159 research outputs found
Holidays, celebrations, and commiserations: measuring drinking during feasting and fasting to improve national and individual estimates of alcohol consumption
BACKGROUND: Accurate measures of alcohol consumption are critical in assessing health harms caused by alcohol. In many countries, there are large discrepancies between survey-based measures of consumption and those based on alcohol sales. In England, surveys measuring typical alcohol consumption account for only around 60% of alcohol sold. Here, using a national survey, we measure both typical drinking and atypical/special occasion drinking (i.e., feasting and fasting) in order to develop more complete measures of alcohol consumption. METHODS: A national random probability telephone survey was implemented (May 2013 to April 2014). Inclusion criteria were resident in England and aged 16 years or over. Respondents (n = 6,085) provided information on typical drinking (amounts per day, drinking frequency) and changes in consumption associated with routine atypical days (e.g., Friday nights) and special dinking periods (e.g., holidays) and events (e.g., weddings). Generalized linear modelling was used to identify additional alcohol consumption associated with atypical/special occasion drinking by age, sex, and typical drinking level. RESULTS: Accounting for atypical/special occasion drinking added more than 120 million UK units of alcohol/week (~12 million bottles of wine) to population alcohol consumption in England. The greatest impact was seen among 25- to 34-year-olds with the highest typical consumption, where atypical/special occasions added approximately 18 units/week (144 g) for both sexes. Those reporting the lowest typical consumption (≤1 unit/week) showed large relative increases in consumption (209.3%) with most drinking associated with special occasions. In some demographics, adjusting for special occasions resulted in overall reductions in annual consumption (e.g., females, 65 to 74 years in the highest typical drinking category). CONCLUSIONS: Typical drinking alone can be a poor proxy for actual alcohol consumption. Accounting for atypical/special occasion drinking fills 41.6% of the gap between surveyed consumption and national sales in England. These additional units are inevitably linked to increases in lifetime risk of alcohol-related disease and injury, particularly as special occasions often constitute heavy drinking episodes. Better population measures of celebratory, festival, and holiday drinking are required in national surveys in order to adequately measure both alcohol consumption and the health harms associated with special occasion drinking
Competing interactions in the XYZ model
We study the interplay between a XY anisotropy , exchange modulations
and an external magnetic field along the z direction in the XYZ chain using
bosonization and Lanczos diagonalization techniques. We find an Ising critical
line in the space of couplings which occur due to competing relevant
perturbations which are present. More general situations are also discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure
Entanglement in the quantum Ising model
We study the asymptotic scaling of the entanglement of a block of spins for
the ground state of the one-dimensional quantum Ising model with transverse
field. When the field is sufficiently strong, the entanglement grows at most
logarithmically in the number of spins. The proof utilises a transformation to
a model of classical probability called the continuum random-cluster model, and
is based on a property of the latter model termed ratio weak-mixing. Our proof
applies equally to a large class of disordered interactions
Adsorption of Reactive Particles on a Random Catalytic Chain: An Exact Solution
We study equilibrium properties of a catalytically-activated annihilation reaction taking place on a one-dimensional chain of length () in which some segments (placed at random, with mean concentration
) possess special, catalytic properties. Annihilation reaction takes place,
as soon as any two particles land onto two vacant sites at the extremities
of the catalytic segment, or when any particle lands onto a vacant site on
a catalytic segment while the site at the other extremity of this segment is
already occupied by another particle. Non-catalytic segments are inert with
respect to reaction and here two adsorbed particles harmlessly coexist. For
both "annealed" and "quenched" disorder in placement of the catalytic segments,
we calculate exactly the disorder-average pressure per site. Explicit
asymptotic formulae for the particle mean density and the compressibility are
also presented.Comment: AMSTeX, 27 pages + 4 figure
Jordan-Wigner approach to dynamic correlations in spin-ladders
We present a method for studying the excitations of low-dimensional quantum
spin systems based on the Jordan-Wigner transformation. Using an extended
RPA-scheme we calculate the correlation function of neighboring spin flips
which well approximates the optical conductivity of . We
extend this approach to the two-leg --ladder by numbering the spin
operators in a meander-like sequence. We obtain good agreement with the optical
conductivity of the spin ladder compound (La,Ca)CuO for
polarization along the rungs. For polarization along the legs higher order
correlations are important to explain the weight of high-energy continuum
excitations and we estimate the contribution of 4-- and 6--fermion processes.Comment: 15 pages, 16 figure
Structural and dielectric properties of SrTiO from first principles
We have investigated the structural and dielectric properties of
SrTiO,the first member of the SrTiO
Ruddlesden-Popper series, within density functional theory. Motivated by recent
work in which thin films of SrTiO were grown by molecular beam
epitaxy (MBE) on SrTiO substrates, the in-plane lattice parameter was
fixed to the theoretically optimized lattice constant of cubic SrTiO
(n=), while the out-of-plane lattice parameter and the internal
structural parameters were relaxed. The fully relaxed structure was also
investigated. Density functional perturbation theory was used to calculate the
zone-center phonon frequencies, Born effective charges, and the electronic
dielectric permittivity tensor. A detailed study of the contribution of
individual infrared-active modes to the static dielectric permittivity tensor
was performed. The calculated Raman and infrared phonon frequencies were found
to be in agreement with experiment where available. Comparisons of the
calculated static dielectric permittivity with experiments on both ceramic
powders and epitaxial thin films are discussed.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure, 8 tables, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Geochemical and physical sources of radon variation in a subterranean estuary — implications for groundwater radon activities in submarine groundwater discharge studies
Author Posting. © Elsevier B.V., 2007. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Marine Chemistry 110 (2008): 120-127, doi:10.1016/j.marchem.2008.02.011.Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD), in form of springs and diffuse seepage,
has long been recognized as a source of chemical constituents to the coastal ocean.
