Expanding a fluorescent RNA alphabet: synthesis, photophysics and utility of isothiazole-derived purine nucleoside surrogates.

A series of emissive ribonucleoside purine mimics, all comprised of an isothiazolo[4,3-d]pyrimidine core, was prepared using a divergent pathway involving a key Thorpe-Ziegler cyclization. In addition to an adenosine and a guanosine mimic, analogues of the noncanonical xanthosine, isoguanosine, and 2-aminoadenosine were also synthesized and found to be emissive. Isothiazolo 2-aminoadenosine, an adenosine surrogate, was found to be particularly emissive and effectively deaminated by adenosine deaminase. Competitive studies with adenosine deaminase with each analogue in combination with native adenosine showed preference for the native substrate while still deaminating the isothiazolo analogues

Regulation, generic competition and pharmaceutical prices: Theory and evidence from a natural experiment

We study the impact of regulatory regimes on generic competition and pharmaceutical pricing using a unique policy experiment in Norway, where reference pricing (RP) replaced price cap regulation in 2003 for a sub-sample of off-patent products. We exploit a detailed panel dataset at product level covering a wide set of off-patent drugs before and after the policy reform. Off-patent drugs not subject to reference pricing serve as our control group. We find that RP leads to lower relative prices, with the effect being driven by strong brand-name price reductions, and not increases in generic prices. We also find that RP increases generic competition, resulting in lower brand-name market shares. Finally, we show that RP has a strong negative effect on average prices at molecule level, suggesting significant cost-savings.Pharmaceuticals, Regulation, Generic Competition.

Regulation and Pricing of Pharmaceuticals: Reference Pricing or Price Cap Regulation?

We study the relationship between regulatory regimes and pharmaceutical firms’ pricing strategies using a unique policy experiment from Norway, which in 2003 introduced a reference price (RP) system called “index pricing” for a sub-sample of off-patent pharmaceuticals, replacing the existing price cap (PC) regulation. We estimate the effect of the reform using a product level panel dataset, covering the drugs exposed to RP and a large number of drugs still under PC regulation in the time before and after the policy change. Our results show that RP significantly reduced both brand-name and generic prices within the reference group, with the effect being stronger for brand-names. We also identify a negative cross-price effect on therapeutic substitutes not included in the RP-system. In terms of policy implications, the results suggest that RP is more effective than PC regulation in lowering drug prices, while the cross-price effect raises a concern about patent protection.Pharmaceuticals; Price Regulation; Branded-Generic competition.

Regulation and Pricing of Pharmaceuticals: Reference Pricing or Price Cap Regulation?

We study the relationship between regulatory regimes and pharmaceutical firms’ pricing strategies using a unique policy experiment from Norway, which in 2003 introduced a reference price (RP) system called “index pricing” for a sub-sample of off-patent pharmaceuticals, replacing the existing price cap (PC) regulation. We estimate the effect of the reform using a product level panel dataset, covering the drugs exposed to RP and a large number of drugs still under PC regulation in the time before and after the policy change. Our results show that RP significantly reduces both brand-name and generic prices within the reference group, with the effect being stronger for brand-names. We also identify a negative cross-price effect on therapeutic substitutes not included in the RP-system. In terms of policy implications, the results suggest that RP is more effective than PC regulation in lowering drug prices, while the cross-price effect raises a concern about patent protection.pharmaceuticals, price regulation, branded-generic competition

Towards Hardware-Based Application Fingerprinting with Microarchitectural Signals for Zero Trust Environments

The interactions between software and hardware are increasingly important to computer system security. This research collects sequences of microprocessor control signals to develop machine learning models that identify software tasks. The proposed approach considers software task identification in hardware as a general problem with attacks treated as a subset of software tasks. Two lines of effort are presented. First, a data collection approach is described to extract sequences of control signals labeled by task identity during real (i.e., non-simulated) system operation. Second, experimental design is used to select hardware and software configuration to train and evaluate machine learning models. The machine learning models significantly outperform a Naive classifier based on Euclidean distances from class means. Various configurations produce balanced accuracy scores between 26.08% and 96.89%

