Probability of Causation for Lung Cancer After Exposure to Radon Progeny: A Comparison of Models and Data

The estimates of lung cancer risk due to the exposure to radon decay products are based on different data sets from underground mining and on different mathematical models that are used to fit the data. Diagrams of the excess relative rate per 100 working level months in its dependence on age at exposure and age attained are shown to be a useful tool to elucidate the influence that is due to the choice of the model, and to assess the differences between the data from the major western cohorts and those from the Czech uranium miners. It is seen that the influence of the choice of the model is minor compared to the difference between the data sets. The results are used to derive attributable lifetime risks and probabilities of causation for lung cancer following radon progeny exposures

Evaluation of the Nimbin Integrated Services Project

This report is an evaluation of a Nurse Practitioner-led integrated service for mental health and drug and alcohol clients, in a small town in rural NSW.Dept of Premier and Cabinet, NS

A Survey of the Czechoslovak Follow-up of Lung Cancer Mortality in Uranium Miners

The major Czechoslovak cohort of uranium miners (S-cohort) is surveyed in terms of diagrams illustrating dependences on calendar year, age, and exposure to radon and radon progeny. An analysis of the dose dependence of lung cancer mortality is performed by nonparametric and, subsequently, by parametric methods. In the first step, two-dimensional isotonic regression is employed to derive the lung cancer mortality rate and the relative excess risk as functions of age attained and of lagged cumulated exposure. In a second step, analytical fits in terms of relative risk models are derived. The treatment is largely analogous to the methods applied by the BEIR IV Committee to other major cohorts of uranium miners. There is a marked dependence of the excess risk on age attained and on time since exposure. A specific characteristic of the Czechoslovak data is the nonlinearity of the dependence of the lung cancer excess risk on the cumulated exposure; exposures on the order of 100 working level months or less appear to be more effective per working level month than larger exposures but, in the absence of an internal control group, this cannot be excluded to be due to confounders such as smoking or environmental exposures. A further notable observation is the association of larger excess risks with longer protraction of the exposures

Development of Prognosis in Palliative care Study (PiPS) predictor models to improve prognostication in advanced cancer: prospective cohort study

OBJECTIVE: To develop a novel prognostic indicator for use in patients with advanced cancer that is significantly better than clinicians' estimates of survival. DESIGN: Prospective multicentre observational cohort study. SETTING: 18 palliative care services in the UK (including hospices, hospital support teams, and community teams). PARTICIPANTS: 1018 patients with locally advanced or metastatic cancer, no longer being treated for cancer, and recently referred to palliative care services. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Performance of a composite model to predict whether patients were likely to survive for "days" (0-13 days), "weeks" (14-55 days), or "months+" (>55 days), compared with actual survival and clinicians' predictions. RESULTS: On multivariate analysis, 11 core variables (pulse rate, general health status, mental test score, performance status, presence of anorexia, presence of any site of metastatic disease, presence of liver metastases, C reactive protein, white blood count, platelet count, and urea) independently predicted both two week and two month survival. Four variables had prognostic significance only for two week survival (dyspnoea, dysphagia, bone metastases, and alanine transaminase), and eight variables had prognostic significance only for two month survival (primary breast cancer, male genital cancer, tiredness, loss of weight, lymphocyte count, neutrophil count, alkaline phosphatase, and albumin). Separate prognostic models were created for patients without (PiPS-A) or with (PiPS-B) blood results. The area under the curve for all models varied between 0.79 and 0.86. Absolute agreement between actual survival and PiPS predictions was 57.3% (after correction for over-optimism). The median survival across the PiPS-A categories was 5, 33, and 92 days and survival across PiPS-B categories was 7, 32, and 100.5 days. All models performed as well as, or better than, clinicians' estimates of survival. CONCLUSIONS: In patients with advanced cancer no longer being treated, a combination of clinical and laboratory variables can reliably predict two week and two month survival

NASA/DOD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project. Paper 28: The technical communication practices of Russian and US aerospace engineers and scientists

As part of Phase 4 of the NASA/DoD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project, two studies were conducted that investigated the technical communication practices of Russian and U.S. aerospace engineers and scientists. Both studies had the same five objectives: first, to solicit the opinions of aerospace engineers and scientists regarding the importance of technical communication to their professions; second, to determine the use and production of technical communication by aerospace engineers and scientists; third, to seek their views about the appropriate content of the undergraduate course in technical communication; fourth, to determine aerospace engineers' and scientists' use of libraries, technical information centers, and on-line databases; and fifth, to determine the use and importance of computer and information technology to them. A self administered questionnaire was distributed to Russian aerospace engineers and scientists at the Central Aero-Hydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI) and to their U.S. counterparts at the NASA Ames Research Center and the NASA Langley Research Center. The completion rates for the Russian and U.S. surveys were 64 and 61 percent, respectively. Responses of the Russian and U.S. participants to selected questions are presented in this paper

