An Analysis of Prescription Drug Information From Manufacturer to Consumer: A Text Mining Approach

The goal of this study is to evaluate the differences in readability and content between U.S. drug Package Inserts (PI) and Consumer Medical Information Leaflets (CMI). Using text mining techniques such as Natural Language Processing with the UMLS MetaMap, and document metrics such as the Flesch-Kincaid grade level score, a sample of PI and CMI will be examined for 35 common drugs in the U.S. Text Mining allows for mapping of text into Concept Unique Identifiers, which allows for comparison of text between documents with different vocabularies. As Package Inserts are written for professionals, and CMI Leaflets are written for consumers, this technique lends itself well to compare content. This study shows that recall is appropriately low when comparing CMI Leaflets to Package Inserts: omitted concepts are more important for physicians and pharmacists than patients. Readability is high for CMI Leaflets, but more effort should be made to express contraindications

Almost every set of N≥d+1N\ge d+1 orthogonal states on d⊗nd^{\otimes n} is locally indistinguishable

I consider the problem of deterministically distinguishing the state of a multipartite system, from a set of $N\ge d+1$ orthogonal states, where $d$ is the dimension of each party's subsystem. It is shown that if the set of orthogonal states is chosen at random, then there is a vanishing probability that this set will be perfectly distinguishable under the restriction that the parties use only local operations on their subsystems and classical communication amongst themselves.Comment: 5 pages, no figures, comments welcom

Report of a workshop on large whale medical intervention : indications and technology development

Sponsors: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Center for Coastal Studies, New England Aquarium. Location: Carriage House, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole MA 02543. Date: Monday February 7th 2000This one day interdisciplinary workshop, attended by 12 veterinarians 11 whale biologists, an engineer and the NMFS Regional Stranding Coordinator, was convened by Michael Moore, with financial support from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Cecil and Ida Green Technology Innovation Fund. The goal was to examine ways in which veterinary medical techniques could assist in efforts to mitigate right whale mortality. In particular the indications and technology for the use of sedation during disentanglement efforts and antibiotic therapy for wounds after disentanglement were considered.Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Cecil and Ida Green Technology Innovation Fun

Ancilla models for quantum operations: For what unitaries does the ancilla state have to be physical?

Any evolution described by a completely positive trace-preserving linear map can be imagined as arising from the interaction of the evolving system with an initially uncorrelated ancilla. The interaction is given by a joint unitary operator, acting on the system and the ancilla. Here we study the properties such a unitary operator must have in order to force the choice of a physical- that is, positive-state for the ancilla if the end result is to be a physical-that is, completely positive-evolution of the system.Comment: Quantum Information Processing, (2012

Entanglements of North Atlantic right whales increase as their distribution shifts in response to climate change: The need for a new management paradigm [poster]

Presented at 2019: World Marine Mammal Science Conference, Barcelona, Spain, December 9-12, 2019.Detection rate of severely injured or entangled NARWs began to increase around 2004 - 2007.We thank the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium for data curation and dissemination, and the Atlantic Large Whale Disentanglement Network for entanglement sighting information

Direct and Simultaneous Observation of Ultrafast Electron and Hole Dynamics in Germanium

Understanding excited carrier dynamics in semiconductors is crucial for the development of photovoltaics and efficient photonic devices. However, overlapping spectral features in optical/NIR pump-probe spectroscopy often render assignments of separate electron and hole carrier dynamics ambiguous. Here, ultrafast electron and hole dynamics in germanium nanocrystalline thin films are directly and simultaneously observed by attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy (ATAS) in the extreme ultraviolet at the germanium M_{4,5}-edge (~30 eV). We decompose the ATAS spectra into contributions of electronic state blocking and photo-induced band shifts at a carrier density of 8*10^{20}cm^{-3}. Separate electron and hole relaxation times are observed as a function of hot carrier energies. A first order electron and hole decay of ~1 ps suggests a Shockley-Read-Hall recombination mechanism. The simultaneous observation of electrons and holes with ATAS paves the way for investigating few to sub-femtosecond dynamics of both holes and electrons in complex semiconductor materials and across junctions.Comment: Includes Supplementary Informatio

