Fatalities involving illicit drug use in Pretoria, South Africa, for the period 2003 - 2012

Background. Globally, illicit drugs are responsible for many fatalities annually, yet accurate data on the nature and extent of these deaths in South Africa (SA) are lacking.Objectives. To investigate the presence and profile of illicit drugs detected in deceased persons who were subjected to medicolegal autopsies and upon whom analyses were carried out in search of illicit drugs in their body fluids at the Pretoria Medico-Legal Laboratory (PMLL), SA, over a 10-year period.Methods. A retrospective descriptive case audit was conducted for the period 2003 - 2012.Results. Screening for illicit drugs was requested in 385 out of 22 566 medicolegal autopsies. Results were available for only 281 of these cases, with 154 cases showing the presence of one or more illicit drugs. The demographic profile of positive cases indicated the majority to be male (90.3%) and white (85.1%). Decedents who tested positive for illicit drugs were predominantly aged between 20 and 30 years (51.9%). The most frequently detected drug was heroin, the presence of which was confirmed in 35.2% of cases, followed by cocaine in 19.9%. Alcohol in combination with an illicit drug or drugs was detected in 56 cases (36.4%).Conclusions. Results from this study indicate that illicit drugs were implicated in a considerable number of fatalities in Pretoria. However, it is believed that the figures are a gross under-representation of the actual number of drug users who died during this period. It is therefore recommended that further research be conducted and that drug screening be requested routinely when unnatural deaths are investigated at medicolegal mortuaries, not only to ensure the administration of justice but also to obtain more accurate data for purposes of public health programmes and improve insight into the burden of illicit drug use in SA

Sex-related variation in morphology of helmeted guineafowl (Numida meleagris) from the Riemland of the northeastern Free State, South Africa

In the hope of developing a relatively simple, nondestructive way of sexing adult helmeted guineafowl (Numida meleagris), sexual differences in body mass and in the size of head adornments of adult helmeted guineafowl sampled during the winter months in the Riemland district of the northeastern Free State, South Africa, were investigated. Males have statistically significantly larger values for all attributes than do females. However, no single attribute, nor a combination of them, can be used to sex guineafowl unambiguously

Fatalities involving illicit drug use in Pretoria, South Africa, for the period 2003 - 2012

Background. Globally, illicit drugs are responsible for many fatalities annually, yet accurate data on the nature and extent of these deaths in South Africa (SA) are lacking.Objectives. To investigate the presence and profile of illicit drugs detected in deceased persons who were subjected to medicolegal autopsies and upon whom analyses were carried out in search of illicit drugs in their body fluids at the Pretoria Medico-Legal Laboratory (PMLL), SA, over a 10-year period.Methods. A retrospective descriptive case audit was conducted for the period 2003 - 2012.Results. Screening for illicit drugs was requested in 385 out of 22 566 medicolegal autopsies. Results were available for only 281 of these cases, with 154 cases showing the presence of one or more illicit drugs. The demographic profile of positive cases indicated the majority to be male (90.3%) and white (85.1%). Decedents who tested positive for illicit drugs were predominantly aged between 20 and 30 years (51.9%). The most frequently detected drug was heroin, the presence of which was confirmed in 35.2% of cases, followed by cocaine in 19.9%. Alcohol in combination with an illicit drug or drugs was detected in 56 cases (36.4%).Conclusions. Results from this study indicate that illicit drugs were implicated in a considerable number of fatalities in Pretoria. However, it is believed that the figures are a gross under-representation of the actual number of drug users who died during this period. It is therefore recommended that further research be conducted and that drug screening be requested routinely when unnatural deaths are investigated at medicolegal mortuaries, not only to ensure the administration of justice but also to obtain more accurate data for purposes of public health programmes and improve insight into the burden of illicit drug use in SA

