Preliminary Exploration of Variations in Measures of Pharyngeal Area During Nonswallowing Tasks.

Purpose: Age- and disease-related changes in oropharyngeal anatomy and physiology may be identified through quantitative videofluoroscopic measures of pharyngeal area and dynamics. Pixel-based measures of nonconstricted pharyngeal area (PhAR) are typically taken during oral bolus hold tasks or on postswallow rest frames. A recent study in 87 healthy adults reported mean postswallow PhAR of 62%(C2-4), (range: 25%-135%), and significantly larger PhAR in males.

Measurement of Enhanced Spin-Orbit Coupling Strength for Donor-Bound Electron Spins in Silicon.

While traditionally considered a deleterious effect in quantum dot spin qubits, the spin-orbit interaction is recently being revisited as it allows for rapid coherent control by on-chip AC electric fields. For electrons in bulk silicon, spin-orbit coupling (SOC) is intrinsically weak, however, it can be enhanced at surfaces and interfaces, or through atomic placement. Here it is showed that the strength of the spin-orbit coupling can be locally enhanced by more than two orders of magnitude in the manybody wave functions of multi-donor quantum dots compared to a single donor, reaching strengths so far only reported for holes or two-donor system with certain symmetry.

Machine Learning-Assisted Precision Manufacturing of Atom Qubits in Silicon.

Donor-based qubits in silicon, manufactured using scanning tunneling microscope (STM) lithography, provide a promising route to realizing full-scale quantum computing architectures. This is due to the precision of donor placement, long coherence times, and scalability of the silicon material platform. The properties of multiatom quantum dot qubits, however, depend on the exact number and location of the donor atoms within the quantum dots.

Equitable Care for Hypertension: Blood Pressure and Patient-Reported Outcomes of the RICH LIFE Cluster Randomized Trial.

Background: Disparities in hypertension control are well documented but underaddressed.

Methods: RICH LIFE (Reducing Inequities in Care of Hypertension: Lifestyle Improvement for Everyone) was a 2-arm, cluster randomized trial comparing the effect on blood pressure (BP) control (systolic BP ≤140 mm Hg, diastolic BP ≤90 mm Hg), patient activation, and disparities in BP control of 2 multilevel interventions, standard of care plus (SCP) and collaborative care/stepped care (CC/SC). SCP included BP measurement standardization, audit and feedback, and equity-leadership training.

A Preliminary Study of Vallecular Bolus Aggregation in Healthy Swallowing of Solid Food Boluses.

Objective: The pharyngeal swallow typically begins within 400 ms following the arrival of a liquid bolus in the pharynx. By contrast, processed food particles aggregate in the valleculae prior to swallow initiation. With solid foods, swallow reaction time (SRT), the interval between bolus passing the ramus of mandible and hyoid burst onset (HYB) can be subdivided into components of vallecular aggregation time (VAT) and the subsequent end of aggregation to hyoid burst interval (EOA-to-HYB).

Meta-analysis of single-case design research: Application of multilevel modeling.

This study describes the benefits and challenges of meta-analyses of single-case design research using multilevel modeling. The researchers illustrate procedures for conducting meta-analyses using four-level multilevel modeling through open-source R code. The demonstration uses data from multiple-baseline or multiple-probe across-participant single-case design studies ( = 21) on word problem instruction for students with learning disabilities published between 1975 and 2023.

Investigating midwives and nurses reporting of 'infant feeding at hospital discharge': an online survey across NSW Australia.

Background: The collection of data on 'infant feeding at hospital discharge' is used to monitor breastfeeding outcomes, health service benchmarking, and research. While some Australian states have clear definitions of this data collection point, there is no operational definition of 'infant feeding at hospital discharge' in the Australian state of New South Wales. Little is known about how midwives interpret the term 'infant feeding at hospital discharge', in particular, the timeframe used to calculate these important indicators.

Engineering Spin-Orbit Interactions in Silicon Qubits at the Atomic-Scale.

