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A pilot study of a text messaging intervention to modify illness and medication beliefs amongst patients diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease
Intentional and unintentional medication non-adherence is a particular challenge for patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Non-adherence can affect patients’ quality of life, which can result in unfavorable treatment outcomes, more hospitalizations, and higher healthcare-related costs. The purpose of this study was to assess whether a tailored text message intervention designed to modify illness and medication adherence beliefs in patients with IBD would increase treatment compliance and change patients’ illness perceptions and medication concerns. This pilot study utilized a pre-test-post-test non-randomized design. A sample of 32 IBD patients was recruited within the UK. Participants’ medication beliefs and illness perception scores determined the set of tailored daily text messages, which were sent to patients over duration of 12 weeks. Medication adherence increased post-intervention, as “forgetting to take medication” decreased while “never” forgetting to take medication increased over time. A significant increase in treatment control and coherence and a decreased level of concern surrounding their condition was evident. Participants’ level of concern towards their medications changed during the 12 weeks, with a baseline mean concern score of 3.08 (.57) in comparison to the 12 weeks mean concern score of 2.89 (.59), which is statistically different, t (31) = 2.16, p < .038, r = .36 (medium effect). Sixty-six percent of participants from the baseline were aware of the necessity of their medication: “without my medication I would become ill.” The results have direct implications for improving medication adherence and changing illness and medication beliefs. This study validated the benefits of text messages and highlighted the importance of addressing these beliefs in order to understand the reasons for non-adherence fully
Novel schemes for measurement-based quantum computation
We establish a framework which allows one to construct novel schemes for
measurement-based quantum computation. The technique further develops tools
from many-body physics - based on finitely correlated or projected entangled
pair states - to go beyond the cluster-state based one-way computer. We
identify resource states that are radically different from the cluster state,
in that they exhibit non-vanishing correlation functions, can partly be
prepared using gates with non-maximal entangling power, or have very different
local entanglement properties. In the computational models, the randomness is
compensated in a different manner. It is shown that there exist resource states
which are locally arbitrarily close to a pure state. Finally, we comment on the
possibility of tailoring computational models to specific physical systems as,
e.g. cold atoms in optical lattices.Comment: 5 pages RevTeX, 1 figure, many diagrams. Title changed, presentation
improved, material adde
Combining Generalized Phase Contrast with matched filtering into a versatile beam shaping approach
The Spectral Dimension of 2D Quantum Gravity
We show that the spectral dimension d_s of two-dimensional quantum gravity
coupled to Gaussian fields is two for all values of the central charge c <= 1.
The same arguments provide a simple proof of the known result d_s= 4/3 for
branched polymers.Comment: 7 pages, Late
Quantum Teleportation of Optical Quantum Gates
We show that a universal set of gates for quantum computation with optics can
be quantum teleported through the use of EPR entangled states, homodyne
detection, and linear optics and squeezing operations conditioned on
measurement outcomes. This scheme may be used for fault-tolerant quantum
computation in any optical scheme (qubit or continuous variable). The
teleportation of nondeterministic nonlinear gates employed in linear optics
quantum computation is discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, published versio
Necessary and sufficient conditions for bipartite entanglement
Necessary and sufficient conditions for bipartite entanglement are derived,
which apply to arbitrary Hilbert spaces. Motivated by the concept of witnesses,
optimized entanglement inequalities are formulated solely in terms of arbitrary
Hermitian operators, which makes them useful for applications in experiments.
The needed optimization procedure is based on a separability eigenvalue
problem, whose analytical solutions are derived for a special class of
projection operators. For general Hermitian operators, a numerical
implementation of entanglement tests is proposed. It is also shown how to
identify bound entangled states with positive partial transposition.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figur
Can the X(3872) be a 1^{++} four-quark state?
We use QCD spectral sum rules to test the nature of the meson X(3872),
assumed to be an exotic four-quark (c\bar{c}q\bar{q}) state with J^{PC}=1^{++}.
For definiteness, we work with the current proposed recently by Maiani et al
[1], at leading order in \alpha_s, consider the contributions of higher
dimension condensates and keep terms which are linear in the light quark mass
m_q. We find M_X=(3925+- 127) MeV which is compatible, within the errors, with
he experimental candidate X(3872), while the SU(3) breaking-terms lead to an
unusual mass-splitting M_{X^{s}}-M_X=- (61+-30) MeV. The mass-difference
between the neutral states due to isospin violation of about (2.6-3.9) MeV is
much smaller than the value (8+-3) MeV proposed in [1]. For the b-quark, we
predict M_{X_b}= (10144+-106) MeV for the X_b(b\bar{b}q \bar{q}), which is much
below the {\bar B}B* threshold in contrast to the {\bar B}B* molecule
prediction [2], and for the X_b^s(b\bar{b}s \bar{s}), a mass-splitting
M_{X^s_{b}}-M_{X_b}=-(121+-182) MeV. Our analysis also indicates that the
mass-splitting between the ground state and the radial excitation of about
(225~250) MeV is much smaller than in the case of ordinary mesons and is
(within the errors) flavour-independent. We also extract the decay constants,
analogous to f_\pi, of such mesons, which are useful for further studies of
their leptonic and hadronic decay widths. The uncertainties of our estimates
are mainly due to the ones from the c and b quark masses.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures. Version to appear in Phys. Rev.
Mode-Field Radius of Photonic Crystal Fibers Expressed by the V-parameter
We numerically calculate the equivalent mode-field radius of the fundamental
mode in a photonic crystal fiber (PCF) and show that this is a function of the
V-parameter only and not the relative hole size. This dependency is similar to
what is found for graded-index standard fibers and we furthermore show that the
relation for the PCF can be excellently approximated with the same general
mathematical expression. This is to our knowledge the first semi-analytical
description of the mode-field radius of a PCF.Comment: Accepted for Opt. Let
Fast Universal Quantum Computation with Railroad-switch Local Hamiltonians
We present two universal models of quantum computation with a
time-independent, frustration-free Hamiltonian. The first construction uses
3-local (qubit) projectors, and the second one requires only 2-local
qubit-qutrit projectors. We build on Feynman's Hamiltonian computer idea and
use a railroad-switch type clock register. The resources required to simulate a
quantum circuit with L gates in this model are O(L) small-dimensional quantum
systems (qubits or qutrits), a time-independent Hamiltonian composed of O(L)
local, constant norm, projector terms, the possibility to prepare computational
basis product states, a running time O(L log^2 L), and the possibility to
measure a few qubits in the computational basis. Our models also give a
simplified proof of the universality of 3-local Adiabatic Quantum Computation.Comment: Added references to work by de Falco et al., and realized that
Feynman's '85 paper already contained the idea of a switch in i
Observing different phases for the dynamics of entanglement in an ion trap
The evolution of the entanglement between two oscillators coupled to a common
thermal environment is non-trivial. The long time limit has three qualitatively
different behaviors (phases) depending on parameters such as the temperature of
the bath ({\em Phys. Rev. Lett.} \textbf{100}, 220401). The phases include
cases with non-vanishing long-term entanglement, others with a final
disentangled state, and situations displaying an infinite sequence of events of
disappearance and revival of entanglement. We describe an experiment to realize
these different scenarios in an ion trap. The motional degrees of freedom of
two ions are used to simulate the system while the coupling to an extra
(central) ion, which is continuously laser cooled, is the gateway to a
decohering reservoir. The scheme proposed allows for the observation and
control of motional entanglement dynamics, and is an example of a class of
simulations of quantum open systems in the non-Markovian regime.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
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