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This manuscript describes the model specification, including input and output measures, dependencies, and structure for VLSiM-PPW, a Monte Carlo type model for HIV adherence, viral load and vertical transmission in pregnant and breastfeeding women.

Purpose: The use of cumulative measures of exposure to raised HIV viral load (viremia copy-years) is an increasingly common in HIV prevention and treatment epidemiology due to the high biological plausibility. We sought to estimate the magnitude and direction of bias in a cumulative measure of viremia caused by different frequency of sampling and duration of follow-up. Methods: We simulated longitudinal viral load measures and reanalysed cohort study datasets with longitudinal viral load measurements under different sampling strategies to estimate cumulative viremia. Results: In both simulated and observed data, estimates of cumulative viremia by the trapezoidal rule show systematic upward bias when there are fewer sampling time points and/or increased duration between sampling time points, compared to estimation of full time series. Absolute values of cumulative viremia vary appreciably by the patterns of viral load over time, even after adjustment for total duration of follow up. Conclusions: Sampling bias due to differential frequency of sampling appears extensive and of meaningful magnitude in measures of cumulative viremia. Cumulative measures of viremia should be used only in studies with sufficient frequency of viral load measures and always as relative measures., Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables

This paper is an expanded and more detailed version of our recent work in which the Operator Quantum Error Correction formalism was introduced. This is a new scheme for the error correction of quantum operations that incorporates the known techniques - i.e. the standard error correction model, the method of decoherence-free subspaces, and the noiseless subsystem method - as special cases, and relies on a generalized mathematical framework for noiseless subsystems that applies to arbitrary quantum operations. We also discuss a number of examples and introduce the notion of ``unitarily noiseless subsystems''., Comment: 21 pages, to appear in Quantum Information & Computation