Determinism in the one-way model

We introduce a flow condition on open graph states (graph states with inputs and outputs) which guarantees globally deterministic behavior of a class of measurement patterns defined over them. Dependent Pauli corrections are derived for all such patterns, which equalize all computation branches, and only depend on the underlying entanglement graph and its choice of inputs and outputs. The class of patterns having flow is stable under composition and tensorization, and has unitary embeddings as realizations. The restricted class of patterns having both flow and reverse flow, supports an operation of adjunction, and has all and only unitaries as realizations.Comment: 8 figures, keywords: measurement based quantum computing, deterministic computing; Published version, including a new section on circuit decompositio

Finite temperature elastic constants of paramagnetic materials within the disordered local moment picture from ab initio molecular dynamics calculations

We present a theoretical scheme to calculate the elastic constants of magnetic materials in the high-temperature paramagnetic state. Our approach is based on a combination of disordered local moments picture and ab initio molecular dynamics (DLM-MD). Moreover, we investigate a possibility to enhance the efficiency of the simulations of elastic properties using recently introduced method: symmetry imposed force constant temperature dependent effective potential (SIFC-TDEP). We have chosen cubic paramagnetic CrN as a model system. This is done due to its technological importance and its demonstrated strong coupling between magnetic and lattice degrees of freedom. We have studied the temperature dependent single-crystal and polycrystalline elastic constants of paramagentic CrN up to 1200 K. The obtained results at T= 300 K agree well with the experimental values of polycrystalline elastic constants as well as Poisson ratio at room temperature. We observe that the Young's modulus is strongly dependent on temperature, decreasing by ~14% from T=300 K to 1200 K. In addition we have studied the elastic anisotropy of CrN as a function of temperature and we observe that CrN becomes substantially more isotropic as the temperature increases. We demonstrate that the use of Birch law may lead to substantial errors for calculations of temperature induced changes of elastic moduli. The proposed methodology can be used for accurate predictions of mechanical properties of magnetic materials at temperatures above their magnetic order-disorder phase transition.Comment: 1 table, 3 figure

Unconditionally verifiable blind computation

Blind Quantum Computing (BQC) allows a client to have a server carry out a quantum computation for them such that the client's input, output and computation remain private. A desirable property for any BQC protocol is verification, whereby the client can verify with high probability whether the server has followed the instructions of the protocol, or if there has been some deviation resulting in a corrupted output state. A verifiable BQC protocol can be viewed as an interactive proof system leading to consequences for complexity theory. The authors, together with Broadbent, previously proposed a universal and unconditionally secure BQC scheme where the client only needs to be able to prepare single qubits in separable states randomly chosen from a finite set and send them to the server, who has the balance of the required quantum computational resources. In this paper we extend that protocol with new functionality allowing blind computational basis measurements, which we use to construct a new verifiable BQC protocol based on a new class of resource states. We rigorously prove that the probability of failing to detect an incorrect output is exponentially small in a security parameter, while resource overhead remains polynomial in this parameter. The new resource state allows entangling gates to be performed between arbitrary pairs of logical qubits with only constant overhead. This is a significant improvement on the original scheme, which required that all computations to be performed must first be put into a nearest neighbour form, incurring linear overhead in the number of qubits. Such an improvement has important consequences for efficiency and fault-tolerance thresholds.Comment: 46 pages, 10 figures. Additional protocol added which allows arbitrary circuits to be verified with polynomial securit

Genomic and molecular characterization of a novel quorum sensing molecule in Bacillus licheniformis

Abstract Quorum sensing molecules (QSMs) are involved in the regulation of complicated processes helping bacterial populations respond to changes in their cell-density. Although the QS gene cluster (comQXPA) has been identified in the genome sequence of some bacilli, the QS system B. licheniformis has not been investigated in detail, and its QSM (ComX pheromone) has not been identified. Given the importance of this antagonistic bacterium as an industrial workhorse, this study was aimed to elucidate B. licheniformis NCIMB-8874 QS. The results obtained from bioinformatics studies on the whole genome sequence of this strain confirmed the presence of essential quorum sensing-related genes. Although polymorphism was verified in three proteins of this cluster, ComQ, precursor-ComX and ComP, the transcription factor ComA was confirmed as the most conserved protein. The cell–cell communication of B. licheniformis NCIMB-8874 was investigated through further elucidation of the ComX pheromone as 13-amino acid peptide. The peptide sequence of the pheromone has been described through biochemical characterisation

Lecturers’ commitment and students’ academic achievement: Viewed from teaching evaluation result

