Bob Stoll (right) at the White House, Nov. 2010, with then USPTO Deputy Director Sharon Barner.
On July 19, 2012, I interviewed Bob Stoll, former Commissioner for Patents of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The interview took place in a conference room at Drinker Biddleon K Street in Washington, D.C. After 29 years working for the USPTO and a total of 34 years working for the government, Stoll retired on December 31, 2011. He then started his new, second career as a private citizen and all around patent specialist at Drinker Biddle in the firm's Intellectual Property Group.
In part 1 of my interview with Stoll we discussed his adjusting to life in the private sector, the fact that he doesn't enjoy the billable hour part of private practice (just like every other attorney I know) and we discussed politics a bit, as well as the U.S. economy and innovation policy. Part 2 of my interview, which appears below, picks up where we left off discussing Presidential politics and the buzz that engulfs D.C. every 4 years. We then move on to talk about how innovation drives the U.S. economy and I get his thoughts on why we haven't seen a great new technology that has spawned an entirely new industry as we have coming out of so many recessions in the past. We then finish part 2 discussing changes to the patent examination process and how to streamline the examination process.
QUINN: I mean, this is a fun and interesting time for a lot of reasons. Maybe just one more question down this path. Being right here on K Street in D.C., at this point in time where probably everybody, Republican and Democrat alike would both agree — this is an incredibly important election. How fun is that for you?
QUINN: No, no, I know, but what I'm saying — you strike me as a real observer, somebody who likes the debate, someone that likes the discussion and you're in the city where right now it's just a buzz, no matter who you talk to.
QUINN: That's got to be an exciting time for you.
QUINN: It kind of makes you wonder though on some level whether either of these guys really want to win because one week Obama is having a bad week, another week Romney's having a bad week.
STOLL: That was taken out of context.
STOLL: Agreed. But it was taken out of context.
QUINN: I understand what people think he was trying to say.
STOLL: It's a game at this point and it's not one that's helping the discussion. And I don't think that part of it is good. I think genuine ideas should be put on the table with respect to that.
QUINN: I agree with you there.
STOLL: But I am reading everything I can about it.
QUINN: Oh, I am as well. And, you know, at the end of the day I think, you know, if we could both get in a room and had any kind of decision we'd probably come with, you know, within a degree or two of one another.
QUINN: It's a shame that the government can't do that.
QUINN: Well, let me ask you this, sort of on a broader economic level, and see if you have any thoughts you'd like to share. I suspect you probably do.
I look back at this recession, the great recession, whatever you want to call it, and it's been so long and slow to get out of, it's starting to have that feel like the Great Depression. Not that it was maybe not as bad as the Great Depression but that it was, 10, 15, 20 years to get back to where we really ought to be. I don't see innovation driving the bus the same way as it has in every other recession or the aftermath of a recession since the Great Depression. I'm trying to think what is the great new technology from this recession? Because there should be one. There should be something. We're making great advances with the wind and green technologies, but those are not ready to drive an economy yet. Computers are getting better and stronger. We've had the iPhone and the smartphone wars, but they're not driving the economy the same way that the Internet did. You look at the Clinton years; it was the Internet that drove an entire decade. Why is that? Why aren't we seeing break-out technologies that drive a new economy?
QUINN: If we had taken the stimulus money and said we're going to put people to work and we're gonna revolutionize our electric grid.
STOLL: Well, and maybe environmental improvements so we don't have another spill of oil again.
STOLL: And the needs of the people today one of the driving factors of advancement. For example, better batteries. , something as simple as that, batteries that don't recharge as much. And the cars that are going forward now that are more energy efficient and green tech oriented, I think you're gonna — you're keep seeing things move in that direction. Breakthroughs on diabetes and on AIDS would also be areas. Breakthroughs on cancer where a lot of research is happening. I think you're gonna see more technological solutions to problems..
QUINN: — down — you were in charge of driving down pendency and getting the old stuff out and really pushing things through.
QUINN: I know that and the people in the loop know it but, you were a driving force. Thank you for that. Kudos to you.
STOLL: Thank my team. I mean, we did start looking at some of the older cases and didn't understand why they were pending there for so long and they fell through the cracks and none of the reports were picking up a lot of them so I made people look at reports from 20 different ways and we found thousands of old cases that were just fallen through.
STOLL: That is because it's measured based upon the actions that you're undertaking.
STOLL: Not what's sitting in your queue.
STOLL: — It was important to get the applications out. And finally we started working up and getting rid of them and then the people I worked with and I got together and figured out ways of continuing to remove older cases so that we could get to a reasonable backlog, maybe by 2015, 10 months to first action pendency and it was a big goal of ours. But it doesn't have to happen for all cases. I think it has to happen for those that are important to anybody.
QUINN: Yes, I think that all that stuff is good and I think that since the Patent Office is speeding up and those things that people are really interested in and can get out, I think that maybe we will start to see. The other thing that I wonder is because we see a lot of this incremental advances and I also — I'm really, really worried and what I've been calling lately is the patent infringer lobby and it seems to me that just across the spectrum there is more interest in just keeping your head down, maybe not affirmatively trying to willfully infringe but just taking the position that I don't care, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna go through and I'm not necessarily gonna take the next step to figure out what other people are doing and try and innovate around them. And that to me seems like a fundamental problem when there's so many people that seem to be doing that.
STOLL: Companies do invent around patents and I'm seeing a lot of that now. I also see a lot of companies selling off the patents that are not core to their business.
STOLL: Some companies sell them off completely and hope to monetize them. I also see industries licensing competitors in order to reap some benefits that way and avoid costly suits so everybody's using patents differently.
STOLL: I think the problem is improvidently granted patents. I think when you've got a patent that's too vague and too broad and the examiners did not have the time or resources to undertake a proper examination that's where you get into problems. Now I'm gonna say that I think it's a split responsibility. The applicants need to file decent applications with detailed explanations that really point out their inventions and not try to obviscate and blur what they're actually claiming. The examiner needs to go out and make sure that the applicant is doing that and the examiner needs to find the best prior art and apply it properly. Those two things done together, a lot of these problems would go away.
STOLL: And I really think it goes back to the basic filing and the basic examination and we wouldn't have all of this litigation going on that we currently do.
QUINN: Yes. And it also strikes me as odd, I mean, you know, and maybe I see a non-representative set of things, you know, with IPWatchdog being out there sometimes I get — not sometimes — with regularity I'll get e-mails from people saying, hey, I have an invention, it's an innovation, I have my patent on file, can't get the patent and I don't understand what's going on. Could you take a look? And there seems to an aversion to actually engage the examiner and, I mean, and I get it. I get that during litigation anything you do or say can and will be held against you, but at the end of the day there's no litigation to be had if you don't get the patent.
STOLL: But Gene, I actually think that there's more willingness now, at least on the Office's side, and I'm seeing it from the practicing attorneys, to call the examiner up and see if they can't find a way to work through the problems. I actually think that the institution of this pre-first Office action interview is a phenomenal thing.
STOLL: It establishes a relationship between the applicant and the examiner and it really lets them get to a meeting of the minds quicker so that they understand each other's position. I think it's fantastic. I really believe — let me underline this — I think that most of the problems with our patent system really do flow from poorly drafted, unclear applications, poor examinations of those unclear applications so that combination, improving the tools, improving the examination, improving the application as it comes down — that would fix the system.
STOLL: I think that's great.
QUINN: — We've had luck with the first interview program before action and we've had luck now with the pilot and I really hope that that becomes permanent where the pilot where after final, you know, you've gotten so close that do we need to file the RCE? No.
STOLL: I don't even see how it couldn't be made permanent and I think it might be expanded in some cases.
QUINN: Well, I hope so. At times the examiner hasn't wanted to do that and, you know, it's fair. We always call up in advance and ask whether the examiner would be willing because you never want to assume.
QUINN: You never want to file something only to have it kicked back and then you wind up the dates are in play and so forth. And in the cases where the examiners have said they are willing, we are almost there and wind up getting a patent in those cases.
STOLL: And I think the discussions between the examiner and the applicant before the first office action is a brilliant procedure. I think it's really good. I think the after final program is great too and I hope the examiners aren't avoiding an agreement on the claims after final so they can get more counts without doing more work.
STOLL: I don't think most examiners would do that.
QUINN: No. I don't think so. The ones that we've seen so far — I think there's been some that were kind of close to the line and I thought maybe they would do it but it could have gone either way and they said no. And then there were some cases that we thought, you know, we are a word or two and they say yeah, sure, let's do it.
STOLL: Yeah. And I think that's great. And then when you're way too far they can't.
QUINN: And if it's gonna require an additional search, if you're not really just talking about the same language that somewhere it's already being considered but I think that's a big improvement. I also wonder though — I think it maybe isn't quite as simple as you say, just good applications and the good examinations. I think that's for sure, but we also seem to be in this golden era of interest in patents, both from the Supreme Court and the CAFC. Maybe the overall number of cases isn't growing as much as it seems, but I think the number of really important cases that those Courts decide, cases that have widespread ramifications that touch through a number of different areas, have grown.
STOLL: More judges, more attorneys. I think they are gonna be buried under an avalanche of cases in the near future. I mean, the examination, the core is picking up, what, 1200, 1500 right there?
STOLL: It's going to increase the number of applications being examined. The post-grant and the inter-parties review are immediately appealable to the CAFC. They're gonna need resources. So I think that you're gonna see not only more important cases coming out but more cases and a backlog start building up. I actually think some of the interest in having the Supreme Court engage in so many of these patent cases, which they've never done to this extent before, the media being filled with patent issues all flow from the fact that the examination and the filing have not been exactly what they should have been. I think that there's a concern with the quality of some of these patents out there in how they're being used and I think if we had better quality patents the system would work better. I highly respect the examiners and the management at the Patent and Trademark Office, they are doing the best that they can with the resources and the backlog they've got and I understand the attorneys are trying to put these cases competitively into the queue and into economy — as quickly and as economically as they can to make their money. I just think the system should be improved so that both are given a little bit more time to be able to do a better job in prosecuting the applications.
PART 3 PREVIEW — In the final installment of my interview with Bob Stoll we discuss the recent Supreme Court interest in patentable subject matter cases, inequitable conduct post- Therasense, and who might be in line for appointment to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.


