Varenicline in the treatment of tobacco dependence

Varenicline, a partial agonist of α4β2 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, is the most recently approved drug for smoking cessation. This paper reviews the outcomes of Phase 2 and Phase 3 clinical trials that assess the efficacy of varenicline in comparison to placebo and other smoking cessation pharmacotherapies, ie, sustained-release bupropion (bupropion SR) and nicotine transdermal patch. Varenicline has higher abstinence rates than placebo and the alternative active treatments at the end of standard regimen treatment periods. Significantly higher abstinence rates were also found with varenicline in comparison to both placebo and bupropion SR at the end of a 40-week non-treatment follow-up period. Varenicline typically tripled the abstinence rates compared with placebo. In addition, varenicline reduced craving and withdrawal symptoms as well as some of the positive experiences associated with smoking to a greater extent than placebo, bupropion SR, and nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). These findings are consistent with the proposed agonist/antagonist effects of varenicline. Preliminary studies assessing individual variables such as smoking dependency level and smoking reinforcement types provide justification to examine further the effects of varenicline according to these individual factors. Outcomes from such research could improve our understanding of varenicline’s mechanism of action and could ultimately help clinicians to develop individualized smoking cessation programs. Also, given varenicline’s ability to reduce the reward from smoking, it might be helpful to use it before cessation to motivate or prepare smokers for a quit attempt

An Information Infrastructure For Sustainable IT Procurement: A Suitable Case For Actor-Network Theory?

The use of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is assessed as a means of understanding the context of the information architecture needed to support sustainable procurement practices. The Higher Education (HE) Institutions within the UK public sector have been the subject of central government initiatives to fulfil the UK’s international obligations to reduce carbon emissions. This has included measures to introduce sustainability criteria into procurements decisions, which require staff to make decisions informed by the sustainability characteristics of the products available. This could include a wide range of data about the whole supply chain of a product, which could involve many different organisational entities. Previous research, particularly on the evolution of inter-organisational information infrastructures, suggested ANT as a research approach. The particular features of ANT that seemed to be particularly supportive of the understanding of the issues of IT sustainable procurement are presented along with examples of their application to the problem domain

Source and fate of dissolved organic matter in boreal headwater streams

Understanding the source and fate of dissolved organic matter (DOM), a key water quality variable, in boreal headwaters is of critical importance considering the amount of carbon stored and processed in different ecosystem components within the boreal forest and the sensitivity of these processes to climate change. Using historical streamflow and stream chemistry data in combination with direct measurements of the landscape sources of DOM and more detailed stream DOM quality data from 2021 at the IISD-ELA, I examined how the terrestrial source of DOM influences the quantity and quality of DOM in three boreal headwater streams. Using historical stream data from 1981-2021, I found that concentration-discharge (c-Q) relationships varied based on both catchment characteristics and hydrological conditions. Streams draining upland-dominated catchments were more often transport-limited (i.e., concentration increased with increasing flow), whereas a wetland-dominated stream was more often source-limited (i.e., concentration decreased with increasing flow) in terms of stream DOM concentration. DOM concentration and quality data in soil leachate indicated that streamwater had DOM characteristics suggesting it originated from near-stream organic soils, while after the drought the DOM came proportionally more from distal mineral soils (in addition to near-stream organic soil contributions). I showed that the severe drought in 2021 made streams with varying landscape characteristics respond similarly to the post-drought flush. These findings also illustrate that while c-Q relationships may be different among streams draining upland-dominated and wetland-dominated catchments as a result of the different abilities of these landscape to accumulate and mobilize DOM, DOM quality responded to this drought to post-drought flush synchronously among all three streams. As climate change will alter the frequency, duration, and severity of future hydrological conditions, this has repercussions for the DOM dynamics in headwater streams and the resulting water quality downstream."I was supported in this research by a UWGSS Scholarship from UWinnipeg and an NSERc - Canada Graduate Scholarship."Master of Science in Bioscience, Technology and Public Polic

Absolutely continuous spectrum of Dirac operators with square-integrable potentials

We show that the absolutely continuous part of the spectral function of the one-dimensional Dirac operator on a half-line with a constant mass term and a real, square-integrable potential is strictly increasing throughout the essential spectrum (−∞, −1] ∪ [1, ∞). The proof is based on estimates for the transmission coefficient for the full-line scattering problem with a truncated potential and a subsequent limiting procedure for the spectral function. Furthermore, we show that the absolutely continuous spectrum persists when an angular momentum term is added, thus also establishing the result for spherically symmetric Dirac operators in higher dimensions

Gas Kinematics on GMC scales in M51 with PAWS: cloud stabilization through dynamical pressure

