Physicians Charged with Opioid-Analgesic Prescribing Offenses

Word counts: abstract = 249 , text = 4,329 ABSTRACT Objective. To provide a "big-picture" overview of the characteristics and outcomes of recent criminal and administrative cases in which physicians have been criminally prosecuted or charged by medical boards with offenses related to inappropriate prescribing of opioid analgesics. Design: We identified as many criminal and administrative cases of these types as possible that occurred between 1998 and 2006. Cases were identified using a wide variety of sources, including organizational and government-agency databases, published news accounts, and Websites. Factual characteristics of these cases and their outcomes, and of the physicians involved, then were further researched using additional sources and methods. Setting: Study findings are intended to apply to practicing U.S. patient care physicians as a whole. Patients or other participants: There were no patients or participants in this study. Outcome measures: We analyzed the numbers and types of cases and physicians involved, criminal and administrative charges brought, case outcomes and sanctions, specialties and other characteristics of the physicians involved. Results: The study identified 725 doctors, representing an estimated 0.1% of practicing patient care physicians, who were charged between 1998 and 2006 with criminal and/or administrative offenses related to prescribing opioid analgesics. A plurality of these (39.3%) were General Practice/Family Medicine physicians, compared with 3.5% who were self-identified or board-certified pain specialists. Physicians in this sample were more likely to be male, older, and not board certified (P<0.001). DEA criminal and complaint investigations averaged 658 per year (2003)(2004)(2005)(2006) and "for cause" surrenders of DEA registrations averaged 369.7 (2000-2006). Conclusions: Criminal or administrative charges and sanctions for prescribing opioid analgesics are rare. In addition, there appears to be little objective basis for concern that pain specialists have been "singled out" for prosecution or administrative sanctioning for such offenses

In-Plane Deformation Mechanics for Highly Stretchable Electronics

Scissoring in thick bars suppresses buckling behavior in serpentine traces that have thicknesses greater than their widths, as detailed in a systematic set of analytical and experimental studies. Scissoring in thick copper traces enables elastic stretchability as large as approximate to 350%, corresponding to a sixfold improvement over previously reported values for thin geometries (approximate to 60%).</p

Constraining Proton Lifetime in SO(10) with Stabilized Doublet-Triplet Splitting

We present a class of realistic unified models based on supersymmetric SO(10) wherein issues related to natural doublet-triplet (DT) splitting are fully resolved. Using a minimal set of low dimensional Higgs fields which includes a single adjoint, we show that the Dimopoulos-Wilzcek mechanism for DT splitting can be made stable in the presence of all higher order operators without having pseudo-Goldstone bosons and flat directions. The {mu} term of order TeV is found to be naturally induced. A Z{sub 2}-assisted anomalous U(1){sub A} gauge symmetry plays a crucial role in achieving these results. The threshold corrections to {alpha}{sub 3}(M{sub Z}), somewhat surprisingly, are found to be controlled by only a few effective parameters. This leads to a very predictive scenario for proton decay. As a novel feature, we find an interesting correlation between the d = 6 (p {yields} e{sup +}{pi}{sup 0}) and d = 5 (p {yields} {bar {nu}}K{sup +}) decay amplitudes which allows us to derive a constrained upper limit on the inverse rate of the e{sup +}{pi}{sup 0} mode. Our results show that both modes should be observed with an improvement in the current sensitivity by about a factor of five to ten

DUSEL Theory White Paper

The scientific case for a Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory [DUSEL] located at the Homestake mine in Lead, South Dakota is exceptional. The site of this future laboratory already claims a discovery for the detection of solar neutrinos, leading to a Nobel Prize for Ray Davis. Moreover this work provided the first step to our present understanding of solar neutrino oscillations and a chink in the armor of the Standard Model of particle physics. We now know, from several experiments located in deep underground experimental laboratories around the world, that neutrinos have mass and even more importantly this mass appears to fit into the framework of theories which unify all the known forces of nature, i.e. the strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational. Similarly, DUSEL can forge forward in the discovery of new realms of nature, housing six fundamental experiments that will test the frontiers of our knowledge: (1) Searching for nucleon decay (the decay of protons and neutrons predicted by grand unified theories of nature); (2) Searching for neutrino oscillations and CP violation by detecting neutrinos produced at a neutrino source (possibly located at Brookhaven National Laboratory and/or Fermi National Laboratory); (3) Searching for astrophysical neutrinos originating from the sun, from cosmic rays hitting the upper atmosphere or from other astrophysical sources, such a supernovae; (4) Searching for dark matter particles (the type of matter which does not interact electromagnetically, yet provides 24% of the mass of the Universe); (5) Looking for the rare process known as neutrino-less double beta decay which is predicted by most theories of neutrino mass and allows two neutrons in a nucleus to spontaneously change into two protons and two electrons; and (6) Searching for the rare process of neutron- anti-neutron oscillations, which would establish violation of baryon number symmetry. A large megaton water Cherenkov detector for neutrinos and nucleon decay, located in DUSEL and roughly 20 times the size of current detectors, can perform the first three of these experiments. The last 3 can utilize the unique environment afforded by DUSEL to perform the most sensitive tests to date. Any one of these experiments can greatly increase our knowledge of nature. The Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL), with a Large Megaton Size Detector, is desperately needed to address a set of fundamental issues in particle and astrophysics

Study of direct CP violation in B+- ---> J/psi K+- (pi+-) file decays

The authors present a search for direct CP violation in B{sup {+-}} {yields} J/{psi}K{sup {+-}}{pi}{sup {+-}} decays. The event sample is selected from 2.8 fb{sup -1} of p{bar p} collisions recorded by D0 experiment in Run II of the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. The charge asymmetry A{sub CP}(B{sup +} {yields} J/{psi}K{sup +}) = +0.0075 {+-} 0.0061(stat.) {+-} 0.0027(syst.) is obtained using a sample of approximately 40 thousand B{sup {+-}} {yields} J/{psi}K{sup {+-}} decays. The achieved precision is of the same level as the expected deviation predicted by some extensions of the standard model. They also measured the charge asymmetry A{sub CP}(B{sup +} {yields} J/{psi}{pi}{sup +}) = -0.09 {+-} 0.08(stat.){+-}0.03(syst.)

Double parton interactions in photon+3 jet events in ppbar collisions sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV

We have used a sample of photon+3 jets events collected by the D0 experiment with an integrated luminosity of about 1 fb{sup -1} to determine the fraction of events with double parton scattering (f{sub DP}) in a single ppbar collision at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV. The DP fraction and effective cross section (sigma{sub eff}), a process-independent scale parameter related to the parton density inside the nucleon, are measured in three intervals of the second (ordered in p{sub T}) jet transverse momentum pT{sub jet2} within the range 15 &lt; pT{sub jet2} &lt; 30 GeV. In this range, f{sub DP} varies between 0.23 &lt; f{sub DP} &lt; 0.47, while sigma{sub eff} has the average value sigma{sub effave} = 16.4 {+-} 0.3(stat) {+-} 2.3(syst) mb