Cigarette smoking and food insecurity among low-income families in the United States, 2001

The goal of this research is to quantify the association between food insecurity and smoking among low-income families. This analysis is a retrospective study using data from the 2001 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a longitudinal study of a representative sample of U.S. men, women, and children and the family units in which they reside. Family income is linked with U.S. poverty thresholds to identify 2,099 families living near or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Food insecurity (that is, having insufficient funds to purchase enough food to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle) is calculated from the eighteen core items in the food security module of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The results indicate that smoking prevalence is higher among low-income families who are food insecure compared to low-income families who are food secure (43.6 percent versus 31.9 percent). Multivariate analysis reveals that smoking is associated with an increase in food insecurity of approximately 6 percentage points. Given our finding that families near the federal poverty level spend a large share of their income on cigarettes, perhaps it would be prudent for food assistance and tobacco control programs to work together to help low-income people quit smoking.

Colorectal Cancer Screening Behaviors among American Indians in the Midwest

Colorectal cancer is the second most diagnosed cancer among American Indians and is also the second leading cause of cancer death. We used a community-based participatory approach to conduct a mixed methods study to examine colorectal cancer screening behaviors. Here we report on the screening behaviors of our focus group participants (n=153). There were significant gender differences in the colorectal cancer screening rates for FOBT and colonoscopy. Although over 80% of participants reported having health insurance, only 35% of males over 50 years old and 57% of females reported ever having a colonoscopy. More research is needed to identify the causes of gender differences in colorectal cancer screening rates among American Indians. The results of the current study provide new information on the prevalence of colorectal cancer screening among American Indians living in the Midwestern (Kansas and Missouri) portion of the country

Quantum Key Distribution with Blind Polarization Bases

We propose a new quantum key distribution scheme that uses the blind polarization basis. In our scheme the sender and the receiver share key information by exchanging qubits with arbitrary polarization angles without basis reconciliation. As only random polarizations are transmitted, our protocol is secure even when a key is embedded in a not-so-weak coherent-state pulse. We show its security against the photon number splitting attack and the impersonation attack.Comment: Security has been improved upon referee's comment. 4 pages and 2 figure

Emergent modular neural control drives coordinated motor actions.

A remarkable feature of motor control is the ability to coordinate movements across distinct body parts into a consistent, skilled action. To reach and grasp an object, 'gross' arm and 'fine' dexterous movements must be coordinated as a single action. How the nervous system achieves this coordination is currently unknown. One possibility is that, with training, gross and fine movements are co-optimized to produce a coordinated action; alternatively, gross and fine movements may be modularly refined to function together. To address this question, we recorded neural activity in the primary motor cortex and dorsolateral striatum during reach-to-grasp skill learning in rats. During learning, the refinement of fine and gross movements was behaviorally and neurally dissociable. Furthermore, inactivation of the primary motor cortex and dorsolateral striatum had distinct effects on skilled fine and gross movements. Our results indicate that skilled movement coordination is achieved through emergent modular neural control

Conformal anomaly and the vector coupling in dense matter

We construct an effective chiral Lagrangian for hadrons implemented by the conformal invariance and discuss the properties of nuclear matter at high density. The model is formulated based on two alternative assignment, "naive" and mirror, of chirality to the nucleons. It is shown that taking the dilaton limit, in which the mended symmetry of Weinberg is manifest, the vector-meson Yukawa coupling becomes suppressed and the symmetry energy becomes softer as one approaches the chiral phase transition. This leads to softer equations of state (EoS) and could accommodate the EoS without any exotica consistent with the recent measurement of a $1.97 \pm 0.04\,M_\odot$ neutron star.Comment: v2:10 pages, 2 figures, typos corrected, a rough estimate of m0 adde

Neural-Network Vector Controller for Permanent-Magnet Synchronous Motor Drives: Simulated and Hardware-Validated Results

This paper focuses on current control in a permanentmagnet synchronous motor (PMSM). The paper has two main objectives: The first objective is to develop a neural-network (NN) vector controller to overcome the decoupling inaccuracy problem associated with conventional PI-based vector-control methods. The NN is developed using the full dynamic equation of a PMSM, and trained to implement optimal control based on approximate dynamic programming. The second objective is to evaluate the robust and adaptive performance of the NN controller against that of the conventional standard vector controller under motor parameter variation and dynamic control conditions by (a) simulating the behavior of a PMSM typically used in realistic electric vehicle applications and (b) building an experimental system for hardware validation as well as combined hardware and simulation evaluation. The results demonstrate that the NN controller outperforms conventional vector controllers in both simulation and hardware implementation

Exactly Soluble Quantum Wormhole in Two Dimensions

We are presenting a quantum traversable wormhole in an exactly soluble two-dimensional model. This is different from previous works since the exotic negative energy that supports the wormhole is generated from the quantization of classical energy-momentum tensors. This explicit illustration shows the quantum-mechanical energy can be used as a candidate for the exotic source. As for the traversability, after a particle travels through the wormhole, the static initial wormhole geometry gets a back reaction which spoils the wormhole structure. However, it may still maintain the initial structure along with the appropriate boundary condition.Comment: v1. 13 pages, 1 figure, REVTeX3; v2. 1 Ref. added, REVTeX4, to appear in Phys. Rev.