Cardiovascular Risk Associated with Medical Use of Opioids and Cannabinoids: A Systematic Review

Purpose of Review: The long-term use of opioid and cannabinoid medications to control chronic pain and treat opioid use disorders now involves a large proportion of the population in the United States. Yet, the cardiovascular risks of opioids are not well understood. This systematic review summarizes the current literature to assess the potential cardiovascular disease risks associated with opioid and cannabinoid medications. Recent Findings: The role of long-term methadone use in increasing QT interval among people receiving methadone treatment for substance use disorders is well established. Routine electrocardiogram screenings among patients receiving methadone treatment may be helpful in early identification and prevention of ventricular arrhythmias. There is limited, but credible evidence of increased risk for myocardial infarction among patients using opioid medications for chronic pain, and equivocal evidence that opioids may lead to hypotension in the short term. Further, there is no evidence indicating that opioid pain medications increase the risk of stroke or pulmonary embolism. However, the majority of the reviewed studies include limited internal and external validity due to poor confounding control, exposure misclassification, confounding by indication, small sample size, and non-generalizable special populations. We also did not find any human studies evaluating the cardiovascular effects of cannabinoids. Summary: While the effects of methadone on cardiac conduction are well known and interventions at the healthcare practice level may help prevent potential harm, more good quality research is needed to better understand cardiovascular risk associated with the use of opioids and cannabinoids

Using new ways of working to attract millennials

Millennials are attracted to the new ways of working. However, care needs to be taken as the new ways of working must be clearly aligned with opportunities to learn and grow

Dynamical and Stationary Properties of On-line Learning from Finite Training Sets

The dynamical and stationary properties of on-line learning from finite training sets are analysed using the cavity method. For large input dimensions, we derive equations for the macroscopic parameters, namely, the student-teacher correlation, the student-student autocorrelation and the learning force uctuation. This enables us to provide analytical solutions to Adaline learning as a benchmark. Theoretical predictions of training errors in transient and stationary states are obtained by a Monte Carlo sampling procedure. Generalization and training errors are found to agree with simulations. The physical origin of the critical learning rate is presented. Comparison with batch learning is discussed throughout the paper.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figure

Molecular epidemiology of Coxsackievirus A6 in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, from 2000 to 2015

Hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) affects mostly children with millions of infections notified every year particularly in Asia. In the last decade, Coxsackievirus A6 (CVA-6) has emerged as an important pathogen in HFMD epidemics replacing CVA-16 as a predominant serotype associated with uncomplicated HFMD. In Sarawak, CVA-6 has been detected since 2000. However a comprehensive study on the circulation of this virus has not been carried out to date. In this study, we investigated the molecular epidemiology of CVA-6 in Sarawak from 2000 to 2015 associated with HFMD

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp. Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02

Wave Function Based Characteristics of Hybrid Mesons

We propose some extensions of the quark potential model to hybrids, fit them to the lattice data and use them for the purpose of calculating the masses, root mean square radii and wave functions at the origin of the conventional and hybrid charmonium mesons. We treat the ground and excited gluonic field between a quark and an antiquark as in the Born-Oppenheimer expansion, and use the shooting method to numerically solve the required Schr$\ddot{\textrm{o}}$dinger equation for the radial wave functions; from these wave functions we calculate the mesonic properties. For masses we also check through a Crank Nichelson discretization. For hybrid charmonium mesons, we consider the exotic quantum number states with $J^{PC} = 0^{+ -}, 1^{- +}$ and $2^{+ -}$. We also compare our results with the experimentally observed masses and theoretically predicted results of the other models. Our results have implications for scalar form factors, energy shifts, magnetic polarizabilities, decay constants, decay widths and differential cross sections of conventional and hybrid mesons.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, Erratum is submitted to EPJ

An overview of the MHONGOOSE survey: Observing nearby galaxies with MeerKAT

MHONGOOSE is a deep survey of the neutral hydrogen distribution in a representative sample of 30 nearby disk and dwarf galaxies with HI masses from 10^6 to ~10^{11} M_sun, and luminosities from M_R ~ -12 to M_R ~ -22. The sample is selected to uniformly cover the available range in log(M_HI). Our extremely deep observations, down to HI column density limits of well below 10^{18} cm^{-2} - or a few hundred times fainter than the typical HI disks in galaxies - will directly detect the effects of cold accretion from the intergalactic medium and the links with the cosmic web. These observations will be the first ever to probe the very low-column density neutral gas in galaxies at these high resolutions. Combination with data at other wavelengths, most of it already available, will enable accurate modelling of the properties and evolution of the mass components in these galaxies and link these with the effects of environment, dark matter distribution, and other fundamental properties such as halo mass and angular momentum. MHONGOOSE can already start addressing some of the SKA-1 science goals and will provide a comprehensive inventory of the processes driving the transformation and evolution of galaxies in the nearby universe at high resolution and over 5 orders of magnitude in column density. It will be a Nearby Galaxies Legacy Survey that will be unsurpassed until the advent of the SKA, and can serve as a highly visible, lasting statement of MeerKAT's capabilities