The correlates and extent of prescribing of medications for alcohol relapse prevention in England

AIMS: To determine the pattern and extent of prescribing of medications for alcohol relapse prevention (ARP) in England. DESIGN: Cross-sectional. SETTING: Specialist drug and alcohol treatment providers in England reporting to the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System. PARTICIPANTS: Service users aged 18+, alcohol the primary substance of dependence, completing a treatment journey between April 2013 and March 2016 (N=188,152). MEASUREMENTS: Prescription of medications for ARP during a treatment journey. Data on service users' demographics, treatment and clinical characteristics were extracted. FINDINGS: The rate of prescribing of medications for ARP was 2.1% in 2013/14, 6.8% in 2014/15 and 7.8% in 2015/16. A greater likelihood of prescription was associated with treatment journey year (2014/15; Adjusted Odds Ratio (ORadj )=3.269, 95% Confidence Intervals (CI)=3.044-3.510, 2015/16; ORadj =3.823, CI=3.560-4.106), age (25-34; ORadj =1.622, CI=1.380-1.907, 35-54; ORadj =1.901, CI=1.628-2.220 or 55+; ORadj =1.700, CI=1.446-1.999), female gender (ORadj =1.129, CI=1.077-1.184), white ethnicity (ORadj =1.219, CI=1.077-1.380), regional prevalence of alcohol dependence (middle rate; ORadj =1.121, CI=1.024-1.228), severity of alcohol dependence (moderate dependence without complex needs; ORadj =1.329, CI=1.244-1.419, severe dependence without complex needs; ORadj =1.308, CI=1.188-1.441, moderate/severe dependence with complex needs; ORadj =1.131, CI=1.020-1.255), treatment setting (inpatient; ORadj =10.512, CI=9.950-11.104, Primary Care; ORadj =2.264, CI=2.050-2.500, residential; ORadj =3.216, CI=2.807-3.685), prior treatment for alcohol dependence (ORadj =1.242, CI=1.183-1.304), longer treatment journey (ORadj =1.002, CI=1.002-1.002), more drinking days in the prior 28 days (ORadj =1.021, CI=1.018-1.024) and drinking a higher number of alcohol units in the prior 28 days (ORadj =1.002 CI=1.001-1.004). Living in a region of England with the lowest alcohol prevalence was associated with a lower likelihood of prescription of medication for ARP (ORadj =0.491, CI=0.436-0.552). CONCLUSIONS: In England, medications for alcohol relapse prevention are rarely prescribed (e.g., 7.8% in 2015/16) and those prescriptions appear to be associated with specific service user demographics, treatment, and clinical characteristics

Effective Gravitational Field of Black Holes

The problem of interpretation of the \hbar^0-order part of radiative corrections to the effective gravitational field is considered. It is shown that variations of the Feynman parameter in gauge conditions fixing the general covariance are equivalent to spacetime diffeomorphisms. This result is proved for arbitrary gauge conditions at the one-loop order. It implies that the gravitational radiative corrections of the order \hbar^0 to the spacetime metric can be physically interpreted in a purely classical manner. As an example, the effective gravitational field of a black hole is calculated in the first post-Newtonian approximation, and the secular precession of a test particle orbit in this field is determined.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX, 1 eps figure. Proof of the theorem and typos correcte

Isotropy of the early universe from CMB anisotropies

The acoustic peak in the CMB power spectrum is sensitive to causal processes and cosmological parameters in the early universe up to the time of last scattering. We provide limits on correlated spatial variations of the peak height and peak position and interpret these as constraints on the spatial variation of the cosmological parameters (baryon density, cold dark matter density and cosmological constant as well as the amplitude and tilt of the original fluctuations). We utilize recent work of Hansen, Banday and Gorski (HBG) who have studied the spatial isotropy of the power spectrum as measured by WMAP by performing the power spectrum analysis on smaller patches of the sky. We find that there is no statistically significant correlated asymmetry of the peak. HBG have also provided preliminary indications of a preferred direction in the lower angular momentum range(~ 2-40) and we show how possible explanations of this asymmetry are severely constrained by the data on the acoustic peak. Finally we show a possible non-gaussian feature in the data, associated with a difference in the northern and southern galactic hemispheres.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, v.2 adds an extra relevant reference and commen

