253 research outputs found
Critical behavior of a non-equilibrium interacting particle system driven by an oscillatory field
First- and second-order temperature driven transitions are studied, in a
lattice gas driven by an oscillatory field. The short time dynamics study
provides upper and lower bounds for the first-order transition points obtained
using standard simulations. The difference between upper and lower bounds is a
measure for the strength of the first-order transition and becomes negligible
small for densities close to one half. In addition, we give strong evidence on
the existence of multicritical points and a critical temperature gap, the
latter induced by the anisotropy introduced by the driving field.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures; to appear in Europhys. Let
Geographical Variation in Medication Prescriptions: A Multiregional Drug-Utilization Study
Background: Studies have emphasized the importance of geographical factors and general practitioner (GP) characteristics in influencing drug prescriptions. Objectives: To: (i) ascertain the prevalence rate (PR) of use of drugs in six therapeutic categories used for chronic conditions; (ii) assess how geographical characteristics and GP characteristics may influence drug prescribing. Methods: This study is part of the EDU.RE.DRUG Project, a national collaborative project founded by Italian Medicine Agency (AIFA). Cross-sectional analyses were undertaken employing the pharmacy-claim databases of four local health units (LHUs) located in two Italian regions: Lombardy and Campania. Six drug categories were evaluated: proton-pump inhibitors; antibiotics; respiratory-system drugs; statins; agents acting on the renin 12angiotensin system; psychoanaleptic drugs. The PR was estimated according to drug categories at the LHU level. A linear multivariate regression analysis was undertaken to evaluate the association between the PR and geographical area, age and sex of GPs, number of patients, and percentage of patients aged >65 per GP. Results: LHUs in Campania showed a PR that was significantly higher than that in Lombardy. Antibiotics showed the highest PR in all the LHUs assessed, ranging from 32.5% in Lecco (Lombardy) to 59.7% in Naples-2 (Campania). Multivariate linear regression analysis confirmed the association of the PR with geographical area for all drug categories. Being located in Campania increased the possibility of receiving a drug prescription from the categories considered, with estimates more marked for antibiotics, proton-pump-inhibitors, and respiratory-system drugs. Conclusions: This study provides information about the PR of medications used for treating common and costly conditions in Italy and highlighted a significant geographical variation. These insights could help to develop area-specific strategies to optimize prescribing behavior
PMS66 Determinants of Non-Persistence to Antiosteoporotic Drugs by Using Administrative Database
Osteoporosis treatment involves several therapeutic tools, including long-term drug therapy. Subjects with chronic disorders are more likely to be non-adherent and/or non-persistent to treatment than those with other diseases. Adherence is the extent to which patients take medication as prescribed by their physicians, whereas persistence is the time from treatment initiation to discontinuation. Lack of persistence is common among subjects using oral anti-osteoporotic drugs, and leads to increased risk of fragility fracture
Simulations for dynamics of granular mixtures in a rotating drum
Abstract We present a simple model and carry out simulations to investigate the dynamics of mixtures of granular material within a rotating drum. On the basis of the commonly held belief (supported by considerable experimental evidence) that segregation is due to motion of particles on the active layer, the bulk playing little or no role, we introduce a 2d lattice gas model which takes into account the rotational frequency, frictional forces, and the gravitational field, and represents segregation tendencies via activated effective grain-grain interactions. Our results include the onset of segregation perpendicular to the drum axis, the appearance and subsequent coarsening of bands and peculiarities of the effects of periodic modulation of the drum. Observed effects such as the segregation of rougher (smoother) particles into the bellies (necks) of the modulation are reproduced by our simulation
Fixed Versus Free Combinations of Antihypertensive Drugs: Analyses Of Real-World Data Of Persistence With Therapy In Italy
