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Compressing continuous variable quantum measurements
Get PDFWe generalize the notion of joint measurability to continuous variable systems by extending a recently introduced compression algorithm of quantum measurements to this realm. The extension results in a property that asks for the minimal dimensional quantum system required for representing a given set of quantum measurements. To illustrate the concept, we show that the canonical pair of position and momentum is completely incompressible. We translate the concept of measurement compression to the realm of quantum correlations, where it results in a generalization of continuous variable quantum steering. In contrast to the steering scenario, which detects entanglement, the generalization detects the dimensionality of entanglement. We illustrate the bridge between the concepts by showing that an analogue of the original EPR argument is genuinely infinite-dimensional with respect to our figure of merit, and that a fundamental discrete variable result on preparability of unsteerable state assemblages with separable states does not directly carry over to the continuous variable setting. We further prove a representation result for partially entanglement breaking channels that can be of independent interest
Reading Easy Language texts written by public authorities. Evidence from eye tracking
Get PDFPrevious research has shown that word length, frequency and word repetition influence word reading times (Rayner 1998; 2009). Guidelines for Easy Language advise writers to use frequent and short words, and to repeat words instead of using synonyms. However, some of these guidelines are based on research that has been misinterpreted, simplified, or is outdated (Wengelin 2015), and studies focusing on effects of word length, frequency and word repetition among adult readers in the Easy Swedish target group are lacking. This eye-tracking study investigated the reading of Easy Language texts written by public authorities, as well as the effects of word length, frequency, and word repetition on readers in a day centre for people with intellectual disabilities. The results showed significant effects for word length and frequency in all readers. In addition, the effects were significantly greater in the target group than in the control group. The effects for word repetition were not as clear, affecting only one of the reading measures. Furthermore, the study revealed poor comprehension rates in the target group, i.e., when asked, they were not able to reproduce the main contents of the texts. The significantly greater effects of word length and frequency suggest that the related Easy Language guidelines are valid for this group of readers. The poor comprehension rates indicate that the texts were too difficult for these readers.</p
Bordetella pertussis isolates in Finland after acellular vaccination : serotype change and biofilm formation
Get PDFObjectives: In Finland, whole cell pertussis vaccine (wP) was introduced in 1952 and was replaced by acellular pertussis vaccine (aP) without fimbrial (FIM) antigen in 2005. We aimed to analyse the changes in serotypes of circulating Bordetella pertussis before and after acellular vaccination and to explore the relationship between biofilm formation and serotype diversity after the introduction of aP vaccine.Methods: Serotyping of 1399 B. pertussis isolates collected at the Finnish National Reference Laboratory for Pertussis and Diphtheria in Turku, Finland, from 1974 to 2023 was performed by slide agglutination or indirect ELISA. Of 278 isolates collected after 2005, 53 were selected, genotyped for fim3 and fim2 alleles, and tested for biofilm formation. The selection criteria included maintaining a relatively equal distribution of isolates per time interval, ensuring approximately a 50:50 ratio of FIM2 (N = 26) and FIM3 (N = 27) serotypes. The reference strain Tohama I was used as a control.Results: During the wP era, the majority of circulating B. pertussis exhibited the FIM2 serotype. However, FIM3 strains have appeared since 1999 and become prevalent. After the implementation of aP vaccines, the distribution of serotypes has exhibited substantial variability. FIM3 isolates displayed an enhanced biofilm formation compared to FIM2 isolates (Geometric mean value (95% CI): 0.90 (0.79-1.03) vs. 0.75 (0.65-0.85); p Conclusion: Following the implementation of aP vaccines, the distribution of serotypes in Finland has exhibited substantial variability. FIM3 isolates with the fim3-2 allele displayed an enhanced biofilm formation capability compared to FIM2 isolates.</p
Gendered Relationship of Childbearing with Earnings Accumulated by Midlife in Two Nordic Welfare States
Get PDFThe Nordic welfare states are considered advanced in terms of gender equality, but even in these countries women still take longer family leave and have lower earnings than men. This study provides new insights by assessing the differences in accumulated midlife earnings associated with childbearing between women and men in Finland and Sweden. We pay particular attention to the size of the gender gap in accumulated earnings across groups. We hypothesize that the gender gap will be larger among those with a larger number of children, among those with a lower level of education, and overall in Finland. The study is based on complete population register data, with highly accurate measures of earnings over decades. Our results show that by the age of 44, women born in 1974–1975 in Finland and Sweden had earned on average 32% and 29% less than men, respectively. Childbearing strongly modifies the gender gap, especially in Finland, and the highly educated have moderately smaller gaps in both countries. Our results show that, even the Nordic welfare states, despite their strong policy emphasis on gender equality and their success in achieving high levels of female labor force participation, are far from closing the gender gap in earnings accumulated over the first half of the life course. Our results also suggest that governments seeking to achieve gender equality should be cautious about providing long family-related leave with flat-rate compensation.</p
