The Prescription Opioid Epidemic: an Evidence-Based Approach

A group of experts, led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, issued this report aimed at stemming the prescription opioid epidemic, a crisis that kills an average of 44 people a day in the U.S. The report calls for changes to the way medical students and physicians are trained, prescriptions are dispensed and monitored, first responders are equipped to treat overdoses, and those with addiction are identified and treated. The report grew out of discussions that began last year at a town hall co-hosted by the Bloomberg School and the Clinton Health Matters Initiative, an initiative of the Clinton Foundation. The recommendations were developed by professionals from medicine, pharmacy, injury prevention and law. Patient representatives, insurers and drug manufacturers also participated in developing the recommendations. The report breaks its recommendations into seven categories:Prescribing GuidelinesPrescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs)Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) and PharmaciesEngineering Strategies (i.e., packaging)Overdose Education and Naloxone Distribution ProgramsAddiction TreatmentCommunity-Based Prevention Strategie

Information Content of Polarization Measurements

Information entropy is applied to the state of knowledge of reaction amplitudes in pseudoscalar meson photoproduction, and a scheme is developed that quantifies the information content of a measured set of polarization observables. It is shown that this definition of information is a more practical measure of the quality of a set of measured observables than whether the combination is a mathematically complete set. It is also shown that when experimental uncertainty is introduced, complete sets of measurements do not necessarily remove ambiguities, and that experiments should strive to measure as many observables as practical in order to extract amplitudes.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures; figures updated, minor textual correction

Configurational entropy of network-forming materials

We present a computationally efficient method to calculate the configurational entropy of network-forming materials. The method requires only the atomic coordinates and bonds of a single well-relaxed configuration. This is in contrast to the multiple simulations that are required for other methods to determine entropy, such as thermodynamic integration. We use our method to obtain the configurational entropy of well-relaxed networks of amorphous silicon and vitreous silica. For these materials we find configurational entropies of 1.02 kb and 0.97 kb per silicon atom, respectively, with kb the Boltzmann constant.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Addressing neuroticism in psychological treatment

Neuroticism has long been associated with psychopathology and there is increasing evidence that this trait represents a shared vulnerability responsible for the development and maintenance of a range of common mental disorders. Given that neuroticism may be more malleable than previously thought, targeting this trait in treatment, rather than its specific manifestations (e.g., anxiety, mood, and personality disorders), may represent a more efficient and cost-effective approach to psychological treatment. The goals of the current manuscript are to (a) review the role of neuroticism in the development of common mental disorders, (b) describe the evidence of its malleability, and (c) review interventions that have been explicitly developed to target this trait in treatment. Implications for shifting the focus of psychological treatment to underlying vulnerabilities, such as neuroticism, rather than on the manifest symptoms of mental health conditions, are also discussed.First author draf

Supporting the American Dream of Homeownership: An Assessment of Neighborhood Reinvestment's Home Ownership Pilot Program

Based on recommendations from a group of NeighborWorks organization (NWO) directors, Neighborhood Reinvestment initiated the Campaign for Home Ownership in 1993. That campaign provided NWOs with both funding and technical assistance to expand homeownership opportunities in the communities they serve. Based on the experiences of organizations involved with that campaign, Neighborhood Reinvestment staff distilled a model homeownership assistance strategy they call Full-Cycle Lending. This model includes six components: partnership building, pre-purchase home-buyer education, flexible loan products, property services, post-purchase counseling and neighborhood impact. Based on the success of this first five-year Campaign, Neighborhood Reinvestment supported a second five-year campaign called the Campaign for Home Ownership 2002.In 1998 Congress authorized $25 million for a NeighborWorks Home Ownership Pilot program designed to leverage additional local support and test new strategies for assisting first-time home buyers. In less than four months, the Neighborhood Reinvestment Home Ownership Campaign staff developed and implemented specific program guidelines for the distribution of funds to local NWOs. These guidelines allowed NWOs great flexibility in the use of Pilot funds including using the funds for upgrading computers, hiring staff, developing marketing plans and programs, capitalizing loan funds, providing down payment assistance as well as other uses.Campaign staff developed guidelines for three funding categories, A, B, and C, designed to respond to the different needs of NWOs. Category A grants (up to$500,000) were to assist NWOs that were already assisting 30 or more home buyers a year increase the number of home buyers assisted. Category B grants (up to $500,000) were to assist NWOs that were already assisting a large number of new home buyers enhance the positive impacts of home ownership on their target areas by undertaking other neighborhood improvement activities as well as increasing the number of home buyers assisted. Category C grants (up to$50,000) were to assist NWOs that were assisting a relatively low number of new home buyers build their capacities to do so. A total of 35 Category A grants were made, nine Category B grants and 40 Category C grants.To assist Campaign and Pilot sites in achieving their goals, Neighborhood Reinvestment provides several types of technical assistance. The semi-annual Neighborhood Reinvestment Training Institute offers a variety of courses on developing homeownership promotion programs and home-owner education methods. Neighborhood Reinvestment has also developed an extensive array of marketing materials that can be used by Campaign and Pilot organizations. Finally, Neighborhood Reinvestment Campaign and field staff assist participating organizations with special challenges as they arise.This report is the second of three reports evaluating the outcomes, implementation process and impacts of the Pilot. The outcome evaluation was designed to document the results of the Pilot including the number of persons trained and/or counseled, the number of new home owners assisted, and the value of housing units purchased, built or rehabilitated with the assistance of the Pilot organizations. This evaluation is based on information provided to Neighborhood Reinvestment by participating NWOs. The process evaluation was designed to document and evaluate the efforts of Neighborhood Reinvestment and participating NWOs in planning and implementing the Pilot programs. This part of the evaluation is based on interviews conducted in two rounds of site visits to eight Category A and B Pilot programs -- once in the fall of 1999 and once in the spring and summer of 2001. Finally, the impact evaluation was designed to assess the influence of the Pilot on the participating NWOs and their clients. The evaluation is based on interviews with NWO staff and focus groups of new home owners assisted in the eight sites visited

