Contemporary management of drug-packers

Experience with management of drug-packers (mules) is variable among different centres. However, despite a recorded increase in drug trafficking in general, as yet, no unified, clear guidelines exist to guide the medical management of those who only occasionally encounter these individuals. We describe our recent experience with this growing problem and discuss the most salient points concerning the contemporary management of body packers. Our recent experience demonstrates that type IV packages may now be managed conservatively for the most part

Hip contact forces in asymptomatic total hip replacement patients differ from normal healthy individuals: implications for preclinical testing

BACKGROUND Preclinical durability testing of hip replacement implants is standardised by ISO-14242-1 (2002) which is based on historical inverse dynamics analysis using data obtained from a small sample of normal healthy individuals. It has not been established whether loading cycles derived from normal healthy individuals are representative of loading cycles occurring in patients following total hip replacement. METHODS Hip joint kinematics and hip contact forces derived from multibody modelling of forces during normal walking were obtained for 15 asymptomatic total hip replacement patients and compared to 38 normal healthy individuals and to the ISO standard for pre-clinical testing. FINDINGS Hip kinematics in the total hip replacement patients were comparable to the ISO data and the hip contact force in the normal healthy group was also comparable to the ISO cycles. Hip contact forces derived from the asymptomatic total hip replacement patients were comparable for the first part of the stance period but exhibited 30% lower peak loads at toe-off. INTERPRETATION Although the ISO standard provides a representative kinematic cycle, the findings call into question whether the hip joint contact forces in the ISO standard are representative of those occurring in the joint following total hip replacement

Australian SMEs waste to landfill

Landfill waste has a negative impact on the environment and small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are believed to be significant contributors. There is little government or scholarly research, however, quantifying the collective volume of waste SMEs send to landfill. Where studies do exist they measure total volumes (landfill and recycling combined) and/or do not distinguish between specific waste streams (e.g. wood) and subcategories (e.g. dust). This paper contributes to knowledge by giving insight into the collective volume of waste of 404 SMEs, reconceptualising SME waste into subcategories and by measuring landfill volumes. It presents findings from these 404 Australian SMEs which found that, in descending order, cardboard, paper, plastic wrap, wood dust and particleboard were the subcategories these SMEs sent to landfill in the greatest volumes. It also argues that this reconceptualisation, and associated data collection protocols, have the potential to enable scholars and policy makers to determine the waste subcategories to which SMEs contribute most, formulate targeted interventions and research or evaluate environmental outcomes. © 2014 © 2014 Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand Inc

Analytic perturbation theory in QCD and Schwinger's connection between the beta-function and the spectral density

We argue that a technique called analytic perturbation theory leads to a well-defined method for analytically continuing the running coupling constant from the spacelike to the timelike region, which allows us to give a self-consistent definition of the running coupling constant for timelike momentum. The corresponding $\beta$-function is proportional to the spectral density, which confirms a hypothesis due to Schwinger.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure

Working together: the roles of geographic proximity, homophilic organizational characteristics, and neighborhood context in civic stewardship collaboration networks in Philadelphia and New York City

This is the final version. Available from Resilience Alliance via the DOI in this record. We examine networks of collaboration among civic environmental stewardship organizations in Philadelphia and New York City to understand which factors shape collaborative ties between organizations. Environmental issues in cities are increasingly complicated and often involve many actors, including citizens, governments, and organizations. Organizations frequently collaborate to tackle collective action problems related to environmental management. Here, we study two such networks collected as part of the U.S. Forest Service’s Stewardship Mapping and Assessment (STEW-MAP) project that monitors and maps the organizational characteristics of local environmental groups. We apply Exponential Random Graph models to demonstrate that network motifs, spatial proximity, organizational attributes, neighborhood context, and main issue focus all play different roles in explaining organizational collaboration among civic groups, but in very different ways across the two cities. Our findings reveal that civic networks are more correlated with homophily by social issues in Philadelphia, whereas civic networks in New York City are often correlated with geography proximity and homophily in land use. The comparative framework, still relatively rare in studies of environmental stewardship organizations, shows that different types of homophily, corresponding to different theoretical motivations, are at work in these cities. We conclude with some speculation as to the causes of these differences and their implications.US Forest Agenc