Validation of cross-sectional and longitudinal ComBat harmonization methods for magnetic resonance imaging data on a travelling subject cohort
Get PDFBackgroundThe growth in multi-center neuroimaging studies generated a need for methods that mitigate the differences in hardware and acquisition protocols across sites i.e., scanner effects. ComBat harmonization methods have shown promise but have not yet been tested on all the data types commonly studied with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This study aimed to validate neuroCombat, longCombat and gamCombat on both structural and diffusion metrics in both cross-sectional and longitudinal data.MethodsWe used a travelling subject design whereby 73 healthy volunteers contributed 161 scans across two sites and four machines using one T1 and five diffusion MRI protocols. Scanner was defined as a composite of site, machine and protocol. A common pipeline extracted two structural metrics (volumes and cortical thickness) and two diffusion tensor imaging metrics (mean diffusivity and fractional anisotropy) for seven regions of interest including gray and (except for cortical thickness) white matter regions.ResultsStructural data exhibited no significant scanner effect and therefore did not benefit from harmonization in our particular cohort. Indeed, attempting harmonization obscured the true biological effect for some regions of interest. Diffusion data contained marked scanner effects and was successfully harmonized by all methods, resulting in smaller scanner effects and better detection of true biological effects. LongCombat less effectively reduced the scanner effect for cross-sectional white matter data but had a slightly lower probability of incorrectly finding group differences in simulations, compared to neuroCombat and gamCombat. False positive rates for all methods and all metrics did not significantly exceed 5%.ConclusionsStatistical harmonization of structural data is not always necessary and harmonization in the absence of a scanner effect may be harmful. Harmonization of diffusion MRI data is highly recommended with neuroCombat, longCombat and gamCombat performing well in cross-sectional and longitudinal settings.</p
Carimas: An Extensive Medical Imaging Data Processing Tool for Research
Get PDFCarimas is a multi-purpose medical imaging data processing tool, which can be used to visualize, analyze, and model different medical images in research. Originally, it was developed only for positron emission tomography data in 2009, but the use of this software has extended to many other tomography imaging modalities, such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. Carimas is especially well-suited for analysis of three- and four-dimensional image data and creating polar maps in modeling of cardiac perfusion. This article explores various parts of Carimas, including its key features, program structure, and application possibilities
Peräpukamien nykyhoito - konservatiiviset keinot, ligeeraus vai leikkaus?
Get PDFPeräpukamat oireilevat jopa 40 %:lla väestöstä ajoittain. Tyypilliset oireet ovat kirkas verenvuoto ja pukamien ulos luiskahtaminen. Valtaosa pukamista voidaan hoitaa konservatiivisesti tai ligeerauksella.Ligeeraus eli kumilenkkihoito on tehokas ja edullinen toimenpide, joka voidaan tarvittaessa uusia. Se soveltuu hyvin perusterveydenhuoltoon.Vain pieni osa peräpukamista tarvitsee kirurgista hoitoa.Kirkas verenvuoto peräaukosta on tyypillistä. Yli 45-vuotiaat kannattaa herkästi lähettää kolonoskopiaan, jos kliininen kuva ei sovi pukamavuotoon.</ul
Realizing multioperations and multiprefixes in Thick Control Flow processors
No full textMultioperations are primitives of parallel computation by which threads perform reductions, e.g., additions, on values provided by multiple threads into a single value in a constant number of steps. Multiprefixes resemble multioperations, but return to each participating thread a cumulative ordered reduction of all preceding values. Algorithmically, multioperations and multiprefixes can speed up parallel programs by a logarithmic factor over their single operation counterparts. In this paper, we introduce architectural techniques for realizing multioperations and multiprefixes in so-called Thick Control Flow (TCF) processors. A thick control flow is a computational construct that bundles homogeneous threads following the same control path into a data parallel entity. Our proposed processors optimized for executing TCFs feature a frontend-backend structure with low-latency processing of TCF-common computations and high-throughput execution of data parallel parts. Our solution relies on step caches and equally sized multioperation scratchpads, while on the memory side, we make use of active memory modules. The idea is to compute partial results in backend units to reduce the traffic to the referred shared memory location. The final multioperation result is then computed in the active memory unit of the target memory module. Multiprefixes use an additional phase where the final results are computed with a help of backend-wise prefixes. According to our evaluation, the proposed techniques indeed speed up certain N data element algorithms by a log N factor with reasonable hardware costs.</p
Tapaturmaisten aivovammojen epidemiologia muutoksessa – katse vanhempiin ikäluokkiin
No full textVanhusten tapaturmaisten aivovammojen lisääntyminen on kansanterveyden kannalta merkittävä trendi, joka näkyy myös meillä. Iäkkäiden naisten kuolleisuus aivovammoihin ja neurokirurgisia leikkauksia vaativien aivovammojen määrä ovat maassamme kasvussa. Vanhusten tapaturmat ovat usein kaatumisia, ja alkoholilla voi heilläkin olla osuutta asiaan.</p