Because groundwater is two to four orders of magnitude richer in radon than surface
water, it has been used as both a qualitative and a quantitative tracer of groundwater
discharge. Besides this large activity gradient, the other perceived advantage of radon
stems from its classification as noble gas; that is, its chemical behavior is expected not to
be influenced by salinity, redox, and diagenetic conditions present in aquatic
environments.
During our three-year monthly sampling of the subterranean estuary (STE) in
Waquoit Bay, MA, we found highly variable radon activities (50-1600 dpm L-1) across
the fresh-saline interface of the aquifer. We monitored pore water chemistry and radon
activity at 8 fixed depths spanning from 2 to 5.6 m across the STE, and found seasonal
fluctuations in activity at depths where elevated radon was observed. We postulate that
most of pore water 222Rn is produced from particle-surface bound 226Ra, and that the
accumulation of this radium is likely regulated by the presence of manganese
(hydr)oxides. Layers of manganese (hydr)oxides form at the salinity transition zone
(STZ), where water with high salinity, high manganese, and low redox potential mixes
with fresh water. Responding to the seasonality of aquifer recharge, the location of the
STZ and the layers with radium enriched manganese (hydr)oxide follows the seasonal
land- or bay-ward movement of the freshwater lens. This results in seasonal changes in
the depth where elevated radon activities are observed.
The conclusion of our study is that the freshwater part of the STE has a radon
signature that is completely different from the STZ or recirculated sea water. Therefore,
the radon activity in SGD will depend on the ratio of fresh and recirculated seawater in
the discharging groundwater.This work is a
result of research sponsored by NSF (OCE- 0425061 to M.A.C.) and the WHOI
Postdoctoral Scholar program (to H.D.)
Felsic crust development in the Kaapvaal Craton, South Africa: A reference sample collection to investigate a billion years of geological history
The crust of the Kaapvaal craton accreted throughout the Archaean over nearly 1 billion years. It provides a unique example of the various geological processes that shape Earth's continental crust, and is illustrated by a reference collection of granitoids and mafic rocks (SWASA collection). This sample collection is fully characterised in term of age, major and trace elements, and documents the following multistage history of the craton. In the Barberton area, the initial stages of accretion (stage B·I, > 3.33 Ga and B.II, 3.28—3.21 Ga) correspond to the formation of a sodic (TTG) crust extracted from a near-chondritic reservoir. Stage B.III (ca. 3.1 Ga) corresponds to reworking of this crust, either through intracrustal melting, or via recycling of some material into the mantle and melting of this enriched mantle. Stage B.IV (2.85—2.7 Ga) corresponds to the emplacement of small, discrete plutons involving limited intracrustal reworking. The Northern Kaapvaal craton corresponds to a mobile belt flanking the Barberton cratonic core to the North. Stage NK·I (> 3.1 Ga) resembles stages B·I and B.II: formation of a TTG crust from a chondritic reservoir. In contrast, stage NK.II. (2.97–2.88 Ga) witnesses probable rifting of a cratonic fragment and formation of greenstone basins as well as a new generation of TTGs with both the mafic and felsic magmatism extracted from an isotopically depleted mantle (super-chondritic) reservoir. Intra-crustal reworking dominates stage NK.III (2.88–2.71 Ga), whereas sanukitoids and related granites, involving a mantle contaminated by recycled crustal material, are common during stage NK.IV (ca. 2.67 Ga)
Quantum Griffiths effects and smeared phase transitions in metals: theory and experiment
In this paper, we review theoretical and experimental research on rare region
effects at quantum phase transitions in disordered itinerant electron systems.
After summarizing a few basic concepts about phase transitions in the presence
of quenched randomness, we introduce the idea of rare regions and discuss their
importance. We then analyze in detail the different phenomena that can arise at
magnetic quantum phase transitions in disordered metals, including quantum
Griffiths singularities, smeared phase transitions, and cluster-glass
formation. For each scenario, we discuss the resulting phase diagram and
summarize the behavior of various observables. We then review several recent
experiments that provide examples of these rare region phenomena. We conclude
by discussing limitations of current approaches and open questions.Comment: 31 pages, 7 eps figures included, v2: discussion of the dissipative
Ising chain fixed, references added, v3: final version as publishe
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