A note on the universality of the Hagedorn behavior of pp-wave strings

Following on from recent studies of string theory on a one-parameter family of integrable deformations of $AdS_{5}\times S^{5}$ proposed by Lunin and Maldacena, we carry out a systematic analysis of the high temperature properties of type IIB strings on the associated pp-wave geometries. In particular, through the computation of the thermal partition function and free energy we find that not only does the theory exhibit a Hagedorn transition in both the $(J,0,0)$ and $(J,J,J)$ class of pp-waves, but that the Hagedorn temperature is insensitive to the deformation suggesting an interesting universality in the high temperature behaviour of the pp-wave string theory. We comment also on the implications of this universality on the confinement/deconfinement transition in the dual $\mathcal{N}=1$ Leigh-Strassler deformation of ${\cal N}=4$ Yang-Mills theory.Comment: 25 pages; fixed minor typo; added reference

ABJM Dibaryon Spectroscopy

We extend the proposal for a detailed map between wrapped D-branes in Anti-de Sitter space and baryon-like operators in the associated dual conformal field theory provided in hep-th/0202150 to the recently formulated AdS_4 \times CP^3/ABJM correspondence. In this example, the role of the dibaryon operator of the 3-dimensional CFT is played by a D4-brane wrapping a CP^2 \subset CP^3. This topologically stable D-brane in the AdS_4 \times CP^3 is nothing but one-half of the maximal giant graviton on CP^3.Comment: 26 page

Beyond the Planar Limit in ABJM

In this article we consider gauge theories with a U(N)X U(N) gauge group. We provide, for the first time, a complete set of operators built from scalar fields that are in the bi fundamental of the two groups. Our operators diagonalize the two point function of the free field theory at all orders in 1/N. We then use this basis to investigate non-planar anomalous dimensions in the ABJM theory. We show that the dilatation operator reduces to a set of decoupled harmonic oscillators, signaling integrability in a nonplanar large N limit.Comment: v2: minor revisison

On the perturbative chiral ring for marginally deformed N=4 SYM theories

For \cal{N}=1 SU(N) SYM theories obtained as marginal deformations of the \cal{N}=4 parent theory we study perturbatively some sectors of the chiral ring in the weak coupling regime and for finite N. By exploiting the relation between the definition of chiral ring and the effective superpotential we develop a procedure which allows us to easily determine protected chiral operators up to n loops once the superpotential has been computed up to (n-1) order. In particular, for the Lunin-Maldacena beta-deformed theory we determine the quantum structure of a large class of operators up to three loops. We extend our procedure to more general Leigh-Strassler deformations whose chiral ring is not fully understood yet and determine the weight-two and weight-three sectors up to two loops. We use our results to infer general properties of the chiral ring.Comment: LaTex, 40 pages, 4 figures, uses JHEP3; v2: minor correction

Semiclassical Strings, Dipole Deformations of N=1 SYM and Decoupling of KK Modes

In this paper we investigate the recently found $\gamma$-deformed Maldacena-Nunez background by studying the behavior of different semiclassical string configurations. This background is conjectured to be dual to dipole deformations of $\N=1$ SYM. We compare our results to those in the pure Maldacena-Nunez background and show that the energies of our string configurations are higher than in the undeformed background. Thinking in the lines of (hep-th/0505100) we argue that this is an evidence for better decoupling of the Kaluza-Klein modes from the pure SYM theory excitations. Moreover we are able to find a limit of the background in which the string energy is independent of $\gamma$, these strings are interpreted as corresponding to pure gauge theory effects.Comment: 31 pages, references added, new solutions in Section 7 presented, an appendix added, to appear in JHE

gamma_i Deformed Lax Pair for Rotating Strings in the Fast Motion Limit

A 3-parameter generalization of the Lunin-Maldacena background has recently been constructed by Frolov. This gamma_i-deformed background is non-supersymmetric. We consider strings in this gamma_i-deformed R \times S^5 background rotating in three orthogonal planes (the 3-spin sector) in a fast motion limit, in which the total angular momentum J is assumed to be large. We show that there exists a consistent transformation which takes the undeformed equations of motion into the gamma_i-deformed equations of motion. This transformation is used to construct a Lax pair for the bosonic part of the gamma_i-deformed theory in the fast motion limit. This implies the integrability of the bosonic part of the gamma_i-deformed string sigma model in the fast motion limit.Comment: 21 page