Stabilization of point-defect spin qubits by quantum wells.

Defect-based quantum systems in wide bandgap semiconductors are strong candidates for scalable quantum-information technologies. However, these systems are often complicated by charge-state instabilities and interference by phonons, which can diminish spin-initialization fidelities and limit room-temperature operation. Here, we identify a pathway around these drawbacks by showing that an engineered quantum well can stabilize the charge state of a qubit.

Applications of Blockchain Technology for Data-Sharing in Oncology: Results from a Systematic Literature Review.

Background: Timely sharing of electronic health records across providers, while ensuring data security and privacy, is essential for prompt care of cancer patients, as well as for the development of medical research and the enhancement of personalized medicine. Yet, it is not trivial to achieve efficient consent management, data exchange, and access-control policy enforcement, in particular, in decentralized settings, and given the gravity of the condition such as cancer. Using blockchain technology (BCT) has been recently advocated by research communities and gained momentum from the industry perspective.

Global Sensitivity Analysis of Ventricular Myocyte Model-Derived Metrics for Proarrhythmic Risk Assessment.

Multiscale computational models of the heart are being extensively investigated for improved assessment of drug-induced torsades de pointes (TdP) risk, a fatal side effect of many drugs. Model-derived metrics such as action potential duration and net charge carried by ionic currents () have been proposed as potential candidates for TdP risk stratification after being tested on small datasets. Unlike purely statistical approaches, model-derived metrics are thought to provide mechanism-based classification.

Rectification of protein translocation in truncated pyramidal nanopores.

Solid-state nanopore technology presents an emerging single-molecule-based analytical tool for the separation and analysis of nanoparticles. Different approaches have been pursued to attain the anticipated detection performance. Here, we report the rectification behaviour of protein translocation through silicon-based truncated pyramidal nanopores.

Carrier-resolved photo-Hall effect.

The fundamental parameters of majority and minority charge carriers-including their type, density and mobility-govern the performance of semiconductor devices yet can be difficult to measure. Although the Hall measurement technique is currently the standard for extracting the properties of majority carriers, those of minority carriers have typically only been accessible through the application of separate techniques. Here we demonstrate an extension to the classic Hall measurement-a carrier-resolved photo-Hall technique-that enables us to simultaneously obtain the mobility and concentration of both majority and minority carriers, as well as the recombination lifetime, diffusion length and recombination coefficient.

Optimal compressed sensing strategies for an array of nonlinear olfactory receptor neurons with and without spontaneous activity.

There are numerous different odorant molecules in nature but only a relatively small number of olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) in brains. This "compressed sensing" challenge is compounded by the constraint that ORNs are nonlinear sensors with a finite dynamic range. Here, we investigate possible optimal olfactory coding strategies by maximizing mutual information between odor mixtures and ORNs' responses with respect to the bipartite odor-receptor interaction network (ORIN) characterized by sensitivities between all odorant-ORN pairs.

Could electrical coupling contribute to the formation of cell assemblies?

Cell assemblies and central pattern generators (CPGs) are related types of neuronal networks: both consist of interacting groups of neurons whose collective activities lead to defined functional outputs. In the case of a cell assembly, the functional output may be interpreted as a representation of something in the world, external or internal; for a CPG, the output 'drives' an observable (i.e.

NeTFactor, a framework for identifying transcriptional regulators of gene expression-based biomarkers.

Biological and regulatory mechanisms underlying many multi-gene expression-based disease biomarkers are often not readily evident. We describe an innovative framework, NeTFactor, that combines network analyses with gene expression data to identify transcription factors (TFs) that significantly and maximally regulate such a biomarker. NeTFactor uses a computationally-inferred context-specific gene regulatory network and applies topological, statistical, and optimization methods to identify regulator TFs.

Nonuniversal Transverse Electron Mean Free Path through Few-layer Graphene.

In contrast to the in-plane transport electron mean-free path in graphene, the transverse mean-free path has received little attention and is often assumed to follow the "universal" mean-free path (MFP) curve broadly adopted in surface and interface science. Here we directly measure transverse electron scattering through graphene from 0 to 25 eV above the vacuum level both in reflection using low energy electron microscopy and in transmission using electronvolt transmission electron microscopy. From these data, we obtain quantitative MFPs for both elastic and inelastic scattering.

Modeling the Personas of Primary Care Communication Modality Usage: Experiences from the R-Health Direct Primary Care Model.

Recent advancements in mediated communication technologies enable unfettered communication between patients and their providers. We explore patients' utilization of different direct and mediated communication modalities in a Direct Primary Care (DPC) clinic and the patient characteristics that predict their communication behavior patterns. Based on this knowledge, we developed 2 patient personas that explicate the nuances of patients who tend to prefer visiting the clinic in person versus those who use mediated modalities more often.

Error-Speed Correlations in Biopolymer Synthesis.

Synthesis of biopolymers such as DNA, RNA, and proteins are biophysical processes aided by enzymes. The performance of these enzymes is usually characterized in terms of their average error rate and speed. However, because of thermal fluctuations in these single-molecule processes, both error and speed are inherently stochastic quantities.

