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Speech is a fundamental aspect of human life, crucial not only for communication but also for cognitive, social, and academic development. Children with speech disorders (SD) face significant challenges that, if unaddressed, can result in lasting negative impacts. Traditionally, speech and language assessments (SLA) have been conducted by skilled speech-language pathologists (SLPs), but there is a growing need for efficient and scalable SLA methods powered by artificial intelligence. This position paper presents a survey of existing techniques suitable for automating SLA pipelines, with an emphasis on adapting automatic speech recognition (ASR) models for children's speech, an overview of current SLAs and their automated counterparts to demonstrate the feasibility of AI-enhanced SLA pipelines, and a discussion of practical considerations, including accessibility and privacy concerns, associated with the deployment of AI-powered SLAs., Comment: AAAI-FSS 24

Disruptions to medical infrastructure during disasters pose significant risks to critically ill patients with advanced chronic kidney disease or end-stage renal disease. To enhance patient access to dialysis treatment under such conditions, it is crucial to assess the vulnerabilities of critical care facilities to hazardous events. This study proposes optimization models for patient reallocation and the strategic placement of temporary medical facilities to bolster the resilience of the critical care system, with a focus on equitable outcomes. Utilizing human mobility data from Texas, we evaluate patient access to critical care and dialysis centers under simulated hazard scenarios. The proposed bio-inspired optimization model, based on the Ant Colony optimization method, efficiently reallocates patients to mitigate disrupted access to dialysis facilities. The model outputs offer valuable insights into patient and hospital preparedness for disasters. Overall, the study presents a data-driven, analytics-based decision support tool designed to proactively mitigate potential disruptions in access to critical care facilities during disasters, tailored to the needs of health officials, emergency managers, and hospital system administrators in both the private and public sectors.

Understanding the collective quantum dynamics of nonequilibrium many-body systems is an outstanding challenge in quantum science. In particular, dynamics driven by quantum fluctuations are important for the formation of exotic quantum phases of matter \cite{altman2023quantum}, fundamental high-energy processes \cite{bauer2023highenergy}, quantum metrology \cite{degen2017sensing, li2023scrambling}, and quantum algorithms \cite{ebadi2022quantum}. Here, we use a programmable quantum simulator based on Rydberg atom arrays to experimentally study collective dynamics across a (2+1)D Ising quantum phase transition. After crossing the quantum critical point, we observe a gradual growth of correlations through coarsening of antiferromagnetically ordered domains~\cite{Samajdar2024}. By deterministically preparing and following the evolution of ordered domains, we show that the coarsening is driven by the curvature of domain boundaries, and find that the dynamics accelerate with proximity to the quantum critical point. We quantitatively explore these phenomena and further observe long-lived oscillations of the order parameter, corresponding to an amplitude (Higgs) mode \cite{pekker2015amplitude}. These observations offer a unique viewpoint into emergent collective dynamics in strongly correlated quantum systems and nonequilibrium quantum processes., Comment: 25 pages, 14 figures

Suppressing errors is the central challenge for useful quantum computing, requiring quantum error correction for large-scale processing. However, the overhead in the realization of error-corrected ``logical'' qubits, where information is encoded across many physical qubits for redundancy, poses significant challenges to large-scale logical quantum computing. Here we report the realization of a programmable quantum processor based on encoded logical qubits operating with up to 280 physical qubits. Utilizing logical-level control and a zoned architecture in reconfigurable neutral atom arrays, our system combines high two-qubit gate fidelities, arbitrary connectivity, as well as fully programmable single-qubit rotations and mid-circuit readout. Operating this logical processor with various types of encodings, we demonstrate improvement of a two-qubit logic gate by scaling surface code distance from d=3 to d=7, preparation of color code qubits with break-even fidelities, fault-tolerant creation of logical GHZ states and feedforward entanglement teleportation, as well as operation of 40 color code qubits. Finally, using three-dimensional [[8,3,2]] code blocks, we realize computationally complex sampling circuits with up to 48 logical qubits entangled with hypercube connectivity with 228 logical two-qubit gates and 48 logical CCZ gates. We find that this logical encoding substantially improves algorithmic performance with error detection, outperforming physical qubit fidelities at both cross-entropy benchmarking and quantum simulations of fast scrambling. These results herald the advent of early error-corrected quantum computation and chart a path toward large-scale logical processors., Comment: See ancillary files: five supplementary movies and captions. Main text + Methods

The ability to perform entangling quantum operations with low error rates in a scalable fashion is a central element of useful quantum information processing. Neutral atom arrays have recently emerged as a promising quantum computing platform, featuring coherent control over hundreds of qubits and any-to-any gate connectivity in a flexible, dynamically reconfigurable architecture. The major outstanding challenge has been to reduce errors in entangling operations mediated through Rydberg interactions. Here we report the realization of two-qubit entangling gates with 99.5% fidelity on up to 60 atoms in parallel, surpassing the surface code threshold for error correction. Our method employs fast single-pulse gates based on optimal control, atomic dark states to reduce scattering, and improvements to Rydberg excitation and atom cooling. We benchmark fidelity using several methods based on repeated gate applications, characterize the physical error sources, and outline future improvements. Finally, we generalize our method to design entangling gates involving a higher number of qubits, which we demonstrate by realizing low-error three-qubit gates. By enabling high-fidelity operation in a scalable, highly connected system, these advances lay the groundwork for large-scale implementation of quantum algorithms, error-corrected circuits, and digital simulations., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. Methods: 13 pages, 10 figures