Evaluating complementary medicine: methodological challenges of randomised controlled trials

Complementary medicine has a different philosophy from conventional medicine, presenting challenges to research methodology. Rigorous evaluation of complementary medicine could provide much needed evidence of its effectiveness. Good design of randomised controlled trials will avoid invalid results and misrepresentation of the holistic essence of complementary medicine. Practitioners need to be recognised as a component in or contributor to complementary treatment. Both specific and non-specific outcome measures with long follow up are needed to adequately encompass the essence of complementary medicine

A search for X-ray polarization in cosmic X-ray sources

Fifteen strong X-ray sources were observed by the X-ray polarimeters on board the OSO-8 satellite from 1975 to 1978. The final results of this search for X-ray polarization in cosmic sources are presented in the form of upper limits for the ten sources which are discussed elsewhere. These limits in all cases are consistent with a thermal origin for the X-ray emission

Is the cosmic UV background fluctuating at redshift z ~ 6 ?

We study the Gunn-Peterson effect of the photo-ionized intergalactic medium(IGM) in the redshift range 5< z <6.4 using semi-analytic simulations based on the lognormal model. Assuming a rapidly evolved and spatially uniform ionizing background, the simulation can produce all the observed abnormal statistical features near redshift z ~ 6. They include: 1) rapidly increase of absorption depths; 2) large scatter in the optical depths; 3) long-tailed distributions of transmitted flux and 4) long dark gaps in spectra. These abnormal features are mainly due to rare events, which correspond to the long-tailed probability distribution of the IGM density field, and therefore, they may not imply significantly spatial fluctuations in the UV ionizing background at z ~ 6.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figs, accepted by ApJ

Prime Factorization in the Duality Computer

We give algorithms to factorize large integers in the duality computer. We provide three duality algorithms for factorization based on a naive factorization method, the Shor algorithm in quantum computing, and the Fermat's method in classical computing. All these algorithms are polynomial in the input size.Comment: 4 page

Single and Many Particle Correlation Functions and Uniform Phase Bases for Strongly Correlated Systems

The need for suitable many or infinite fermion correlation functions to describe some low dimensional strongly correlated systems is discussed. This is linked to the need for a correlated basis, in which the ground state may be postive definite, and in which single particle correlations may suffice. A particular trial basis is proposed, and applied to a certain quasi-1D model. The model is a strip of the 2D square lattice wrapped around a cylinder, and is related to the ladder geometries, but with periodic instead of open boundary conditions along the edges. Analysis involves a novel mean-field approach and exact diagonalisation. The model has a paramagnetic region and a Nagaoka ferromagnetic region. The proposed basis is well suited to the model, and single particle correlations in it have power law decay for the paramagnet, where the charge motion is qualitatively hard core bosonic. The mean field also leads to a BCS-type model with single particle long range order.Comment: 23 pages, in plain tex, 12 Postscript figures included. Accepted for publication in J.Physics : Condensed Matte