Purpose: To analyse the pattern of use and cost of antihypertensive drugs in new users in an Italian population, and explore the patient/treatment factors associated with the risk of therapy discontinuation. Patients and methods: In this retrospective study, information was collected from a population-based electronic primary-care database. Persistence with medication use 1 year from therapy initiation was evaluated for each user using the gap method. Each new user was classified according to his/her pattern of use as: \u201ccontinuer\u201d, \u201cdiscontinuer\u201d \u201cswitching\u201d or \u201cadd-on\u201d. A Cox regression model was used to analyse the factors influencing therapy discontinuation. Primary-care costs comprised specialists\u2019 visits, diagnostic procedures and pharmacologic therapies. Results: Among 14,999 subjects included in persistence analyses, 55.1% of cases initially started on monotherapy were classified as discontinuers vs 36.5% of cases taking combination therapy (42.3% vs 32.7%, respectively, for free and fixed combinations, P < 0.01). Old age, high cardiovascular risk and being in receipt of fixed-combination therapy were associated with greater persistence. Overall, the primary-care cost/person/year of hypertension management was 3c\u20ac95.3 (IQR, 144.9). The monotherapy cost was \u20ac88 per patient (IQR, 132.9), and that for combination therapy was \u20ac151\ub1148.3. The median cost/patient with a fixed combination was lower than that for a free combination (\u20ac98.4 (IQR, 155.3) and \u20ac154.9 (IQR, 182.6), respectively). Conclusion: The initial type of therapy prescribed influences persistence. Prescribing fixed combinations might be a good choice as initial therapy
Study of the one-dimensional off-lattice hot-monomer reaction model
Hot monomers are particles having a transient mobility (a ballistic flight)
prior to being definitely absorbed on a surface. After arriving at a surface,
the excess energy coming from the kinetic energy in the gas phase is dissipated
through degrees of freedom parallel to the surface plane. In this paper we
study the hot monomer-monomer adsorption-reaction process on a continuum
(off-lattice) one-dimensional space by means of Monte Carlo simulations. The
system exhibits second-order irreversible phase transition between a reactive
and saturated (absorbing) phases which belong to the directed percolation (DP)
universality class. This result is interpreted by means of a coarse-grained
Langevin description which allows as to extend the DP conjecture to transitions
occurring in continuous media.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, final version to appear in J. Phys.
Application of a renormalization group algorithm to nonequilibrium cellular automata with one absorbing state
We improve a recently proposed dynamically driven renormalization group
algorithm for cellular automata systems with one absorbing state, introducing
spatial correlations in the expression for the transition probabilities. We
implement the renormalization group scheme considering three different
approximations which take into account correlations in the stationary
probability distribution. The improved scheme is applied to a probabilistic
cellular automaton already introduced in the literature.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.
Numerical study of a first-order irreversible phase transition in a CO+NO catalyzed reaction model
The first-order irreversible phase transitions (IPT) of the Yaldran-Khan
model (Yaldran-Khan, J. Catal. 131, 369, 1991) for the CO+NO reaction is
studied using the constant coverage (CC) ensemble and performing epidemic
simulations. The CC method allows the study of hysteretic effects close to
coexistence as well as the location of both the upper spinodal point and the
coexistence point. Epidemic studies show that at coexistence the number of
active sites decreases according to a (short-time) power law followed by a
(long-time) exponential decay. It is concluded that first-order IPT's share
many characteristic of their reversible counterparts, such as the development
of short ranged correlations, hysteretic effects, metastabilities, etc.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figure
Maximal height statistics for 1/f^alpha signals
Numerical and analytical results are presented for the maximal relative
height distribution of stationary periodic Gaussian signals (one dimensional
interfaces) displaying a 1/f^alpha power spectrum. For 0<alpha<1 (regime of
decaying correlations), we observe that the mathematically established limiting
distribution (Fisher-Tippett-Gumbel distribution) is approached extremely
slowly as the sample size increases. The convergence is rapid for alpha>1
(regime of strong correlations) and a highly accurate picture gallery of
distribution functions can be constructed numerically. Analytical results can
be obtained in the limit alpha -> infinity and, for large alpha, by
perturbation expansion. Furthermore, using path integral techniques we derive a
trace formula for the distribution function, valid for alpha=2n even integer.
From the latter we extract the small argument asymptote of the distribution
function whose analytic continuation to arbitrary alpha > 1 is found to be in
agreement with simulations. Comparison of the extreme and roughness statistics
of the interfaces reveals similarities in both the small and large argument
asymptotes of the distribution functions.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, RevTex
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