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Extending Coherence in the Frequency Domain with Four-Wave Mixing for Scalable Quantum Information
No full textInformation stored in optical frequency modes has revolutionized and will continue enabling numerous technological capabilities in the classical regime, from detecting exoplanets using frequency combs to the high-data-rate optical fiber networks encircling the globe. Yet, despite enormous advances in matter-based quantum information science, the quantum regime of such optical frequency modes has received comparatively little attention, particularly when considering more than two frequency modes. Just as coherence plays a critical role in existing classical technologies, coherence of the quantum superpositions of frequency modes can be harnessed to achieve new technological capabilities.
As we will demonstrate, four-wave mixing, resulting from third-order optical nonlinearity, is an indispensable tool for coherently manipulating optical frequency modes in the quantum regime. In this thesis, we experimentally study three distinct applications of four-wave mixing. We achieve nonlinear soliton-effect compression of 1.2-ps pulses down to 66 fs in a low-loss 40-cm SiN waveguide; the resulting short pulses display coherent spectral broadening and can be linked with existing integrated laser sources and used to seed coherent supercontinuum generation all on one photonic chip.
Second, using Bragg-scattering four-wave mixing, we demonstrate quantum state tomography of a frequency-bin qubit under conditions of lossy propagation, proposing the use of the frequency domain for coherent and broadband quantum communication. Finally, we measure two-photon interference of three frequency modes via N-way Bragg-scattering, in which more than two pumps can mediate unitary three-dimensional transformations between the three quantum fields in the frequency domain, with applications including frequency qudits and scalable quantum advantage
Development perspectives of the Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement
No full textThe WTO Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement (IFDA) offers significant development perspectives by speeding up and streamlining administrative procedures and reducing transaction costs. Domestic regulatory reforms, combined with comprehensive special-and-differential treatment as well as substantial technical and financial support are essential to ensure the beneficial implementation of the IFDA and sustainable and productive FDI
The Magical Slickness of the Myth of Black Oil, Movement Suite
No full textThe Magical Slickness of the Myth of Black Oil, Movement Suite explores the subversive and disruptive slick nature of a concept I am developing called chaos force. The three-piece Movement Suite consists of a short written poetic manifesto contextualizing the current of chaos force as it exists in black sonic temporality as the first movement, then transitioning into a recorded two movement sound piece that spans 20 min.
I have been exploring mythbuilding & worldbuilding, memory, rhythmanalysis, and vocal & movement-based improvisation as a generative tool to harness and disperse a concept which I call chaos force. Chaos force is a current which sits between two polarized magnetic forces and propels matter outside of its orbit, into the void, towards endless potentiality. This current can then be transformed into subversive material which problematizes, interrogates, and disrupts duality and oppositionality. Within this black sonic temporal performance, I use amorphous structure and improvisation to imagine anti-colonial post-modern sonic futures integrated into worldbuilding, social refusal, and political fugitivity.
The sound piece is loosely devised for piano, voice, and synth, with the addition of horn and percussion as the third instigating force. This work aims to actively create, swallow, and destroy structure in real-time using both contradiction in rhythm and harmony, counter-force, and spontaneity. Spirit inhabits this sonic world and speaks in tongue–devouring at its own pleasure and desire. Its landscape is both a love poem for the black imagination, a travel through planetary orbits, and sex with the slickness of oil.
Notes on Contributor
Jordan Deal (they/them) is a Philadelphia-based multidisciplinary artist whose work defies conventional boundaries. Using their body as a conduit, Deal navigates the intersections of performance, sound, and film to explore the forces that shape socio-political structures and mythologies.
Deal has presented performance work internationally, such as at Radialsystem (Berlin) as part of CTM Festival, Cafe OTO (London), ZDB (Lisbon), Performing Arts Forum (France), Performance Mix Festival (NYC), Judson Memorial Church (NYC), and Icebox Project Space (Philadelphia), amongst others. They have exhibited sculptural and sonic installations throughout Philadelphia and New York and have recently been selected as a 2023-2024 Artistic Fellow at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. They are currently a 2024 recipient of the MAPFund Grant.
