Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a prion disease of captive and free-ranging deer (Odocoileus spp), elk (Cervus elaphus nelsonii) and moose (Alces alces shirasi). Unlike in most other prion diseases, in CWD prions are shed in urine and feces, which most likely contributes to the horizontal transmission within and between cervid species. To date, CWD ante-mortem diagnosis is only possible by imm...

ii Acknowledgments My gratitude goes to Nicolas Cerf for introducing me to the fascinating field of quantum information, and for giving me the opportunity to pursue this thesis. I would also like to thank all of my colleagues at the QuIC, in particular Lo¨ıck Magnin who read a preliminary version of this manuscript, and Louis-Philippe Lamoureux who has become a true friend. Some of the results ...

A Maxwell’s demon is a device that gets information and trades it in for thermodynamic advantage, in apparent (but not actual) contradiction to the second law of thermodynamics. Quantum-mechanical versions of Maxwell’s demon exhibit features that classical versions do not: in particular, a device that gets information about a quantum system disturbs it in the process. In addition, the informati...