Currently, there are a number of different compostable plastics resins available in the market and the number is growing every day. The most commonly used raw material for making the compostable plastics is corn starch, which is converted into a polymer with similar properties as normal plastic products. Other compostable resins are available made from potato starch, soybean protein, cellulose and as well from petroleum and petroleum by products. It is counter intuitive to think that compostable resins could be derived from petroleum, when all normal plastic products are derived from petroleum and are non compostable. However, there are certified compostable resins available in the market, derived from petroleum and the field of compostable plastics is constantly evolving with new materials and technologies being worked on and being brought to market. There is even research underway to make compostable plastics from carbon dioxide.
Properties The compostable resins for the most part mimic plastic properties, and different resins have different properties related to heat resistance, tensile strength, impact resistance, MVTR, oxygen barrier etc. One of the main compostable resin PLA, for example has a heat resistance of only 110F, while other compostable resins can have a much higher heat resistance.
Bioplastics can take different length of times to totally compost, based on the material and are meant to be composted in a commercial composting facility, where higher composting temperatures can be reached and is between 90-180 days. Most existing international standards require biodegradation of 60% within 180 days along with certain other criteria for the resin or product to be called compostable. It is important to make the distinction between degradable, biodegradable and compostable. These terms are often (incorrectly) used interchangeably.


Our service for an internship in Bali includes the active support during the preparation stage and throughout the time of your internship. We do our best to offer an affordable professional internship opportunity, while providing you with full organizational and local support.
All internships attract a registration fee of 75 EURO, which is not part of the program fee below. This fee may be refundable according to our terms and conditions.
What does the accommodation look like?
Do I have to decide before applying if I would like to choose the package including 4 weeks accommodation?
No, you can easily decide after your internship got confirmed by the host company. Some companies may also offer an accommodation as a reimbursment, however, this is not the regularity.
Will I still get support from Bali Internships throughout my internship?
Yes, definitely! Although your internship coordinator in your host company/organization might already support you, as you will see them on a daily basis, we will always be there to support you. We will schedule regular internship visits to ensure your satisfaction and the sustainbility of your internship commitment. Plus, we will assist you with your monthly visa extension, inform you about upcoming events and student gatherings and you can always reach us over our emergency number!


SAN FRANCISCOA lawsuit alleging ConAgra Foods, Inc. failed to disclose all the sodium content in its sunflower seeds is not preempted by federal law, an appeals court held last week.
The Feb. 20 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit revives a proposed class action lawsuit, which a federal judge previously dismissed.
ConAgra's nutrition facts label failed to disclose the sodium content on the shells of sunflower seeds, plaintiff alleged, quoting directions on the packaging that advise consumers to "crack the shell with your teeth, eat the seed and split the shell."
In the lawsuit, ConAgra countered that such a labeling practice would run counter to federal law (Nutrition Labeling and Education Act), which only requires that the sodium listed includes a food's "edible portion."
"But ConAgra's argument simply ignores the fact that while the shells themselves are inedible, the coatings put on top of the shells most certainly are not inedible," 9th Circuit Judge Barry Silverman wrote. "To the contrary, the coatings impart flavor and are indisputably intended to be ingested as part of the sunflower seed eating experience."
ConAgra also argued that dismissal of the lawsuit was appropriate because the labeling referencing only the kernels would not deceive a reasonable consumer. The 9th Circuit indicated the issue was a factual question and therefore not an appropriate one for it to address.
The lawsuit is Aleta Lilly v. ConAgra Foods, Inc., 2:2012-cv-00225, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.


text:
Liberty House kicks off Domestic Violence Awareness Month with Vigil
October 4, 2017 at 3:47 AM EDT - Updated August 14 at 2:35 PM
Liberty House Executive Director, Diane Rogers (Source: WALB)
Dougherty County Coroner, Michael Fowler (Source: WALB)
(Source: WALB)
Residents kick off domestic violence awareness month with vigil. (Source: WALB)
ALBANY, GA (WALB) - Tuesday evening, Albany residents gathered to remember more than 100 victims of domestic violence last year.
Dougherty County Coroner said domestic violence is growing at an alarming rate, with the most recent case being the brutal killing of an Albany woman, just last month.
Liberty House held its annual Butterfly Release and Vigil to raise awareness of domestic violence.
"To honor domestic violence victims that spoke up, that got the help they needed, so they can be their best self," Executive Director, Diane Rogers said to a crowd attending the vigil.
Rogers explained that before spreading its wings, the butterfly goes through a major transformation. Similar to what victims of domestic violence experience before getting the help they need to escape their abusers.
But many aren't so lucky.
"Francis Nelson and Mamie Childs..." Rogers read the names of two victims in Dougherty County who died, with Childs' murder being the most chilling scene.
"It's vicious violence, it's not just one thing, it's a repeated thing that's happening to the victims," Dougherty County Coroner, Michael Fowler remarked.
A coronation was thrown for each of the 102 victims in Georgia last year.
"I would rather see you getting some help, than to see you at a crime scene," Fowler explained.
Liberty House is there to provide resources for victims.
"It takes everyone in the community working together to make a change in domestic violence," Rogers said.
And it starts with a safety plan, "Kind of plan to figure out what the next step is, what to do, how to do it, and to do it safely," Rogers explained.
She said having a plan can prevent another life from being cut short.
"Bring light to the fact that 102 people passed away from something that could've been prevented," Rogers said.
"Get help, get counseling," Fowler pleaded.
Liberty House will be hosting several other events this month to raise awareness of domestic violence.
Future events include:
Lunch and Learn at ASU West Campus in the J Building Multipurpose Room from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m.
Self-Defense Class at Albany Police Department Community Room at 6 p.m.
Both of those events take place on Tuesday, October 10th.
Keep up with WALB on the go!
Follow us on social and download our apps!
Employers across South Georgia met at Albany Technical College Wednesday to learn about apprenticeship programs.
ASU to cut 2 sports teams
WALB News Team

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Dinurus longisinus är en plattmaskart. Dinurus longisinus ingår i släktet Dinurus och familjen Hemiuridae. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.

Källor

Sugmaskar
longisinus

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Community Zoom meeting Dec. 19 for hospital capital projects
December 15, 2022 Local NewsDianna Martell
There are two significant capital projects that will advance at the Kincardine hospital, including the construction of a 2,000 square foot addition to house a new Computed Tomography (CT) scanner, along with a 34,000 square foot expansion and modernization of the hospital's emergency department, diagnostic imaging, laboratory, decontamination room, lobby and its back of house (loading/unloading).
To provide an overview of these projects, SBGHC is holding a Virtual Community Information Session on Monday, Dec. 19, 2022 at 6:30 p.m. The session will be held via Zoom to provide an update to the Kincardine community, and all members of the public are welcome to join the call. To register for the session and receive the zoom link by email, please contact communications@sbghc.on.ca.
Construction of the new CT scanner suite to house the Siemens "X.Cite" CT scanner, is nearing completion. Construction of the addition began in May 2022 and is scheduled to be complete in mid February 2023. The new CT scanner is expected to arrive on site at the end of February, and then a team from Siemens Canada will complete the installation and commissioning of the equipment in early March. The targeted go-live date to begin scanning patients is March 20, 2023.
In addition to the CT scanner project, the Kincardine hospital expansion project continues to advance, passing another significant milestone in the Ministry of Health's five-stage capital planning process with the completion of Stage 3.1, to be submitted this month. Once Stage 3 has been approved by the Ministry of Health, Stage 4, he development of working drawings that are suitable for public tendering and construction purposes, will begin. Stage 5 is construction, which is estimated to begin in 2025.
The Kincardine and Community Health Care Foundation has been working closely with SBGHC since the start of the CT and expansion projects, having two Foundation Board member representatives on SBGHC's Kincardine Redevelopment Oversight Committee (KROC) which is helping to guide these projects. The Foundation, through locally raised dollars, has committed to fund $3 million of the cost of the CT Scanner project, and has also committed to funding the estimated $10.1million local share for Phase 1 of the hospital expansion project.
The Foundation has launched the "Building Health Care for Generations" capital fundraising campaign, with an overall goal of raising $12million to fund the redevelopment project, the CT Scanner and the hospital's ongoing medical equipment needs over the next four years. Support for this campaign has already begun with a $1.5 million donation from Bruce Power, along with an additional $500,000 donation from Bruce Power's supplier partners through the Bruce Power Supplier Sponsorship Package. In addition, the Municipalities of Kincardine and Huron-Kinloss have both made initial pledges of support.
"Our capital campaign to fund the community's share of the hospital expansion and medical equipment needs is our biggest undertaking to date. But our hospital urgently requires critical upgrades, additional space and more modern technology," said Becky Fair, Kincardine and Community Health Care Foundation President. "It will be through the generosity of the local community that our Kincardine hospital is upgraded and improved."
Community Zoom meeting Dec. 19 for hospital capital projects was last modified: December 15th, 2022 by Dianna Martell


