Reversible Pebbling Game for Quantum Memory Management

Quantum memory management is becoming a pressing problem, especially given the recent research effort to develop new and more complex quantum algorithms. The only existing automatic method for quantum states clean-up relies on the availability of many extra resources. In this work, we propose an automatic tool for quantum memory management. We show how this problem exactly matches the reversible pebbling game. Based on that, we develop a SAT-based algorithm that returns a valid clean-up strategy, taking the limitations of the quantum hardware into account. The developed tool empowers the designer with the flexibility required to explore the trade-off between memory resources and number of operations. We present three show-cases to prove the validity of our approach. First, we apply the algorithm to straight-line programs, widely used in cryptographic applications. Second, we perform a comparison with the existing approach, showing an average improvement of 52.77%. Finally, we show the advantage of using the tool when synthesizing a quantum circuit on a constrained near-term quantum device.Comment: In Proc. Design Automation and Test in Europe (DATE 2019

Addiction trajectories

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addicted.pregnant.poor

addicted.pregnant.poor is an ethnography addressing the biomedical, social, political, and ethical dimensions of ongoing illicit drug use during pregnancy. A result of four years of fieldwork in daily-rent hotels – privately owned buildings in which the exploitation of women’s sex work and on-going poor health was normative – the book follows nineteen women who had twenty-three pregnancies. To answer the question ‘What forms of life are possible here?’ I engaged with the social actors who are called upon to produce knowledge about addicted pregnancy, including addicted, pregnant women; an anthropologist; public health epidemiologists; advocates; social policymakers; treatment professionals; bureaucrats; and scientists. In this essay, I describe the relationship between the scientific contours of reproductive health and the personal and social consequences of pregnancy in the context of addiction and housing instability. Pregnant women in the daily-rent hotels existed within multiple temporalities. Here I explore what an ethnographic understanding of memorial time and biomedical time can teach us about the vital politics of viability at work in addicted pregnancy

"We Really Help, Taking Care of Each Other": Older Homeless Adults as Caregivers.

Objectives:Many older homeless adults maintain contact with family. We conducted a qualitative study examining the role of family caregiving for older homeless adults. Method:We conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with a sample of 46 homeless participants who reported spending at least one night with a housed family member in the prior 6 months. Results:A total of 13 of 46 older adult participants provided caregiving. Themes included (a) the death of the care recipient led to the participant's homelessness; (b) feeling a duty to act as caregivers; (c) providing care in exchange for housing; (d) caregivers' ability to stay was tenuous; (e) providing care conflicted with the caregiver's needs; and (f) resentment when family was ungrateful. Discussion:In a sample of older homeless adults in contact with family, many provided caregiving for housed family. For some, caregiving precipitated homelessness; for others, caregiving provided temporary respite from homelessness, and for others, caregiving continued during homelessness

The Himmelfarb Library Annual Art Show: Celebrating the Creative Abilities of Faculty, Staff, and Students

Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library at the George Washington University has held an annual art show since 1987. Students, staff, faculty, and clinicians from the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, the School of Public Health and Health Services, the School of Nursing, the GW Hospital, and Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library are invited to submit artwork to be displayed throughout the first floor of the library in a month-long display. The talent of the artists is celebrated at an opening reception where light refreshments are served and students, staff, and faculty mingle and view the art. Library art shows serve as an opportunity to share and celebrate talents outside of the health sciences and as an avenue for networking between all members of the library and medical academic arena. The Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library Annual Art Show fosters a sense of community; the spirit of creativity and imagination weaves its way through the opening reception as well as throughout the library during the span of the show. In addition, the art show helps to promote the visibility of the library, not only through art show marketing efforts but also by attracting new and returning patrons to visit and view the art

Developing a Response to Secondary Trauma for American Indian and Rural Service Providers

How can victim service providers, the organizations they work for, and the communities they serve help respond to the issue of occupation-based secondary trauma? Over the last few years, federal agencies in the United States have spent millions in research and programming to answer this important scientific and policy question. The current study builds on this work by describing and evaluating a community-based participatory research project focused on finding manageable, effective, sustainable, and ethical ways to respond to occupation-based secondary trauma in two separate communities: a rural American Indian community, Blackfeet Tribal Nation, and a predominantly white county in Montana, Gallatin County, United States. Findings from evaluation questionnaires (n=178; 80.10% women; 64.60% American Indian; 29.14% White) representing a wide range of occupations document that: (1) the implementation of the project was successful; (2) toolkits created for the project were useful to both individual participants and organizations; (3) training outcomes improved significantly; and (4) findings were consistent across the two different community contexts. Contributions, lessons learned, and future directions are discussed

