Short-term rotations using the forage legume Lablab have a place in Central Queensland farming systems

Soil nitrogen fertility decline is a problem for the farmers of Central Queensland (CQ). Nitrogen fertilisers are now widely used, but an erratic climate means that economic returns are not always achieved. Two farmer groups in CQ have ongoing experiments to make economic comparisons between a lablab/cereal rotation and conventional grain cropping regimes. At Fernlees, a sequence of lablab/sorghum/wheat is being compared with wheat/sorghum/chickpea on a low fertility open downs soil. At Theodore, an unfertilised lablab/sorghum rotation is being compared with continuous fertilised sorghum. Results after three seasons indicate that the nitrogen benefit to subsequent crops plus returns from a ley legume phase can offset the opportunity cost of not growing a grain crop on a low fertility soil

Localized nasal cavity, sinus, and massive bilateral orbital involvement by human T cell leukemia virus 1 adult T cell lymphoma, with epidermal hypertrophy due to mite infestation

HTLV1 adult T cell lymphoma occurs tends to be widely disseminated and aggressive, with only brief responses to chemotherapy. Aside from cervical adenopathy, involvement of head and neck structures is uncommon and orbital involvement rare

Comparison of opioid prescribing by dentists in the United States and England

Importance: The United States consumes most of the opioids worldwide despite representing a small portion of the world\u27s population. Dentists are one of the most frequent US prescribers of opioids despite data suggesting that nonopioid analgesics are similarly effective for oral pain. While oral health and dentist use are generally similar between the United States and England, it is unclear how opioid prescribing by dentists varies between the 2 countries. Objective: To compare opioid prescribing by dentists in the United States and England. Design, Setting, and Participants: Cross-sectional study of prescriptions for opioids dispensed from outpatient pharmacies and health care settings between January 1 and December 31, 2016, by dentists in the United States and England. Data were analyzed from October 2018 to January 2019. Exposures: Opioids prescribed by dentists. Main Outcomes and Measures: Proportion and prescribing rates of opioid prescriptions. Results: In 2016, the proportion of prescriptions written by US dentists that were for opioids was 37 times greater than the proportion written by English dentists. In all, 22.3% of US dental prescriptions were opioids (11.4 million prescriptions) compared with 0.6% of English dental prescriptions (28 082 prescriptions) (difference, 21.7%; 95% CI, 13.8%-32.1%; P \u3c .001). Dentists in the United States also had a higher number of opioid prescriptions per 1000 population (35.4 per 1000 US population [95% CI, 25.2-48.7 per 1000 population] vs 0.5 per 1000 England population [95% CI, 0.03-3.7 per 1000 population]) and number of opioid prescriptions per dentist (58.2 prescriptions per dentist [95% CI, 44.9-75.0 prescriptions per dentist] vs 1.2 prescriptions per dentist [95% CI, 0.2-5.6 prescriptions per dentist]). While the codeine derivative dihydrocodeine was the sole opioid prescribed by English dentists, US dentists prescribed a range of opioids containing hydrocodone (62.3%), codeine (23.2%), oxycodone (9.1%), and tramadol (4.8%). Dentists in the United States also prescribed long-acting opioids (0.06% of opioids prescribed by US dentists [6425 prescriptions]). Long-acting opioids were not prescribed by English dentists. Conclusions and Relevance: This study found that in 2016, dentists in the United States prescribed opioids with significantly greater frequency than their English counterparts. Opioids with a high potential for abuse, such as oxycodone, were frequently prescribed by US dentists but not prescribed in England. These results illustrate how 1 source of opioids differs substantially in the United States vs England. To reduce dental opioid prescribing in the United States, dentists could adopt measures similar to those used in England, including national guidelines for treating dental pain that emphasize prescribing opioids conservatively

Local and Global Distinguishability in Quantum Interferometry

A statistical distinguishability based on relative entropy characterises the fitness of quantum states for phase estimation. This criterion is employed in the context of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer and used to interpolate between two regimes, of local and global phase distinguishability. The scaling of distinguishability in these regimes with photon number is explored for various quantum states. It emerges that local distinguishability is dependent on a discrepancy between quantum and classical rotational energy. Our analysis demonstrates that the Heisenberg limit is the true upper limit for local phase sensitivity. Only the `NOON' states share this bound, but other states exhibit a better trade-off when comparing local and global phase regimes.Comment: 4 pages, in submission, minor revision

Effective antibiotic conservation by emergency antimicrobial stewardship during a drug shortage

We present the first description of an antimicrobial stewardship program (ASP) used to successfully manage a multi-antimicrobial drug shortage. Without resorting to formulary restriction, meropenem utilization decreased by 69% and piperacillin-tazobactam by 73%. During the shortage period, hospital mortality decreased (P=.03), while hospital length of stay remained unchanged.Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2017;38:356–359</jats:p