Evaluering av NTNU Technology Transfer

Med dette presenteres resultatene fra en evaluering av NTNU Technology Transfer AS (TTO), som er gjennomført på oppdrag av NTNU. Utgangspunktet for oppdraget, var NTNUs ønske om å få en helhetlig analyse av TTOs rolle innenfor NTNUs strategi for nyskaping, og som kunne brukes i en pågående prosess med videreutvikling av denne strategien. Av denne grunn er det lagt vekt på å diskutere hvilke muligheter det er for å utvikle aktiviteten i TTO, både ved en bedre tilrettelegging av rammebetingelsene for virksomheten, og ved en utvikling av virksomhetens strategi

Exploratory data analysis for fatty acid composition in pig meat

Fat content and composition are determinant factors affecting pork production and meat quality (Wood et al., 2003). Fat composition is commonly presented as the percentage of each individual fatty acid relative to total fatty acids and then some pork quality traits are described in terms of some fatty acid percentages (see for example the review by Wood et al., 2008). Despite being compositional in nature, to our knowledge there is no reference in the literature where specific compositional data analysis methods had been applied to analyze fatty acid composition. A first objective of this contribution is to analyze fatty acid composition as compositional data. In meat quality research, it is common to analyze the effect of some influential factors (such as diet, genotype, gender, live weight or age, among others) on fat content and composition, usually the subcutaneous (SF) or the intramuscular (IMF) fats. In these studies, the aim is mostly to estimate and then test the differences among treatments for fatty acid percentages. The pattern of fatty acid deposition may differ among tissue (for instance, SF or IMF) or muscle (Kloareg et al., 2007; Duran-Montgé et al., 2008), and even between localization within a specific tissue. A second objective of this manuscript is to better know the differences between fatty acid deposition pattern between tissues, localization within a tissue, and muscles. Thus, the purpose of the present study is, first, to describe a data set of fatty acid composition collected specifically for doing research on IMF content and composition and assess the main differences among IMF of three muscles and SF using compositional data methods, and, second, to apply, as a case study, specific compositional data methods to discriminate between samples of IMF and SF by fatty acid composition and compare the results with the obtained when using the traditional approach

A compositional genetic analysis of oleic acid content in pig meat

Intramuscular fat (IMF) content and composition, particularly the oleic fatty acid content (OL), are major quality characteristics of pork fresh and dry-cured products. They are known to be related to nutritional, manufacturing and organoleptic properties, as well as to human health. It is known that IMF content is under genetic control but little evidence is available for IMF composition, namely OL. There are very few estimates in the literature regarding genetic parameters for OL (Suzuki et al., 2006) and, besides, most of them are based on small data sets from experiments designed for other purposes (Ntawubizi et al., 2010; Sellier et al., 2010). However, genetic parameters associated to IMF and OL (i.e. heritability and genetic correlations with other relevant traits) are needed for developing selection criteria and optimum breeding strategies and programmes. IMF content is usually expressed in percent of dry or wet matter and OL in percent of total fatty acids in IMF. However, all research done in this field was not aware of the compositional nature of these data (Aitchison, 1986). The purpose of the present contribution is to compare results from standard linear with compositional data analyses for IMF and OL. Analyses were compared in terms of genetic parameter estimates, selection efficiency, and predictive capacity

Regulation, generic competition and pharmaceutical prices : theory and evidence from a natural experiment

We study the impact of regulatory regimes on generic competition and pharmaceutical pricing using a unique policy experiment in Norway, where reference pricing (RP) replaced price cap regulation in 2003 for a sub-sample of off-patent products. We exploit a detailed panel dataset at product level covering a wide set of off-patent drugs before and after the policy reform. Off-patent drugs not subject to reference pricing serve as our control group. We find that RP leads to lower relative prices, with the effect being driven by strong brand-name price reductions, and not increases in generic prices. We also find that RP increases generic competition, resulting in lower brand-name market shares. Finally, we show that RP has a strong negative effect on average prices at molecule level, suggesting significant cost-savings.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - Programa Operacional Ciência e Inovação 2010 (POCI 2010)Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER