12,843 research outputs found
Dynamics and bifurcations in a simple quasispecies model of tumorigenesis
Cancer is a complex disease and thus is complicated to model. However, simple
models that describe the main processes involved in tumoral dynamics, e.g.,
competition and mutation, can give us clues about cancer behaviour, at least
qualitatively, also allowing us to make predictions. Here we analyze a
simplified quasispecies mathematical model given by differential equations
describing the time behaviour of tumor cells populations with different levels
of genomic instability. We find the equilibrium points, also characterizing
their stability and bifurcations focusing on replication and mutation rates. We
identify a transcritical bifurcation at increasing mutation rates of the tumor
cells population. Such a bifurcation involves an scenario with dominance of
healthy cells and impairment of tumor populations. Finally, we characterize the
transient times for this scenario, showing that a slight increase beyond the
critical mutation rate may be enough to have a fast response towards the
desired state (i.e., low tumor populations) during directed mutagenic
therapies
Is the Food and Drug Administration Safe and Effective?
In the United States, drug safety and efficacy are primarily regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the legal system, which gives manufacturers large incentives to produce safe drugs and provide proper warnings for side effects, since patients can sue manufacturers that provide unsafe drugs and/or insufficient warnings. In this paper, we begin by examining the efficiency implications of this joint regulation of drug safety. We find that joint regulation of drug safety can be inefficient when the regulatory authority mandates a binding and well enforced level of safety investment. In this case, product liability has no effect on a firm's safety investment, but affects welfare by raising a firm's costs and therefore prices. Using these results, we calibrate a model of the pharmaceutical market and find that, depending on the share of liability costs in marginal costs, a product liability exemption for activities that are well regulated by the FDA could increase consumer welfare by 754.7 billion annually (4-66 percent of sales) and producer welfare by 173.9 billion annually (1-15 percent of sales). In addition, we summarize the welfare effects of recent legislation, the Prescription Drug User Fee Acts (PDUFA), which mandated faster FDA review times in exchange for user fees levied on the pharmaceutical industry. Overall, we find that the faster review times mandated by PDUFA raised social surplus by 5.6-$16.6 billion.
Selectivity of Metsulfuron Methyl to Six Common Littoral Species in Florida
Many Central Florida lakes, particularly those in the Kissimmee
River watershed, are maintained 0.5 to 1.0 m lower than historic (pre-1960) levels during the summer hurricane
season for flood control purposes. These lower water levels
have allowed proliferation and formation of dense monotypic
populations of pickerelweed (
Pontederia cordata
L.) and
other broadleaf species that out compete more desirable native
grasses (Hulon, pers. comm., 2002). Due to the limited
availability of data on the effects of metsulfuron methyl on
wetland plants, particularly in Florida, the present study was
carried out with the objective of testing its phytotoxicity on
six wetland species, to determine the feasibility of its use for
primary pickerelweed control
The disjointness of stabilizer codes and limitations on fault-tolerant logical gates
Stabilizer codes are a simple and successful class of quantum
error-correcting codes. Yet this success comes in spite of some harsh
limitations on the ability of these codes to fault-tolerantly compute. Here we
introduce a new metric for these codes, the disjointness, which, roughly
speaking, is the number of mostly non-overlapping representatives of any given
non-trivial logical Pauli operator. We use the disjointness to prove that
transversal gates on error-detecting stabilizer codes are necessarily in a
finite level of the Clifford hierarchy. We also apply our techniques to
topological code families to find similar bounds on the level of the hierarchy
attainable by constant depth circuits, regardless of their geometric locality.
For instance, we can show that symmetric 2D surface codes cannot have non-local
constant depth circuits for non-Clifford gates.Comment: 8+3 pages, 2 figures. Comments welcom
Merit Motives and Government Intervention: Public Finance in Reverse
A common view in public finance is that there is an efficiency-redistribution tradeoff in which distortions are tolerated in order to redistribute income. However, the fact that so much public- and private redistributive activity involves in-kind transfers rather than cash may be indicative of merit motives on the part of the payers rather than a preference for the well-being of the recipients. Efficiency-enhancing public policy in a merit good economy has the primary purpose of creating distortions and may only redistribute income from rich to poor in order to create those distortions the reverse of the conventional efficiency-redistribution tradeoff. We discuss why the largest programs on the federal and local level in the US including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and Public Schooling seem consistent with the reverse tradeoff rather than the classic one. Transfers are not lump sum in a merit good economy, and explicitly accounting for this when calculating tax incidence reduces the estimated progressivity of government policy. As one example, we calibrate the conventional life-cycle model to show how the amount of over-saving induced on the poor by Social Security hurts them at least as much as the progressive' benefits help them. When the distortions outweigh fiscal transfers in this manner, the classic efficiency-redistribution tradeoff cannot justify the program and the program is far less progressive than conventional analysis suggests.
Large lepton mixing and supernova 1987A
We reconsider the impact of
neutrino oscillations on the observed signal of supernova SN 1987A.
Performing a maximum-likelihood analysis using as fit parameters the released
binding energy \Eb and the average neutrino energy \Ee, we find as previous
analyses that oscillations with
large mixing angles have lower best-fit values for \Ee than small-mixing
angle (SMA) oscillations. Moreover, the inferred value of \Ee is already in
the SMA case lower than those found in simulations. This apparent conflict has
been interpreted as evidence against the large mixing oscillation solutions to
the solar neutrino problem. In order to quantify the degree to which the
experimental data favour the SMA over the large mixing solutions we use their
likelihood ratios as well as a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. We find within the
range of SN parameters predicted by simulations regions in which the LMA-MSW
solution is either only marginally disfavoured or favoured compared to the
SMA-MSW solution. We conclude therefore that the LMA-MSW solution is not in
conflict with the current understanding of SN physics. In contrast, the vacuum
oscillation and the LOW solutions to the solar neutrino problem can be excluded
at the level for most of the SN parameter ranges found in
simulations. Only a marginal region with low values of \Ee,
and \Eb is left over, in which these oscillation
solutions can be reconciled with the neutrino signal of SN 1987A.Comment: 23 pages, 20 figures, v2: brief comments adde
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