Economic cost of tobacco use in India, 2004

ObjectiveTo estimate the tobacco-attributable costs of diseases separately for smoked and smokeless tobacco use in India.MethodsThe prevalence-based attributable-risk approach was used to estimate the economic cost of tobacco using healthcare expenditure data from the National Sample Survey, a nationally representative household sample survey conducted in India in 2004. Four major categories of tobacco-related disease-tuberculosis, respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases and neoplasms-were considered.ResultsDirect medical costs of treating tobacco related diseases in India amounted to $907 million for smoked tobacco and$285 million for smokeless tobacco. The indirect morbidity costs of tobacco use, which includes the cost of caregivers and value of work loss due to illness, amounted to $398 million for smoked tobacco and$104 million for smokeless tobacco. The total economic cost of tobacco use amounted to $1.7 billion. Tuberculosis accounted for 18$311 million) in India. Of the total cost of tobacco, 88% was attributed to men.ConclusionsThe cost of tobacco use was many times more than the expenditures on tobacco control by the government of India and about 16% more than the total tax revenue from tobacco. The tobacco-attributable cost of tuberculosis was three times higher than the expenditure on tuberculosis control in India. The economic costs estimated here do not include the costs of premature mortality from tobacco use, which is known to comprise roughly 50% to 80% of the total economic cost of tobacco in many countries

Nearly Massless Electrons in the Silicon Interface with a Metal Film

We demonstrate the realization of nearly massless electrons in the most widely used device material, silicon, at the interface with a metal film. Using angle-resolved photoemission, we found that the surface band of a monolayer lead film drives a hole band of the Si inversion layer formed at the interface with the film to have nearly linear dispersion with an effective mass about 20 times lighter than bulk Si and comparable to graphene. The reduction of mass can be accounted for by repulsive interaction between neighboring bands of the metal film and Si substrate. Our result suggests a promising way to take advantage of massless carriers in silicon-based thin-film devices, which can also be applied for various other semiconductor devices.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

Effect of sintering temperature under high pressure in the uperconductivity for MgB2

We report the effect of the sintering temperature on the superconductivity of MgB2 pellets prepared under a high pressure of 3 GPa. The superconducting properties of the non-heated MgB2 in this high pressure were poor. However, as the sintering temperature increased, the superconducting properties were vastly enhanced, which was shown by the narrow transition width for the resistivity and the low-field magnetizations. This shows that heat treatment under high pressure is essential to improve superconducting properties. These changes were found to be closely related to changes in the surface morphology observed using scanning electron microscopy.Comment: 3 Pages including 3 figure

Growth Characteristics of Superior Lines of Zoysia Grass (\u3cem\u3eZoysia Japonica\u3c/em\u3e) And Development of Its DNA Markers

Demand for turf grass has steadily increased for recreation and sport fields after the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup in Korea. Zoysia grass has the advantage of easy management, including low water and fertiliser requirement, but has limitations such as low recovery, low shoot density and short green period (Kim et al., 1999). Objectives of this research were to select superior lines in the collected clones, compare the superior lines of zoysia grass with other standard cultivars for growth characteristics and to develop the DNA markers of superior lines

Growth Characteristics of Ecotype Superior Line of Bermudagrass and Development of Its rDNA Markers

Interest in turfgrass has steadily increased in Korea since the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup . Use of zoysiagrass (Zoysia japonica L.) has been limited due to its slow recovery, low shoot density, short green period and low wear tolerance during dormancy (Lee et. al., 1999). Bermudagrass has high quality and fast recovery, but has low cold tolerance (Richardson et. al., 1978). This research compared the growth characteristics of a superior line of bermudagrass, named as Joyspy with other standard cultivars and to develop its rDNA markers

Coarse-graining the dynamics of coupled oscillators

We present an equation-free computational approach to the study of the coarse-grained dynamics of {\it finite} assemblies of {\it non-identical} coupled oscillators at and near full synchronization. We use coarse-grained observables which account for the (rapidly developing) correlations between phase angles and oscillator natural frequencies. Exploiting short bursts of appropriately initialized detailed simulations, we circumvent the derivation of closures for the long-term dynamics of the assembly statistics.Comment: accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let

UBVI Surface Photometry of the Spiral Galaxy NGC 300 in the Sculptor Group

We present UBVI surface photometry for 20.'5 X 20.'5 area of a late-type spiral galaxy NGC 300. In order to understand the morphological properties and luminosity distribution characteristics of NGC 300, we have derived isophotal maps, surface brightness profiles, ellipticity profiles, position angle profiles, and color profiles. By merging the I-band data of our surface brightness measurements with those of Boeker et al. (2002) based on Hubble Space Telescope observations, we have made combined I-band surface brightness profiles for the region of 0."02 < r < 500" and decomposed the profiles into three components: a nucleus, a bulge, and an exponential disk.Comment: 16 pages(cjaa209.sty), Accepted by the Chinese J. Astron. Astrophys., Fig 2 and 8 are degraded to reduce spac