Drugs for exceptionally rare diseases: a commentary on Hughes et al

Recently in this journal, Hughes and colleagues discussed special funding status to ultra-orphan drugs. They concluded that there should be a uniform policy for the provision of orphan drugs across Europe; that complete restriction was impractical, and that UK policy should aspire to the values of the EU directive on orphan drugs. We critically assess these arguments, demonstrating that they failed to justify special status for treatments for rare diseases

Drugs for exceptionally rare diseases: a commentary on Hughes et al

Recently in this journal, Hughes and colleagues discussed special funding status to ultra-orphan drugs. They concluded that there should be a uniform policy for the provision of orphan drugs across Europe; that complete restriction was impractical, and that UK policy should aspire to the values of the EU directive on orphan drugs. We critically assess these arguments, demonstrating that they failed to justify special status for treatments for rare diseases

Reforming the cancer drug fund focus on drugs that might be shown to be cost effective

The Cancer Drug Fund was originally conceived as a temporary measure, until value based pricing for drugs was introduced, to give NHS cancer patients access to drugs not approved by NICE. Spending on these drugs rose from less than the £50m (€63m; $79m) budgeted for the first year in 2010-11 to well over £200m in 2013-14, and the budget for the scheme—now extended for a further two years—will reach £280m by 2016.1 The recent changes to the fund recognise the impossibility, within any sensible budget limit, of providing all the new cancer drugs that offer possible benefit to patients. More radical changes are needed to the working of the fund, given the failure to introduce value based pricing, so that it deals with the underlying problem of inadequate information on the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of new cancer drugs when used in the NHS

Suppression of photon shot noise dephasing in a tunable coupling superconducting qubit

We demonstrate the suppression of photon shot noise dephasing in a superconducting qubit by eliminating its dispersive coupling to the readout cavity. This is achieved in a tunable coupling qubit, where the qubit frequency and coupling rate can be controlled independently. We observe that the coherence time approaches twice the relaxation time and becomes less sensitive to thermal photon noise when the dispersive coupling rate is tuned from several MHz to 22 kHz. This work provides a promising building block in circuit quantum electrodynamics that can hold high coherence and be integrated into larger systems

Influence of Sulfur-Containing Diamino Acid Structure on Covalently Crosslinked Copolypeptide Hydrogels.

Biologically occurring non-canonical di-α-amino acids were converted into new di-N-carboxyanhydride (di-NCA) monomers in reasonable yields with high purity. Five different di-NCAs were separately copolymerized with tert-butyl-l-glutamate NCA to obtain covalently crosslinked copolypeptides capable of forming hydrogels with varying crosslinker density. Comparison of hydrogel properties with residue structure revealed that different di-α-amino acids were not equivalent in crosslink formation. Notably, l-cystine was found to produce significantly weaker hydrogels compared to l-homocystine, l-cystathionine, and l-lanthionine, suggesting that l-cystine may be a sub-optimal choice of di-α-amino acid for preparation of copolypeptide networks. The di-α-amino acid crosslinkers also provided different chemical stability, where disulfide crosslinks were readily degraded by reduction, and thioether crosslinks were stable against reduction. This difference in response may provide a means to fine tune the reduction sensitivity of polypeptide biomaterial networks

Vertical Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers Operating with Multiple Photonic Crystal Defect Cavities

Coherently coupled arrays of vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) offer the potential of extended area coherent sources with high spectral purity, useful in a variety of applications in the high power (laser radar, optical communications, steerable sources) and low power (image processing, spectroscopic sensing, optical logic) regimes. A recently developed method for providing optical confinement is the introduction of a two-dimensional photonic crystal (PhC) pattern with a defect, etched into the top distributed Bragg reflector, to define a defect cavity in a VCSEL. This dissertation investigates the operation of PhC VCSELs that have multiple defect cavities to form arrays of vertically emitting lasers. A major achievement of this work is coherent coupling between the defect cavities, with both out-of-phase and in-phase coherent coupling in 2x1 and 2x2 defect cavity arrays. A qualitative and quantitative understanding of the optical characteristics of PhC VCSEL arrays was developed and demonstrated by the agreement of simulated to experiment results. Other conclusions that are supported by this study are: (1) different wafers result in coupling at different overlap integral values; (2) coupling can be effected by thermal effects (hysteresis observed), and (3) the relative phase difference between the defect civilities can be varied with injection current during both continuous-wave and pulsed operatio

Prison Librarianship and LIS Schools: Is there a career-path?

Library Information Science research has inquired and advocated for prison librarianship since as far back as the 1930s. While most of the articles published focus on the problems facing these institutional libraries, (budgets, censorship, best practices, and standards), very few focus on the preparations LIS schools take to prepare and promote prison librarianship. For many years’ civilians, not professional librarians, operated prison libraries. Although the rise in professional librarians in prison libraries has grown, has the preparation and quality of professionally trained institutional/prison librarians changed? Previous research states LIS schools often overlook or ignore institutional/prison librarianship. This article explores past recommendations and current ALA accredited LIS School’s curriculum to find out if LIS schools are preparing and promoting the necessity and career of prison librarianship. Sixty ALA accredited LIS schools were contacted and asked to supply course descriptions related to institutional/prison libraries. Additionally, they were asked if they promote the career path of institutional/prison librarianship. An inquiry about LIS student’s capstone and thesis projects on the topic of institutional/prison librarianship was included