Striking the right balance in right whale conservation

Author Posting. © The Authors, 2009. This article is posted here by permission of NRC Research Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 66 (2009): 1399-1403, doi:10.1139/F09-115.Despite many years of study and protection, the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) remains on the brink of extinction. There is a crucial gap in our understanding of their habitat use in the migratory corridor along the eastern seaboard of the United States. Here, we characterize habitat suitability in migrating right whales in relation to depth, distance to shore, and the recently enacted ship speed regulations near major ports. We find that the range of suitable habitat exceeds previous estimates and that, as compared with the enacted 20 nautical mile buffer, the originally proposed 30 nautical mile buffer would protect more habitat for this critically endangered species.This work was supported in part by SERDP/DoD grant W912HQ-04-C-0011 to A.J. Read and P.N. Halpin as well as a James B. Duke Fellowship and a Harvey L. Smith Dissertation Year Fellowship to R.S. Schick

Genome-wide analysis reveals PADI4 cooperates with Elk-1 to activate c-Fos expression in breast cancer cells.

Peptidylarginine deiminase IV (PADI4) catalyzes the conversion of positively charged arginine and methylarginine residues to neutrally charged citrulline, and this activity has been linked to the repression of a limited number of target genes. To broaden our knowledge of the regulatory potential of PADI4, we utilized chromatin immunoprecipitation coupled with promoter tiling array (ChIP-chip) analysis to more comprehensively investigate the range of PADI4 target genes across the genome in MCF-7 breast cancer cells. Results showed that PADI4 is enriched in gene promoter regions near transcription start sites (TSSs); and, surprisingly, this pattern of binding is primarily associated with actively transcribed genes. Computational analysis found potential binding sites for Elk-1, a member of the ETS oncogene family, to be highly enriched around PADI4 binding sites; and coimmunoprecipitation analysis then confirmed that Elk-1 physically associates with PADI4. To better understand how PADI4 may facilitate gene transactivation, we then show that PADI4 interacts with Elk-1 at the c-Fos promoter and that, following Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF) stimulation, PADI4 catalytic activity facilitates Elk-1 phosphorylation, histone H4 acetylation, and c-Fos transcriptional activation. These results define a novel role for PADI4 as a transcription factor co-activator

New Five Dimensional Black Holes Classified by Horizon Geometry, and a Bianchi VI Braneworld

We introduce two new families of solutions to the vacuum Einstein equations with negative cosmological constant in 5 dimensions. These solutions are static black holes whose horizons are modelled on the 3-geometries nilgeometry and solvegeometry. Thus the horizons (and the exterior spacetimes) can be foliated by compact 3-manifolds that are neither spherical, toroidal, hyperbolic, nor product manifolds, and therefore are of a topological type not previously encountered in black hole solutions. As an application, we use the solvegeometry solutions to construct Bianchi VI$_{-1}$ braneworld cosmologies.Comment: LaTeX, 20 pages, 2 figures Typographical errors corrected, and references to printed matter added in favour of preprints where possibl

Tight informationally complete quantum measurements

We introduce a class of informationally complete positive-operator-valued measures which are, in analogy with a tight frame, "as close as possible" to orthonormal bases for the space of quantum states. These measures are distinguished by an exceptionally simple state-reconstruction formula which allows "painless" quantum state tomography. Complete sets of mutually unbiased bases and symmetric informationally complete positive-operator-valued measures are both members of this class, the latter being the unique minimal rank-one members. Recast as ensembles of pure quantum states, the rank-one members are in fact equivalent to weighted 2-designs in complex projective space. These measures are shown to be optimal for quantum cloning and linear quantum state tomography.Comment: 20 pages. Final versio