Sinking phytoplankton associated with carbon flux in the Atlantic Ocean

© The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Limnology and Oceanography 61 (2016): 1172–1187, doi:10.1002/lno.10253.The composition of sinking particles and the mechanisms leading to their transport ultimately control how much carbon is naturally sequestered in the deep ocean by the “biological pump.” While detrital particles often contain much of the sinking carbon, sinking of intact phytoplankton cells can also contribute to carbon export, which represents a direct flux of carbon from the atmosphere to the deep ocean by circumventing the surface ocean food web. Phytoplankton that contributed to carbon flux were identified in sinking material collected by short-term sediment trap deployments conducted along a transect off the eastern shore of South America. Particulate organic carbon flux at 125 m depth did not change significantly along the transect. Instead, changes occurred in the composition and association of phytoplankton with detrital particles. The fluxes of diatoms, coccolithophores, dinoflagellates, and nano-sized cells at 125 m were unrelated to the overlying surface population abundances, indicating that functional-group specific transport mechanisms were variable across locations. The dominant export mechanism of phytoplankton at each station was putatively identified by principal component analysis and fell into one of three categories; (1) transport and sinking of individual, viable diatom cells, (2) transport by aggregates and fecal pellets, or (3) enhanced export of coccolithophores through direct settling and/or aggregationFunding for the DeepDOM cruise was provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant OCE-1154320 to E. B. Kujawinski and K. Longnecker, WHOI. Partial research support was provided by NSF through grants OCE-0925284, and OCE-1316036 to S.T. Dyhrman. C.A. Durkin was supported by a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Devonshire Postdoctoral Scholarship

Effectiveness of tobacco control television advertisements with different types of emotional content on tobacco use in England, 2004–2010

Aim: To examine the effects of tobacco control television advertisements with positive and negative emotional content on adult smoking prevalence and cigarette consumption. Design: Analysis of monthly cross-sectional surveys using generalised additive models. Setting: England. Participants: 60 000 adults aged 18 years or over living in England and interviewed in the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey from 2004 to 2010. Measurements: Current smoking status, daily cigarette consumption, tobacco control gross rating points (GRPs—a measure of per capita advertising exposure), cigarette costliness, concurrent tobacco control policies, sociodemographic variables. Results: After adjusting for cigarette costliness, other tobacco control policies and individual characteristics, we found that a 400-point increase in positive emotive GRPs was associated with 7% lower odds of smoking (odds ratio (OR) 0.93, 95% CI 0.87 to 0.98) 1 month later and a similar increase in negative emotive GRPs was significantly associated with 4% lower odds of smoking (OR 0.96, 95% CI 0.92 to 0.999) 2 months later. An increase in negative emotive GRPs from 0 to 400 was also associated with a significant 3.3% (95% CI 1.1 to 5.6) decrease in average cigarette consumption. There was no evidence that the association between positive emotive GRPs and the outcomes differed depending on the intensity of negative emotive GRPs (and vice versa). Conclusions: This is the first study to explore the effects of campaigns with different types of emotive content on adult smoking prevalence and consumption. It suggests that both types of campaign (positive and negative) are effective in reducing smoking prevalence, whereas consumption among smokers was only affected by campaigns evoking negative emotions

Environment and Obesity in the National Children\u27s Study

Objective: In this review we describe the approach taken by the National Children’s Study (NCS), a 21-year prospective study of 100,000 American children, to understanding the role of environmental factors in the development of obesity. Data sources and extraction: We review the literature with regard to the two core hypotheses in the NCS that relate to environmental origins of obesity and describe strategies that will be used to test each hypothesis. Data synthesis: Although it is clear that obesity in an individual results from an imbalance between energy intake and expenditure, control of the obesity epidemic will require understanding of factors in the modern built environment and chemical exposures that may have the capacity to disrupt the link between energy intake and expenditure. The NCS is the largest prospective birth cohort study ever undertaken in the United States that is explicitly designed to seek information on the environmental causes of pediatric disease. Conclusions: Through its embrace of the life-course approach to epidemiology, the NCS will be able to study the origins of obesity from preconception through late adolescence, including factors ranging from genetic inheritance to individual behaviors to the social, built, and natural environment and chemical exposures. It will have sufficient statistical power to examine interactions among these multiple influences, including gene–environment and gene–obesity interactions. A major secondary benefit will derive from the banking of specimens for future analysis

Radiation Testing of Electronics for the CMS Endcap Muon System

The electronics used in the data readout and triggering system for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator at CERN are exposed to high radiation levels. This radiation can cause permanent damage to the electronic circuitry, as well as temporary effects such as data corruption induced by Single Event Upsets. Once the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) accelerator upgrades are completed it will have five times higher instantaneous luminosity than LHC, allowing for detection of rare physics processes, new particles and interactions. Tests have been performed to determine the effects of radiation on the electronic components to be used for the Endcap Muon electronics project currently being designed for installation in the CMS experiment in 2013. During these tests the digital components on the test boards were operating with active data readout while being irradiated with 55 MeV protons. In reactor tests, components were exposed to 30 years equivalent levels of neutron radiation expected at the HL-LHC. The highest total ionizing dose (TID) for the muon system is expected at the inner-most portion of the CMS detector, with 8900 rad over ten years. Our results show that Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components selected for the new electronics will operate reliably in the CMS radiation environment