Identifying Apparel Attributes: The Relationship between Risks, Perceived Copyright Infringement and Purchase Intention of Knockoff Fashion Apparel Products

The success of fast fashion retailers has some industry leaders calling for copyright protection for apparel and closely aligned fashion products (Cline, 2012). Establishing criteria to determine what constitutes apparel copyright infringement is extremely difficult, as few designs are completely original (Raustiala & Sprigman, 2006). Apparel attributes are pertinent to purchase intention of fashion apparel and could influence perceived copyright infringement of knockoff fashion apparel products. The primary purpose of this study was to identify prominent visual fashion apparel attributes that could determine perceived copyright infringement. A secondary purpose was to examine the relationships among fashion apparel attributes, perceived copyright infringement, perceived risk, and purchase intention of knockoff fashion apparel. Researchers have identified apparel attribute factors including: Quality (Wee, Tan, & Cheok, 1995), appearance (Abraham-Murali & Littrell, 1995; Zhang, Li, Gong, and Wu, 2002), aesthetics (Abraham-Murali & Littrell, 1995) and functionality (Zhang, et al., 2002)

Assortative Mating and Partner Influence: Problem Behavior across the Life Course

Why do individuals select romantic partners who use drugs, are criminals, or have mental health problems, a choice that eventually puts them and their children at increased risk for negative developmental outcomes? Theoretically, assortative mating and partner influence are both plausible explanations. Results from a systematic literature review found that the research is split. All cross-sectional, retrospective studies except one supported assortative mating over partner influence. In contrast, all prospective studies supported partner influence. Studying the problem behaviors of romantic couples across the life course is challenging and differences in findings likely result from a number of methodological obstacles. The aim of this study was to use dyadic data from the Rochester Youth Development Study and the Rochester Intergenerational Study to examine these competing hypotheses. Partial correlations and actor-partner interdependence models estimated social homogamy, partner similarity, assortative mating, contagion, and partner influence effects. Heterotypic associations, different types of romantic relationships, and gender differences were also explored. Although social homogamy and partner similarity on problem behavior is evident, little support for assortative mating, except on drug use, and virtually no support for partner influence is found using the Rochester data. Findings do indicate, however, that a comprehensive explanation of partner similarity requires a refined consideration of heterotypic problem behaviors across the life course

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Sedentary Time and Behaviour in Children and Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

The aim of this meta-analysis was to quantify the change in sedentary time during the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on health outcomes in the general population. One thousand six hundred and one articles published after 2019 were retrieved from five databases, of which 64 and 40 were included in the systematic review and meta-analysis, respectively. Studies were grouped according to population: children (65 years). Average sedentary time was calculated, with sub-analyses performed by country, behaviour type and health outcomes. Children were most affected, increasing their sedentary time by 159.5 ± 142.6 min day−1, followed by adults (+126.9 ± 42.2 min day−1) and older adults (+46.9 ± 22.0 min day−1). There were no sex differences in any age group. Screen time was the only consistently measured behaviour and accounted for 46.8% and 57.2% of total sedentary time in children and adults, respectively. Increases in sedentary time were negatively correlated with global mental health, depression, anxiety and quality of life, irrespective of age. Whilst lockdown negatively affected all age groups, children were more negatively affected than adults or older adults, highlighting this population as a key intervention target. As lockdowns ease worldwide, strategies should be employed to reduce time spent sedentary. Trial registration: PROSPERO (CRD42020208909

Preliminary design of the redundant software experiment

The goal of the present experiment is to characterize the fault distributions of highly reliable software replicates, constructed using techniques and environments which are similar to those used in comtemporary industrial software facilities. The fault distributions and their effect on the reliability of fault tolerant configurations of the software will be determined through extensive life testing of the replicates against carefully constructed randomly generated test data. Each detected error will be carefully analyzed to provide insight in to their nature and cause. A direct objective is to develop techniques for reducing the intensity of coincident errors, thus increasing the reliability gain which can be achieved with fault tolerance. Data on the reliability gains realized, and the cost of the fault tolerant configurations can be used to design a companion experiment to determine the cost effectiveness of the fault tolerant strategy. Finally, the data and analysis produced by this experiment will be valuable to the software engineering community as a whole because it will provide a useful insight into the nature and cause of hard to find, subtle faults which escape standard software engineering validation techniques and thus persist far into the software life cycle