Device for handling printed circuit cards Patent

Handling tool for printed circuit card

GP prescribing of nicotine replacement and bupropion to aid smoking cessation in England and Wales

Aims Prescribing nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) or bupropion for smoking cessation is of considerable importance to public health but little is known about prescribing practices. This paper examines general practitioners' (GPs') prescribing patterns in Britain where these drugs are reimbursed. The results have implications for other health-care systems considering introducing reimbursement.Design, participants and setting Postal survey conducted in 2002 of a random sample of 1088 GPs in England and Wales, of whom 642 (59%) responded.Measures Number of requests GPs reported having received from patients for NRT and bupropion over the past month, the number of prescriptions they reported issuing and ratings of attitudes to these medications.Findings GPs reported receiving an average of 4.3 requests for NRT and 1.9 for bupropion in the previous month. They reported issuing 3.5 prescriptions for NRT and 1.2 for bupropion. Almost all GPs accepted that NRT (95%) and bupropion (97%) should be reimbursable on National Health Service (NHS) prescription. However, a significant minority of those who received requests for prescriptions did not issue any (81% for NRT and 26% for bupropion). This was related to whether they thought these products should be available on NHS prescription for both NRT and bupropion (OR = 0.66, P < 0.05), which in turn was related to beliefs about whether smokers should have to pay for treatment themselves, the cost-effectiveness of NRT/bupropion and the low priority they would give NRT/bupropion in the drug budget. For bupropion, concern about side-effects independently predicted not prescribing [odds ratio (OR) = 1.46, P < 0.03].Conclusion In the British health-care system, which has a well-established system for technology assessment and professionally endorsed guidelines, a significant minority of GPs decline all patient requests for stop-smoking medicines

How much improvement in mental health can be expected when people stop smoking? Findings from a national survey

Background and aims: There is evidence that mental health improves when smokers stop. This study aimed to assess in a nationally representative sample how far anxiety and depression in long-term ex-smokers can be expected eventually to reach levels found in those who have never smoked. Methods: Data from the Smoking Toolkit Study (STS) were used. The STS involves monthly household surveys of representative samples of the adult population of England. Anxiety and depression were compared using an item from the EQ5-D in respondents aged 40+ years where were either current smokers, never smokers, or had stopped for at least a year, adjusting statistically for age, gender and social grade. Results: The prevalence of anxiety or depression was 10.0% (95% CI 9.1-10.9) in never smokers, 18.3% (95% CI 16.0-20.6) in current smokers, and 11.3% (95% CI 9.6-13.0) in long-term ex-smokers. After adjusting for age, sex and social grade, long-term ex-smokers were similar to never smokers (OR=1.15, 95% CI=0.94-1.41). Current smokers had higher prevalence than never smokers (OR=1.69, 95% CI=1.39-2.04) and ex-smokers (OR=1.47, 95% CI=1.15-1.86). Conclusions: Prevalence of anxiety and depression in long-term ex-smokers appears to be similar to what is found in never smokers

Degenerate states of narrow semiconductor rings in the presence of spin orbit coupling: Role of time-reversal and large gauge transformations

The electron Hamiltonian of narrow semiconductor rings with the Rashba and Dresselhaus spin orbit terms is invariant under time-reversal operation followed by a large gauge transformation. We find that all the eigenstates are doubly degenerate when integer or half-integer quantum fluxes thread the quantum ring. The wavefunctions of a degenerate pair are related to each other by the symmetry operation. These results are valid even in the presence of a disorder potential. When the Zeeman term is present only some of these degenerate levels anticross

Detection limits for close eclipsing and transiting sub-stellar and planetary companions to white dwarfs in the WASP survey

We used photometric data from the WASP (Wide-Angle Search for Planets) survey to explore the possibility of detecting eclipses and transit signals of brown dwarfs, gas giants and terrestrial companions in close orbit around white dwarfs. We performed extensive Monte Carlo simulations and we found that for Gaussian random noise WASP is sensitive to companions as small as the Moon orbiting a $V\sim$12 white dwarf. For fainter stars WASP is sensitive to increasingly larger bodies. Our sensitivity drops in the presence of co-variant noise structure in the data, nevertheless Earth-size bodies remain readily detectable in relatively low S/N data. We searched for eclipses and transit signals in a sample of 194 white dwarfs in the WASP archive however, no evidence for companions was found. We used our results to place tentative upper limits to the frequency of such systems. While we can only place weak limits on the likely frequency of Earth-sized or smaller companions; brown dwarfs and gas giants (radius$\simeq$ R$_{jup}$) with periods $\leq$0.2 days must certainly be rare ($<10\%$). More stringent constraints requires significantly larger white dwarf samples, higher observing cadence and continuous coverage. The short duration of eclipses and transits of white dwarfs compared to the cadence of WASP observations appears to be one of the main factors limiting the detection rate in a survey optimised for planetary transits of main sequence stars.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure