Older, Less Regulated Medical Marijuana Programs Have Much Greater Enrollment Rates Than Newer ‘Medicalized’ Programs

Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have passed laws implementing medical marijuana programs. The nineteen programs that were in operation as of October 2014 collectively had over one million participants. All states (including D.C.) with medical marijuana laws require physicians directly or indirectly to authorize the use of marijuana at their discretion, yet little is known about how medical marijuana programs vary regarding adherence to basic principles of medical practice and associated rates of enrollment. To explore this, we analyzed marijuana programs according to seven components of traditional medical care and pharmaceutical regulation. We then examined enrollment rates, while controlling for potentially confounding state characteristics. We found that fourteen of the twenty-four programs were nonmedical and collectively enrolled 99.4 percent of participants nationwide, with enrollment rates twenty times greater than programs deemed to be “medicalized.” Policy makers implementing or amending medical marijuana programs should consider the powerful relationship between less regulation and greater enrollment. Researchers should consider variations across programs when assessing programs’ population-level effects

Evidence of kaon nuclear and Coulomb potential effects on soft K+ production from nuclei

The ratio of forward K+ production on copper, silver and gold targets to that on carbon has been measured at proton beam energies between 1.5 and 2.3 GeV as a function of the kaon momentum p_K using the ANKE spectrometer at COSY-Juelich. The strong suppression in the ratios observed for p_K<200-250 MeV/c can be ascribed to a combination of Coulomb and nuclear repulsion in the K+A system. This opens a new way to investigate the interaction of K+-mesons in the nuclear medium. Our data are consistent with a K+A nuclear potential of V_K~20 MeV at low kaon momenta and normal nuclear density. Given the sensitivity of the data to the kaon potential, the current experimental precision might allow one to determine V_K to better than 3 MeV.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures; changed conten

On minimal affinizations of representations of quantum groups

In this paper we study minimal affinizations of representations of quantum groups (generalizations of Kirillov-Reshetikhin modules of quantum affine algebras introduced by Chari). We prove that all minimal affinizations in types A, B, G are special in the sense of monomials. Although this property is not satisfied in general, we also prove an analog property for a large class of minimal affinization in types C, D, F. As an application, the Frenkel-Mukhin algorithm works for these modules. For minimal affinizations of type A, B we prove the thin property (the l-weight spaces are of dimension 1) and a conjecture of Nakai-Nakanishi (already known for type A). The proof of the special property is extended uniformly for more general quantum affinizations of quantum Kac-Moody algebras.Comment: 38 pages; references and additional results added. Accepted for publication in Communications in Mathematical Physic

Use of Lambert's Theorem for the n-Dimensional Coulomb Problem

We present the analytical solution in closed form for the semiclassical limit of the quantum mechanical Coulomb Green function in position space in n dimensions. We utilize a projection method which has its roots in Lambert's theorem and which allows us to treat the system as an essentially one dimensional problem. The semiclassical result assumes a simple analytical form and is well suited for a numerical evaluation. The method can also be extended to classically forbidden space regions. Already for moderately large principal quantum numbers nu >= 5, the semiclassical Green function is found to be an excellent approximation to the quantum mechanical Green function.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures. Accepted in Phys. Rev.

Polymers with attractive interactions on the Husimi tree

We obtain the solution of models of self-avoiding walks with attractive interactions on Husimi lattices built with squares. Two attractive interactions are considered: between monomers on first-neighbor sites and not consecutive along a walk and between bonds located on opposite edges of elementary squares. For coordination numbers q>4, two phases, one polymerized the other non-polymerized, are present in the phase diagram. For small values of the attractive interaction the transition between those phases is continuous, but for higher values a first-order transition is found. Both regimes are separated by a tricritical point. For q=4 a richer phase diagram is found, with an additional (dense) polymerized phase, which is stable for for sufficiently strong interactions between bonds. The phase diagram of the model in the three-dimensional parameter space displays surfaces of continuous and discontinuous phase transitions and lines of tricritical points, critical endpoints and triple points.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Kaon Pair Production in Proton--Proton Collisions

The differential and total cross sections for kaon pair production in the pp->ppK+K- reaction have been measured at three beam energies of 2.65, 2.70, and 2.83 GeV using the ANKE magnetic spectrometer at the COSY-Juelich accelerator. These near-threshold data are separated into pairs arising from the decay of the phi-meson and the remainder. For the non-phi selection, the ratio of the differential cross sections in terms of the K-p and K+p invariant masses is strongly peaked towards low masses. This effect can be described quantitatively by using a simple ansatz for the K-p final state interaction, where it is seen that the data are sensitive to the magnitude of an effective K-p scattering length. When allowance is made for a small number of phi events where the K- rescatters from the proton, the phi region is equally well described at all three energies. A very similar phenomenon is discovered in the ratio of the cross sections as functions of the K-pp and K+pp invariant masses and the identical final state interaction model is also very successful here. The world data on the energy dependence of the non-phi total cross section is also reproduced, except possibly for the results closest to threshold.Comment: 12 two-column pages, 12 figures, 1 tabl

a0+(980)-resonance production in pp->dK+Kbar0 reactions close to threshold

The reaction pp->d K+ Kbar0 has been investigated at an excess energy of Q=46 MeV above the (K+ Kbar0) threshold with ANKE at COSY-Juelich. From the detected coincident dK+ pairs about 1000 events with a missing Kbar0 were identified, corresponding to a total cross section of sigma(pp->d K+ Kbar0)=(38 +/- 2(stat) +/- 14(syst)) nb. Invariant-mass and angular distributions have been jointly analyzed and reveal s-wave dominance between the two kaons, accompanied by a p-wave between the deuteron and the kaon system. This is interpreted in terms of a0+(980)-resonance production.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; accepted by Phys. Rev. Let

Exclusive measurement of coherent eta photoproduction from the deuteron

Coherent photoproduction of eta mesons from the deuteron has been measured from threshold up to incident photon energies of 750 MeV using the photon spectrometer TAPS at the tagged photon facility at the Mainz microtron MAMI. For the first time, differential coherent cross sections have been deduced from the coincident detection of the eta meson and the recoil deuteron. A missing energy analysis was used for the suppression of background events so that a very clean identification of coherent eta-photoproduction was achieved. The resulting cross sections agree with previous experimental results except for angles around 90 deg in the photon-deuteron cm-system where they are smaller. They are compared to various model calculations.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Measurement of polarisation observables in Ks0Σ+K^0_s\Sigma^+ photoproduction off the proton

The reaction $\gamma \, p \rightarrow K^0_S\,\Sigma^+$ is studied in the photon energy range from threshold. Linearly polarised photon beams from coherent bremsstrahlung enabled the first measurement of photon beam asymmetries in this reaction up to $E_\gamma = 2250$ MeV. In addition, the recoil hyperon polarisation was determined through the asymmetry in the weak decay $\Sigma^+ \rightarrow p \pi^0$ up to $E_\gamma = 1650$ MeV. The data are compared to partial wave analyses, and the possible impact on the interpretation of a recently observed cusp-like structure near the $K^*$ thresholds is discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures. References [8,9,10,11] which were not on the original submission are now include