958 research outputs found
Beyond CP violation: hadronic physics at BaBar
I report on recent studies of hadronic physics performed by the BaBar
Collaboration. Emphasis is given to the measurement of the properties of newly
discovered charmed hadrons and to the searches for light and heavy pentaquarks.Comment: 14 pages, 20 postscript figues, contributed to the Proceedings of the
First APS Topical Group Meeting on Hadron Physics, Fermilab, Batavia, IL
(October 24-26, 2004
Nonleptonic charmless two-body decays
In this work we have studied hadronic charmless two-body B decays involving
p-wave mesons in final state. We have calculated branching ratios of
decays (where and denotes a axial-vector and a tensor meson,
respectively), using form factors obtained in the covariant
light-front (CLF) approach, and the full effective Hamiltonian. We have
obtained that ,
,
(with ) for ,
with
, for
where . It seems that these decays can be measured
in experiments at factories. Additionally, we have found that
and
ratios could be useful to determine numerical values of mixing angles
and , respectively.Comment: 12 page
Relationship between pharmaceutical pricing strategies with price, availability, and affordability of cardiovascular disease medicines: Surveys in Qatar and Lebanon
Background: Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in Lebanon and Qatar. When lifestyle modifications prove insufficient, medication becomes a cornerstone in controlling such diseases and saving lives. Price, availability, and affordability hinder the equitable access to medicines. The study aimed to assess prices, availability, and affordability of essential cardiovascular disease medicines in relation to pricing strategies in Qatar and Lebanon. Methods: A cross-sectional survey using a variant of the World Health Organization and Health Action International (WHO/HAI) methodology as outlined in "Measuring medicine prices, availability, affordability and price components" (2008), second edition, was adopted. Prices and availability of 27 cardiovascular medicines were collected from public and private dispensing outlets. For international comparison, prices were adjusted to purchasing power parity. Data was analyzed across multiple sectors, within and across countries. Results: A total of 15 public and private outlets were surveyed in each country. Prices were more uniform in Qatar than in Lebanon. In the public sector, medicines were free-of-charge in Lebanon and priced lower than the international reference prices in Qatar. The ratio of medicine unit price to international reference price in the private sectors surveyed are significantly higher than the acceptable threshold of 4. This ratio of originator brands and lowest priced generics in Qatar were up to two and five times those in Lebanon, respectively, even after adjusting for purchasing power parity. However, prices of lowest priced generics in the private sector were at least 35% cheaper in Qatar and 65% cheaper in Lebanon than their comparative originator brands. Medicines were more available in the private sector in Lebanon than in Qatar, but only the originator brand availability in the public sector in Qatar exceeded the WHO target of more than 80%. While affordable in the public sector in Qatar, four out of thirteen medicines exceeded the threshold in all private sectors covered. Hence, only the public sector in Qatar had a satisfying level of availability and affordability. Conclusions: Except for the Qatari public sector, medicine prices, availability, and affordability are falling short from targets. Key policy decisions should be implemented to improve access to medicines. - 2019 The Author(s).This study was supported by Qatar University with the grantsâ numbers (QUST-CPH-SPR-15/16â7 & QUST-CPH-SPR\2017â18). It funded the collection of data and a revision of the written English. The publication fee for this article was funded by the Qatar National Library.Scopu
A mid-IR survey of the L 1641-N region with ISOCAM
We present an analysis of the L 1641 outflow region using broad-band and
narrow-band imaging data at mid-infrared wavelengths from ISOCAM. We detect a
total of 34 sources in the x region covered by
the broad-band filters. Four of these sources have no reported detection in
previous studies of the region. We find that the source previously identified
as the near-IR counter-part to the IRAS detected point-source (IRAS 05338-0624)
is not the brightest source in the wavelength region of the IRAS 12 \micron\
filter. We find instead that a nearby object (within the beam of IRAS and not
detected at near-IR wavelengths) outshines all others sources in the area by a
factor of 2. We submit that this source is likely to be the IRAS detected
point source. A comparison of the near-IR (J-H vs H-K) and mid-IR (J-K vs [6.7
um]-[14 um]) color-color plots shows only four sources with excess emission at
near-IR wavelengths, but atleast 85% of all sources show excess emission at
mid-IR wavelengths. The CVF spectra suggest a range of evolutionary status in
the program stars ranging from embedded YSOs to the young disks. When combined
with optical and near-IR age estimates, these results show active current
star-formation in the region that has been on-going for at least 2 Myr.Comment: Submitted to ApJ. Abstracted edited for arXiv submission Replaced by
version accepted by Ap
Pharmacists and telemedicine: an innovative model fulfilling Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
The lack of access to safe medicines and quality healthcare services in peri-urban and rural areas is a major challenge driving a health system to innovate new models of care. This commentary will discuss the implementation and impact of the âGuddi bajiâ tele-pharmacy model, a project piloted by doctHERs, one of Pakistanâs leading telemedicine organizations. This innovative model has described the reintegration of women into the workforce by leveraging technology to improve the level of primary health care services and contributes to safe medication practice in a remote area. Our intervention proposed the deployment of technology-enabled, female frontline health workers known as the Guddi baji (meaning The Good Sister) in a rural village. They serve as an âaccess point to health careâ that is linked to a remotely located health care professional; a licensed doctor or a pharmacist within this model
Technique for early reliability prediction of software components using behaviour models
Behaviour models are the most commonly used input for predicting the reliability of a software system at the early design stage. A component behaviour model reveals the structure and behaviour of the component during the execution of system-level functionalities. There are various challenges related to component reliability prediction at the early design stage based on behaviour models. For example, most of the current reliability techniques do not provide fine-grained sequential behaviour models of individual components and fail to consider the loop entry and exit points in the reliability computation. Moreover, some of the current techniques do not tackle the problem of operational data unavailability and the lack of analysis results that can be valuable for software architects at the early design stage. This paper proposes a reliability prediction technique that, pragmatically, synthesizes system behaviour in the form of a state machine, given a set of scenarios and corresponding constraints as input. The state machine is utilized as a base for generating the component-relevant operational data. The state machine is also used as a source for identifying the nodes and edges of a component probabilistic dependency graph (CPDG). Based on the CPDG, a stack-based algorithm is used to compute the reliability. The proposed technique is evaluated by a comparison with existing techniques and the application of sensitivity analysis to a robotic wheelchair system as a case study. The results indicate that the proposed technique is more relevant at the early design stage compared to existing works, and can provide a more realistic and meaningful prediction
Evaluation of the genetic structure of the urban dwelling species of Bank Myna (Acridotheres ginginisnus) using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis
We used the random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) technique to decipher the genetic structure of the Bank Myna (Acridotheres ginginisnus) in Pakistan. The samples were collected from four cities namely: Dera Ghazi Khan, Jahanian, Khanewal and Gujranwala. The analysis showed a high genetic diversity at species level (H = 0.318, S = 0.467) but low levels at population levels (H = 0.047, S = 0.069 to H = 0.195, S = 0.283). The four populations analyzed were genetically distant from each other and hinted the effect of urbanization role in isolating the urban dwelling species. The genetic distances between populations ranged from D = 0.2403 to D = 0.3419 and the similarity coefficient showed low range from 0.66 to 0.70. This study will help in future conservation plans and also help the understanding of the role of urbanization on fragmentation of speciesâ natural distribution and dispersal mechanism.Key words: Acridotheres ginginisnus, Bank Myna, random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), genetic structure
- âŠ