Supersymmetric quantum mechanics based on higher excited states

We generalize the formalism and the techniques of the supersymmetric (susy) quantum mechanics to the cases where the superpotential is generated/defined by higher excited eigenstates. The generalization is technically almost straightforward but physically quite nontrivial since it yields an infinity of new classes of susy-partner potentials, whose spectra are exactly identical except for the lowest m+1 states, if the superpotential is defined in terms of the (m+1)-st eigenfunction, with m=0 reserved for the ground state. It is shown that in case of the infinite 1-dim potential well nothing new emerges (the partner potential is still of P\"oschl-Teller type I, for all m), whilst in case of the 1-dim harmonic oscillator we get a new class of infinitely many partner potentials: for each m the partner potential is expressed as the sum of the quadratic harmonic potential plus rational function, defined as the derivative of the ratio of two consecutive Hermite polynomials. These partner potentials of course have m singularities exactly at the locations of the nodes of the generating (m+1)-st wavefunction. The susy formalism applies everywhere between the singularities. A systematic application of the formalism to other potentials with known spectra would yield an infinitely rich class of "solvable" potentials, in terms of their partner potentials. If the potentials are shape invariant they can be solved at least partially and new types of analytically obtainable spectra are expected. PACS numbers: 03.65.-w, 03.65.Ge, 03.65.SqComment: 15 pages LaTeX file, no figures, submitted to J. Phys. A: accepted for publication

Properties of implanted and CVD incorporated nitrogen-vacancy centers: preferential charge state and preferential orientation

The combination of the long electron state spin coherence time and the optical coupling of the ground electronic states to an excited state manifold makes the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond an attractive candidate for quantum information processing. To date the best spin and optical properties have been found in centers deep within the diamond crystal. For useful devices it will be necessary to engineer NVs with similar properties close to the diamond surface. We report on properties including charge state control and preferential orientation for near surface NVs formed either in CVD growth or through implantation and annealing

NASA/DOD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project. Paper 21: Technological innovation and technical communications: Their place in aerospace engineering curricula. A survey of European, Japanese, and US Aerospace Engineers and Scientists

Aerospace engineers and scientists from Western Europe, Japan, and the United States were surveyed as part of the NASA/DoD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project. Questionnaires were used to solicit their opinions regarding the following: (1) the importance of technical communications to their profession; (2) the use and production of technical communications; and (3) their views about the appropriate content of an undergraduate course in technical communications. The ability to communicate technical information effectively was very important to the aerospace engineers and scientists who participated in the study. A considerable portion of their working week is devoted to using and producing technical information. The types of technical communications used and produced varied within and among the three groups. The type of technical communication product used and produced appears to be related to respondents' professional duties. Respondents from the three groups made similar recommendations regarding the principles, mechanics, and on-the-job communications to be included in an undergraduate technical communications course for aerospace majors

Polymorphisms in the circadian expressed genes PER3 and ARNTL2 are associated with diurnal preference and GNβ3 with sleep measures

Sleep and circadian rhythms are intrinsically linked, with several sleep traits, including sleep timing and duration, influenced by both sleep homeostasis and the circadian phase. Genetic variation in several circadian genes has been associated with diurnal preference (preference in timing of sleep), although there has been limited research on whether they are associated with other sleep measurements. We investigated whether these genetic variations were associated with diurnal preference (Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire) and various sleep measures, including: the global Pittsburgh Sleep Quality index score; sleep duration; and sleep latency and sleep quality. We genotyped 10 polymorphisms in genes with circadian expression in participants from the G1219 sample (n = 966), a British longitudinal population sample of young adults. We conducted linear regressions using dominant, additive and recessive models of inheritance to test for associations between these polymorphisms and the sleep measures. We found a significant association between diurnal preference and a polymorphism in period homologue 3 (PER3) (P < 0.005, recessive model) and a novel nominally significant association between diurnal preference and a polymorphism in aryl hydrocarbon receptor nuclear translocator-like 2 (ARNTL2) (P < 0.05, additive model). We found that a polymorphism in guanine nucleotide binding protein beta 3 (GNβ3) was associated significantly with global sleep quality (P < 0.005, recessive model), and that a rare polymorphism in period homologue 2 (PER2) was associated significantly with both sleep duration and quality (P < 0.0005, recessive model). These findings suggest that genes with circadian expression may play a role in regulating both the circadian clock and sleep homeostasis, and highlight the importance of further studies aimed at dissecting the specific roles that circadian genes play in these two interrelated but unique behaviours

Modification of the spontaneous emission rate of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond by coupling to plasmons

Nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond are widely studied both as a testbed for solid state quantum optics and for their applications in quantum information processing and magnetometry. Here we demonstrate coupling of the nitrogen-vacancy centers to gap plasmons in metal nano-slits. We use diamond samples where nitrogen-vacancy centers are implanted tens of nanometers under the surface. Silver nano-slits are patterned on the sample such that diamond ridges tens of nanometers wide fill the slit gap. We measure enhancement of the spontaneous emission rate of the zero photon line by a factor of 3 at a temperature of 8K