The purpose of this research is to measure the relevance of the Teaching Evaluation Result (TER) as a tool in evaluating the commitment of the lecturers in delivering the course taught.The TER questionnaires should be evaluated from time to time to ensure the quality, reliability and the applicability of each questions represented the commitment of lecturer.The respondents are foundation students (N=433) together with a total of 4 lecturers teaching the surveyed 7 courses. Students’ academic achievement evaluated from their final exam grades and the students are comprised of 85% Indian, 10% Malay and 5% Chinese.Surprisingly, the finding stated that there are more than 30% of the students who have obtained a grade of A- and better, the TER was < 80%.At the same token10% of the students who have secured a grade of A- and better, the TER was � 80%.This indicates that a high TER score does not guarantee that the students will perform well academically even though their lecturers give a full commitment.The mean scores of at least two groups of courses are significantly different at � = 0.05 level and the mean score of the grades of at least two groups of lecturers are significantly different at � = 0.05 level.Thus, the method of Kolmogorov-Smirnov was used to obtain the existence of normality.The results indicated that all of the variables are generally not normally distributed even at a significant level of � = 0.01.Therefore, it was found that 13 out of 17 of TER questionnaires to be significant at � = 0.01 and 3 out of 17 TER questionnaires to be significant at � = 0.05. However, 1 out of 17 of the questionnaires is not significant.Conclusion, the finding helps the management of the university on the relevance of TER used to measure the lecturer’s commitment.However, due to the limitation and the unavailability of matching each student TER towards each lecturers, therefore, the results presented herein is weakly conclusive.It is recommended that future research to incorporate the matching of students TER be made with the lecturers to obtain reliable and conclusive result

Alcohol-dysregulated miR-30a and miR-934 in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

BackgroundAlcohol consumption is a well-established risk factor for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC); however, the molecular mechanisms by which alcohol promotes HNSCC pathogenesis and progression remain poorly understood. Our study sought to identify microRNAs that are dysregulated in alcohol-associated HNSCC and investigate their contribution to the malignant phenotype.MethodUsing RNA-sequencing data from 136 HNSCC patients, we compared the expression levels of 1,046 microRNAs between drinking and non-drinking cohorts. Dysregulated microRNAs were verified by qRT-PCR in normal oral keratinocytes treated with biologically relevant doses of ethanol and acetaldehyde. The most promising microRNA candidates were investigated for their effects on cellular proliferation and invasion, sensitivity to cisplatin, and expression of cancer stem cell genes. Finally, putative target genes were identified and evaluated in vitro to further establish roles for these miRNAs in alcohol-associated HNSCC.ResultsFrom RNA-sequencing analysis we identified 8 miRNAs to be significantly upregulated in alcohol-associated HNSCCs. qRT-PCR experiments determined that among these candidates, miR-30a and miR-934 were the most highly upregulated in vitro by alcohol and acetaldehyde. Overexpression of miR-30a and miR-934 in normal and HNSCC cell lines produced up to a 2-fold increase in cellular proliferation, as well as induction of the anti-apoptotic gene BCL-2. Upon inhibition of these miRNAs, HNSCC cell lines exhibited increased sensitivity to cisplatin and reduced matrigel invasion. miRNA knockdown also indicated direct targeting of several tumor suppressor genes by miR-30a and miR-934.ConclusionsAlcohol induces the dysregulation of miR-30a and miR-934, which may play crucial roles in HNSCC pathogenesis and progression. Future investigation of the alcohol-mediated pathways effecting these transformations will prove valuable for furthering the understanding and treatment of alcohol-associated HNSCC

A comparative study on different cooling strategies for lithium-ion battery cells

In this study a 1D electrochemical-thermal model is coupled with a 3D thermal model in order to predict the heat generation and corresponding temperature distribution in a battery cell. The developed model is verified against experimental data for a 20 Ah lithium iron phosphate (LFP) which is operating at 20 °C ambient temperature. The model is then adjusted to accommodate for 10Ah and 40 Ah cells by decreasing and increasing the surface area of each cell as well as the tab dimensions. The temperature distribution of the different cells are studied employing fin cooling as well as indirect liquid cooling system. Simulation results highlight that the temperature gradient within the surface of the 40 Ah cell is almost 1.9 and 1.3 times that of the 10 Ah and 20 Ah cells, respectively. Moreover, it is found that the fin cooling method by employing aluminium plates between the cells is not a good choice when applied to large format batteries. Whereas, by employing the indirect liquid cooling, a very uniform temperature along with low temperature gradient is achieved even under high discharge rate. When the two cooling units have the same volume, the obtained volumetric temperature gradient with fin cooling is equal to 20.5, 27.5 and 34.7 °C for the 10 Ah, 20 Ah and 40Ah respectively, whereas the corresponding value in case of the indirect cooling is 4.7, 5.2 and 6.2 °C respectivel

Unballanced performance of parallel connected large format lithium ion batteries for electric vehicle application

The integration of cells that exhibit differing electrical characteristics, such as variations in energy capacity and internal resistance can degrade the overall performance of the energy storage system (ESS) when those cells are aggregated into single battery pack. When cells are connected electrically in parallel, such variations can lead to significant individual differences in battery load current, state of charge (SOC) and heat generation. Further, if consideration is given to small variations in cell interconnection resistance, the detrimental effect on load imbalance is amplified. Given that cell resistance is known to be a function of both SOC and temperature, the impact of the imbalance is compounded as the performance of cells further diverge under load. During extended periods of excitation, variations in cell depth of discharge (DOD) and the occurrence of temperature gradients across the parallel connection will accelerate cell ageing and, if unmanaged, may present safety concerns such as the onset of thermal runaway. In this paper the impact of varied SOC and temperature on the overall performance of the ESS with parallel connected cells has been investigated. The results highlight that 8% variation in the initial SOC can result in a current difference of 62% among the cells, while a temperature variation of 8℃ results in a current deviation of 14%. Moreover, it was found that the interconnection resistance can significantly increase the inhomogeneity