body, biologically-based, and energy modalities.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Four hundred forty fatigued and 444 non-fatigued persons from 2,728 households completed screening. Fatigued subjects included 53 persons with prolonged fatigue, 338 with chronic fatigue, and 49 with CFS-like illness. Mind-body therapy (primarily personal prayer and prayer by others) was the most frequently used CAM across all groups. Among women, there was a significant trend of increasing overall CAM use across all subgroups (p-trend = 0.003). All categories of CAM use were associated with significantly poorer physical health scores, and all but one (alternative medicine systems) were associated with significantly poorer mental health scores. People with CFS-like illness were significantly more likely to use body-based therapy (chiropractic and massage) than non-fatigued participants (OR = 2.52, CI = 1.32, 4.82). Use of body-based therapies increased significantly in a linear trend across subgroups of non-fatigued, prolonged fatigued, chronic fatigued, and CFS-like subjects (p-trend = 0.002). People with chronic fatigue were also significantly more likely to use body-based therapy (OR = 1.52, CI = 1.07, 2.16) and mind-body (excluding prayer) therapy than non-fatigued participants (OR = 1.73, CI = 1.20 – 2.48).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Utilization of CAM was common in fatiguing illnesses, and was largely accounted for by the presence of underlying conditions and poor physical and mental health. Compared to non-fatigued persons, those with CFS-like illness or chronic fatigue were most likely to use body-based and mind-body therapies. These observations have important implications for provider education programs and development of intervention strategies for CFS.</p

Identification of Atg5-dependent transcriptional changes and increases in mitochondrial mass in Atg5-deficient T lymphocytes

Autophagy is implicated in many functions of mammalian cells such as organelle recycling, survival and differentiation, and is essential for the maintenance of T and B lymphocytes. Here, we demonstrate that autophagy is a constitutive process during T cell development. Deletion of the essential autophagy genes Atg5 or Atg7 in T cells resulted in decreased thymocyte and peripheral T cell numbers, and Atg5-deficient T cells had a decrease in cell survival. We employed functional-genetic and integrative computational analyses to elucidate specific functions of the autophagic process in developing T-lineage lymphocytes. Our whole-genome transcriptional profiling identified a set of 699 genes differentially expressed in Atg5-deficient and Atg5-sufficient thymocytes (Atg5-dependent gene set). Strikingly, the Atg5-dependent gene set was dramatically enriched in genes encoding proteins associated with the mitochondrion. In support of a role for autophagy in mitochondrial maintenance in T lineage cells, the deletion of Atg5 led to increased mitochondrial mass in peripheral T cells. We also observed a correlation between mitochondrial mass and Annexin-V staining in peripheral T cells. We propose that autophagy is critical for mitochondrial maintenance and T cell survival. We speculate that, similar to its role in yeast or mammalian liver cells, autophagy is required in T cells for the removal of damaged or aging mitochondria and that this contributes to the cell death of autophagy-deficient T cells

In-roads to the spread of antibiotic resistance: regional patterns of microbial transmission in northern coastal Ecuador

The evolution of antibiotic resistance (AR) increases treatment cost and probability of failure, threatening human health worldwide. The relative importance of individual antibiotic use, environmental transmission and rates of introduction of resistant bacteria in explaining community AR patterns is poorly understood. Evaluating their relative importance requires studying a region where they vary. The construction of a new road in a previously roadless area of northern coastal Ecuador provides a valuable natural experiment to study how changes in the social and natural environment affect the epidemiology of resistant Escherichia coli. We conducted seven bi-annual 15 day surveys of AR between 2003 and 2008 in 21 villages. Resistance to both ampicillin and sulphamethoxazole was the most frequently observed profile, based on antibiogram tests of seven antibiotics from 2210 samples. The prevalence of enteric bacteria with this resistance pair in the less remote communities was 80 per cent higher than in more remote communities (OR = 1.8 [1.3, 2.3]). This pattern could not be explained with data on individual antibiotic use. We used a transmission model to help explain this observed discrepancy. The model analysis suggests that both transmission and the rate of introduction of resistant bacteria into communities may contribute to the observed regional scale AR patterns, and that village-level antibiotic use rate determines which of these two factors predominate. While usually conceived as a main effect on individual risk, antibiotic use rate is revealed in this analysis as an effect modifier with regard to community-level risk of resistance