Specimen size and geometry effects on fracture toughness of Al2O3 measured with short rod and short bar chevron-notch specimens

Plane strain fracture toughness measurements were made on Al2O3 using short rod and short bar chevron notch specimens previously calibrated by the authors for their dimensionless stress intensity factor coefficients. The measured toughness varied systematically with variations in specimen size, proportions, and chevron notch angle apparently due to their influence on the amount of crack extension to maximum load (the measurement point). The toughness variations are explained in terms of a suspected rising R curve for the material tested, along with a discussion of an unavoidable imprecision in the calculation of K sub Ic for materials with rising R curves when tested with chevron notch specimens

Symmetry and optical selection rules in graphene quantum dots

Graphene quantum dots (GQD's) have optical properties which are very different from those of an extended graphene sheet. In this Article we explore how the size, shape and edge--structure of a GQD affect its optical conductivity. Using representation theory, we derive optical selection rules for regular-shaped dots, starting from the symmetry properties of the current operator. We find that, where the x- and y-components of the current operator transform with the same irreducible representation (irrep) of the point group - for example in triangular or hexagonal GQD's - the optical conductivity is independent of the polarisation of the light. On the other hand, where these components transform with different irreps - for example in rectangular GQD's - the optical conductivity depends on the polarisation of light. We find that GQD's with non-commuting point-group operations - for example dots of rectangular shape - can be distinguished from GQD's with commuting point-group operations - for example dots of triangular or hexagonal shape - by using polarized light. We carry out explicit calculations of the optical conductivity of GQD's described by a simple tight--binding model and, for dots of intermediate size, \textcolor{blue}{($10 \lesssim L \lesssim 50\ \text{nm}$)} find an absorption peak in the low--frequency range of the spectrum which allows us to distinguish between dots with zigzag and armchair edges. We also clarify the one-dimensional nature of states at the van Hove singularity in graphene, providing a possible explanation for very high exciton-binding energies. Finally we discuss the role of atomic vacancies and shape asymmetry.Comment: 24 pages, 15 figure

Corruption, Development and the Curse of Natural Resources

In 1995, Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner found a negative relationship between natural resources and economic growth, and claimed that natural resources are a curse. Their work has been widely cited, with many economists now accepting the curse of natural resources as a welldocumented explanation of poor economic growth in some economies (e.g., Papyrakis and Gerlagh, 2004; Kronenberg, 2004). In this paper, we provide an alternative econometric framework for evaluating this claim, although we begin with a discussion of possible explanations for the curse and a critical assessment of the extant theory underlying the curse. Our approach is to identify natural resources that have the greatest rents and potential for exploitation through rent-seeking agents. The transmission mechanism that we specify works through the effect that rent seeking has on corruption and how that, in turn, impacts wellbeing. Our measure of wellbeing is the Human Development Index, although we find similar results for per capita GDP. While we find that resource abundance does not directly impact economic development, we do find that petroleum resources are associated with rent-seeking behavior that negatively affects wellbeing. Our regression results are robust to various model specifications and sensitivity analyses.natural resource curse, petroleum resources, unbalanced panels and GMM estimation