Information Design with Endogenous State Verification

BackgroundDespite the enormous resources committed to the implementation of supplemental immunisation activities in Nigeria, achieving the required coverage (post-campaign survey) to halt the transmission of vaccine-preventable diseases has continued to seem like an impossibility. A vast volume of data is generated and transmitted during mass vaccination campaigns, but this administrative data does not always culminate into improved coverage. The absence of data-informed guidance from stakeholders with long years of experience in planning and implementing mass vaccination campaigns has impeded achieving 95% coverage in measles campaigns in Nigeria. This study reviews the use of data to guide the implementation of the 2017/2018 measles vaccination campaign in Nigeria. MethodsA central coordinating body was formed at the national level with the same replicated in every state. Tools were developed to measure the performance of the different phases and activities required for the implementation of a mass vaccination campaign as recommended in the international guidelines. Stakeholders were engaged to help ensure that feedback provided by the national measles technical coordinating committee was implemented at the lower level. ResultsMonitoring and analysis of daily data submission caused a proper spread of senior supervisors, vaccination posts location during the campaign and helped identify areas targeted for mop-up. Although the verification of states’ microplan increased the operational target population by 11.2%, the process aided the distribution of resources as appropriate.Maps showing the likely areas that needed additional effort to achieve required coverage with recommendation on the necessary approach to be deployed were transmitted to the states implementing the campaign. ConclusionThe improvement in the use of data to guide implementation of the Nigeria 2017/2018 measles vaccination campaign caused an increase in the number of states that achieved higher coverage in the post-campaign coverage survey.

Graph states are resource states for measurement‐based quantum computation. Verification of graph states aims to certify whether a quantum state prepared by an untrusted device is close to an ideal graph state or not. Existing verification methods have not considered verifying graph states under an adversarial scenario and noisy measurements. In this paper, a robust verification method for graph states is proposed to overcome this issue. First, a verification model for graph states is designed. Then, two types of verification protocols based on this model are proposed. In addition, the completeness and soundness of the verification protocols are calculated when the measurement devices are affected by noises. Afterward, the measurement strategy of the robust verification protocols is extended from the specific case to the general case. In order to obtain the soundness that scales as , the verification method only requires copies of the graph state, where is the size of the graph state. Finally, several numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the effect of noises on the completeness and soundness of the verification protocols.

There exists, in general, a convex set of quantum state estimators that maximize the likelihood for informationally incomplete data. We propose an estimation scheme, catered to measurement data of this kind, to search for the exact maximum-likelihood-maximum-entropy estimator using semidefinite programming and a standard multi-dimensional function optimization routine. This scheme can be used to infer the expectation values of a set of entanglement witnesses that can be used to verify the entanglement of the unknown quantum state for composite systems. Next, we establish an alternative numerical scheme that is more computationally robust for the sole purpose of maximizing the likelihood and entropy.

Costly state verification models predict that the sensitivity of borrowing costs to financial leverage is positively related to the level of state verification costs (financial frictions). This paper constructs a measure of financial frictions that is consistent with this prediction of theory. Using bond deals from 47 countries, financial frictions are captured as the sensitivity of bond spreads to the issuing firms’ financial leverage. This dynamic measure of financial frictions provides new insights into three characteristics of financial frictions. 1) In contrast to the inferences drawn from widely-used measures, financial frictions display a large degree of variability, and have decreased over time. 2) The effect of financial frictions on private credit supply has decreased both in significance and magnitude over time. 3) Bankruptcy reforms, in general, have not been effective in improving creditor/borrower rights.

Unique input/output(UIO) sequences are used for state verification and functional test in finite state machines. A UIO sequence for a state s distinguishes it from other states in the FSM. Current algorithms to compute UIO sequences are limited in their applicability to FSMs with binary input symbols such as those found in con trol applications. Execution times of traditional approaches are exponential in the n umber of FSM inputs. We dev elop a new heuristic algorithm to generate UIO sequences for FSMs with binary inputs. Execution time is reduced significantly b y reducing the size of the search space. When a UIO sequence cannot be generated, our algorithm generates a small n umber of functional faults for state verification.

