Smoking Behaviors and Abstinence in Low-Income Pregnant Women

Background: Despite efforts to educate individuals about the hazards of smoking, pregnant women continue to smoke. In the literature, there is less evidence about successful abstinence strategies for low-income women. The purpose of this pilot study was to assess smoking behaviors and factors that support smoking abstinence in low-income pregnant women. Methods: Using a longitudinal design, quantitative and qualitative data were collected from pregnant women at a low-income community prenatal clinic. Based on the Transtheoretical model, all subjects received information about the harmful effects of smoking and secondhand exposure, while current smokers were given a “quit kit” and contacted up to one year post-delivery to evaluate smoking behaviors. Results: All subjects (N = 135) ranged in age from 18 to 41; 75% were not married; 78% had household incomes \u3c $30,000; and the majority were African American (40%). Fifty-five (40.7%) never smoked while 77(57%) had a smoking history, of these 18(23%) were spontaneous quitters. Data indicated that 36% reported smoking during pregnancy, with the majority in pre-contemplation. After one year, 18% of current smokers quit. Conclusions: Without a specific plan, the majority were unable to successfully abstain. Rate of abstinence may have been further influenced because subjects began smoking at an early age and were unsuccessful at previous quit attempts. Providers must continue to educate pregnant women but also evaluate strategies that require few provider visits, are cost effective, focus on relapse prevention, and can successfully influence smoking abstinence in low-income pregnant women

Making Laplacians commute

In this paper, we construct multimodal spectral geometry by finding a pair of closest commuting operators (CCO) to a given pair of Laplacians. The CCOs are jointly diagonalizable and hence have the same eigenbasis. Our construction naturally extends classical data analysis tools based on spectral geometry, such as diffusion maps and spectral clustering. We provide several synthetic and real examples of applications in dimensionality reduction, shape analysis, and clustering, demonstrating that our method better captures the inherent structure of multi-modal data

Quantum lost property: a possible operational meaning for the Hilbert-Schmidt product

Minimum error state discrimination between two mixed states \rho and \sigma can be aided by the receipt of "classical side information" specifying which states from some convex decompositions of \rho and \sigma apply in each run. We quantify this phenomena by the average trace distance, and give lower and upper bounds on this quantity as functions of \rho and \sigma. The lower bound is simply the trace distance between \rho and \sigma, trivially seen to be tight. The upper bound is \sqrt{1 - tr(\rho\sigma)}, and we conjecture that this is also tight. We reformulate this conjecture in terms of the existence of a pair of "unbiased decompositions", which may be of independent interest, and prove it for a few special cases. Finally, we point towards a link with a notion of non-classicality known as preparation contextuality.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure. v2: Less typos in text and less punctuation in titl

Experimental Quantum Process Discrimination

Discrimination between unknown processes chosen from a finite set is experimentally shown to be possible even in the case of non-orthogonal processes. We demonstrate unambiguous deterministic quantum process discrimination (QPD) of non-orthogonal processes using properties of entanglement, additional known unitaries, or higher dimensional systems. Single qubit measurement and unitary processes and multipartite unitaries (where the unitary acts non-separably across two distant locations) acting on photons are discriminated with a confidence of $\geq97$ in all cases.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, comments welcome. Revised version includes multi-partite QP

Low-cost interactive active monocular range finder

This paper describes a low-cost interactive active monocular range finder and illustrates the effect of introducing interactivity to the range acquisition process. The range finder consists of only one camera and a laser pointer, to which three LEDs are attached. When a user scans the laser along surfaces of objects, the camera captures the image of spots (one from the laser, and the others from LEDs), and triangulation is carried out using the camera\u27s viewing direction and the optical axis of the laser. The user interaction allows the range finder to acquire range data in which the sampling rate varies across the object depending on the underlying surface structures. Moreover, the processes of separating objects from the background and/or finding parts in the object can be achieved using the operator\u27s knowledge of the objects

THE EFFECTS OF ALTERNATIVE SEASONAL PRICE DIFFERENTIALS ON MILK PRODUCTION IN NEW YORK

Uneven monthly milk production (seasonality) is a major problem in the New York dairy industry. This article estimates expected monthly milk production response to a set of hypothetical seasonal price differentials designed to reduce the degree of seasonality. The analysis is based on a random mail survey and farm record data. The results indicate that a seasonal price differential of $1.12 per cwt. (over three times the current differential) would be necessary to completely balance spring and fall production in New York, based on the perceptions of farmers surveyed. Also, producers with better managerial skills are shown to be able to reduce their seasonality at a significantly lower price differential than less skilled farm managers.Livestock Production/Industries,

Star formation in the large Magellanic cloud

What role the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a dwarf irregular galaxy, plays in understanding infrared luminous galaxies is discussed. There are two main reasons the LMC may prove helpful. One, the LMC is only 55 kpc away, very nearby compared to much rarer high luminosity systems. Second, the environment in the LMC is distinctly different than in the Milky Way, at least those parts of the Milky Way interior to the sun, where most of the studies of massive star formation were concentrated. The LMC is an interacting system with a large amount of neutral hydrogen that is pushed around by the galaxy's encounter with the Milky Way. Perhaps a good understanding of star formation process in the LMC will provide guidance in the study of the infrared luminous galaxies. Two questions which will be addressed are: how is star formation in the LMC similar to the Milky Way Galaxy, and how is it different

On the rough Gronwall lemma and its applications

We present a rough path analog of the classical Gronwall Lemma introduced recently by A. Deya, M. Gubinelli, M. Hofmanov\'a, S. Tindel in [arXiv:1604.00437] and discuss two of its applications. First, it is applied in the framework of rough path driven PDEs in order to establish energy estimates for weak solutions. Second, it is used in order to prove uniqueness for reflected rough differential equations

THRESHOLD EFFECTS IN FOOD AND AGRIBUSINESS STOCK PRICE MARKETS

This study investigates the dynamics of agribusiness stock returns and the market return for 22 firms in a switching-regression framework. Threshold levels and regression slopes are estimated and tested. Results indicate how parameters differ for alternative regimes, at what levels dynamic adjustments take place, and the adjustment time involved.Marketing,