The south by-pass consists of two twin tunnels – the north and south tunnels – with three, 3.5 m wide lanes each and an approximate total length of 4,200 meters, 90% of which have been built with the tunneling machine. "Tizona", a 148 long tunneling machine that weighs over 4,200 tons – is the biggest and most powerful in the world. It made the 3,664 meters of the south tunnel of this by-pass, cutting in five months the expected 12 months initially envisaged in the project with peak performances of 46 meters per day.
The contribution of Azierta consisted in the providing comprehensive engineering services and geotechnical studies.
Thanks to the tunnel, the gas emissions from the vehicles will no longer directly reach the atmosphere unchecked as it was the case now. Instead they will go through the by-pass's high technology Ventilation and Filtering System which can retain 80% of the particles, significantly absorbing the pollutant gases from the vehicles passing through the tunnels. These features make this tunnel a world benchmark in the application of efficient systems to improve air quality.
The tunnel will be among the safest in the world: it includes a gallery for service and emergency vehicles all along the tunnel in both directions, 13 pedestrian galleries connecting the tunnels every 200 meters and 5 for vehicle evacuation every 600 meters as well as 7 emergency exists that directly lead to the outside. It has 464 CCTV cameras, 18 km of fire detection cable, 472 hydrants, 15,710 lights and 112 variable message signs.


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text:
\section{Introduction}
\label{sec:1}
This paper comments on the recent approaches referred to as ``quantum-inspired'' in Information Retrieval (IR) research. IR is an area of classical computer science which covers problems related to the effective and efficient access to large amounts of stored information, where this information can be text documents, images, video, audio, etc~\citep{Baezayates_1999}. In ad-hoc information retrieval, which is the most common situation with which an IR system is concerned, input documents are transformed into a suitable representation for the IR system by an indexing process. A user expresses an information need in the form of a request that is formalised into a query by the IR system. The IR system compares the query against each document representation using a matching function determined by the adopted IR model. As a result of this comparison, the IR system produces a list of documents that are ranked from the most relevant to the least relevant, and this list is displayed to the user. This list reflects those documents that the IR system thinks are \emph{about} the query. In IR \emph{aboutness} is a semi-formalised notion which ``arises from an attempt to reason abstractly about the properties of documents and queries in terms of index terms''~\cite[p.19]{Rijsbergen_gir}. After examining the retrieved list, the user may provide feedback to the system by distinguishing documents that are relevant or modifying his/her initial information need. That is, IR is an interactive process --- the behaviour of the user modifies the system.

For several years the IR community has been considering some of the techniques and mathematical structures that have been used in quantum theory to model their tasks at hand.
These mathematical structures have typically been used by analogy, however, some of these approaches generate confusion. At least two papers have been written, targeting the IR community, to highlight some of the concerns about this program of research~\citep{Kantor_2007,Rieffel_2007}. However, on the basis of our observations of both the IR and Quantum Information communities, those who have a deep understanding of the physics of quantum theory and those who know merely the mathematical framework of quantum theory, tend to develop very different understanding of what has and has not been done in quantum-inspired IR. This paper is an introductory attempt to clarify the emerging issues and the authors hope it can benefit both communities.

The paper is organised as follows. Section~\ref{sec:2} discusses what IR researchers expect from Quantum Theory.
In Section 3, we provide a warning about the difference between storing information in a classical computer and storing quantum information on a quantum computer. Sections~\ref{sec:4} and~\ref{sec:5} describe various fundamental and advanced elements of QM, comparing them with their classical counterparts and discussing various proposed IR equivalences. The final discussion section lays out a number of challenges for this program of research if it is going to be successfully pursued.

\section{What do IR researchers want from Quantum Theory?}
\label{sec:2}

In this section we present our understanding of what IR researchers want from QM.

IR arose as a field driven by pragmatic considerations. Unlike other areas of classical computer science, finding a fundamental axiomatic formulation of the field has proven tricky, perhaps because of the intrinsic role humans play in the process and because information has proven considerably easier to capture mathematically than ``meaning". Quantum-inspired IR (QIIR) is an attempt to lay such a foundation.
The starting point can be traced back to viewing the field by the founder of QIIR,~\citet{Keith_towardslogic}, as a form of inference (from a document to a query or from a query to a document).
That is, a document is relevant to a query if it logically implies the given query and a measure of uncertainty is associated with such an implication. The uncertainty of implication is used to model the uncertainty of relevance.

This unifying viewpoint was motivated from prior work re-expressing three standard retrieval models (Boolean, Probabilistic and Co-ordination) in terms of uncertain implication~\citep{Keith_nonclassic_1986}.
In this proposal, it was suggested that accepting retrieval as inference allows us to ``speak quite clearly about theories of IR''. Theories themselves were described as ``a language together with axioms and rules of inference'', which provide a logic to perform this implication, and a measure of uncertainty of this implication~\citep{Keith_towardslogic}.

\Citet{Rijsbergen_experiment, Rijsbergen_gir} proposed to use the mathematical language of quantum mechanics, to describe the objects and processes in IR. It was also suggested that ``quantum mechanics provides a ready-made interpretation of this language. It is as if in physics we have an example semantics for the language, and as such it will be used extensively to motivate a similar but different interpretation for IR"~\citep[preface]{Rijsbergen_gir}.

While these intuitions are, at first glance, quite reasonable, there are difficulties in particulars.
There is an indication of such from the outset~\citep[preface]{Rijsbergen_gir}: ``The important notions in quantum mechanics, state vector, observable, uncertainty, complementarity, superposition and compatibility readily translate into analogous notions in information retrieval, and hence the theorems of quantum theory become available as theorems in IR". However, when we encounter some of the proposed IR-equivalences in Sections~\ref{sec:4} and~\ref{sec:5}, we will see that the majority do not admit a concrete or clear analogy which leads us to one of the main points of the paper: One should be very cautious about using the theorems of quantum theory as theorems in IR.

In this suggested quantum representation for IR, objects are represented within a Hilbert space, and a user can interact with these objects through \emph{measurement}. Measurement here is defined as application of linear operators (observables) to objects~(See Section~\ref{subsec:observables}). The outcome of this measurement is considered to be potentially probabilistic.
One aim for using this mathematical language was ``to apply the quantum theoretic way of looking at measurement to the finding of relevance in IR''~\citep[p.17]{Rijsbergen_gir}.

The essence of this proposal is the claim that using the mathematics of Hilbert space, which is also used by quantum theory, one can find a way of looking at information retrieval problems while being able to address questions of logic, probability and vector spaces within one framework.

Where does the logic of inference come from? The properties of observables on Hilbert space form a non-Boolean lattice, which induces a non-Boolean logic; accordingly, the outcome of applying observables to these objects is controlled by this logic~\citep{Keith_qlogic_1996}. The outcomes of measurement have associated with them a probability as specified by the Gleason's Theorem~(See~\citet{Rijsbergen_gir} for further details). Further motivations for suggesting such a program were to model the complex notion of relevance~\citep{Rijsbergen_gir}, to capture the interaction between users and a retrieval system particularly with respect to the fact that both user and the IR system are allowed to evolve~\citep{Piwowarski_etal_2009} and to capture the user's context to help users finding information~\citep{Melucci_08}.

In the rest of this paper we provide some perspective on the above, our first step will be to clarify the difference between classical and quantum information processing.

\section{Warning: QIIR involves no physical quantum information}
\label{sec:3}

A warning similar to what we address in this section was raised in~\citet{Rieffel_2007} wherein the author briefly addressed \emph{``what is and isn't quantum information processing"}. We believe that it is well worth elaborating on this in the context of QIIR.

Mathematically a quantum state is a normalized vector of complex entries. The quantum state of even a small number of particles is vastly too large to ``write down" as classical bits. For example, a generic state of 50 two-level quantum systems (photons, atoms, spins etc) is represented by $2^{50}$ complex numbers, which if stored using single precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) would require 8192TB of space (about $10 ^{12}$ pieces of paper!) to store as a vector on a classical computer. Observables or unitary transformations to act on the state require even more than this. If we do have a lot of memory available and we write down the state of a number of particles then we have represented the quantum state by classical information. For such a classical representation of a quantum state we can of course read out any element of the state vector we choose, something we shall see is very different to how real quantum states are accessible in the physical world.