Artificial Intelligence for Clinical Trial Design.

Clinical trials consume the latter half of the 10 to 15 year, 1.5-2.0 billion USD, development cycle for bringing a single new drug to market.

Active protection of a superconducting qubit with an interferometric Josephson isolator.

Nonreciprocal microwave devices play critical roles in high-fidelity, quantum-nondemolition (QND) measurement schemes. They impose unidirectional routing of readout signals and protect the quantum systems from unwanted noise originated by the output chain. However, cryogenic circulators and isolators are disadvantageous in scalable superconducting architectures because they use magnetic materials and strong magnetic fields.

Chemically Engineered Synthetic Lipid Vesicles for Sensing and Visualization of Protein-Bilayer Interactions.

From pathogen intrusion to immune response, the cell membrane plays an important role in signal transduction. Such signals are important for cellular proliferation and survival. However, measurement of these subtle signals through the lipid membrane scaffold is challenging.

G-Computation and Hierarchical Models for Estimating Multiple Causal Effects From Observational Disease Registries With Irregular Visits.

Huntington's Disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative disorder with serious motor, cognitive, and behavioral symptoms. Chorea, a motor symptom of HD characterized by abrupt involuntary movements, is typically treated with tetrabenazine or certain off-label antipsychotics. Clinical trial evidence about the impact of these drugs in the HD population is scant.

Developing a Data-driven Medication Indication Knowledge Base using a Large Scale Medical Claims Database.

Medication-indication knowledge base (KB) is useful for clinical care and also a key enabler for secondary use of observational health data. Over the years there are several indication KBs being developed, however, they were built based on curated data sources and thus may not reflect actual clinical practice. The longitudinal observational health data contain information about real world practice of medication indication, but were rarely used in KB construc- tion.

Improving Carrier-Transport Properties of CZTS by Mg Incorporation with Spray Pyrolysis.

High nonradiative recombination, low diffusion length and band tailing are often associated with a large open circuit voltage deficit, which results in low efficiency of CuZnSnS (CZTS) solar cells. Recently, cation substitution in CZTS has gained interest as a plausible solution to suppress these issues. However, the common substitutes, Ag and Cd, are not ideal due to their scarcity and toxicity.

Transcriptome characterization and differentially expressed genes under flooding and drought stress in the biomass grasses Phalaris arundinacea and Dactylis glomerata.

Background And Aims: Perennial grasses are a global resource as forage, and for alternative uses in bioenergy and as raw materials for the processing industry. Marginal lands can be valuable for perennial biomass grass production, if perennial biomass grasses can cope with adverse abiotic environmental stresses such as drought and waterlogging.

Methods: In this study, two perennial grass species, reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea) and cocksfoot (Dactylis glomerata) were subjected to drought and waterlogging stress to study their responses for insights to improving environmental stress tolerance.

Three-Qubit Randomized Benchmarking.

As quantum circuits increase in size, it is critical to establish scalable multiqubit fidelity metrics. Here we investigate, for the first time, three-qubit randomized benchmarking (RB) on a quantum device consisting of three fixed-frequency transmon qubits with pairwise microwave-activated interactions (cross-resonance). We measure a three-qubit error per Clifford of 0.

Transient, Consequential Increases in Extracellular Potassium Ions Accompany Channelrhodopsin2 Excitation.

Channelrhodopsin2 (ChR2) optogenetic excitation is widely used to study neurons, astrocytes, and circuits. Using complementary approaches in situ and in vivo, we found that ChR2 stimulation leads to significant transient elevation of extracellular potassium ions by ∼5 mM. Such elevations were detected in ChR2-expressing mice, following local in vivo expression of ChR2(H134R) with adeno-associated viruses (AAVs), in different brain areas and when ChR2 was expressed in neurons or astrocytes.

Topological superconductivity in a phase-controlled Josephson junction.

Topological superconductors can support localized Majorana states at their boundaries. These quasi-particle excitations obey non-Abelian statistics that can be used to encode and manipulate quantum information in a topologically protected manner. Although signatures of Majorana bound states have been observed in one-dimensional systems, there is an ongoing effort to find alternative platforms that do not require fine-tuning of parameters and can be easily scaled to large numbers of states.

Signal enrichment with strain-level resolution in metagenomes using topological data analysis.

Background: A metagenome is a collection of genomes, usually in a micro-environment, and sequencing a metagenomic sample en masse is a powerful means for investigating the community of the constituent microorganisms. One of the challenges is in distinguishing between similar organisms due to rampant multiple possible assignments of sequencing reads, resulting in false positive identifications. We map the problem to a topological data analysis (TDA) framework that extracts information from the geometric structure of data.

exRNA Atlas Analysis Reveals Distinct Extracellular RNA Cargo Types and Their Carriers Present across Human Biofluids.

To develop a map of cell-cell communication mediated by extracellular RNA (exRNA), the NIH Extracellular RNA Communication Consortium created the exRNA Atlas resource (https://exrna-atlas.org). The Atlas version 4P1 hosts 5,309 exRNA-seq and exRNA qPCR profiles from 19 studies and a suite of analysis and visualization tools.