This paper studies how capital market imperfections affect the welfare effects of forming a currency union. The analysis considers a bank-only world where intermediaries compete in Cournot fashion and monitoring and state verification are costly. The first part determines the credit market equilibrium and the optimal number of banks, prior to joining the union. The second part discusses the benefits from joining a currency union. A competition effect is identified and related to the added monitoring costs that banks may incur when operating outside their home country, through an argument akin to the Brander-Krugman "reciprocal dumping" model of bilateral trade. Whether joining a union raises welfare of the home country is shown to depend on the relative strength of "investment creation" and "intermediation diversion" effects.

Quantum error correction is pivotal in advancing toward large-scale quantum computation, and efficient verification is crucial for ensuring the high fidelity of code states. Traditional methodologies, such as state tomography, direct fidelity estimation, and state verification, either fall short in measurement efficiency, especially for large-scale systems, or are restricted to some specific states. In this work, we introduce a general framework for quantum subspace verification, enabling efficient and measurement-noise-robust fidelity estimation between a given state and the target subspace with a specified confidence level. By integrating the proposed subspace verification with direct fidelity estimation, we develop a composite protocol that significantly improves the efficiency of verifying the fidelity of general magic logical states, as demonstrated by intuitive numerical results. This improvement stems from the use of subspace verification, which leverages the knowledge of code subspaces to significantly reduce measurement costs. Additionally, we detail the construction of verification operators for typical error correction codes, including general stabilizer codes and quantum low-density parity-check codes, enabling their efficient implementation using practical local measurements. Notably, for certain codes, such as the Calderbank-Shor-Steane codes and quantum low-density parity-check stabilizer codes, we reduce the number of required measurement settings and sample complexity to a constant level using graphical methods. Our approach facilitates efficient and feasible verification of error correction codes and generic magic logical states, advancing their practical implementations on quantum platforms.

Fraud deterrence in dynamic Mirrleesian economies

The rapid development of quantum computing technologies already made it possible to manipulate a collective state of several dozens of qubits, which poses a strong demand on efficient methods for characterization and verification of large-scale quantum states. Here, we propose a numerically cheap procedure to distinguish quantum states which is based on a limited number of projective measurements in at least two different bases and computing inter-scale dissimilarities of the resulting bit-string patterns via coarse-graining. The information one obtains through this procedure can be viewed as a ‘hash function’ of quantum state—a simple set of numbers which is specific for a concrete wave function and can be used for certification. We show that it is enough to characterize quantum states with different structure of entanglement, including the chaotic quantum states. Our approach can also be employed to detect phase transitions in quantum magnetic systems.

Efficient verification of multipartite quantum states is crucial to many applications in quantum information processing. By virtue of Schmidt decomposition and mutually unbiased bases, here we propose a universal protocol to verify arbitrary multipartite pure quantum states using adaptive local projective measurements. Moreover, we establish a universal upper bound on the sample complexity that is independent of the local dimensions. Numerical calculations further indicate that Haar-random pure states can be verified with a constant sample cost, irrespective of the qudit number and local dimensions, even in the adversarial scenario in which the source cannot be trusted. As alternatives, we provide several simpler variants that can achieve similar high efficiencies without using Schmidt decomposition. The simplest variant consists of only two distinct tests.

The article deals with the peculiarities of monitoring the technical state of construction objects comprising the measures to trace the deformation of buildings (constructions) on the whole, deformation and stress state of certain structures, the state of the ground, foundations, and underground waters in the construction zone, timely recording and assessment ofany deviations from the project, normative and regulation requirements, comparison of the forecast on the mutual influence of the object and the environment with the results obtained from the monitoring in order to ensure a timely prevention and elimination of the identified adverse phenomena and processes. The article provides a basis for undertaking inspections of construction objects, enumerates issues connected with construction and technical studies, whose solution requires the expert to have knowledge of the technical state of the buildings, structures, some of their structural elements, recorded by the preliminary technical examination of the technical inspection in the documents that were drafted by specialized organizations or specialists who have a license to conduct this activity. The article provides extracts from main normative documents regulating mandatory verification of the technical state of buildings and structures and that are used in construction and technical studies.

