Ignoring Puff Counts: Another Shortcoming of the Federal Trade Commission Cigarette Testing Programme

OBJECTIVES; To examine reasons behind the failure of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to preserve puff count information from standard cigarette testing and to elucidate the importance of puff count to overall tar yields.METHODS; We reviewed industry documents on origins of the FTC test and data sets provided by the Tobacco Institute Testing Laboratory to the tobacco industry and FTC for reporting purposes.RESULTS; The majority of the tobacco industry argued for "dual reporting" of tar yields-both per cigarette and per puff. Despite a request from the Tobacco Institute in 1967 that puff count information be preserved, documents and recent communications with the FTC indicate that puff number data have not been maintained by the government. In contrast, for the cigarette industry, puff count data are a fundamental and routine part of testing and important to cigarette design. A sample of puff counts for cigarettes tested in 1996 (n = 471) shows that on average 100 mm cigarettes have 18% more puffs taken on them than do 85 mm cigarettes in standard tests (7.66 vs 9.03; p<0.01). The 10th percentile puff count is 6.8 and the 90th percentile is 8.8 for king size; the 10th percentile puff count is 8.2 and the 90th percentile is 10.0 for 100 mm cigarettes, indicating that puff counts can vary substantially among brands.CONCLUSIONS; The FTC has failed to seek or preserve puff count information that the industry finds important. Any standard test of tar and nicotine yields should at minimum preserve puff count information

A gravitationally lensed quasar discovered in OGLE

Indexación: Scopus; Web of Science.We report the discovery of a new gravitationally lensed quasar (double) from the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) identified inside the ~670deg2 area encompassing the Magellanic Clouds. The source was selected as one of ~60 'red W1-W2' mid-infrared objects from WISE and having a significant amount of variability in OGLE for both two (or more) nearby sources. This is the first detection of a gravitational lens, where the discovery is made 'the other way around', meaning we first measured the time delay between the two lensed quasar images of -132 < tAB < -76 d (90 per cent CL), with the median tAB ~-102 d (in the observer frame), and where the fainter image B lags image A. The system consists of the two quasar images separated by 1.5 arcsec on the sky, with I ~20.0mag and I ~19.6mag, respectively, and a lensing galaxy that becomes detectable as I ~21.5 mag source, 1.0 arcsec from image A, after subtracting the two lensed images. Both quasar images show clear AGN broad emission lines at z=2.16 in the New Technology Telescope spectra. The spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting with the fixed source redshift provided the estimate of the lensing galaxy redshift of z ~0.9 ± 0.2 (90 per cent CL), while its type is more likely to be elliptical (the SED-inferred and lens-model stellar mass is more likely present in ellipticals) than spiral (preferred redshift by the lens model). © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/476/1/663/483368

SDWFS-MT-1: A Self-Obscured Luminous Supernova at z~0.2

We report the discovery of a six-month-long mid-infrared transient, SDWFS-MT-1 (aka SN 2007va), in the Spitzer Deep, Wide-Field Survey of the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey Bootes field. The transient, located in a z=0.19 low luminosity (M_[4.5]~-18.6 mag, L/L_MilkyWay~0.01) metal-poor (12+log(O/H)~7.8) irregular galaxy, peaked at a mid-infrared absolute magnitude of M_[4.5]~-24.2 in the 4.5 micron Spitzer/IRAC band and emitted a total energy of at least 10^51 ergs. The optical emission was likely fainter than the mid-infrared, although our constraints on the optical emission are poor because the transient peaked when the source was "behind" the Sun. The Spitzer data are consistent with emission by a modified black body with a temperature of ~1350 K. We rule out a number of scenarios for the origin of the transient such as a Galactic star, AGN activity, GRB, tidal disruption of a star by a black hole and gravitational lensing. The most plausible scenario is a supernova exploding inside a massive, optically thick circumstellar medium, composed of multiple shells of previously ejected material. If the proposed scenario is correct, then a significant fraction (~10%) of the most luminous supernova may be self-enshrouded by dust not only before but also after the supernova occurs. The spectral energy distribution of the progenitor of such a supernova would be a slightly cooler version of eta Carina, peaking at 20-30 microns.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in Ap

A Medium-Resolution Near-Infrared Spectral Library of Late Type Stars: I

We present an empirical infrared spectral library of medium resolution (R~2000-3000) H (1.6 micron) and K (2.2 micron) band spectra of 218 red stars, spanning a range of [Fe/H] from ~-2.2 to ~+0.3. The sample includes Galactic disk stars, bulge stars from Baade's window, and red giants from Galactic globular clusters. We report the values of 19 indices covering 12 spectral features measured from the spectra in the library. Finally, we derive calibrations to estimate the effective temperature, and diagnostic relationships to determine the luminosity classes of individual stars from near-infrared spectra. This paper is part of a larger effort aimed at building a near-IR spectral library to be incorporated in population synthesis models, as well as, at testing synthetic stellar spectra.Comment: 34 pages, 12 figures; accepted for publication at ApJS; the spectra are available from the authors upon reques

The clonal root system of balsam poplar in upland sites of Quebec and Alberta

Balsam poplar seeds are short-lived and require moist seedbeds soon after they are released to germinate. In addition to sexual reproduction, balsam poplar stands can regenerate clonally by root suckering. The origin of stands will in turn affect their genetic structure and root system architecture, which are poorly understood for upland forest stands. Three stands were hydraulically excavated in Quebec (moist) and Alberta (dry) to determine the origin of trees and to characterize root systems with respect to presence of parental roots and root grafts connections. Clones were identified using single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs), and all stems, roots and root grafts were aged using dendrochronology techniques. All 82 excavated trees were of sucker origin, and four of the six stands contained a single clone. Parental root connections were found between 22% and 25% of excavated trees, and 53% and 48% of trees were linked with a root graft between the same or different clones, in Alberta and Quebec, respectively. Mean distance between trees connected by parental root was significantly lower than the distance between unconnected trees (0.47 ± 0.25 m vs. 3.14 ± 0.15 m and 1.55 ± 0.27 m vs. 4.25 ± 0.13 m) in Alberta and in Quebec, respectively. The excavations also revealed many dead stumps with live roots, maintained through root connections with live trees. This research highlights that balsam poplar growing in upland stands is a clonal species that can maintain relatively high genotypic diversity, with frequent root connections between trees at maturity. Maintaining an extensive root system through root connections increases the chances of a clone surviving when the above ground tree is dead and may also enhance the resilience of balsam poplar stands after disturbance

Employee Stock Ownership and Financial Performance in European Countries: The Moderating Effects of Uncertainty Avoidance and Social Trust

This study investigates how the effect of employee stock ownership on financial performance may hinge on the diverse cultural and societal contexts of European countries. Based on agency and national culture theories, we hypothesize that the positive relationship between employee stock ownership and return on assets (ROA) is stronger in those nations with lower uncertainty avoidance and higher social trust. Using a multisource, time‐lagged, large‐scale dataset of 1,741 firms from 21 countries in Europe, our multilevel, random coefficient modeling analysis found evidence for these hypotheses, suggesting that uncertainty avoidance and social trust serve as important contextual cues in predicting the linkage between employee stock ownership and financial performance. Our supplemental analysis with distinction between the managerial and nonmanagerial employee stock ownership further indicates managerial employee stock ownership has a direct positive effect on ROA. Although nonmanagerial employee stock ownership had a nonsignificant association with ROA, the relationship was positive and significant when uncertainty avoidance was low and social trust was high. This research contributes to the existing literature by illuminating some of the contextual influences altering the effectiveness of employee stock ownership. Our findings also offer practical suggestions for effectively using employee stock ownership