Taxation formula for tobacco in Sri Lanka

Article 06 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco control emphasizes the importance of implementing effective tax and price policies for Tobacco products. To fight against the Tobacco epidemic WHO has introduced the MPOWER package which R stands for raising taxes on Tobacco. According to WHO standards, 70% of the excise tax from the retail price will contribute to an effective Tobacco tax indexation policy. National Authority on Tobacco and Alcohol organized Tobacco Taxation and Illicit Trade virtual workshop with the collaboration of WHO FCTC Knowledge Hub on Tobacco Taxation, Research Unit on the Economics of Excisable Products, University of Cape Town. The developed Tobacco tax indexation formula of the National Authority on Tobacco and Alcohol was modified by including exogenous factor with the guidance of experts of WHO FCTC Secretariat Knowledge Hub on tobacco taxation. Tobacco tax simulation modeling can be used to predict how much tobacco consumption will decrease, and government revenue will increase if there is a change in the tobacco excise tax structure and an increase in the level of taxation. Preliminary evidence from the TETSiM model predicts that a 91.6 to 124.6 billion increase in tobacco excise taxation from the current 2022 to 2026 would lead to a 1.1 % drop in consumption and approximately 101.8 to 136.9 billion increases in government revenue. The finding of the modeling of Tobacco taxes with the TETSiM model will lead to an increase in Tobacco tax revenue and decrease Tobacco consumption in Sri Lanka

Physiotherapy Students’ Attitudes Toward Working With People With Dementia: A Cross-Sectional Survey

Aims: To understand personal, educational and clinical experiences and the attitudes of physiotherapy students towards people with dementia. Methods: Online survey questionnaire. Physiotherapy students in the last year of a two-year Masters of Physical Therapy (MPT) entry-to-practice degree program (n = 59) were surveyed. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. Results: Fifty-five students participated (93%). The majority of students (n = 52/55, 77%) had at least one clinical placement working with people with dementia. Overall, 53% (n = 29/55) felt their academic training was sufficient to effectively work with people with dementia. Moreover, 82% (n = 45/55) reported their confidence was greatest working with people who could communicate well verbally. Conclusions: Disease-based knowledge was strong, yet just over half felt their academic training was sufficient to effectively work with people with dementia. The findings support the need for more training, particularly in communication strategies, to support students to effectively work with client with dementia upon graduation

Liver Transplantation Prevents Progressive Neurological Impairment in Argininemia

Argininemia is a rare hereditary disease due to a deficiency of hepatic arginase, which is the last enzyme of the urea cycle and hydrolyzes arginine to ornithine and urea. The onset of the disease is usually in childhood, and clinical manifestations include progressive spastic paraparesis and mental retardation. Liver involvement is less frequent and usually not as severe as observed in other UCDs. For this reason, and because usually there is a major neurological disease at diagnosis, patients with argininemia are rarely considered as candidates for OLT despite its capacity to replace the deficient enzyme by an active one. We report on long-term follow-up of two patients with argininemia. Patient 1 was diagnosed by the age of 20 months and despite appropriate conventional treatment progressed to spastic paraparesis with marked limp. OLT was performed at 10 years of age with normalization of plasmatic arginine levels and guanidino compounds. Ten years post-OLT, under free diet, there is no progression of neurological lesions. The second patient (previously reported by our group) was diagnosed at 2 months of age, during a neonatal cholestasis workup study. OLT was performed at the age of 7 years, due to liver cirrhosis with portal hypertension, in the absence of neurological lesions and an almost-normal brain MRI. After OLT, under free diet, there was normalization of plasmatic arginine levels and guanidino compounds. Twelve years post-OLT, she presents a normal neurological examination. We conclude that OLT prevents progressive neurological impairment in argininemia and should be considered when appropriate conventional treatment fails

Persistence of magnetic field driven by relativistic electrons in a plasma

The onset and evolution of magnetic fields in laboratory and astrophysical plasmas is determined by several mechanisms, including instabilities, dynamo effects and ultra-high energy particle flows through gas, plasma and interstellar-media. These processes are relevant over a wide range of conditions, from cosmic ray acceleration and gamma ray bursts to nuclear fusion in stars. The disparate temporal and spatial scales where each operates can be reconciled by scaling parameters that enable to recreate astrophysical conditions in the laboratory. Here we unveil a new mechanism by which the flow of ultra-energetic particles can strongly magnetize the boundary between the plasma and the non-ionized gas to magnetic fields up to 10-100 Tesla (micro Tesla in astrophysical conditions). The physics is observed from the first time-resolved large scale magnetic field measurements obtained in a laser wakefield accelerator. Particle-in-cell simulations capturing the global plasma and field dynamics over the full plasma length confirm the experimental measurements. These results open new paths for the exploration and modelling of ultra high energy particle driven magnetic field generation in the laboratory

Preliminary Limits on the WIMP-Nucleon Cross Section from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS)

We are conducting an experiment to search for WIMPs, or weakly-interacting massive particles, in the galactic halo using terrestrial detectors. This generic class of hypothetical particles, whose properties are similar to those predicted by extensions of the standard model of particle physics, could comprise the cold component of non-baryonic dark matter. We describe our experiment, which is based on cooled germanium and silicon detectors in a shielded low-background cryostat. The detectors achieve a high degree of background rejection through the simultaneous measurement of the energy in phonons and ionization. Using exposures on the order of one kilogram-day from initial runs of our experiment, we have achieved (preliminary) upper limits on the WIMP-nucleon cross section that are comparable to much longer runs of other experiments.Comment: 5 LaTex pages, 5 eps figs, epsf.sty, espcrc2dsa2.sty. Proceedings of TAUP97, Gran Sasso, Italy, 7-11 Sep 1997, Nucl. Phys. Suppl., A. Bottino, A. di Credico and P. Monacelli (eds.). See also http://cfpa.berkeley.ed

The Entropy for General Extremal Black Holes

We use the Kerr/CFT correspondence to calculate the entropy for all known extremal stationary and axisymmetric black holes. This is done with the help of two ansatzs that are general enough to cover all such known solutions. Considering only the contribution from the Einstein-Hilbert action to the central charge(s), we find that the entropy obtained by using Cardy's formula exactly matches with the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy.Comment: Minor corrections, section 5 refined, references added

Accretions of Various Types of Dark Energies onto Morris-Thorne Wormhole

In this work, we have studied accretion of the dark energies onto Morris-Thorne wormhole. For quintessence like dark energy, the mass of the wormhole decreases and phantom like dark energy, the mass of wormhole increases. We have assumed two types of dark energy like variable modified Chaplygin gas (VMCG) and generalized cosmic Chaplygin gas (GCCG). We have found the expression of wormhole mass in both cases. We have found the mass of the wormhole at late universe and this is finite. For our choices the parameters and the function $B(a)$, these models generate only quintessence dark energy (not phantom) and so wormhole mass decreases during evolution of the universe. Next we have assumed 5 kinds of parametrizations of well known dark energy models. These models generate both quintessence and phantom scenarios. So if these dark energies accrete onto the wormhole, then for quintessence stage, wormhole mass decreases upto a certain value (finite value) and then again increases to infinite value for phantom stage during whole evolution of the universe. We also shown these results graphically.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1112.615

Restrictions and extensions of semibounded operators

We study restriction and extension theory for semibounded Hermitian operators in the Hardy space of analytic functions on the disk D. Starting with the operator zd/dz, we show that, for every choice of a closed subset F in T=bd(D) of measure zero, there is a densely defined Hermitian restriction of zd/dz corresponding to boundary functions vanishing on F. For every such restriction operator, we classify all its selfadjoint extension, and for each we present a complete spectral picture. We prove that different sets F with the same cardinality can lead to quite different boundary-value problems, inequivalent selfadjoint extension operators, and quite different spectral configurations. As a tool in our analysis, we prove that the von Neumann deficiency spaces, for a fixed set F, have a natural presentation as reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces, with a Hurwitz zeta-function, restricted to FxF, as reproducing kernel.Comment: 63 pages, 11 figure

A comunicação da suspensão de cirurgias pediátricas: sentimentos dos familiares envolvidos no processo

A hospitalização é uma experiência complexa, sendo agravada no caso de necessidade de intervenção cirúrgica, principalmente quando o paciente é criança. Quando a cirurgia é suspensa, paciente e seus familiares podem apresentar sentimentos de insegurança, angústia e ansiedade. Este estudo teve como objetivo identificar e descrever a percepção de quinze mães e/ou responsáveis por crianças de 0 a 18 anos, internadas em um hospital, após receberem a notícia de que a cirurgia de seu filho foi suspensa. É um estudo descritivo, qualitativo, que utilizou o referencial teórico da Comunicação Interpessoal e o metodológico da Análise de Conteúdo. Os resultados evidenciaram que as suspensões de cirurgias pediátricas são fatos presentes na instituição, que trazem repercussões ao paciente e familiares, e à organização institucional; que a comunicação entre profissionais da saúde, pacientes e familiares é inadequada; que a atuação do enfermeiro na notícia da suspensão da cirurgia precisa ser efetiva.La hospitalización es una experiencia compleja, agravada en el caso de ser necesaria una intervención quirúrgica, en particular cuando el enfermo es un niño. Cuando la cirugía es suspendida, el enfermo y sus familiares pueden manifestar sentimientos de inseguridad, angustia y ansiedad. Este estudio tuve como objetivo identificar e describir la percepción de quince madres y/o responsables por niños con edades entre 0 y 18 años internados en un hospital después de recibir la noticia de que la cirugía de su hijo fue suspendida. Se trata de un estudio descriptivo cualitativo que utilizó el referencial teórico de la Comunicación Interpersonal y la metodología del Análisis de Contenido. Los resultados evidenciaron que las suspensiones de cirugías pediátricas son hechos presentes en la institución, que traen repercusiones al enfermo y familiares y en la propia organización institucional, que la comunicación entre profesionales de la salud, enfermos y familiares es inadecuada y que la actuación del enfermero en la noticia de la suspensión de la cirugía debe ser necesariamente efectiva.Hospitalization is a complex experience; this can be made worse if surgical intervention is required, especially when the patient is a child. When surgery is suspended, patient and family can experience feelings of insecurity, distress, and anxiety. The objective of this study was to identify and describe the perceptions of fifteen mothers or guardians of children between 0 and 18 years old admitted in a teaching hospital, after receiving news that surgery for their child was suspended. This was a descriptive qualitative study which used Interpersonal Communication as theoretical reference and Analysis of Content as the methodology. Results showed that suspension of pediatric surgery in our institution causes repercussions to patients, their families, and institution organisation; that communication between health team professionals, patients and families is inadequate; and that the nurses' participation in informing surgery suspension must be effective