Effect of tobacco smoking on survival of men and women by social position: a 28 year cohort study

<b>Objective:</b> To assess the impact of tobacco smoking on the survival of men and women in different social positions. <b>Design:</b> A cohort observational study. <b>Setting:</b> Renfrew and Paisley, two towns in west central Scotland. <b>Participants:</b> 8353 women and 7049 men aged 45-64 years recruited in 1972-6 (almost 80% of the population in this age group). The cohort was divided into 24 groups by sex (male, female), smoking status (current, former, or never smokers), and social class (classes I + II, III non-manual, III manual, and IV + V) or deprivation category of place of residence. <b>Main outcome measure:</b> Relative mortality (adjusted for age and other risk factors) in the different groups; Kaplan-Meier survival curves and survival rates at 28 years. <b>Results:</b> Of those with complete data, 4387/7988 women and 4891/6967 men died over the 28 years. Compared with women in social classes I + II who had never smoked (the group with lowest mortality), the adjusted relative mortality of smoking groups ranged from 1.7 (95% confidence interval 1.3 to 2.3) to 4.2 (3.3 to 5.5). Former smokers’ mortalities were closer to those of never smokers than those of smokers. By social class (highest first), age adjusted survival rates after 28 years were 65%, 57%, 53%, and 56% for female never smokers; 41%, 42%, 33%, and 35% for female current smokers; 53%, 47%, 38%, and 36% for male never smokers; and 24%, 24%, 19%, and 18% for male current smokers. Analysis by deprivation category gave similar results. <b>Conclusions:</b> Among both women and men, never smokers had much better survival rates than smokers in all social positions. Smoking itself was a greater source of health inequality than social position and nullified women’s survival advantage over men. This suggests the scope for reducing health inequalities related to social position in this and similar populations is limited unless many smokers in lower social positions stop smoking

Density-Matrix approach to a Strongly Coupled Two-Component Bose-Einstein Condensate

The time evolution equations for average values of population and relative phase of a strongly coupled two component BEC is derived analytically. The two components are two hyper-fine states coupled by an external laser that drives fast Rabi oscillations between these states. Specifically, this derivation incorporates the two-mode model proposed in [1] for the strongly coupled hyper-fine states of Rb. The fast Rabi cycle is averaged out and rate equations are derived that represents the slow dynamics of the system. These include the collapse and revival of Rabi oscillations and their subsequent dependence on detuning and trap displacement as reported in experiments of [1]. A proposal to create stable vortices is also given.Comment: 11 Latex pages, 2 figures (Figure 3 was removed and the text chnaged accordingly

Orientations of two coupled molecules

Orientation states of two coupled polar molecules controlled by laser pulses are studied theoretically. By varying the period of a series of periodically applied laser pulse, transition from regular to chaotic behavior may occur. Schmidt decomposition is used to measure the degree of entanglement. It is found that the entanglement can be enhanced by increasing the strength of laser pulse.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Chem. Phys. Lett.(2004

Inflationary models inducing non-Gaussian metric fluctuations

We construct explicit models of multi-field inflation in which the primordial metric fluctuations do not necessarily obey Gaussian statistics. These models are realizations of mechanisms in which non-Gaussianity is first generated by a light scalar field and then transferred into curvature fluctuations. The probability distribution functions of the metric perturbation at the end of inflation are computed. This provides a guideline for designing strategies to search for non-Gaussian signals in future CMB and large scale structure surveys.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figure

Decoherence in Bose-Einstein Condensates: towards Bigger and Better Schroedinger Cats

We consider a quantum superposition of Bose-Einstein condensates in two immiscible internal states. A decoherence rate for the resulting Schroedinger cat is calculated and shown to be a significant threat to this macroscopic quantum superposition of BEC's. An experimental scenario is outlined where the decoherence rate due to the thermal cloud is dramatically reduced thanks to trap engineering and "symmetrization" of the environment which allow for the Schroedinger cat to be an approximate pointer states.Comment: 12 pages in RevTex; improved presentation; a new comment on decoherence-free pointer subspaces in BEC; accepted in Phys.Rev.

Symmetric-Asymmetric transition in mixtures of Bose-Einstein condensates

We propose a new kind of quantum phase transition in phase separated mixtures of Bose-Einstein condensates. In this transition, the distribution of the two components changes from a symmetric to an asymmetric shape. We discuss the nature of the phase transition, the role of interface tension and the phase diagram. The symmetric to asymmetric transition is the simplest quantum phase transition that one can imagine. Careful study of this problem should provide us new insight into this burgeoning field of discovery.Comment: 6 pages, 3 eps figure

Sensitive Observations of Radio Recombination Lines in Orion and W51: The Data and Detection of Systematic Recombination Line Blueshifts Proportional to Impact Broadening

Sensitive spectral observations made in two frequency bands near 6.0 and 17.6 GHz are described for Orion and W51. Using frequency switching we were able to achieve a dynamic range in excess of 10,000 without fitting sinusoidal or polynomial baselines. This enabled us to detect lines as weak as T$_{A} ~1mK in these strong continuum sources. Hydrogen recombination lines with$\Delta n$ as high as 25 have been detected in Orion. In the Orion data, where the lines are stronger, we have also detected a systematic shift in the line center frequencies proportional to linewidth that cannot be explained by normal optical depth effects.Comment: 22 pages, 13 figures. Accepted for publication in Astrophysics and Space Scienc

Self-consistent model of ultracold atomic collisions and Feshbach resonances in tight harmonic traps

We consider the problem of cold atomic collisions in tight traps, where the absolute scattering length may be larger than the trap size. As long as the size of the trap ground state is larger than a characteristic length of the van der Waals potential, the energy eigenvalues can be computed self-consistently from the scattering amplitude for untrapped atoms. By comparing with the exact numerical eigenvalues of the trapping plus interatomic potentials, we verify that our model gives accurate eigenvalues up to milliKelvin energies for single channel s-wave scattering of $^{23}$Na atoms in an isotropic harmonic trap, even when outside the Wigner threshold regime. Our model works also for multi-channel scattering, where the scattering length can be made large due to a magnetically tunable Feshbach resonance.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures (PostScript), submitted to Physical Review