Air pollution and mortality : results from Santiago, Chile

Heavy outdoor pollution is found in developing country cities such as Jakarta, Katowice, Mexico City, and Santiago. But most epidemiological studies of dose-response relationships between particulate air pollution (PM10) and premature deaths are from Western industrial nations. This study of such relationships in developing countries by the authors fills an important gap. It is also one of the few based on monitored PM10 values, or small particles, which is likely to be a more relevant measure of exposure to air pollution than the more traditional measure of total suspended particulates. Over several years, daily measures of ambient PM10 were collected in Santiago. Data were collected for all deaths, as well as for deaths for all men, all women, and all people over 64. Deaths from respiratory and cardiovascular disease were recorded separately, and accidental deaths were excluded. Multiple regression analysis was used to explain mortality, with particular attention to the influence of season and temperature. The association persists after controlling for daily minimum temperature and binary variables indicating temperature extremes the day of the week, the month, and the year. Additional sensitivity analysis suggests robust relationships. A change equal to 10-microgram-per-cubic-meter in daily PM10 (about 9 percent) averaged over three days was associatedwith a 1.1 percent increase in mortality (95 percent confidence interval: 0.6 to 1.5 percent). Death from respiratory and cardiovascular disease was more responsive to changes in PM10 than total mortality was. The same holds for mortality among men and mortality among individuals older than 64. The results are surprising consistent with results from industrial countries.Public Health Promotion,Air Quality&Clean Air,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Montreal Protocol,Statistical&Mathematical Sciences,Statistical&Mathematical Sciences,Montreal Protocol,Airports and Air Services,Health Economics&Finance,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

Higgs mediated lepton flavor violating tau decays τ→μγ\tau \to \mu \gamma and τ→μγγ\tau \to \mu \gamma \gamma in effective theories

The size of the branching ratios for the $\tau \to \mu \gamma$ and $\tau \to \mu \gamma \gamma$ decays induced by a lepton flavor violating Higgs interaction $H\tau \mu$ is studied in the frame of effective field theories. The best constraint on the $H\tau \mu$ vertex, derived from the know measurement on the muon anomalous magnetic moment, is used to impose the upper bounds $Br(\tau \to \mu \gamma)<2.5\times 10^{-10}$ and $Br(\tau \to \mu \gamma \gamma)<2.3\times 10^{-12}$, which are more stringent than current experimental limits on this class of transitions.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

A Vector Based, Content Analytic Methodology for Comparing Negotiated IT Service Level Agreements

Growth in the outsourcing of IT services has led many organizations to enter into negotiated contractual agreements with both internal and external service providers known as information technology service level agreements (IT SLAs). To further empirical research into IT SLAs, we present a methodological approach based on the theory of conceptual spaces that allows the content of these negotiated agreements to be analyzed and compared geometrically using vector representation. The outcome of such an analysis is a set of distance measures by which defensible statements regarding the similarity of IT SLAs can be made. We also discuss how the comparisons provide insights for IT SLA negotiation researchers that go beyond alternate empirical and analytic methods. The implications of these comparisons are discussed with a specific focus on research methods that can foster cumulative empirical investigation of IT SLA negotiation support system requirements