Directive words of episturmian words: equivalences and normalization

Episturmian morphisms constitute a powerful tool to study episturmian words. Indeed, any episturmian word can be infinitely decomposed over the set of pure episturmian morphisms. Thus, an episturmian word can be defined by one of its morphic decompositions or, equivalently, by a certain directive word. Here we characterize pairs of words directing a common episturmian word. We also propose a way to uniquely define any episturmian word through a normalization of its directive words. As a consequence of these results, we characterize episturmian words having a unique directive word.Comment: 15 page

A European inventory of common electronic health record data elements for clinical trial feasibility

Background: Clinical studies are a necessity for new medications and therapies. Many studies, however, struggle to meet their recruitment numbers in time or have problems in meeting them at all. With increasing numbers of electronic health records (EHRs) in hospitals, huge databanks emerge that could be utilized to support research. The Innovative Medicine Initiative (IMI) funded project ‘Electronic Health Records for Clinical Research’ (EHR4CR) created a standardized and homogenous inventory of data elements to support research by utilizing EHRs. Our aim was to develop a Data Inventory that contains elements required for site feasibility analysis. Methods:The Data Inventory was created in an iterative, consensus driven approach, by a group of up to 30 people consisting of pharmaceutical experts and informatics specialists. An initial list was subsequently expanded by data elements of simplified eligibility criteria from clinical trial protocols. Each element was manually reviewed by pharmaceutical experts and standard definitions were identified and added. To verify their availability, data exports of the source systems at eleven university hospitals throughout Europe were conducted and evaluated. Results: The Data Inventory consists of 75 data elements that, on the one hand are frequently used in clinical studies, and on the other hand are available in European EHR systems. Rankings of data elements were created from the results of the data exports. In addition a sub-list was created with 21 data elements that were separated from the Data Inventory because of their low usage in routine documentation. Conclusion: The data elements in the Data Inventory were identified with the knowledge of domain experts from pharmaceutical companies. Currently, not all information that is frequently used in site feasibility is documented in routine patient care.<br

Advantaging Authoritarianism: The U.S. Electoral System & Antidemocratic Extremism

America's authoritarian faction is both more extreme and more successful than similar movements in other advanced democracies. Yet despite its ascendency, this faction does not enjoy broad-based support. So what explains its outsized success?In this report, Protect Democracy examines the links between escalating antidemocratic extremism and the U.S. electoral system. In particular, it interrogates how specific features of the U.S. electoral system may be structurally favoring political extremism, such as by exaggerating one party's electoral wins over the other, diluting minority voting power, weakening competition between the major parties, preventing an electorally viable new center-right party, and rewarding extreme factions at the ballot box, among other effects

Quasiperiodic and Lyndon episturmian words

Recently the second two authors characterized quasiperiodic Sturmian words, proving that a Sturmian word is non-quasiperiodic if and only if it is an infinite Lyndon word. Here we extend this study to episturmian words (a natural generalization of Sturmian words) by describing all the quasiperiods of an episturmian word, which yields a characterization of quasiperiodic episturmian words in terms of their "directive words". Even further, we establish a complete characterization of all episturmian words that are Lyndon words. Our main results show that, unlike the Sturmian case, there is a much wider class of episturmian words that are non-quasiperiodic, besides those that are infinite Lyndon words. Our key tools are morphisms and directive words, in particular "normalized" directive words, which we introduced in an earlier paper. Also of importance is the use of "return words" to characterize quasiperiodic episturmian words, since such a method could be useful in other contexts.Comment: 33 pages; minor change

Medical Care Costs of Breast Cancer in Privately Insured Women Aged 18–44 Years

Breast cancer in women aged 18–44 years accounts for approximately 27,000 newly diagnosed cases and 3,000 deaths annually. When tumors are diagnosed, they are usually aggressive, resulting in expensive treatment costs. The purpose of this study is to estimate the prevalent medical costs attributable to breast cancer treatment among privately insured younger women

Explaining variation across grantees in breast and cervical cancer screening proportions in the NBCCEDP

There is substantial variation across the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program (NBCCEDP) grantees in terms of the proportion of the eligible population served by the grantees each year (hereafter referred to as the screening proportion). In this paper, we assess program- and state-level factors to better understand the reason for this variation in breast and cervical cancer screening proportions across the NBCCEDP grantees