We use the high spatial and spectral resolution of the PAWS CO(1-0) survey of the inner 9 kpc of the iconic spiral galaxy M51 to examine the effect of gas streaming motions on the star-forming properties of individual GMCs. We compare our view of gas flows in M51 -- which arise due to departures from axi-symmetry in the gravitational potential (i.e. the nuclear bar and spiral arms) -- with the global pattern of star formation as traced by Halpha and 24\mu m emission. We find that the dynamical environment of GMCs strongly affects their ability to form stars, in the sense that GMCs situated in regions with large streaming motions can be stabilized, while similarly massive GMCs in regions without streaming go on to efficiently form stars. We argue that this is the result of reduced surface pressure felt by clouds embedded in an ambient medium undergoing large streaming motions, which prevents collapse. Indeed, the variation in gas depletion time expected based on the observed streaming motions throughout the disk of M51 quantitatively agrees with the variation in observed gas depletion time scale. The example of M51 shows that streaming motions, triggered by gravitational instabilities in the form of bars and spiral arms, can alter the star formation law; this can explain the variation in gas depletion time among galaxies with different masses and morphologies. In particular, we can explain the long gas depletion times in spiral galaxies compared to dwarf galaxies and starbursts. We suggest that adding a dynamical pressure term to the canonical free-fall time produces a single star formation law that can be applied to all star-forming regions and galaxies, across cosmic time.Comment: 28 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

The PdBI Arcsecond Whirlpool Survey (PAWS): Environmental Dependence of Giant Molecular Cloud Properties in M51

Using data from the PdBI Arcsecond Whirlpool Survey (PAWS), we have generated the largest extragalactic Giant Molecular Cloud (GMC) catalog to date, containing 1,507 individual objects. GMCs in the inner M51 disk account for only 54% of the total 12CO(1-0) luminosity of the survey, but on average they exhibit physical properties similar to Galactic GMCs. We do not find a strong correlation between the GMC size and velocity dispersion, and a simple virial analysis suggests that 30% of GMCs in M51 are unbound. We have analyzed the GMC properties within seven dynamically-motivated galactic environments, finding that GMCs in the spiral arms and in the central region are brighter and have higher velocity dispersions than inter-arm clouds. Globally, the GMC mass distribution does not follow a simple power law shape. Instead, we find that the shape of the mass distribution varies with galactic environment: the distribution is steeper in inter-arm region than in the spiral arms, and exhibits a sharp truncation at high masses for the nuclear bar region. We propose that the observed environmental variations in the GMC properties and mass distributions are a consequence of the combined action of large-scale dynamical processes and feedback from high mass star formation. We describe some challenges of using existing GMC identification techniques for decomposing the 12CO(1-0) emission in molecule-rich environments, such as M51's inner disk.Comment: 73 pages, 18 figures, 14 tables, accepted for publication in Ap

The PdBI Arcsecond Whirlpool Survey (PAWS): Multi-phase cold gas kinematic of M51

The kinematic complexity and the favorable position of M51 on the sky make this galaxy an ideal target to test different theories of spiral arm dynamics. Taking advantage of the new high resolution PdBI Arcsecond Whirlpool Survey (PAWS) data, we undertake a detailed kinematic study of M51 to characterize and quantify the origin and nature of the non-circular motions. Using a tilted-ring analysis supported by several other archival datasets we update the estimation of M51's position angle (PA=(173 +/- 3) deg) and inclination (i=(22 +/- 5) deg). Harmonic decomposition of the high resolution (40 pc) CO velocity field shows the first kinematic evidence of an m=3 wave in the inner disk of M51 with a corotation at R(CR,m=3)=1.1 +/- 0.1 kpc and a pattern speed of Omega_p(m=3) = 140 km/(s kpc). This mode seems to be excited by the nuclear bar, while the beat frequencies generated by the coupling between the m=3 mode and the main spiral structure confirm its density-wave nature. We observe also a signature of an m=1 mode that is likely responsible for the lopsidedness of M51 at small and large radii. We provide a simple method to estimate the radial variation of the amplitude of the spiral perturbation (Vsp) attributed to the different modes. The main spiral arm structure has =50-70 km/s, while the streaming velocity associated with the m=1 and m=3 modes is, in general, 2 times lower. Our joint analysis of HI and CO velocity fields at low and high spatial resolution reveals that the atomic and molecular gas phases respond differently to the spiral perturbation due to their different vertical distribution and emission morphology.Comment: 42 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

A Comparative Study of Giant Molecular Clouds in M51, M33 and the Large Magellanic Cloud

We compare the properties of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in M51 identified by the Plateau de Bure Interferometer Whirlpool Arcsecond Survey (PAWS) with GMCs identified in wide-field, high resolution surveys of CO emission in M33 and the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). We find that GMCs in M51 are larger, brighter and have higher velocity dispersions relative to their size than equivalent structures in M33 and the LMC. These differences imply that there are genuine variations in the average mass surface density of the different GMC populations. To explain this, we propose that the pressure in the interstellar medium surrounding the GMCs plays a role in regulating their density and velocity dispersion. We find no evidence for a correlation between size and linewidth in any of M51, M33 or the LMC when the CO emission is decomposed into GMCs, although moderately robust correlations are apparent when regions of contiguous CO emission (with no size limitation) are used. Our work demonstrates that observational bias remains an important obstacle to the identification and study of extragalactic GMC populations using CO emission, especially in molecule-rich galactic environments.Comment: 25 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ. Uses emulateapj LaTeX macros. For more information on PAWS, further papers and data, see http://www.mpia.de/PAWS