Brexit – What are the potential consequences for pharma patents and SPCs?

Brexit raises a number of difficult questions with regard to intellectual property rights in a post-Brexit world, particularly for UK based pharma companies. Whilst the position with regard to the current European patent system is unchanged, the fate of the unitary patent and the unified patent court remains uncertain. Of more immediate concern is the possible future position with respect to supplementary patent certificates. Should the UK fail to reach an agreement with the EU with respect to marketing authorisations for new pharmaceuticals then there is a real possibility that UK based pharma companies may find themselves in a position where they are unable to obtain EU-wide SPC protection

Soft-tissue specimens from pre-European extinct birds of New Zealand

We provide the first complete review of soft tissue remains from New Zealand birds that became extinct prior to European settlement (c. AD 1800). These rare specimens allow insights into the anatomy and appearance of the birds that are not attainable from bones. Our review includes previously unpublished records of ‘lost’ specimens, and descriptions of recently discovered specimens such as the first evidence of soft tissues from the South Island goose (Cnemiornis calcitrans). Overall, the soft tissue remains are dominated by moa (with specimens from each of the six genera), but also include specimens from Finsch's duck (Chenonetta finschi) and the New Zealand owlet-nightjar (Aegotheles novaezealandiae). All desiccated soft tissue specimens that have radiocarbon or stratigraphic dates are late Holocene in age, and most have been found in the semi-arid region of Central Otago

Palladium and copper mediated cross couplings using dialkylphosphites

Described herein are synthetic methodologies using palladium- and copper-mediated cross coupling reactions involving dialkylphosphites. Chapter 1 discloses two methods for producing alknylphophonates. The first is a novel palladium mediated cross coupling of alkynylbromides with dialkylphosphites. The second is an improvement of a known aerobic copper mediated cross coupling using terminal alkynes and dialkylphosphites. Chapter 2 discloses a novel aerobic copper mediated amide synthesis method. Chapter 3 discloses a novel aerobic copper mediated phosphoramidate synthesis method. All of the above developed methodologies were found to produce their respective products in acceptable yields and tolerate a wide range of functionality. The experimental section comprises the practical methods for effecting the above reactions and the experimental data for all of the compounds presented herein

Automated Georeferencing of Antarctic Species

Many text documents in the biological domain contain references to the toponym of specific phenomena (e.g. species sightings) in natural language form "In Garwood Valley summer activity was 0.2% for Umbilicaria aprina and 1.7% for Caloplaca sp. ..." While methods have been developed to extract place names from documents, and attention has been given to the interpretation of spatial prepositions, the ability to connect toponym mentions in text with the phenomena to which they refer (in this case species) has been given limited attention, but would be of considerable benefit for the task of mapping specific phenomena mentioned in text documents. As part of work to create a pipeline to automate georeferencing of species within legacy documents, this paper proposes a method to: (1) recognise species and toponyms within text and (2) match each species mention to the relevant toponym mention. Our methods find significant promise in a bespoke rules- and dictionary-based approach to recognise species within text (F1 scores up to 0.87 including partial matches) but less success, as yet, recognising toponyms using multiple gazetteers combined with an off the shelf natural language processing tool (F1 up to 0.62). Most importantly, we offer a contribution to the relatively nascent area of matching toponym references to the object they locate (in our case species), including cases in which the toponym and species are in different sentences. We use tree-based models to achieve precision as high as 0.88 or an F1 score up to 0.68 depending on the downsampling rate. Initial results out perform previous research on detecting entity relationships that may cross sentence boundaries within biomedical text, and differ from previous work in specifically addressing species mapping

Divide-and-conquer sequential matrix diagonalisation for parahermitian matrices

A number of algorithms capable of iteratively calculating a polynomial matrix eigenvalue decomposition (PEVD) have been introduced. The PEVD is a generalisation of the ordinary EVD and will diagonalise a parahermitian matrix via paraunitary operations. Inspired by the existence of low complexity divide-and-conquer solutions to eigenproblems, this paper addresses a divide-and-conquer approach to the PEVD utilising the sequential matrix diagonalisation (SMD) algorithm. We demonstrate that with the proposed techniques, encapsulated in a novel algorithm titled divide-and-conquer sequential matrix diagonalisation (DC-SMD), algorithm complexity can be significantly reduced. This reduction impacts on a number of broadband multichannel problems, including those involving large arrays

Observed Extra Mixing Trends in Red Giants are Reproduced by the Reduced Density Ratio in Thermohaline Zones

Observations show an almost ubiquitous presence of extra mixing in low-mass upper giant branch stars. The most commonly invoked explanation for this is the thermohaline instability. One dimensional stellar evolution models include prescriptions for thermohaline mixing, but our ability to make direct comparisons between models and observations has thus far been limited. Here, we propose a new framework to facilitate direct comparison: Using carbon to nitrogen measurements from the SDSS-IV APOGEE survey as a probe of mixing and a fluid parameter known as the reduced density ratio from one dimensional stellar evolution programs, we compare the observed amount of extra mixing on the upper giant branch to predicted trends from three-dimensional fluid dynamics simulations. By applying this method, we are able to place empirical constraints on the efficiency of mixing across a range of masses and metallicities. We find that the observed amount of extra mixing is strongly correlated with the reduced density ratio and that trends between reduced density ratio and fundamental stellar parameters are robust across choices for modeling prescription. We show that stars with available mixing data tend to have relatively low density ratios, which should inform the regimes selected for future simulation efforts. Finally, we show that there is increased mixing at low values of the reduced density ratio, which is consistent with current hydrodynamical models of the thermohaline instability. The introduction of this framework sets a new standard for theoretical modeling efforts, as validation for not only the amount of extra mixing, but trends between the degree of extra mixing and fundamental stellar parameters is now possible.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Ap

Memory and complexity reduction in parahermitian matrix manipulations of PEVD algorithms

A number of algorithms for the iterative calculation of a polynomial matrix eigenvalue decomposition (PEVD) have been introduced. The PEVD is a generalisation of the ordinary EVD and will diagonalise a parahermitian matrix via paraunitary operations. This paper addresses savings — both computationally and in terms of memory use — that exploit the parahermitian structure of the matrix being decomposed, and also suggests an implicit trimming approach to efficiently curb the polynomial order growth usually observed during iterations of the PEVD algorithms. We demonstrate that with the proposed techniques, both storage and computations can be significantly reduced, impacting on a number of broadband multichannel problems

Complexity and search space reduction in cyclic-by-row PEVD algorithms

In recent years, several algorithms for the iterative calculation of a polynomial matrix eigenvalue decomposition (PEVD) have been introduced. The PEVD is a generalisation of the ordinary EVD and uses paraunitary operations to diagonalise a parahermitian matrix. This paper addresses potential computational savings that can be applied to existing cyclic-by-row approaches for the PEVD. These savings are found during the search and rotation stages, and do not significantly impact on algorithm accuracy. We demonstrate that with the proposed techniques, computations can be significantly reduced. The benefits of this are important for a number of broadband multichannel problems