The historical foundations of the narcotic drug control regime

This paper outlines the institutional history of the international narcotic drug control regime. It details the evolution of the control system, from its foundations at the beginning of the twentieth century - a period of mass, unregulated narcotic drug use - to the current period. The paper argues that the contemporary control model is ill-positioned to address the dynamic and rapidly changing nature of the global narcotics trade. The persistence of anachronistic guiding first principles, specifically the utopian idea of prohibition, is identified as the key impediment to the adoption of a more humane and effective policy approach. But while there is growing pressure for a revision of founding ideas, this is not supported by a host of powerful actors that includes the United States.Crime and Society,Post Conflict Reconstruction,Alcohol and Substance Abuse,Pharmaceuticals&Pharmacoeconomics,Pharmaceuticals Industry

Economic evaluation of ondansetron: Preliminary analysis using clinical trial data prior to price setting

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund and is available from the specified link - Copyright © 1992 Macmillan Press Ltd.This study combines secondary analysis of efficacy and side-effect data from a randomised controlled trial with estimates of resource use to evaluate the likely economic effects of the new antiemetic agent ondansetron. Costs, effects and cost-effectiveness of ondansetron in the prophylaxis of acute nausea and vomiting induced by chemotherapy are assessed relative to antiemetic therapy with metoclopramide. Superior efficacy of ondansetron is quantified both in terms of significant emesis avoided and emesis management costs avoided. A simple cost analysis, with the metoclopramide dosage priced at 10 pounds, indicates that therapy with ondansetron would give equivalent net treatment costs, at a price ratio (ondansetron/metoclopramide) of 2.3 to 1. If therapeutic success is defined as the avoidance of emesis and antiemetic side-effects, then the two therapies would be equally cost-effective at a drug price ratio of 5 to 1. We conclude that, (i) economic evaluation prior to price setting is feasible and informative; (ii) such models can indicate prospective data collection priorities

Global IDEA

Five members of the Global IDEA Scientific Advisory Committee respond to Dr. Moore and colleagues: Global IDEA Scientific Advisory Committee. Health and economic benefits of an accelerated program of research to combat global infectious diseases

RESTRUCTURING CLASS I PRICES -- SURPLUS MARKET VIEWPOINTS

Marketing,

SOME MAJOR ISSUES AFFECTING MINNESOTA'S COMPETITIVE POSITION IN UNITED STATES AND WORLD DAIRY MARKETS

Livestock Production/Industries,

Assessing the impact of England's National Health Service R&D Health Technology Assessment program using the "payback" approach

Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009Objectives: This study assesses the impact of the English National Health Service (NHS) Health Technology Assessment (HTA) program using the "payback" framework.Methods: A survey of lead investigators of all research projects funded by the HTA program 1993-2003 supplemented by more detailed case studies of sixteen projects.Results: Of 204 eligible projects, replies were received from 133 or 65 percent. The mean number of peer-reviewed publications per project was 2.9. Seventy-three percent of projects claimed to have had had an impact on policy and 42 percent on behavior. Technology Assessment Reports for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) had fewer than average publications but greater impact on policy. Half of all projects went on to secure further funding. The case studies confirmed the survey findings and indicated factors associated with impact.Conclusions: The HTA program performed relatively well in terms of "payback." Facilitating factors included the program's emphasis on topics that matter to the NHS, rigorous methods and the existence of "policy customers" such as NICE

Screening for abdominal aortic aneurysm

The official published version can be found at the link below

The triple decomposition of a fluctuating velocity field in a multiscale flow

A new method for the triple decomposition of a multiscale flow, which is based on the novel optimal mode decomposition (OMD) technique, is presented. OMD provides low order linear dynamics, which fits a given data set in an optimal way and is used to distinguish between a coherent (periodic) part of a flow and a stochastic fluctuation. The method needs no external phase indication since this information, separate for coherent structures associated with each length scale introduced into the flow, appears as the output. The proposed technique is compared against two traditional methods of the triple decomposition, i.e., bin averaging and proper orthogonal decomposition. This is done with particle image velocimetry data documenting the near wake of a multiscale bar array. It is shown that both traditional methods are unable to provide a reliable estimation for the coherent fluctuation while the proposed technique performs very well. The crucial result is that the coherence peaks are not observed within the spectral properties of the stochastic fluctuation derived with the proposed method; however, these properties remain unaltered at the residual frequencies. This proves the method’s capability of making a distinction between both types of fluctuations. The sensitivity to some prescribed parameters is checked revealing the technique’s robustness. Additionally, an example of the method application for analysis of a multiscale flow is given, i.e., the phase conditioned transverse integral length is investigated in the near wake region of the multiscale object array

Temporal album

Transient synchronization has been used as a mechanism of recognizing auditory patterns using integrate-and-fire neural networks. We first extend the mechanism to vision tasks and investigate the role of spike dependent learning. We show that such a temporal Hebbian learning rule significantly improves accuracy of detection. We demonstrate how multiple patterns can be identified by a single pattern selective neuron and how a temporal album can be constructed. This principle may lead to multidimensional memories, where the capacity per neuron is considerably increased with accurate detection of spike synchronization