Deal recently released their new full LP titled Seas of Triple Consciousness with London-based record label Horn of Plenty Records this past September
Evaluating Trust and Inclusivity: A Machine-Driven Benchmark for Large Language Model Chatbots in LGBTQ+ Suicide Prevention: Data
No full textThe advent of conversational artificial intelligence (AI) has been increasing attention to evaluating the performance of large language models (LLMs) in high-risk mental health scenarios, particularly for marginalized groups. However, methodologies for assessing chatbot performance in such contexts remain underexplored. To address this gap, we introduce a comprehensive machine-driven evaluation pipeline for generative AI chatbots that provide mental health support, focusing on scenarios of suicidality among LGBTQ+ individuals. The pipeline assesses chatbot responses across six metrics: ROUGE (Recall-Oriented Understudy for Gisting Evaluation), METEOR (Metric for Evaluation of Translation with Explicit Ordering), ethical alignment, sentiment distribution, cultural inclusivity, and linguistic complexity. Nine general-purpose LLM-based chatbots (ChatGPT-5, ChatGPT-4.0, Claude, Gemini, LLaMA-3, DeepSeek, Mistral, Perplexity AI, and HuggingChat) and two LGBTQ+-focused chatbots (JackAI and the RUBIES Gender Journey chatbot) were evaluated using this pipeline. The evaluation revealed moderate lexical and semantic similarity between chatbot outputs (ROUGE ranging 0.22–0.36; METEOR 0.19–0.27), but also inconsistent ethical alignment (scores from 0.61 to 0.98) and potential deficiencies in cultural inclusivity (with most scores below 0.2 and only two above 0.3). There was considerable variation in sentiment distribution across models (scores ranging from 0.04 to 1.00), while linguistic complexity scores averaged around 56 (out of 100), indicating moderately complex language. These findings highlight fine-grained differences in chatbot performance across evaluation dimensions and underscore the need for a holistic interpretation of chatbot effectiveness. The insights gained can guide the appropriate use and improvement of AI chatbots for supporting LGBTQ+ individuals dealing with suicidality.
Keywords: Large language models; Chatbot evaluation; Mental health support; LGBTQ+; Ethical alignment; Inclusivit
The Delacorte Review, Issue 2, Crime
No full textCONTENTS
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
If her father was still alive, she knew, he wouldn’t want her in this car, with these men.
— Erika Hayasaki
The Black Dahlia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
He spent years dispelling myths around the famous murder case. Has he finally found an answer of his own?
— Miles Corwin
Absolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
A child soldier for Joseph Cony seeks a path back to the civilized world.
— Adriana Carranca
A Trial by Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
She warmed some chicken for her nieces and took out the trash. Then everything changed
— Carol Mersch
The Killers of Swaziland . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Fifteen years ago in this African kingdom, two serial killers were at work. Just one of them was human
— Shaun Raviv
A Stranger Knocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
On an ordinary Sunday afternoon, a brush with a troubled stranger and its aftermath
— Jonathan Fink
A Cold Case in Florida . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Debra Star Rizzo, 15, was murdered way back in 1978. A retired detective still cares
— Jeff Patterson
Hattie Brazier Stands Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
A tale of race, law enforcement, and murder in 1957 America, not so long ago
— Mary Kelly
About the Authors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Machine learning methods for characterizing the impact of genetic alterations on tumor heterogeneity through multi-modal data integration
No full textTumor heterogeneity remains one of the most pressing obstacles in the development of effective cancer therapeutics. Often driven by genetic mutations, heterogeneity may present as diverse responses to therapy across patients, as well as the presence of multiple lineages of malignant cells within a tumor. The emergence of state-of-the-art single-cell and spatial genomic technologies in conjunction with traditional computational analyses has allowed for the characterization of diverse cell states and temporal dynamics with unprecedented resolution. However, there remains a distinct lack in computational methods designed for integrative data analyses, that examine multiple patients or multiple modalities of data in order to paint a more complex picture of the dysregulated mechanisms occurring as a result of these mutations.
This dissertation focuses on the development of novel machine learning methods whose goal is to dissect the progression of cancer and other diseases through the integration of data across samples and across modalities. We first leverage a novel single-nucleus sequencing method in order to construct large atlases of data for rare cancer subtypes as well as banked clinical specimens, with the inclusion of scRNA-seq, TCR-seq, WGS, and spatial sequencing data. From these data, we identify the putative role of copy number alterations (CNAs) in driving heterogeneous patient response to therapy, emphasizing that immune resistance mechanisms possibly arising from these CNAs may be impacting immune infiltration into the tumor microenvironment (TME).
We then present a novel Bayesian hierarchical model, Echidna, that aims to uncover the mechanistic relationship between CNAs and heterogeneity in tumor phenotype, in settings such as resistance to immunotherapy. Echidna’s framework relies on the integration of scRNA-seq and WGS, leveraging the resolution of the former to aid the deconvolution and inference of the latter. At the same time, Echidna strives towards a new way of understanding the relationship between transcription and CNAs, paving the way for new perspectives towards identifying the CNAs with functional relevance. We apply Echidna to a large cohort of melanoma patients undergoing immune checkpoint blockade therapy and demonstrate that intrinsic drivers of tumor expansion phenotypes are shared across patients, suggesting putative therapeutic and diagnostic targets.