In the real world we can in principle \emph{physically prepare} 50 or more particles in a quantum state, despite normally not being able to write this state down classically. The preparation is not performed by somehow coupling a 8192TB hard drive to the particles and somehow copying in the elements of the desired state onto the systems! Rather, instructions on how to physically prepare the desired quantum state must be written on (a small number of) pieces of paper and passed on to a PhD student, who implements them in a lab. The instructions are classical information, they concern how to arrange pieces of equipment, and since they are also classical and on a small number of pages they could not contain $2^n$ parameters for any reasonably large $n$. We say they contain polynomial in $n$ ($poly(n)$) parameters.\footnote{With a little thought this shows that arbitrary (i.e. generic) quantum states are never prepared in a lab!}

Now, once the student has followed the instructions and prepared the particles in some quantum state we cannot then interact with those systems and simply ``read out" any particular entry of the state vector we choose. If we could do so we would, in fact, have extraordinary computational power~(see Appendix~\ref{appendix-qi-proof} for further details). The problem is that as soon as we interact with the systems we obtain indeterministic data and moreover we destroy the quantum state of the systems in so doing. So this is a big difference between a classical representation of a quantum state (the main focus of IR) and a genuinely quantum representation of a quantum state (which is a bunch of particles prepared to actually be in that state).

In fact, even though we might know the instructions the student followed to prepare the state, in general we can\emph{not} efficiently (i.e. using an algorithm on a classical computer that requires only poly(n) space and time) calculate the probabilities of measurement observables on this state.

These points are subtle even to practitioners of quantum physics and so bear some elucidation.

So one might hope that perhaps the subset of quantum states which \emph{are} prepared in physics labs might be a subset we can both efficiently represent on a classical computer (for instance by storing just the instructions we gave the student!) and then be able to compute (classically) the probabilities of measurement outcomes for a specified observable on such a state. The observables themselves need to be ones that can be efficiently written down and parsed into experimental instructions too of course. The whole field of quantum information and computation is premised on the supposition (for which there is extremely good evidence) that this is not the case. We really do need to go into the lab, prepare and store the state \emph{quantumly} in actual physical systems and then perform physical measurements on those systems obtaining probabilistic data to obtain the well-documented information processing advantages proffered by quantum information.

So, when one talks of using the quantum state to represent some element of IR (e.g. a document, a query etc) if one means representation on a classical computer one is talking about an even much smaller subset of quantum states than even those a physics student can prepare in a lab. And now, since the state is just a vector of complex numbers stored in memory, one is able to do things that would be considered ``magical" within the framework of generic quantum physics  - such as reading out specific entries of the vector. In some sense this leads to the first question a quantum physicist might raise to a practitioner of IR: Why restrict yourself to the same set of rules that nature restricts us by, once you have supposedly adopted the Hilbert space framework but are then representing everything classically?

It is an open question whether there is any advantage to taking some element of IR, turning it into a procedure for creating some actual quantum state or implementing some observable in a lab and thereby letting genuine quantum information processing take place - that is, whether using \emph{quantum computers} is useful. But this is not what QIIR, at least in its original formulation, is aimed at.

The upshot is hopefully clear: QIIR as it stands today should be seen as adopting structural elements of quantum theory as a formal framework. Whether this is justified or useful is what the remainder of this article is about.

In the next section we further clarify the points highlighted in Section~\ref{sec:2} by providing introductory definitions of some of the fundamental elements of QM and further discuss their various proposed IR equivalences.

\section{Structural elements of QM {and} various proposed IR equivalences}
\label{sec:4}

The aim of this section and the next section is to give a clear picture of the basic elements of QM and suggested IR analogous notions. We also compare these elements with their classical counterparts.
We do not provide judgement on whether these analogies are sensible and concrete or not. The authors by no means claim that the list is exhaustive; These are merely a selected subset of features sufficient for the purpose of this commentary.

\subsection{Systems and States}

The status of the quantum state in physics is contentious. However all interpretations of quantum mechanics agree that quantum states are inferential objects: they at least play a role of allowing us to predict
the probabilities of future experimental outcomes. A Bayesian view of quantum mechanics~\citep*{Fuchs_2001} suggests that this is all they are (or ever can be), but there are certainly opposing opinions\citep{Valentini_2009, Deutsch_1999}.

In classical physics the line is clear: epistemic states (states of knowledge/information) are probability distributions over some space, the points of which - the `ontic' or real states - encode the physical properties of the system. For instance; a single particle's ontic states are points in phase space, namely a position and a momentum. However, it is plausible an agent does not know the exact position or the exact momentum of a particle and so assigns a probability distribution (known in physics as a Liouiville distribution) over the phase space based on their information. Note that it is not impossible to think of quantum states in a similar way, but it does lead to some unusual looking descriptions of `underlying reality' and so it is not adopted by most physicists~\citep{Harrigan_Terry_2007,Harrigan_Spekkens_2010}.

Given that quantum states are inferential objects, we point out at this juncture that we could use a complete list of all probabilities of all possible measurement outcomes as a description of the state of the quantum system - an infinite list - but because of relationships between those probabilities we find using a finite vector in Hilbert space allows just as good inferences in a more compressed form. Why are state vectors called inferential objects? This is because QM does not allow us to read out any specific entries of the state vector we choose, and accordingly we need to perform measurement to predict the probabilities of future experimental outcomes from this inferential object.

We now turn to proposed analogous IR notions to quantum systems and quantum states of which several appear in IR literature. However, we refer to two of the most developed ones, namely, representing the state of a \emph{document} or the state of a \emph{query} as an inferential object.

In the first approach, a given document is regarded as a quantum system and the problem of representing or indexing this document is considered analogous to that of representing quantum states of a physical system~\citep{Alvaro_etal2008}. The state of a document is therefore considered the inferential object. In IR vocabulary, this inferential object ``encapsulates the answers to all possible queries"~\citep{Rijsbergen_gir}. In principle the state assigned to the document could just be represented as a list of the probabilities (likelihoods) associated to every query - ie the queries play the role of measurement. However a more compressed version is obviously desirable.

In the second approach, a user's information need is considered as a quantum system and the state of this information need - the query - is the inferential object~\citep{Piwowarski_etal_2009} analogous to the quantum state, which can be used to calculate the outcome probabilities for all possible different measurements (documents) that may be performed.

\subsection{Measurement Observables}
\label{subsec:observables}
Measurements are described mathematically in quantum theory via applying an observable, that is, a Hermitian (self-adjoint) operator, or more precisely the projectors onto the eigenvectors of the observable in question, onto the state of a given system. Both the probabilities of an outcome and the post measurement state form part of the formalism and are deducible given a specific state and observable pair.

Both classical epistemic and quantum states are disturbed by a measurement - they both `collapse'. In the classical case this is not mysterious - when one gains information one changes the probability one assigns to a physical situation instantly. In the quantum case whether this is mysterious or not depends on whether one takes a Bayesian view or one's interpretation of the quantum state, an issue we are avoiding~\citep{Fuchs_2001}. What is certainly clear is that the disturbance in the quantum case is more radical due to the possibility of incompatible measurements.

Incompatible measurement refers to observables which are not jointly measurable, i.e. can not be measured at the same time, and measurement of one of them causes a disturbance to one's ability to predict the outcome of the other. Classical measurements are always compatible, quantum measurements can be either compatible or incompatible.

Interestingly, incompatible measurement is not always specific to quantum theory. There exist \emph{toy theories}~\citep*{toy_2007,ERLM_2011} which have incompatible measurements. These theories generate features people think of as typically quantum but the fact is that they are a restricted version of a classical theory. Another example of classical systems with incompatible variables can be found in~\citet{kirkpatrick-2003}. We will elaborate more on incompatibility in Section~\ref{sec:Incompatibility}.

We now return back to the question of what do we need to infer from a given system's state in IR?
Several possibilities come to mind.
If the task is finding documents relevant to a query, and the state of documents are considered as the inferential objects, then it seems natural that what should replace the role of measurements on the quantum system is a query~\citep{Rijsbergen_gir}.

The user of the IR system will then be the person who chooses a measurement to perform - i.e. who
chooses one from a set of possible queries to make. Posing a query by the user is regarded as applying a measurement operator onto the state of a given system. We need to assume that the query applied to any document yields a real number from 0 to 1, a number that,
in the quantum case, is the probability of that outcome.
These numbers are considered as indicative of likelihoods of user satisfaction. Thus the simple binary query to a document ``I am interested in pictures of an elegant motorcycle, do you contain one?'' should yield a real number $p \in[0; 1]$ which is higher if the document contains a picture that
the user will likely find elegant.

From this perspective the person who mathematically requires the inferential object is not the user per se, rather it is the person who is programming the IR system - the system programmer wants to infer whether any given document has a high or low likelihood of satisfying the user, given a future query to be chosen by users. Note that in this scenario we have
separated the role of \emph{measurer} from that of \emph{inferrer}, which typically we do not bother
doing in QM, but which here seems necessary.

For a single-term query, an observable corresponds to a yes/no question. For multi-term queries, the entire query is considered to be an observable which can be reduced to a combination of yes/no questions using the spectral decomposition theorem~\citep{Rijsbergen_gir}.

In the second approach, queries are considered as states of a quantum system, and
then documents correspond to the role of measurement, e.g.~\citep*{Piwowarski_what_2010}.

\subsection{Dynamics}

First we look at a closed quantum system which does not interact with any observer. A given quantum system evolves in time in a manner that depends both on intrinsic (internal) features and extrinsic (things nearby) ones. In this case the system changes continuously and the evolution operator is represented by the Schr\"odinger equation. This time evolution operator satisfies a number of criteria, including being a linear unitary operation, deterministic and differentiable in time. In quantum dynamics we are not free to choose whatever rules we wish to represent this time evolution. This evolution is in marked contrast to the already mentioned fact that upon measurement a quantum system's state changes discontinuously - it collapses into one of the observable's eigenstates with some probability (itself dependent on the geometry of Hilbert space via Born's Rule).

As the evolution operator must map an allowed state of the system to another allowed state (most operations would take us to invalid states) there is therefore a trade-off between the allowed states of a theory and the allowed dynamics of the theory~\citep{Joh_barrett_2007}. Allowed state refers to those states that "correspond to physically possible states of a system"~\citep{Joh_barrett_2007}.
It is worth mentioning here that there exist theories that are neither quantum nor classical but their dynamic is classical~(See~\citet{Joh_barrett_2007} for some examples of these theories).

In the context of interactive IR, it is suggested that if a user's query is represented as a quantum state then this state evolves when the user interacts with the system. Two different dynamics are suggested~\citep*{Piwowarski_etal_2009}. Firstly, during the interaction of the user with the IR system, the system's understanding of user's information need changes. Secondly, a user may change his/her information need after receiving some information during the interactions with the IR system. Any interaction between the IR system and the user is modelled as a measurement, and measurement is modelled using projection operators (yes/no observable), hence following the discontinuous type of dynamics as mentioned above.

In the second approach, if a document is represented as a quantum state then this state may need to be evolved discontinuously~(by the inferrer) when the user provides feedback on the relevance of the given document\citep{Sachi_thesis08}.

\section{Quantum Phenomena}
\label{sec:5}

In this section we survey some of the more controversial quantum mechanical concepts which induce confusion within the quantum-inspired IR approaches.
We take a closer look at the IR-theoretic analogue(s) of the notions of randomness and incompleteness, incompatibility, statistical mixture and superposition, non-orthogonality, and quantum interference. We end this section by representing some issues with the use of quantum logic for IR.

\subsection{Randomness and Incompleteness}

In this section we compare the notion of classical and quantum randomness, and highlight few questions regarding the application of quantum viewpoint of information processing in IR. The intention of authors here is neither to define any quantitative measure of randomness, nor to defend the usefulness of randomness as a resource in IR\footnote{For an interesting example of using randomness as a resource in designing rich user experiences for listening to music see~\citet*{Leong_etal2006}.}.

Classically the randomness (unpredictability) of the measurement outcome is viewed as observer's ignorance about some pre-determined properties, i.e. it reflects the incomplete knowledge of the observer about the system. This knowledge can be improved or even completed via further measurements and the acquisition of more information.

In the quantum case, the outcome of a specific quantum measurement is unpredictable, however this unpredictability may or may-not be considered to reflect a lack of knowledge about some hidden variables according to one's interpretational leanings. Within the framework of pure quantum theory we can say only that given a pure quantum state, predictability cannot be improved. But of course the predictability is only perfect for a small set of the possible measurements, for most of them the outcomes are probabilistic. And attempts to further refine that information - as can be done classically - run into the problem of incompatibility. There is some maximum amount of information that we can have about a quantum system, but this does not give us the complete information that would be necessary to predict the outcome of \emph{any} measurement: \emph{maximum information about a quantum system as represented by a pure quantum state vector is not necessarily complete information}~\citep{Fuchs_2001,Fuchs_etal_1996,toy_2007}.

To understand the nature of unpredictability in IR, we are required to answer the following question:
Is a user's searching for information as intrinsically unpredictable as that encountered in QM or is IR randomness simply related to the classical concept of incomplete knowledge? In other words, whether we have a more concrete analogy between IR and an incomplete knowledge classical system as opposed to a quantum system.
The answer will depend in some circumstances on whether there is a natural notion of incompatible measurements in IR (see next section). If the answer is positive, then IR notion of randomness is a sensible analogous notion to quantum randomness. Otherwise, we are associating an inherent randomness to a system, only because the system is complex and we do not have complete knowledge about it.\footnote{A concrete question (partly addressed in~\citet{PavlovicD_QI08}) is whether quantum randomness can improve the task of modelling information retrieval systems.}

In QIIR the probabilities of quantum theory are generically carried over to relate in some manner to `document rankings' - to the likelihood of user satisfaction with a document\footnote{The utilised probability notion should not be used as an objective probability, i.e. it is not that we expect if one repeat an experiment multiple times then a certain fraction of them would result in satisfaction.}.
This inferential uncertainty is basically uncertainty about a user's preferences, goals and judgements.
In fact, several studies showed that users' relevance criteria fluctuate depending on their interests, intentions and goals~\citep*{Law_etal_2006}. This implies that each time a user judges whether a document is relevant to a given query, he or she may provide a different judgement depending on the relevance criteria at the time. Does it follow that the user's behaviour is completely unpredictable and we cannot know the user at all?
As the users of an IR system are diverse in goals, intentions, and many other factors, one research question to investigate here is to what extent we can acquire the maximal information about user(s) of an IR system, of course considering the variety of information retrieval tasks.
In this sense we are treating the users as a system - there is a sample space of all possible users. If a (classical or quantum) state is meant to capture our uncertainty about the outcomes of future experiments then from this perspective one can consider associating states to users and not to queries (or documents).

\subsection{Incompatibility}
\label{sec:Incompatibility}

The notion of \emph{incompatible measurement} refers to observables which are not simultaneously measurable, measuring one of them causes a random disturbance in the other -  so different outcomes will be obtained depending on which is measured first. Quantum incompatibility is manifested mathematically by the non-commutativity of the observables, which means the order of successive measurements affects the outcome of the measurements.

Before referring to possible benefits of using incompatibility in IR, it should be noticed that the notion of incompatibility does not exclusively belong to quantum theory. An example of a classical system with incompatible variables is already addressed in~\citet{kirkpatrick-2003}, and example of classical non-commutativity of measurements can be found in the Toy Theory of Robert W.~Spekkens~\citeyearpar{toy_2007} and classical Liouville mechanics with an epistemic restriction~\citep{ERLM_2011}.

If the state (i.e. inferential object) refers to a document and a query to measurement, an intuitive use of incompatibility in IR is where a document passes through a sequence of queries in which reversing the order does not lead to the same results.
A supporting evidence for the existence of such queries refers to a study~\citep*{Busemeyer_etal_2011} in which a story (i.e. a document) is represented to a user and then successive queries are answered by the user about the likelihood of certain statements about the story. The order of these questions has been shown to be significant.
An example suggested in~\citet{Rijsbergen_gir} refers to treating the relation between \emph{aboutness} and \emph{relevance} of a query as incompatibility between observables. It has been argued that incompatibility between predicates happens because of interaction, e.g. if one asks an observer questions regarding \emph{aboutness} and sequentially a question about its \emph{relevance}, by repeating the first question one might get a different answer than when it was originally asked.

If the state refers to a query and a document to measurement, one suggestion for using incompatibility in IR is where a user is provided with two different documents, $d_1$ and $d_2$. The user may first study $d_1$ and then $d_2$ and if we again ask user's opinion about $d_1$, the opinion may have been changed. This implies that the order of documents matters and the `observables' correspond to reading each of these documents do not always commute, e.g.~\citep{Piwowarski_etal_2009}. A supportive evidence for the influence of presentation order on user judgments can be found in~\citet*{Eisenberg_etal1988}.

One fundamental question to investigate would be whether we have enough examples of incompatibility in IR and if we can provide a strong case to justify this analogy. As classical logic is all about compatible observables, finding appropriate answer to the above research question will have a great impact on another question which will come up about incompatible observables and that is to what extent we need to use \emph{quantum logic} for IR.

\subsection{Statistical Mixture and Superposition}
\label{sec:superposition}
Mixed and superposed quantum states are two of the other notions from quantum theory that are suggested to have IR analogous notions. First let recall what is a mixed state in Quantum Mechanics.

\subsubsection{Mixed states}

Assume that the only information an observer knows about a given system is that the system is in state $A$ with probability $P_A$ and in state $B$ with probability $P_B$. This uncertain information about the state of the system can be represented by a mixed state. A mixed state is represented by a density matrix which is a mathematical object that allows to represent experimental scenarios involving a randomization in choice of measurement, preparation of states, etc.
A mixed state corresponds to a classical probability distribution over a set of \emph{pure} quantum states in which
a pure states refer to a state that can not be represented as a mixture of other quantum states.

Until one is clear about the role of pure states within QIIR it is somewhat difficult to be sure about the role of mixed states.
An intuitive suggestion to use the concept of mixed states in IR is to represent an inferential object with some inherent uncertainty. One scenario would be the representation of a single-term query that involve a randomization in choice of query terms. This scenario refers to the case where the user's query is a single-term query but the inferrer is not aware of  the exact query term that the user is asking. As an example consider a user who randomly chooses query term $t_1$ with probability $p_1$, query term $t_2$ with probability $t_2$, and $t_3$ with probability $p_3$ as his/her information need. In this scenario the inferrer who is not aware of the exact query term that the user is asking, uses a mixed state to represent the user's query. As a result of this representation, the probability that the inferrer will measure for each document would be the convex combination of the three cases. This scenario is close to what mixed states are used for in QM and can be extended to mixtures of superposed quantum states as addressed in~\citet{Piwowarski_what_2010}.