Towards pp -> VVjj at NLO QCD: Bosonic contributions to triple vector boson production plus jet

In this work, some of the NLO QCD corrections for pp -> VVjj + X are presented. A program in Mathematica based on the structure of FeynCalc which automatically simplifies a set of amplitudes up to the hexagon level of rank 5 has been created for this purpose. We focus on two different topologies. The first involves all the virtual contributions needed for quadruple electroweak vector boson production, i.e. pp -> VVVV + X. In the second, the remaining "bosonic" corrections to electroweak triple vector boson production with an additional jet (pp -> VVV j + X) are computed. We show the factorization formula of the infrared divergences of the bosonic contributions for VVVV and VVVj production with V=(W,Z,gamma). Stability issues associated with the evaluation of the hexagons up to rank 5 are studied. The CPU time of the FORTRAN subroutines rounds the 2 milliseconds and seems to be competitive with other more sophisticated methods. Additionally, in Appendix A the master equations to obtain the tensor coefficients up to the hexagon level in the external momenta convention are presented including the ones needed for small Gram determinants.Comment: 48 pages,16 figure

Baryon Masses in Chiral Perturbation Theory with Infrared Regularization

The baryon masses are examined in SU(3) chiral perturbation theory to third order using the recently proposed infrared regularization scheme. Fourth order is estimated by evaluating the dominant diagram. With this regularization the magnitude of the loop integrals is reduced so that the convergence of the series appears to be better than in the heavy baryon approach.Comment: The original third order calculation is supplemented by an estimate of fourth order using just the dominant diagram. The convergence still appears to be better than in the heavy baryon approach. To be published in Phys. Rev. C. 15 pages latex, 2 postscript figure

Quantum power correction to the Newton law

We have found the graviton contribution to the one-loop quantum correction to the Newton law. This correction results in interaction decreasing with distance as 1/r^3 and is dominated numerically by the graviton contribution. The previous calculations of this contribution to the discussed effect are demonstrated to be incorrect.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures; numerical error corrected, few references adde

Casimir bag energy in the stochastic approximation to the pure QCD vacuum

We study the Casimir contribution to the bag energy coming from gluon field fluctuations, within the context of the stochastic vacuum model (SVM) of pure QCD. After formulating the problem in terms of the generating functional of field strength cumulants, we argue that the resulting predictions about the Casimir energy are compatible with the phenomenologically required bag energy term.Comment: 16 page

Quantum Gravitational Corrections to the Nonrelativistic Scattering Potential of Two Masses

We treat general relativity as an effective field theory, obtaining the full nonanalytic component of the scattering matrix potential to one-loop order. The lowest order vertex rules for the resulting effective field theory are presented and the one-loop diagrams which yield the leading nonrelativistic post-Newtonian and quantum corrections to the gravitational scattering amplitude to second order in G are calculated in detail. The Fourier transformed amplitudes yield a nonrelativistic potential and our result is discussed in relation to previous calculations. The definition of a potential is discussed as well and we show how the ambiguity of the potential under coordinate changes is resolved.Comment: 27 pages, 17 figure

K -> pi pi Electroweak Penguins in the Chiral Limit

We report on dispersive and finite energy sum rule analyses of the electroweak penguin matrix elements in the chiral limit. We accomplish the correct perturbative matching (scale and scheme dependence) at NLO in alpha_s, and we describe two different strategies for numerical evaluation.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Contribution to QCD02, International Conference on Quantum Chromo-Dynamics, Montpellier (France), July 2-9 200

Photon-Photon Scattering, Pion Polarizability and Chiral Symmetry

Recent attempts to detect the pion polarizability via analysis of $\gamma\gamma\rightarrow\pi\pi$ measurements are examined. The connection between calculations based on dispersion relations and on chiral perturbation theory is established by matching the low energy chiral amplitude with that given by a full dispersive treatment. Using the values for the polarizability required by chiral symmetry, predicted and experimental cross sections are shown to be in agreement.Comment: 21 pages(+10 figures available on request), LATEX, UMHEP-38