We are also interested in the effect of genetic mutations at the cellular level--specifically, how early mutations in driver genes may lead to derailed trajectories of disease progression. Towards this end, we present Decipher: a deep generative model that integrates data across disease contexts in order to align trajectories of cells and identify the specific derailments resulting from mutation. Decipher offers two interpretable latent spaces: a medium-dimensional z-space that captures specific cell-state transitions, and a low-dimensional v-space that may be directly used for visualization with greater faithfulness than common dimensionality reduction tools such as tSNE and UMAP. We demonstrate that when applied to NPM1-mutated AML, and Kras and p53-mutated PDAC, Decipher reveals novel insights into disease progression, highlighting key pathways and processes that may be disrupted as a result of the mutation.
The methods described in this dissertation together illustrate the depth of biological insight that may be derived from considering multiple modalities of data. We demonstrate the ability to map phenotypic effects to putative genomic drivers, as well as characterize the effect of mutations on cell state transitions--with the ultimate goal of better understanding the genomic drivers of cancer
Building Expertise in Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine: A Program Evaluation of Lessons in Lactation Advanced Curriculum, a Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine Fellowship
Get PDFContext: Guidance from health care providers about breastfeeding and lactation is cited as an important factor in breastfeeding decisions, yet clinicians report low levels of knowledge, confidence, and clinical competence in this area. This is due to a lack of standardized, evidence- based education and training in breastfeeding for health care providers, leaving clinicians to rely on personal experience with breastfeeding, or information gathered from a variety of online sources and conferences. This lack of cohesive educational programs and resources results in insufficient training for clinicians to adequately support breastfeeding and lactating families.
Objective: Lessons in Lactation Advanced Curriculum (LILAC) is a two-year, fellowship-level breastfeeding and lactation medicine (BFLM) curriculum for post-residency health care providers that provides them with the depth of knowledge and clinical skills necessary to practice breastfeeding and lactation medicine.
Target Audience: Maternal health care providers, including physicians, midwives, and nurse practitioners.
Description: The LILAC Fellowship has three components: didactic, clinical, and research/QI. The fellowship begins with a week-long contemporaneous session to establish foundationalknowledge in breastfeeding and lactation medicine, followed by 18 monthly modules, built by experts, that cover the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine (ABM) core competencies in breastfeeding medicine. Fellows complete a research or quality improvement project and obtain 1000 hours of practice in breastfeeding and lactation medicine with clinical oversight of a mentor that is a fellow of the ABM.
Evaluation: Kirkpatrick’s four-level evaluation model will be used to evaluate fellowship feasibility, acceptability, and efficacy.
Conclusion: The LILAC fellowship was feasible, acceptable, and effective in providing fellows with the knowledge and skills needed to practice breastfeeding and lactation medicine independently. Fellows reported that participation in LILAC positively impacted their patient interactions, helped to increased BFLM consultations, attendance at BFLM conference, and BFLM-related research publications, key factors in growing this nascent field
Study of electrical contacts to encapsulated ultra-clean semiconductor monolayers
No full textTwo-dimensional (2D) materials such as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are of great interest for electronic and optoelectronic applications. However, a major challenge for both fundamental studies and practical applications of TMD-based devices lies in the difficulty of establishing low-resistance, reliable electrical contacts. Conventional direct metal evaporation methods often bcauses physical damage at the metal-TMD interface due to the high kinetic energy of the metalatoms. This results in the formation of chemical defects at the contact interface, leading to Fermi level pinning and high contact resistance. While strategies like using low-melting-point metals or transferred metal contacts have shown promise in forming van der Waals contacts and reducing contact resistance, most prior research has focused on TMDs grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method and devices built on silicon dioxide/silicon (SiO₂/Si) substrates. In these cases, atomic defects in the TMDs and surface charges from the substrate can significantly degrade device performance.
Our lab has addressed these limitations by growing ultra-high-quality TMD crystals using a two-step flux growth method and minimizing extrinsic disorder in the TMD devices through hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) encapsulation. This thesis aims to study the high-performance electrical contacts to ultra-high-purity monolayer TMDs encapsulated within hBN.