Another suggestion in IR is to use the concept of mixed states to represent a set of inferential objects, each with its own importance degree~\citep{Rijsbergen_gir}. One such scenario would be the representation of multi-term queries, i.e. combinations of query terms with weight coefficients. An example is where the user's query contains three query terms ``$t_1\ t_2\ t_3$'', associated with importance degree of $p_1, p_2, p_3$, respectively. According to the suggested approach, the inferrer assigns a mixture representation to this query. However, any attempt to interpret this representation under the light of the mixed state used in QM would mean that the system (i.e. query) is just in state $t_1$ with probability $p_1$, in state $t_2$ with probability $p_2$ and in state $t_3$ with probability $p_3$. This interpretation differs from the expectation in IR that the user's query is meant to address all three query terms at once.
Accordingly this suggestion reflects a fundamental difference with the concept of mixed states in QM.
Other examples of exploiting this scenario in IR include representing documents in a cluster~\citep{Rijsbergen_gir} and representing the set of documents that user judges as relevant~\citep{Rijsbergen_gir}.

The message to be noticed here is that mixed states are merely a classical distributions over a set of quantum states, and if the goal is to adopt the quantum viewpoint of information processing, a concrete analogy with the concept of mixed states in QM is expected. One question to investigate here is to what extent the uncertainty inherent in density operators matches with the type of mixture we need in IR.

\subsubsection{Superposition}

In quantum theory one can create superposition states of a single quantum system. For example a given system can be in a superposed state $|\phi\rangle$ = $\alpha |A\rangle$ + $\beta |B\rangle$, where
$|.\rangle$ denotes a state vector in the Hilbert space and refers to the Dirac notation used in QM, $\alpha^{*}\alpha$ + $\beta^{*}\beta$ = 1, and $^{*}$ denotes complex conjugate.

It is crucial to note that the system in a superposed state is in a genuinely new state. It is fundamentally different from a system that is in state $|A\rangle$ or one in state $|B\rangle$. But it is also fundamentally different from a system that is just `in state $|A\rangle$ with probability $p$ and in state $|B\rangle$ with probability $1-p$'. That situation is the case of a mixed state, referred to above. Superposition is an operation that takes in two (or more) states and combines them into a completely different state within the Hilbert space. Inferences from this new state differ from those we make from $|A\rangle$ and $|B\rangle$. A superposition of two (or more) possibilities is not the \emph{conjunction (and)} of those possibilities nor the \emph{disjunction (or)} of those possibilities. It should also be pointed out that the same state can be written as a coherent superposition of \emph{many different} pairs of states.

In IR, there are two different viewpoints towards the significance of the concept of superposition. In a first view, van Rijsbergen mentioned that ``it is not clear whether the difference between a superposition and a mixture of states plays a significant role in IR"~\citep[p.95]{Rijsbergen_gir}.
Given that van Rijsbergen also mentioned~\citep[preface]{Rijsbergen_gir} that the important quantum phenomena including superposition readily translates into analogous notions in IR,
this viewpoint is a somehow contradictory view since it is the difference between superposition and mixture that differentiates classical from quantum physics. Several other IR researchers do, however, consider the concept of superposition a significant concept for IR.
There are several attempts to provide analogous notions to superposition, but these approaches generally address a concept which is very different than quantum superposition.

One such attempt is to use the notion of superposition in query representation~\citep{Piwowarski_what_2010}. An example of this attempt is when the query ``Pizza delivered in Cambridge (UK)'' would be represented by a (normalised) linear combination (or, as it was claimed, `superposition') of the state vectors associated with ``I want a pizza'', and the one associated to ``I want it to be delivered in Cambridge (UK)''. As we addressed before, a weighted coherent superposition of two possibilities is not the \emph{and} of those possibilities nor the \emph{or} of those possibilities. Accordingly in this example, the advantage of calling this combination as `superposition` is not clear.
Other suggested analogue(s) of the notion of superposition can be found in~\citet*{Melucci_Keith_2011}.

A final point to note about superpositions is the following. If quantum states $|A\rangle$ and $|B\rangle$ are orthogonal, the state $\alpha |A\rangle$ + $\beta |B\rangle$ is not orthogonal to either. Is there a QIIR analogue of non-orthgonality to help us identify a QIIR analogue of superposition? If we are associating states to documents then two such states would be orthogonal if there is a query that yields a relevance of 1 on the one document and 0 on the other. Conversely, if we are associating states to queries then orthogonal queries are ones for which there is some document that is completely relevant for one and irrelevant for the other. The non-orthogonal combination of the documents or queries should be something that yields some relevance in-between 0 and 1 for such cases. It seems plausible that QIIR examples of such phenomena could be found.

There is a catch however. Non-orthonality arises even in classical probability theory. It arises for overlapping distributions. That is, there are points in the sample space which can be associated with more than one probability distribution. Overlapping probability distributions share many features of quantum non-orthogonality. They cannot be distinguished perfectly, they cannot be cloned~(identically copied) and so on. The toy theories mentioned above~\citep{toy_2007,ERLM_2011} all make extensive use of this feature. Determining what is genuinely quantum about non-orthogonality is subtle -
if one claims that there would be some quantitative benefits for using quantum states in IR, first should show that the same outcomes can not be achieved using classical non-orthogonality.

To conclude, in order to investigate whether the difference between a superposition and a mixture of states plays a significant role in IR we suggest that there should be a clear concept of interference - the fundamental phenomenon that is a consequence of this difference.

\subsection{Quantum Interference}
\label{interference}
Quantum interference is a phenomenon in which the probability of two mutually exclusive events $A$ and $B$, is not $P_{A}+P_{B}$ (the sum of their individual probabilities) but is rather $P_{A}+P_{B}+f(P_{A},P_{B},\theta)$ where $f$ is some function of $P_{A}, P_{B}$, and some set of other parameters (denoted $\theta$) that are either part of the quantum state or are part of the measurement. A simple interference commonly encountered has
$f(P_{A},P_{B},\theta)=2\sqrt P_{A}\cdot\sqrt P_{B}\cdot cos\theta$.

To what does quantum interference correspond in IR? Let us focus on the case where we are assigning states to documents for concreteness. In some sense it should be a process of document
merging which says something like: Combining two possible inferential objects associated with a document yields  an inferential object such that new queries have
outcomes that are \emph{not} formed by probabilistic mixture of the likelihoods for the previous
inferential objects. That is, sometimes the best new inferential object lies
\emph{in-between} the original two in a \emph{non-classical} manner.

Here is an example of our own devising. Consider some ancient manuscript, such as the Bible, for which the
oldest known pieces are fragmentary. D1 could be one such piece, and D2 another. The `real' document - the system - is the original Bible, based on D1 and D2 we might assign different indexes and inferential objects - `states' - according to which we answer questions about whether the bible will satisfy some need of the user. Typically
we find that D1 and D2 agree on the text in many places, however both have text which
is not contained in the other. Moreover, in places where they disagree, scholarly input is
required to analyse the context, to look for possible scribal errors and so on. Therefore the
final reconstructed document D3 is close to D1 and D2, but it is not a simple merging of
them.

Consider now someone making a series of queries on the documents. It is perfectly
possible that the likelihood they assign to D3 satisfying the users information need is not simply a simple probabilistic mixture
of the likelihood for D1 and D2 individually - it is not as if the scholar who produced D3
did so by, wherever there was discrepancy, choosing D1 with probability 2/3 and D2 with
probability 1/3 say. Therefore we have a concrete situation where the inferential object we
would associate with D3 may well be ``non-orthogonal" (in the operational quantum sense)
to that associated with D1 and D2. Of course the functional form of the interference is unlikely
to follow that of QM!.

Other proposed analogous notions to interference could be along the lines that the information in two
documents conflicts (or corroborates), so returning both of them might result in lower (or
higher) user satisfaction than returning each of them individually~\citep{Guido_ecir2010}.
Similarly, the information in two topics, in a long document or document containing multiple topics or subtopics, may conflict~\citep*{Wang_etal_2010}. Similar analogies can be formed on the query side as well, e.g. merging two query terms together~\citep{Piwowarski_etal_2009}.

In quantum mechanics there is a specific functional form that interference takes, due to the geometry of Hilbert space. If we wish to push for a specific type of interference such as those above then the next step is to justify its specific mathematical structure.
There are many general probabilistic theories manifesting interference phenomena in different forms - even within physics it is hard to justify why nature took the specific functional form it did. It therefore seems extremely unlikely that interference in QIIR can easily justify it; if it did we would surely gain new knowledge about quantum physics! The discussion section details about using alternative theories to model interference and other quantum effects.

\subsection{A framework to combine Probability, Logic and Vector Spaces?}
\label{sec:logic}

One of the main motivations for suggesting to use quantum theory in IR was using its underlying mathematical language as a framework to combine probability, logic and vector spaces in one formalism~\citep{Rijsbergen_gir}. The suggestion refers to the fact that Quantum Theory provides this framework via its standard version of quantum logic and via Gleason's theorem.

