Rapidly expanding nuclear arsenals in Pakistan and India portend regional and global catastrophe

Pakistan and India may have 400 to 500 nuclear weapons by 2025 with yields from tested 12- to 45-kt values to a few hundred kilotons. If India uses 100 strategic weapons to attack urban centers and Pakistan uses 150, fatalities could reach 50 to 125 million people, and nuclear-ignited fires could release 16 to 36 Tg of black carbon in smoke, depending on yield. The smoke will rise into the upper troposphere, be self-lofted into the stratosphere, and spread globally within weeks. Surface sunlight will decline by 20 to 35%, cooling the global surface by 2° to 5°C and reducing precipitation by 15 to 30%, with larger regional impacts. Recovery takes more than 10 years. Net primary productivity declines 15 to 30% on land and 5 to 15% in oceans threatening mass starvation and additional worldwide collateral fatalities

Cauchy's infinitesimals, his sum theorem, and foundational paradigms

Cauchy's sum theorem is a prototype of what is today a basic result on the convergence of a series of functions in undergraduate analysis. We seek to interpret Cauchy's proof, and discuss the related epistemological questions involved in comparing distinct interpretive paradigms. Cauchy's proof is often interpreted in the modern framework of a Weierstrassian paradigm. We analyze Cauchy's proof closely and show that it finds closer proxies in a different modern framework. Keywords: Cauchy's infinitesimal; sum theorem; quantifier alternation; uniform convergence; foundational paradigms.Comment: 42 pages; to appear in Foundations of Scienc

Clinical setting influences off-label and unlicensed prescribing in a paediatric teaching hospital

Purpose - To estimate the prevalence of off-label and unlicensed prescribing during 2008 at a major paediatric teaching hospital in Western Australia. Methods - A 12-month retrospective study was conducted at Princess Margaret Hospital using medication chart records randomly selected from 145,550 patient encounters from the Emergency Department, Inpatient Wards and Outpatient Clinics. Patient and prescribing data were collected. Drugs were classified as off-label or unlicensed based on Australian registration data. A hierarchical system of age, indication, route of administration and dosage was used. Drugs were classified according to the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Code. Results - A total of 1,037 paediatric patients were selected where 2,654 prescriptions for 330 different drugs were prescribed to 699 patients (67.4%). Most off-label drugs (n = 295; 43.3%) were from the nervous system; a majority of unlicensed drugs were systemic hormonal preparations excluding sex hormones (n = 22, 32.4%). Inpatients were prescribed more off-label drugs than outpatients or Emergency Department patients (p < 0.0001). Most off-label prescribing occurred in infants and children (31.7% and 35.9% respectively) and the highest percentage of unlicensed prescribing (7.2%) occurred in infants (p < 0.0001). There were 25.7% of off-label and 2.6% of unlicensed medications prescribed across all three settings. Common reasons for off-label prescribing were dosage (47.4%) and age (43.2%). Conclusion - This study confirmed off-label and unlicensed use of drugs remains common. Further, that prevalence of both is influenced by the clinical setting, which has implications in regards to medication misadventure, and the need to have systems in place to minimise medication errors. Further, there remains a need for changes in the regulatory system in Australia to ensure that manufacturers incorporate, as it becomes available, evidence regarding efficacy and safety of their drugs in children in the official product information

Beam Energy Dependence of the Third Harmonic of Azimuthal Correlations in Au+Au Collisions at RHIC

