orphan drugs present unique risks — the potential return on investment is inherently constrained by small patient populations and attendant reimbursement challenges. recognizing these challenges, some countries have passed laws designed to make the economic model associated with developing treatments for orphan diseases more attractive. the most meaningful incentive provided by the various orph...

Introduction: Breastfeeding produces an important effect on the physiology of the body, metabolism and human clinical status. Available evidence suggested that breastfeeding has a prophylactic effect on adiposity, blood pressure and other chronic diseases. Thus, this study was conducted to determine the association between infant breastfeeding and blood pressure status in early adulthood. Ma...

The topological data analysis method “concurrence topology” is applied to mutation frequencies in 69 genes in glioblastoma data. In dimension 1 some apparent “mutual exclusivity” is found. By simulation of data having approximately the same second order dependence structure as that found in the data, it appears that one triple of mutations, PTEN, RB1, TP53, exhibits mutual exclusivity that depe...

This paper examines how an incumbent’s patent protection acts as an implicit subsidy toward non-infringing substitutes. I analyze whether classes of pharmaceuticals whose first entrant has a longer period of market exclusivity (time between approval and generic entry) see more subsequent entry. Instrumenting for exclusivity using plausibly exogenous delays in the development process, I find tha...

Programs have to be designed in such a way as to make them looking good and being handy for all users. Adaptive interface, with all the numerous achievements throughout 30 years of its history, contains and in reality is based on one fundamental flaw – on the assumption that designer knows better than anyone else what is good for users in each and all cases. The new type of programs – user-driv...

Explicitly or implicitly, feminist or not, much of the literature employing a political economy perspective has assumed the existence of two largely separate spheres: a public sphere located in the formal economy and dominated by men, and a private sphere confined to the household and managed by women. For non-feminist theorists, this assumption is evident in the focus on the formal economy to ...

OBJECTIVE The threat of non-communicable diseases ("NCDs") is increasingly becoming a global health crisis and are pervasive in high, middle, and low-income populations resulting in an estimated 36 million deaths per year. There is a need to assess intellectual property rights ("IPRs") that may impede generic production and availability and affordability to essential NCD medicines. METHODS Us...

critical thinking is necessary to read the scientific literature. however, in addition to questions about the science, often one must also question the meaning of the text. this article provides an example of the analyses needed to understand a single sentence. in so doing, it raises several interesting issues of meaning, measurement, statistical analyses, and the form in which results are pres...

An extensive body of literature argues for the benefits of planned obsolescence, the strategy of designing products with low durability to induce repeat purchases from the consumers. Yet, some firms avoid planned obsolescence and instead offer products with high durability. In this paper, we offer a demand-side rationale for a high-durability product design strategy: exclusivity-seeking consume...

Consumers purchase conspicuous goods to satisfy not just material needs but also social needs such as prestige. In an attempt to meet these social needs, marketing managers of conspicuous goods like cars, perfumes, and watches employ several strategies to highlight the exclusivity of their products. These strategies include using exclusive distribution, charging high prices, and limiting produc...