The standard version of quantum logic refers to the set of all closed subspaces of a Hilbert space or the set of all orthogonal projection operators~(the 2-valued observables) which constitute an orthomodular lattice which is not distributive. This orthomodular lattice determines a sort of logic and a probability measure can be specified on this lattice of subspaces using the Gleason's theorem.

Many researchers refer to this version as a failed program of research. It is certainly no longer heavily pursued in physics. For a list of some of these reasons
see~\citet{Coecke_proposal_qlogicfail}.

One particularly relevant issue, addressed first by Foulis and Randall~\citeyearpar{Randall_1979}, relates to describing a composite system via a tensor product. A composite quantum system involves more than one subsystem, wherein the Hilbert space for this system is represented as the tensor product of the Hilbert spaces for each subsystem. Foulis and Randall showed that it is not possible to formulate a tensor product for orthomodular lattices. This means that the tensor product of orthomodular lattices is not necessarily an orthomodular lattice.

It would seem inevitable that for something to be useful as an axiomatic foundation for IR that it be able to deal with the case of multiple systems (regardless of whether `the system' refers to documents, queries or something else). As a natural consequence of the failure of standard quantum logic for composite systems, some of the suggestions for using tensor products in IR, e.g. combining different representations of a given document by means of tensor products and using the notion of non-separable states to formalise the complex interdependent relationships among the different representations~\citep*{Ingo-Polyrepresentation} are not necessarily compatible with some of the underlying motivations for the program.

More general mathematical structures developed later in the area of quantum logic in search for a genuine version of quantum logic for quantum theory, including orthoalgebras (a generalization of orthomodular lattices), effect algebras (a generalization of orthoalgebra) and category theoretic structures~\citep{BobCoecke_picture,Bobcoecke_maincategory}\footnote{For an application of the categorical theory version of quantum logic on the domain of natural language processing see~\citet*{ClarkCoeckeSadr}.}. For a review and a list of references showing the development of quantum logic, including orthoalgebras and effect algebras consult~\citet*{Bob_2000}. The potential benefits of these alternative logics for IR remain to be seen.

\section{Discussion and suggestions for future research}
\label{sec:6}

In this paper we surveyed some of the elements of QM and various proposed IR equivalences.
The main weakness of such proposals as discussed in Sections~\ref{sec:4} and~\ref{sec:5} is that they do not have a convincingly concrete analogy with elements of QM.
This implies a challenge for this program of research to identify what are the requirements for IR to have a concrete analogy with QM, and to investigate whether assuming those requirements for IR problems are reasonable.
Even if we come up with a concrete analogy between IR and quantum phenomena, e.g. strong cases for the existence of incompatibility in measurement, sufficiently similar types of randomness, etc, and we are looking for a theory to reproduce those phenomena, then it should be noted that the mathematics of Hilbert space and its induced logic is merely a tool to perform further foundational research in IR, and one may always expect that a more appropriate tool could arise.
Van Rijsbergen in a keynote talk at SIGIR 2006~\citep{Rijsbergen_keynote_sigir} addressed that the elements of logic in this tool can be challenged. He mentioned that ``The assumption that closed linear subspaces will be the elements of our logic can be challenged, as perhaps a construction with different elements is possible". One can consult Section~\ref{sec:logic} for examples of some of these alternative tools, wherein we referred to some of the existing replacements for the standard quantum logic.
We would like to point out that the probabilistic framework in this tool can also be challenged. There are many general probabilistic theories manifesting features very similar to quantum phenomena that can possibly also be used to help formalise the foundations of IR.

We now briefly introduce some of the possible alternatives for the probabilistic framework. As finding the simplest theory for IR uses would be desirable, being aware of such theories is useful. Although in physics none of these theories have been explored as rigorously as QM, nothing stops IR researchers from exploring the options to find the most appropriate solution for IR.

The first category of theories refers to \emph{In-Between Theories} which are theories that are closer to classical theory as opposed to quantum theory, and have no connections with physics but reproduce a great number of quantum phenomena. As examples we refer to the Toy Theory of~\citet{toy_2007} and classical Liouville
mechanics with an epistemic restriction~\citep{ERLM_2011}. These are both theories built on top of regular probability theory but with a single restriction that forbids someone ever being 100 percent sure of the true value of the random variable.
In these theories, a simple restriction on the available knowledge for the observer allows one to model a very large number of features commonly thought to be quantum phenomena. Examples of these features include non-commutativity of measurements, a form of interference, superposition, the multiplicity of convex decompositions of a mixed state, mutually unbiased bases, the EPR paradox, teleportation and many others.

The second category of alternative theories refers to \emph{Generalised Theories}. This category of theories is a broader range of theories than classical and quantum, i.e.~is
sufficiently general to include quantum theory, classical probabilistic theories and many other theories.
One example of this category refers to theories that are classified under the category of \emph{Generalised Probabilistic Theories Framework}~\citep{Joh_barrett_2007} which is a conservative generalisation of classical probability theory. The fundamental elements we listed in Section~\ref{sec:4} are those structural features that all theories within this framework have in common (i.e. states, measurement observables, dynamics). In fact certain quantum phenomena appear in all of these theories except classical theories!
Therefore the onus is on IR researchers to justify singling out quantum theory from the others, since at present the arguments in favour of quantum inspired IR merely look at qualitative analogies with these phenomena.

Alternatively, it is possible that the Generalised Probabilistic Theories Framework is still not general enough for the tasks in IR and one may need to write down a mathematical framework that generates the specific required features, using e.g.~\emph{Convex Operational Theories}~\citep{Barnum_etal_2011} or \emph{Category Theoretical Structures}~\citep{Bobcoecke_maincategory,BobCoecke_picture}, all of which contain quantum theory as a special case.

The above is not claimed to be an exhaustive list, but are merely examples to make the reader aware of other possibilities.
In our opinion whether there are actually any practical benefits of using a specifically quantum inspired model remains an open and challenging topic for the future of IR theory.

\section{Acknowledgements}
The authors gratefully acknowledge S.Arafat, M. Leifer and B. Coecke for discussions on these issues.
This research was supported by the Imperial College EPSRC Strategic Fund.

\bibliographystyle{apacite}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


text:
Kid's Confidence Campaign
Makenzie
The Kids' Confidence Campaign with Makenzie
It was July, 2020 – Makenzie was booking in and ready to come into the studio. We'd had a pre-consult, picked out some outfits, and chatted about how to make a photoshoot a fun experience for her. But then, 2020 being 2020, Melbourne Metro was thrown into a lockdown that lasted nearly four months!
Luckily, by November, things had calmed down and we were finally able to have Makenzie and her Mum, Michelle, in the studio for some fun!
The Kid's Confidence Campaign is all about working with young people to allow them to build self-esteem, see their self-worth, and have fun being themselves. It's a process to try and break down any barriers young people may have, and let them indulge in beautiful portraits of themselves. So many of us grow up 'hating photos of ourselves', and with the pressures on young people with social media, this project was all about combating those societal pressures.
Makenzie is only 10 years old!
At such a young age, Makenzie was fabulous in front of the camera. She has had some experience with photoshoots before, but mostly outside and not in a studio environment. Coming to my studio was a little bit of a new experience for Makenzie, and with it she was fantastic.
With skills in cheerleading, Makenzie told me it's one of her favourite things about herself. She said she doesn't give up, and she's really strong. These are awesome things for a 10 year old to acknowledge!
She's a great dancer, reader, and a great friend too. Her kindness really does shine through, and Makenzie is so mature for her age as well.
My favourite things about working with Makenzie:
Not only was Mckenzie really kind, but she was also very patient and followed my directions perfectly. She was willing to try new poses, as well as bring in some of her own ideas too. It was so much fun!
I asked Makenzie what her favourite music was, and we put on a soundtrack to some of her favourite movies. She sang and danced the whole way through our session – so much so that her Mum told me she exhausted herself into a nice afternoon nap when she got home! This isn't surprising for me – it is actually exhausting to be in front of a camera, and Makenzie was a champion trying on different outfits and allowing me to bring in different backdrops too.
Let's have a look at how Makenzie felt about her experience.
Makenzie told me she went into the photoshoot feeling excited and wasn't nervous at all. She said, "I am so proud of myself for doing the photoshoot. The photos were amazing!".
How Makenzie felt about her photoshoot:
Having a great experience during a photoshoot is all going to come back to how a person was feeling during the process.
"I felt happy, excited and energetic. I felt so comfortable, I was able to sing and dance and do poses, without even feeling embarrassed or anything" Makenzie said.
When asking her what she liked most about the images we captured together, she said "Just everything!". I love it when people love their photos – when they can see how amazing they are! Makenzie, you have no flaws, and never will. You are gorgeous inside and out!
Working with Makenzie is one part of the process, but it's also important to me to work with Mums & Dads who are just as involved as the little ones! Michelle was fabulous, and such a caring, thoughtful parent who loves being able to help Makenzie with new opportunities. From modelling to dance and cheerleading, Michelle has been with Makenzie through every step.
She said "I wasn't really sure what to expect in terms of how confident Kenzie would be, considering she was in a new environment. She has done lots of outdoor photo shoots, but not much in the studio. However, Julia made Kenzie feel comfortable and relaxed by letting her choose her favourite music! And any butterflies that were hanging around flew straight out the window!! The photoshoot was fun and easy-going, and produced the most amazing array of photographs, with a combination of happy, dancing relaxed photos, and serious, arty, glamorous portraits.'
Can a professional photoshoot help increase confidence and self-worth?
With the Kids' Confidence Campaign, I wanted to look at how people felt the photoshoot aided their confidence. Everyone is going to feel a little differently, so let's see how Makenzie felt:
Do you think having a professional photoshoot has given you more confidence in yourself or helped you in another way? Tell me a little bit how: "Yes, because it's has given me a chance to do a photoshoot in a studio, which I haven't really done before! So now if I get a modelling job I will be able to feel more comfortable and confident know how it's all done".
If you were to encourage another child/teenager to have a professional photoshoot to build their confidence, what would you say to them? "Definitely do it because you will feel really proud of yourself!".
And with a few thoughts from Mum, this is what Michelle said: "Kenzie has definitely become more confident within herself! She has even gone into some uncomfortable situations (like going into the dentist her own due to covid!) that she would normally be terrified, with a lot more confidence."
Check out Makenzie's experience with the behind the scenes video:
There's no better way to sum up a photoshoot than with a behind the scenes video!
Do you know someone who could benefit from their own photoshoot?
No matter what age or style, professional photography is a great way to capture all the positive things about ourselves!
Check out our portrait experiences here.
jcnance	January 1, 2021
Children's Portraits / Kid's Confidence Campaign
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We provide expert consulting in finish selection – how to pull the cabinet color, countertops, wall color, and flooring all together. Whether it is a new build, new construction home or a remodel or a cosmetic update it is important that the finishes selected will go well together.
One of our specialties is to help you unite all the finishes together so that your home will have a cohesive feel and look. Every material and color has undertones and important that they are chosen to go together.
Kitchens and bathrooms are generally the most labor intensive with flooring, tile selection, countertops, cabinets, fixtures, hardware, lighting, all need to be pulled together for a well designed look.


Volunteers from various Indic Wikisource projects took part in a discussion organized by Centre for Internet and society: access to knowledge (CIS:A2K) in Kolkata recently. Dr. Gitartha Bordoloi participated in this consultation on behalf of the Assamese Wikisource which included other Indic languages like Bengali, Odia, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada, Gujarati, Punjabi, Telugu and Sanskrit. It is worth mentioning here that Wikisource is another important project like Wikipedia, Wiktionary etc operated by Wikimedia Foundation. Anyone can contribute to this wikisource project which stores copyright-free books, plays, lyrics, speeches, translated works etc. Such works are first scanned and digitalized and then converted to unicode so that everything becomes searchable. Assamese Wikisource (as.wikisource.org), started in 2013, so far includes various literary works of Guru Sankardeva and Madhavdev, Jyotiprasad Agarwala, Lakshminath Bezbaroa, Padmanath Gogain Baruah, Chandraprasad Agarwala, Amulya Barua, Dandinath Kalita etc. Measures to popularize Wikisource among masses, increasing numbers of readers and contributors, correct techniques to digitalize a book etc were discussed at the event in Kolkata.


Hamdia Ahmed said she and her family had the police called on them at a Dunkin' Doughnuts in Portland, Maine, on Monday.
It came after an employee asked the family to "stop yelling" while they were speaking Somali to one another.
Store owner Dave DaRosa apologised to Ahmed on Wednesday and acknowledged that the police should not have been called.
Dunkin' Doughnuts apologised after one of its employees refused service to a Somali woman and her family before calling the police because the group was speaking in another language.
Hamdia Ahmed told the Portland Press Herald that she and her family were at a Dunkin' Doughnuts drive-thru on Monday in Portland, Maine, when the incident occurred.
The family members were speaking Somali to each other when a worker told them to "stop yelling" and said she was calling the police.
Ahmed, a student at the University of Southern Maine, said she went inside to talk to the employee about the incident before police arrived.
After speaking with police officers, Ahmed, a refugee from Somalia who has lived in the United States for more than a decade, was issued a no-trespass order for "disturbance and yelling at staff," but the order was later revoked.
Store owner Dave DaRosa apologised to Ahmed on Wednesday and acknowledged that the police shouldn't have been called.
A corporate Dunkin' Doughnuts representative also apologised and released a statement on the incident.
Earlier this month, employees at a Dunkin' Doughnuts in Syracuse, New York, were fired after they poured a bucket of water on a homeless man who was inside their store charging his phone.


text:
Colombia filtered 'by mistake' issues that will arise in US his Defense Minister
February 26, 2014 by KCBA-admin Leave a Comment
Washington, Feb 26 (Entravision) .- The Ambassador of Colombia to U.S. , Luis Carlos Villegas, today confirmed that the press office of the Ministry of Defense of Colombia sent "by mistake" an agenda that contains confidential details about the topics that arise in Washington the holder of Defense of the country, Juan Carlos Pinzon.
In an e-mail sent to several Colombian media correspondents in Washington, the Defense Ministry deputy a document of 55 pages, written in English and that includes details on the international strategies of Colombia in countries such as Venezuela and Nicaragua, as these media have reported.
Shortly after, the press office of the Ministry has asked the media not to publish the contents of the document, to contain details confidential, in addition to phone numbers and information on means of transportation of the Colombian delegation.
"It is a serious error, and we would have preferred not to happen, but once that has happened, I would like to say that none of the topics that are cited in that document is surprise," said Villegas in a meeting with journalists in Washington.
Pinzón traveled this Tuesday to the US federal capital for a three-day visit in which will meet with congresspeople, the director of the CIA, John Brennan, and officials from the departments of State and Defense, within the fourth high-level dialog to bilateral also assist the foreign minister, Maria Angela Holguin.
According to Villegas, it should come as no surprise that the agenda include topics such as the peace process between the Government of Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Colombia or the willingness to find some way of cooperating with NATO.
"Clear that we are going to talk about the peace process, and we are going to respond to the questions that have the staff of the United States and insist that the cooperation of the United States has to also be maintained in the post-conflict period," said the ambassador.
With respect to the situation in Venezuela, indicated that the Colombian Government has a "sincere concern" for the protests that have taken place in that country, and that if the US officials, were asking their opinion to Pinzon or to Holguin, "van to answer".
In the same vein, he stressed that Colombia had already "transmitted to the United States its concern about Nicaragua" in relation to the dispute that both countries maintain on its maritime border in the Caribbean, and in this visit is only intended to "reiterate" that concern.
Villegas advancement, in preparation for the High-level Dialog on Friday, these days is paving the way for the creation of a working group for science and technology, and the signing of an agreement on natural parks between Colombia and the United States and a work plan on non-conventional energies.
We are also preparing a convention of bilingualism for the National Apprenticeship Service (SENA) Colombian "receives more easily instructors in english" and an agreement on trafficking in persons, according to the Ambassador, that did not guarantee that all of these projects are completely finished for his signature on Friday.
Finally, Colombia provides "pose to the United States the beginning of the process to obtain 'waiver' (dispensation) visas to Colombia", that is to say, the simplification of procedures for that Colombian citizens may travel without a visa for tourist purposes to USA
"is a process that takes about six or eight years, and we want to start now," said Villegas, who recalled that Chile already processed successfully for some time the same request.
Filed Under: National and World


text:
package gergely.sallai.tools.resultfragment;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.app.DialogFragment;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

/**
 * A DialogFragment that can return results to it's caller.
 * Extending this class will handle the most common result listener use cases:
 *      1.) Calling Activity implements the listener
 *      2.) TargetFragment implements the listener
 * Ability to manually add listeners.
 * @param <T> the type of the ResultListener, must extend ResultFragmentBase.ResultListener
 */
public abstract class ResultDialogFragmentBase<T extends ResultDialogFragmentBase.ResultListener> extends DialogFragment {

    /**
     * Interface to be extended by the actual listener interface.
     * Use this when you create the listener for your fragments.
     */
    public interface ResultListener { };

    private final List<T> listeners = new ArrayList<T>();

    @Override
    public void onStart() {
        super.onStart();
        if (getTargetFragment() instanceof ResultListener) {
            addListener((T) getTargetFragment());
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void onStop() {
        super.onStop();
        if (getTargetFragment() instanceof ResultListener) {
            removeListener((T) getTargetFragment());
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void onAttach(Activity activity) {
        if (activity instanceof ResultListener) {
            addListener((T) activity);
        }
        super.onAttach(activity);
    }

    @Override
    public void onDetach() {
        if (getActivity() instanceof ResultListener) {
            removeListener((T) getActivity());
        }
        super.onDetach();
    }

    /**
     * Adds a listener to the listeners list.
     * This listener will not be retained across all instances!
     * On a Fragment recreation the manually added listeners will be removed. They will need to be added again.
     * (This is not the case when the listener is automatically recognized.
     * E.g.: The Activity or the targetFragment implements the listener)
     * @param resultListener the listener, that is added manually
     */
    public final void addListener(T resultListener) {
        listeners.add(resultListener);
    }

    /**
     * Removes a manually added listener.
     * @param resultListener the listener to be removed
     */
    public final void removeListener(T resultListener) {
        listeners.remove(resultListener);
    }

    /**
     * Get the list of listeners
     * @return the listeners, that should be notified about results
     */
    protected final Iterable<T> getListeners() {
        return listeners;
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


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