We present results from a harmonic decomposition of two-particle azimuthal correlations measured with the STAR detector in Au+Au collisions for energies ranging from $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=7.7$ GeV to 200 GeV. The third harmonic $v_3^2\{2\}=\langle \cos3(\phi_1-\phi_2)\rangle$, where $\phi_1-\phi_2$ is the angular difference in azimuth, is studied as a function of the pseudorapidity difference between particle pairs $\Delta\eta = \eta_1-\eta_2$. Non-zero {\vthree} is directly related to the previously observed large-$\Delta\eta$ narrow-$\Delta\phi$ ridge correlations and has been shown in models to be sensitive to the existence of a low viscosity Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) phase. For sufficiently central collisions, $v_3^2\{2\}$ persist down to an energy of 7.7 GeV suggesting that QGP may be created even in these low energy collisions. In peripheral collisions at these low energies however, $v_3^2\{2\}$ is consistent with zero. When scaled by pseudorapidity density of charged particle multiplicity per participating nucleon pair, $v_3^2\{2\}$ for central collisions shows a minimum near {\snn}$=20$ GeV.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, for submission to Phys. Rev. Let

J/ψ\rm{J}/\psi production at low transverse momentum in p+p and d+Au collisions at sNN\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200 GeV

We report on the measurement of $\rm{J}/\psi$ production in the dielectron channel at mid-rapidity (|y|<1) in p+p and d+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200 GeV from the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The transverse momentum $p_{T}$ spectra in p+p for $p_{T}$ < 4 GeV/c and d+Au collisions for $p_{T}$ < 3 GeV/c are presented. These measurements extend the STAR coverage for $\rm{J}/\psi$ production in p+p collisions to low $p_{T}$. The $$ from the measured $\rm{J}/\psi$ invariant cross section in p+p and d+Au collisions are evaluated and compared to similar measurements at other collision energies. The nuclear modification factor for $\rm{J}/\psi$ is extracted as a function of $p_{T}$ and collision centrality in d+Au and compared to model calculations using the modified nuclear Parton Distribution Function and a final-state $\rm{J}/\psi$ nuclear absorption cross section

Altered Risk-Based Decision Making following Adolescent Alcohol Use Results from an Imbalance in Reinforcement Learning in Rats

Alcohol use during adolescence has profound and enduring consequences on decision-making under risk. However, the fundamental psychological processes underlying these changes are unknown. Here, we show that alcohol use produces over-fast learning for better-than-expected, but not worse-than-expected, outcomes without altering subjective reward valuation. We constructed a simple reinforcement learning model to simulate altered decision making using behavioral parameters extracted from rats with a history of adolescent alcohol use. Remarkably, the learning imbalance alone was sufficient to simulate the divergence in choice behavior observed between these groups of animals. These findings identify a selective alteration in reinforcement learning following adolescent alcohol use that can account for a robust change in risk-based decision making persisting into later life

Post-training ethanol disrupts trace conditioned fear in rats: Effects of timing of ethanol, dose and trace interval duration

Ethanol has complex effects on memory performance, although hippocampus-dependent memory may be especially vulnerable to disruption by acute ethanol intoxication occurring during or shortly after a training episode. In the present experiments, the effects of post-training ethanol on delay and trace fear conditioning were examined in adolescent rats. In Experiment 1, 30-day-old Sprague-Dawley rats were given delay or trace conditioning trials in which a 10 s flashing light CS was paired with a 0.5 mA shock US. For trace groups, the trace interval was 10 s. On days 31-33, animals were administered ethanol once daily (0.0 or 2.5 g/kg via intragastric intubation), and on day 34 animals were tested for CS-elicited freezing. Results showed that post-training ethanol affected the expression of trace, but had no effect on delay conditioned fear. Experiment 2 revealed that this effect was dose-dependent; doses lower than 2.5 g/kg were without effect. Experiment 3 evaluated whether proximity of ethanol to the time of training or testing was critical. Results show that ethanol administration beginning 24 h after training was more detrimental to trace conditioned freezing than administration that was delayed by 48 h. Finally, in Experiment 4 animals were trained with one of three different trace intervals: 1, 3 or 10 s. Results indicate that post-training administration of 2.5 g/kg ethanol disrupted trace conditioned fear in subjects trained with a 10 s, but not with a I or 3 s, trace interval. Collectively the results suggest that ethanol administration impairs post-acquisition memory processing of hippocampus-dependent trace fear conditioning. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved