A Report of Nausea and Vomiting with Discontinuation of Chronic Use of Salvia divinorum

Introduction. This is the first reported case of gastrointestinal symptoms associated with withdrawal after chronic use of this substance. Case Presentation. A 51-year-old Caucasian woman was referred to a hospital with a 3-day history of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal discomfort. She reported no sick family members or contact with anyone who was ill. She did report smoking 3–5 cigarettes of the herb “Salvia” consistently for 3-4 months and quit approximately 48 hours before symptoms appeared. Her use of the herb had been consistent; she smoked several cigarettes each day. Laboratory results were essentially normal including the white blood cell count. She received symptomatic treatment and was released after one day. Discussion. Salvinorin A, a kappa-opioid receptor agonist, is the major active ingredient of S. divinorum. The unique opioid properties of this herb may explain its ability to cause changes in intestinal transit time. Conclusion. A 51-year-old woman possibly developed gastrointestinal manifestations suggestive of withdrawal from Salvia divinorum after smoking the substance consistently for 3 to 4 months. The widespread use of this herb will make the potential for withdrawal syndromes more commonplace

Intermittent control models of human standing: similarities and differences

Two architectures of intermittent control are compared and contrasted in the context of the single inverted pendulum model often used for describing standing in humans. The architectures are similar insofar as they use periods of open-loop control punctuated by switching events when crossing a switching surface to keep the system state trajectories close to trajectories leading to equilibrium. The architectures differ in two significant ways. Firstly, in one case, the open-loop control trajectory is generated by a system-matched hold, and in the other case, the open-loop control signal is zero. Secondly, prediction is used in one case but not the other. The former difference is examined in this paper. The zero control alternative leads to periodic oscillations associated with limit cycles; whereas the system-matched control alternative gives trajectories (including homoclinic orbits) which contain the equilibrium point and do not have oscillatory behaviour. Despite this difference in behaviour, it is further shown that behaviour can appear similar when either the system is perturbed by additive noise or the system-matched trajectory generation is perturbed. The purpose of the research is to come to a common approach for understanding the theoretical properties of the two alternatives with the twin aims of choosing which provides the best explanation of current experimental data (which may not, by itself, distinguish beween the two alternatives) and suggesting future experiments to distinguish between the two alternatives

Shell model in the complex energy plane and two-particle resonances

An implementation of the shell-model to the complex energy plane is presented. The representation used in the method consists of bound single-particle states, Gamow resonances and scattering waves on the complex energy plane. Two-particle resonances are evaluated and their structure in terms of the single-particle degreees of freedom are analysed. It is found that two-particle resonances are mainly built upon bound states and Gamow resonances, but the contribution of the scattering states is also important.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Phys.Rev.

Adhesion State Estimation for Electrostatic Gripper Based on Online Capacitance Measure

Electroadhesion is a suitable technology for developing grippers for applications where fragile, compliant or variable shape objects need to be grabbed and where a retention action is typically preferred to a compression force. This article presents a self-sensing technique for electroadhesive devices (EAD) based on the capacitance measure. Specifically, we demonstrate that measuring the variation of the capacitance between electrodes of an EAD during the adhesion can provide useful information to automatically detect the successful grip of an object and the possible loss of adhesion during manipulation. To this aim, a dedicated electronic circuit is developed that is able to measure capacitance variations while the high voltage required for the adhesion is activated. A test bench characterization is presented to evaluate the self-sensing of capacitance during different states: (1) the EAD is far away from the object to be grasped; (2) the EAD is in contact with the object, but the voltage is not active (i.e., no adhesion); and (3) the EAD is activated and attached to the object. Correlation between the applied voltage, object material and shape and capacitance is made. The self-sensing EAD is then demonstrated in a closed-loop robotic application that employs a robot manipulator arm to pick and place objects of different kinds