Spin-orbit interactions arise whenever the bulk inversion symmetry and/or structural inversion symmetry of a crystal is broken providing a bridge between a qubit's spin and orbital degree of freedom. While strong interactions can facilitate fast qubit operations by all-electrical control, they also provide a mechanism to couple charge noise thereby limiting qubit lifetimes. Previously believed to be negligible in bulk silicon, recent silicon nano-electronic devices have shown larger than bulk spin-orbit coupling strengths from Dresselhaus and Rashba couplings.

Atomic Engineering of Molecular Qubits for High-Speed, High-Fidelity Single Qubit Gates.

Universal quantum computing requires fast single- and two-qubit gates with individual qubit addressability to minimize decoherence errors during processor operation. Electron spin qubits using individual phosphorus donor atoms in silicon have demonstrated long coherence times with high fidelities, providing an attractive platform for scalable quantum computing. While individual qubit addressability has been demonstrated by controlling the hyperfine interaction between the electron and nuclear wave function in a global magnetic field, the small hyperfine Stark coefficient of 0.

Exploring the Efficacy of the Effortful Swallow Maneuver for Improving Swallowing in People With Parkinson Disease-A Pilot Study.

Objectives: To determine the immediate (compensatory) and longer term (rehabilitative) effect of the effortful swallow (ES) maneuver on physiological swallowing parameters in Parkinson disease.

Design: Virtual intervention protocol via Microsoft Teams with pre- and post-videofluoroscopic swallowing studies.

Setting: Outpatient hospital setting, with intervention performed virtually.

The Influence of Sex, Age, and Repeated Measurement on Pixel-Based Measures of Pharyngeal Area at Rest.

Purpose: Videofluoroscopic (VFSS) measurements of pharyngeal swallow mechanics can differentiate age- and disease-related changes in swallowing. Pharyngeal area at rest (PhAR) may differ in people with dysphagia, although its impact is not clear. Before the role of PhAR in dysphagia can be explored, it is important to establish whether PhAR remains stable across repeated measures in healthy adults, and varies as a function of sex or age.

The Use of Exchange Coupled Atom Qubits as Atomic-Scale Magnetic Field Sensors.

Phosphorus atoms in silicon offer a rich quantum computing platform where both nuclear and electron spins can be used to store and process quantum information. While individual control of electron and nuclear spins has been demonstrated, the interplay between them during qubit operations has been largely unexplored. This study investigates the use of exchange-based operation between donor bound electron spins to probe the local magnetic fields experienced by the qubits with exquisite precision at the atomic scale.

Ramped measurement technique for robust high-fidelity spin qubit readout.

State preparation and measurement of single-electron spin qubits typically rely on spin-to-charge conversion where a spin-dependent charge transition of the electron is detected by a coupled charge sensor. For high-fidelity, fast readout, this process requires that the qubit energy is much larger than the temperature of the system limiting the temperature range for measurements. Here, we demonstrate an initialization and measurement technique that involves voltage ramps rather than static voltages allowing us to achieve state-to-charge readout fidelities above 99% for qubit energies almost half that required by traditional methods.

The BLIiNG study - Breastfeeding length and intensity in gestational diabetes and metabolic effects in a subsequent pregnancy: A cohort study.

Background: Gestational diabetes mellitus is associated with higher risk for developing type 2 diabetes. Breastfeeding is protective against the development of type 2 diabetes after gestational diabetes. There are no data regarding the effect of breastfeeding on the development of recurrent gestational diabetes.

Monolithic Three-Dimensional Tuning of an Atomically Defined Silicon Tunnel Junction.

A requirement for quantum information processors is the in situ tunability of the tunnel rates and the exchange interaction energy within the device. The large energy level separation for atom qubits in silicon is well suited for qubit operation but limits device tunability using in-plane gate architectures, requiring vertically separated top-gates to control tunnelling within the device. In this paper, we address control of the simplest tunnelling device in Si:P, the tunnel junction.

Coherent control of a donor-molecule electron spin qubit in silicon.

Donor spins in silicon provide a promising material platform for large scale quantum computing. Excellent electron spin coherence times of [Formula: see text] μs with fidelities of 99.9% have been demonstrated for isolated phosphorus donors in isotopically pure Si, where donors are local-area-implanted in a nanoscale MOS device.