Introduction. Cylindrical and spherical shells are extensively used in engineering. They face internal and/or external pressure and heat. Stresses and strains distribution in elastoplastic shells has been studied by many scientists. Numerous works involve the use of the von Mises yield conditions, maximum shear stress, maximum reduced stress. These condi- tions do not include the dependence on the first invariant of the stress tensor and the sign of the third invariant of the stress deviator. In some cases, it is possible to obtain numerical-analytical solutions for stresses, displacements and de- formations for bodies with spherical and cylindrical symmetry under axisymmetric thermal and force action. Materials and Methods. The problem on the state of a thick-walled elastoplastic shell is solved within the framework of the theory of small deformations. A plasticity condition is proposed, which takes into account the dependence of the stress tensor on three independent invariants, and also considers the sign of the third invariant of the stress deviator and translational hardening of the material. A disconnected thermoelastoplastic problem is being solved. To estimate the stresses in the region of the elastic state of a spherical shell, an equivalent stress is introduced, which is similar to the selected plasticity function. The construction of the stress vector hodograph is used as a method for verification of the stress state. Results. The problem has an analytical solution for linear plasticity functions. A solution is obtained when the strength- ening of the material is taken into account. Analytical and graphical relationships between the parameters of external action for the elastic or elastoplastic states of the sphere are determined. For a combined load, variants are possible when the plastic region is generated at the inner and outer boundaries of the sphere or between these boundaries. Discussion and Conclusions. The calculation results have shown that taking into account the plastic compressibility and the dependence of the plastic limit on temperature can have a significant impact on the stress and strain state of a hollow sphere. In this case, taking into account the first invariant of the stress tensor under the plasticity condition leads to the fact that not only the pressure drop between the outer and inner boundaries of the spherical shell, but the pressure values at these boundaries, can vary within a limited range. In this formulation of the problem, when there is only thermal action, the hollow sphere does not completely pass into the plastic state. The research results provide predicting the behavior of an object (a hollow sphere) that experiences centrally symmetric distributed power and thermal external influences.

Compositional verification has been considered as one of the most promising approaches to attack the state explosion problem. However, current techniques still can not efficiently verify modern distributed systems due to the high interleaved execution of asynchronously sending actions. The paper presents a new methodology for the compositional verification of deadlock states. The contribution of our methodology is that it can efficiently eliminate the interleaved execution of asynchronously sending actions and invisible actions. Experimental results show significant improvement over other methods.

The field of repair and rehabilitation of civil engineering works is evolving. Indeed, most of these structures, especially masonry structures, are over 50 years old and many of them require maintenance and repair work due to their deteriorated condition. To achieve this objective, a study was carried out concerning the different pathologies affecting the masonry bridges, but also the ways and means necessary for the evaluation and repair of the affected works. The results of this work have not only helped to carry out the diagnosis and verification of the structural state of the bridge over river Kentra Stora Skikda (North-East of Algeria), on the section of the 3AA National Road Skikda, but also for the proposal of repair solutions best adapted to the disorders observed.

The modelling of tension stiffening effects is important for the verification of serviceability limit states of reinforced or prestressed concrete structures or even for the computation of the stability limit state of particular classes of slender concrete structures (bridge piles, towers, masts, etc.). The case of pure bending has received extensive analytical and experimental consideration, but little attention has been paid, up to now, to the case of combined bending and normal force. A series of tests on rectangular reinforced concrete beams submitted to bending and constant compressive normal force is reported in this paper. The moment-curvature relationships are evaluated and compared with the prediction of two theoretical models. The first model is the CEB model proposed by Favre and Koprna. It is a simplified model which refers to the uncracked and fully cracked stiffnesses in pure bending only. The second model is a proposition made by the authors which takes into account the tension stiffening effects, the variation in position of the neutral axis as a function of the eccentricity of the normal force, and the non-linear behaviour of concrete in compression.