Attitudes towards fibromyalgia: A survey of Canadian chiropractic, naturopathic, physical therapy and occupational therapy students

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The frequent use of chiropractic, naturopathic, and physical and occupational therapy by patients with fibromyalgia has been emphasized repeatedly, but little is known about the attitudes of these therapists towards this challenging condition.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We administered a cross-sectional survey to 385 senior Canadian chiropractic, naturopathic, physical and occupational therapy students in their final year of studies, that inquired about attitudes towards the diagnosis and management of fibromyalgia.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>336 students completed the survey (response rate 87%). While they disagreed about the etiology (primarily psychological 28%, physiological 23%, psychological and physiological 15%, unsure 34%), the majority (58%) reported that fibromyalgia was difficult to manage. Respondants were also conflicted in whether treatment should prioritize symptom relief (65%) or functional gains (85%), with the majority (58%) wanting to do both. The majority of respondents (57%) agreed that there was effective treatment for fibromyalgia and that they possessed the required clinical skills to manage patients (55%).</p> <p>Chiropractic students were most skeptical in regards to fibromyalgia as a useful diagnostic entity, and most likely to endorse a psychological etiology. In our regression model, only training in naturopathic medicine (unstandardized regression coefficient = 0.33; 95% confidence interval = 0.11 to 0.56) and the belief that effective therapies existed (unstandardized regression coefficient = 0.42; 95% confidence interval = 0.30 to 0.54) were associated with greater confidence in managing patients with fibromyalgia.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The majority of senior Canadian chiropractic, naturopathic, physical and occupational therapy students, and in particular those with naturopathic training, believe that effective treatment for fibromyalgia exists and that they possess the clinical skillset to effectively manage this disorder. The majority place high priority on both symptom relief and functional gains when treating fibromyalgia.</p

Structure-Based Design of Non-Natural Amino Acid Inhibitors of Amyloid Fibrillation

Many globular and natively disordered proteins can convert into amyloid fibers. These fibers are associated with numerous pathologies1 as well as with normal cellular functions2,3, and frequently form during protein denaturation4,5. Inhibitors of pathological amyloid fibers could serve as leads for therapeutics, provided the inhibitors were specific enough to avoid interfering with normal processes. Here we show that computer-aided, structure-based design can yield highly specific peptide inhibitors of amyloid formation. Using known atomic structures of segments of amyloid fibers as templates, we have designed and characterized an all D-amino acid inhibitor of fibrillation of the tau protein found in Alzheimer’s disease, and a non-natural L-amino acid inhibitor of an amyloid fiber that enhances sexual transmission of HIV. Our results indicate that peptides from structure-based designs can disrupt the fibrillation of full-length proteins, including those like tau that lack fully ordered native structures.We thank M.I. Ivanova, J. Corn, T. Kortemme, D. Anderson, M.R. Sawaya, M. Phillips, S. Sambashivan, J. Park, M. Landau, Q. Zhang, R. Clubb, F. Guo, T. Yeates, J. Nowick, J. Zheng, and M.J. Thompson for discussions, HHMI, NIH, NSF, the GATES foundation, and the Joint Center for Translational Medicine for support, R. Peterson for help with NMR experiments, E. Mandelkow for providing tau constructs, R. Riek for providing amyloid beta, J. Stroud for amyloid beta preparation. Support for JK was from the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, for HWC by the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award, for JM from the programme for junior-professors by the ministry of science, Baden-Württemberg, and for SAS by a UCLA-IGERT bioinformatics traineeship

BLOOM: A 176B-Parameter Open-Access Multilingual Language Model

Large language models (LLMs) have been shown to be able to perform new tasks based on a few demonstrations or natural language instructions. While these capabilities have led to widespread adoption, most LLMs are developed by resource-rich organizations and are frequently kept from the public. As a step towards democratizing this powerful technology, we present BLOOM, a 176B-parameter open-access language model designed and built thanks to a collaboration of hundreds of researchers. BLOOM is a decoder-only Transformer language model that was trained on the ROOTS corpus, a dataset comprising hundreds of sources in 46 natural and 13 programming languages (59 in total). We find that BLOOM achieves competitive performance on a wide variety of benchmarks, with stronger results after undergoing multitask prompted finetuning. To facilitate future research and applications using LLMs, we publicly release our models and code under the Responsible AI License