Exploiting a Single-Crystal Environment to Minimize the Charge Noise on Qubits in Silicon.

Electron spins in silicon offer a competitive, scalable quantum-computing platform with excellent single-qubit properties. However, the two-qubit gate fidelities achieved so far have fallen short of the 99% threshold required for large-scale error-corrected quantum computing architectures. In the past few years, there has been a growing realization that the critical obstacle in meeting this threshold in semiconductor qubits is charge noise arising from the qubit environment.

Engineering long spin coherence times of spin-orbit qubits in silicon.

Electron-spin qubits have long coherence times suitable for quantum technologies. Spin-orbit coupling promises to greatly improve spin qubit scalability and functionality, allowing qubit coupling via photons, phonons or mutual capacitances, and enabling the realization of engineered hybrid and topological quantum systems. However, despite much recent interest, results to date have yielded short coherence times (from 0.

Hypertension Self-management in Socially Disadvantaged African Americans: the Achieving Blood Pressure Control Together (ACT) Randomized Comparative Effectiveness Trial.

Background: Effective hypertension self-management interventions are needed for socially disadvantaged African Americans, who have poorer blood pressure (BP) control compared to others.

Objective: We studied the incremental effectiveness of contextually adapted hypertension self-management interventions among socially disadvantaged African Americans.

Design: Randomized comparative effectiveness trial.

Spin read-out in atomic qubits in an all-epitaxial three-dimensional transistor.

The realization of the surface code for topological error correction is an essential step towards a universal quantum computer. For single-atom qubits in silicon, the need to control and read out qubits synchronously and in parallel requires the formation of a two-dimensional array of qubits with control electrodes patterned above and below this qubit layer. This vertical three-dimensional device architecture requires the ability to pattern dopants in multiple, vertically separated planes of the silicon crystal with nanometre precision interlayer alignment.

Readout and control of the spin-orbit states of two coupled acceptor atoms in a silicon transistor.

Coupling spin qubits to electric fields is attractive to simplify qubit manipulation and couple qubits over long distances. Electron spins in silicon offer long lifetimes, but their weak spin-orbit interaction makes electrical coupling challenging. Hole spins bound to acceptor dopants, spin-orbit-coupled = 3/2 systems similar to Si vacancies in SiC and single Co dopants, are an electrically active spin system in silicon.

Addressable electron spin resonance using donors and donor molecules in silicon.

Phosphorus donor impurities in silicon are a promising candidate for solid-state quantum computing due to their exceptionally long coherence times and high fidelities. However, individual addressability of exchange coupled donors with separations ~15 nm is challenging. We show that by using atomic precision lithography, we can place a single P donor next to a 2P molecule 16 ± 1 nm apart and use their distinctive hyperfine coupling strengths to address qubits at vastly different resonance frequencies.

Characterization of a Scalable Donor-Based Singlet-Triplet Qubit Architecture in Silicon.

We present a donor-based quadruple-quantum-dot device, designed to host two singlet-triplet qubits fabricated by scanning tunnelling microscope lithography, with just two leads per qubit. The design is geometrically compact, with each pair of dots independently controlled via one gate and one reservoir. The reservoirs both supply electrons for the dots and measure the singlet-triplet state of each qubit via dispersive sensing.

Atomically engineered electron spin lifetimes of 30 s in silicon.

Scaling up to large arrays of donor-based spin qubits for quantum computation will require the ability to perform high-fidelity readout of multiple individual spin qubits. Recent experiments have shown that the limiting factor for high-fidelity readout of many qubits is the lifetime of the electron spin. We demonstrate the longest reported lifetimes (up to 30 s) of any electron spin qubit in a nanoelectronic device.

Probing the Quantum States of a Single Atom Transistor at Microwave Frequencies.

The ability to apply gigahertz frequencies to control the quantum state of a single P atom is an essential requirement for the fast gate pulsing needed for qubit control in donor-based silicon quantum computation. Here, we demonstrate this with nanosecond accuracy in an all epitaxial single atom transistor by applying excitation signals at frequencies up to ≈13 GHz to heavily phosphorus-doped silicon leads. These measurements allow the differentiation between the excited states of the single atom and the density of states in the one-dimensional leads.