Chapter 1 introduces the fundamentals of 2D TMDs and the challenges associated with achieving low-resistance contacts. Chapter 2 describes high-quality TMD crystals and hBN encapsulation technique developed to minimize disorder in 2D TMD devices. Chapter 3 examines low-melting-point bismuth (Bi) semimetal contacts to ultra-clean MoSe₂ monolayers, demonstrating that Bi forms damage- and strain-free van der Waals contacts to high-purity MoSe₂. To characterize these devices, contact-front and contact-end measurements were combined to unambiguously extract key metal-semiconductor junction parameters that could not be accurately determined using the standard transfer length method (TLM). Additionally, pre-etched hBN was employed as a self-aligned mask, which mechanically stabilizes the weakly coupled van der Waals contacts. This technique enables the scaling of contact lengths from the micron scale down to tens of nanometers. In these deeply scaled contacts, both two-probe resistance and end resistance increased with the characteristic length _ , confirming the calculated transfer length.
Chapter 4 explores a novel in situ via contact technique for air-sensitive monolayer TMDs. This method uses plasma etching and metal deposition to create ’vias’ in the hBN with graphene forming an atomically thin etch-stop. The resulting partially fluorinated graphene (PFG) protects the underlying device layer from air-induced degradation and damage during metal deposition. Using the in situ via technique, an ambipolar contact to air-sensitive monolayer 2H-molybdenum ditelluride (MoTe₂) was achieved with more than one order of magnitude improvement in on-current density compared to previous literature. The complete encapsulation provides high reproducibility and long-term stability. This contact technique was also extended to other air-sensitive materials as well as air-stable materials, offering highly competitive device performance.
In summary, these studies lay a solid foundation for future research on high-quality devices based on TMD monolayers, which are critical for both practical applications and the exploration of their intrinsic properties
GRID3 COD - Health Facilities v4.0
Get PDFThe GRID3 COD - Health Facilities v4.0 dataset consists of health facility points with name, location, health zone, and health area, among other attributes, for fourteen provinces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (COD).
Province group 1: Haut-Katanga, Kasaï, Kasaï-Oriental, Kinshasa, and Lomami
Province group 2: Haut-Lomami and Tanganyika
Province group 3: Ituri and Kwilu
Province group 4: Maniema
Province group 5: Kasaï-Central
Province group 6: Tshopo and Mongala
Province group 7: Haut-Katanga, Kasaï, and Kasaï-Oriental (updates); Sankuru
This operational dataset has not been fully validated by government officials or ministries.
This current version supersedes the GRID3 COD - Health Facilities v3.0 (https://doi.org/10.7916/1c3h-tc02). The following changes were made:
Updated data for the provinces of Haut-Katanga, Kasaï, Kasaï-Oriental, Tshopo and Mongala.
Data for Sankuru Province have been added.
A data sources table has been included as part of the metadata.
Keywords: Health Facilitie
Spatial and temporal variation of Antarctic microbial interactions: a study around the west Antarctic Peninsula
Get PDFBackground
The west Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) is a region of rapid environmental changes, with regional differences in climate warming along the north–south axis of the peninsula. Along the WAP, Palmer corresponds to a warmer region with lesser sea ice extent in the north compared to Rothera ~ 400 km to the south. Comprehensive and comparative, year-round assessments of the WAP microbial community dynamics in coastal surface waters at these two locations are imperative to understand the effects of regional climate warming variations on microbial community dynamics, but this is still lacking.
Results
We report on the seasonal diversity, taxonomic overview, as well as predicted inter-and intra-domain causal effects (interactions) of the bacterial and microbial eukaryotic communities close to the Palmer station and at the Rothera time-series site between July 2013 and April 2014. Our 16S- and 18S-rRNA gene amplicon sequencing data showed that across all seasons, both bacteria and microbial eukaryotic communities were considerably different between the two sites which could be attributed to seawater temperature, and sea ice coverage in combination with sea ice type differences. Overall, in terms of biotic drivers, causal-effect modelling suggests that bacteria were stronger drivers of ecosystem dynamics at Palmer, while microbial eukaryotes played a stronger role at Rothera. The parasitic taxa Syndiniales persevered at both sites across the seasons, with Palmer and Rothera harbouring different key groups. Up to 62.3% of the negative causal effects were driven by Syndiniales at Rothera compared to only 13.5% at Palmer, suggesting that parasitism drives community dynamics at Rothera more strongly than at Palmer. Conversely, SAR11 Clade II, which was less abundant but persistent year-round at both sites, was the dominant driver at Palmer, evidenced by many (28.2% and 37.4% of positive and negative effects respectively) strong causal effects. Article note: Kindly check first page article notes are correct.
Conclusions Our research has shed light on the dynamics of microbial community composition and correlative interactions at two sampling locations that represent different climate regimes along the WAP