Louisiana-Recognized Native American Tribal Needs Assessment: Understanding the Perceptions, Resources, and Challenges Involving Opioid Use Disorder

Executive Summary The Social Research and Evaluation Center (SREC) at the Louisiana State University, College of Human Sciences and Education engaged Louisiana-recognized tribes to investigate their perceptions, resources, and challenges around the Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) crisis in their communities. The outreach and investigative process resulted in attending tribal council meetings, conducting key stakeholder interviews, and administering tribal listening sessions. The discussions and listening sessions facilitated open dialogue about the nature of OUD, prevention, treatment, and recovery as well as identification of strengths and challenges experienced by tribal communities. Tribal citizens reported limited knowledge about help for those experiencing addiction. Knowledge of resources was limited, and misinformation was also revealed. Tribal citizens reported little to no cultural practices that could assist those dealing with addiction. Tribal citizens listed an array of root causes contributing to addiction in their communities including historical and generational trauma. The interactions for this project with Native American citizens opened new channels of communication and established rapport among tribal citizens and the SREC research team to better understand the impact of OUD and identify appropriate solution

An Evaluation of the North Carolina Tobacco.Reality.Unfiltered. Media Campaign

With youth smoking rates showing little decline since the late 1990’s, the state of North Carolina implemented a multi-component initiative focused on teenage tobacco use prevention and cessation. One component of this initiative is Tobacco.Reality.Unfiltered., or TRU, an anti-tobacco media campaign, aimed at North Carolina youth ages 11 – 17 years. The primary goal of this campaign is to prevent the initiation of tobacco use, especially cigarette smoking, among youth. This research evaluates the progress that the TRU campaign has made in achieving its short term, i.e. campaign awareness and receptivity, and long term, i.e. prevention of tobacco use, goals using a longitudinal telephone survey of North Carolina youth (N = 502). The results indicate that 45% of North Carolina youth had confirmed awareness of at least one TRU ad, with the majority of youth reporting that the ads were convincing, attention-grabbing, and gave good reasons not to smoke. Latent transition analyses indicate that the probabilities at which youth were transitioning into smoking experimentation were not different for youth who were aware of the TRU campaign versus youth who were unaware of the campaign. These results held regardless of whether smoking initiation was measured using a youth’s lifetime smoking behavior or current smoking behavior. A difference did emerge in the transition probabilities for younger and older youth regarding current smoking behavior, with older youth transitioning into smoking experimentation at a higher rate than younger youth

Support Among Middle School and High School Students for Smoke-free Policies, North Carolina, 2009

IntroductionIn the United States, little is known about youth attitudes toward smoke-free policies. Our research measures North Carolina middle school and high school students’ opinions about smoke-free policies in indoor and outdoor public places as well as private places such as vehicles, homes, and work environments.MethodsData come from the 2009 North Carolina Youth Tobacco Survey. The overall middle school response rate was 79.2% (n = 3,805 students); the overall high school response rate was 78.2% (n = 3,301 students). To account for the complex survey design and sampling weights, data were analyzed by using SAS survey procedures.ResultsMost middle school and high school students support smoke-free policies across all venues. Support for smoke-free policies for several venues is also strong among high school students who are current smokers and those who want to stop smoking.ConclusionUntil smoke-free legislation becomes universal, youth are at risk for exposure in many venues. The North Carolina legislature can protect the health and well-being of North Carolina youth by passing new legislation that is concordant with youth preferences regarding smoke-free policies

The Belle II SVD detector

The Silicon Vertex Detector (SVD) is one of the main detectors in the Belle II experiment at KEK, Japan. In combination with a pixel detector, the SVD determines precise decay vertex and low-momentum track reconstruction. The SVD ladders are being developed at several institutes. For the development of the tracking algorithm as well as the performance estimation of the ladders, beam tests for the ladders were performed. We report an overview of the SVD development, its performance measured in the beam test, and the prospect of its assembly and commissioning until installation

Performance studies of the Belle II Silicon Vertex Detector with data taken at the DESY test beam in April 2016

Belle II is a multipurpose detector currently under construction which will be operated at the next generation B-factory SuberKEKB in Japan. Its main devices for the vertex reconstruction are the Silicon Vertex Detector (SVD) and the Pixel Detector (PXD). In April 2016 a sector of the Belle II SVD and PXD have been tested in a beam of high energetic electrons at the test beam facility at DESY Hamburg (Germany). We report here the results for the hit efficiency estimation and the measurement of the resolution for the Belle II silicon vertex etector. We find that the hit efficiencies are on average above 99.5% and that the measured resolution is within the expectations

Performance studies of the Belle II Silicon Vertex Detector with data taken at the DESY test beam in April 2016

Belle II is a multipurpose detector currently under construction which will be operated at the next generation B-factory SuberKEKB in Japan. Its main devices for the vertex reconstruction are the Silicon Vertex Detector (SVD) and the Pixel Detector (PXD). In April 2016 a sector of the Belle II SVD and PXD have been tested in a beam of high energetic electrons at the test beam facility at DESY Hamburg (Germany). We report here the results for the hit efficiency estimation and the measurement of the resolution for the Belle II silicon vertex etector. We find that the hit efficiencies are on average above 99.5% and that the measured resolution is within the expectations

Performance and running experience of the Belle II silicon vertex detector

The Belle II silicon vertex detector is one of the vertex detectors in the Belle II experiment. The detector reads out the signals from the double-sided silicon strip sensors with the APV25 front-end readout ASIC, adopting the chip-on-sensor concept to minimize the strip noise. The detector has been operated in the experiment since the spring of 2019. Analyzing the acquired data during the beam collisions, the excellent performance of the detector is confirmed. Also, the radiation dose and 1-MeV equivalent neutron fluence of the detector are estimated using the measured dose rates of the diamond sensors installed on the beam pipe and are compared with the measured radiation effects in the strip noise, leakage current, and depletion voltage. This paper briefly introduces the main features of the silicon vertex detector, and then reports on the measured performance and radiation effects of the first two years of running experience of the detector

Risk factors and management of pasireotide-associated hyperglycemia in acromegaly

Pasireotide, a multireceptor-targeted somatostatin analog with highest affinity for somatostatin receptor subtype (SST) 5, has demonstrated superior efficacy over the SST2-preferential somatostatin analogs octreotide and lanreotide. The safety profile is similar to those of octreotide and lanreotide, except for a higher frequency and degree of hyperglycemia. This analysis investigated baseline characteristics and occurrence and management of hyperglycemia during pasireotide treatment in patients with acromegaly treated in two prospective clinical studies, SOM230C2305 (C2305) and SOM230C2402 (C2402; PAOLA)

New Results from the Silicon Vertex Detector of the Belle II Experiment

The Silicon Vertex Detector (SVD) consists of four layers of double-sided silicon strip sensors. The SVD is one of the two vertex subdetectors within Belle II. Since the start of data taking in 2019 at the Super-KEKB collider (KEK, Japan), which has the highest peak-luminosity ever recorded, the SVD is operated reliably and with high efficiency, despite exposure to harsh beam background. Measurements using data show that the SVD has both high signal-to-noise ratio and hit efficiency, as well precise spatial resolution. Further these properties are stable over time. Recently the simulation has been tuned, using data, to improve the agrement between data and MC for cluster properties. The good hit-time resolution can be exploited to further improve the robustness against the higher levels of background expected as the instantaneous luminosity increases in the next years of running. First effects of radiation damage on strip noise, sensor currents and depletion voltage have been measured, although they do not have any detrimental effect on the performance of the detector