Unilateral total hip replacement patients with symptomatic leg length inequality have abnormal hip biomechanics during walking

BACKGROUND Symptomatic leg length inequality accounts for 8.7% of total hip replacement related claims made against the UK National Health Service Litigation authority. It has not been established whether symptomatic leg length inequality patients following total hip replacement have abnormal hip kinetics during gait. METHODS Hip kinetics in 15 unilateral total hip replacement patients with symptomatic leg length inequality during gait was determined through multibody dynamics and compared to 15 native hip healthy controls and 15 'successful' asymptomatic unilateral total hip replacement patients. FINDING More significant differences from normal were found in symptomatic leg length inequality patients than in asymptomatic total hip replacement patients. The leg length inequality patients had altered functions defined by lower gait velocity, reduced stride length, reduced ground reaction force, decreased hip range of motion, reduced hip moment and less dynamic hip force with a 24% lower heel-strike peak, 66% higher mid-stance trough and 37% lower toe-off peak. Greater asymmetry in hip contact force was also observed in leg length inequality patients. INTERPRETATION These gait adaptions may affect the function of the implant and other healthy joints in symptomatic leg length inequality patients. This study provides important information for the musculoskeletal function and rehabilitation of symptomatic leg length inequality patients

In silico karyotyping of chromosomally polymorphic malaria mosquitoes in the Anopheles gambiae complex

Chromosomal inversion polymorphisms play an important role in adaptation to environmental heterogeneities. For mosquito species in the Anopheles gambiae complex that are significant vectors of human malaria, paracentric inversion polymorphisms are abundant and are associated with ecologically and epidemiologically important phenotypes. Improved understanding of these traits relies on determining mosquito karyotype, which currently depends upon laborious cytogenetic methods whose application is limited both by the requirement for specialized expertise and for properly preserved adult females at specific gonotrophic stages. To overcome this limitation, we developed sets of tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) inside inversions whose biallelic genotype is strongly correlated with inversion genotype. We leveraged 1,347 fully sequenced An. gambiae and Anopheles coluzzii genomes in the Ag1000G database of natural variation. Beginning with principal components analysis (PCA) of population samples, applied to windows of the genome containing individual chromosomal rearrangements, we classified samples into three inversion genotypes, distinguishing homozygous inverted and homozygous uninverted groups by inclusion of the small subset of specimens in Ag1000G that are associated with cytogenetic metadata. We then assessed the correlation between candidate tag SNP genotypes and PCA-based inversion genotypes in our training sets, selecting those candidates with >80% agreement. Our initial tests both in held-back validation samples from Ag1000G and in data independent of Ag1000G suggest that when used for in silico inversion genotyping of sequenced mosquitoes, these tags perform better than traditional cytogenetics, even for specimens where only a small subset of the tag SNPs can be successfully ascertained

Dirac Cat States in Relativistic Landau Levels

We show that a relativistic version of Schrodinger cat states, here called Dirac cat states, can be built in relativistic Landau levels when an external magnetic field couples to a relativistic spin 1/2 charged particle. Under suitable initial conditions, the associated Dirac equation produces unitarily Dirac cat states involving the orbital quanta of the particle in a well defined mesoscopic regime. We demonstrate that the proposed Dirac cat states have a purely relativistic origin and cease to exist in the non-relativistic limit. In this manner, we expect to open relativistic quantum mechanics to the rich structures of quantum optics and quantum information.Comment: Revtex4, color figures, submitted for publicatio

Two-Loop Calculations with Vertex Corrections in the Walecka Model

Two-loop corrections with scalar and vector form factors are calculated for nuclear matter in the Walecka model. The on-shell form factors are derived from vertex corrections within the framework of the model and are highly damped at large spacelike momenta. The two-loop corrections are evaluated first by using the one-loop parameters and mean fields and then by refitting the total energy/baryon to empirical nuclear matter saturation properties. The modified two-loop corrections are significantly smaller than those computed with bare vertices. Contributions from the anomalous isoscalar form factor of the nucleon are included for the first time. The effects of the implicit density dependence of the form factors, which arise from the shift in the baryon mass, are also considered. Finally, necessary extensions of these calculations are discussed.Comment: 29 pages in REVTeX, 18 figures, preprint IU/NTC 94-02 //OSU--94-11