3,737 research outputs found
Prescription Drugs Associated with Reports of Violence Towards Others
CONTEXT: Violence towards others is a seldom-studied adverse drug event and an atypical one because the risk of injury extends to others. OBJECTIVE: To identify the primary suspects in adverse drug event reports describing thoughts or acts of violence towards others, and assess the strength of the association. METHODOLOGY: From the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS) data, we extracted all serious adverse event reports for drugs with 200 or more cases received from 2004 through September 2009. We identified any case report indicating homicide, homicidal ideation, physical assault, physical abuse or violence related symptoms. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Disproportionality in reporting was defined as a) 5 or more violence case reports, b) at least twice the number of reports expected given the volume of overall reports for that drug, c) a χ2 statistic indicating the violence cases were unlikely to have occurred by chance (p<0.01). RESULTS: We identified 1527 cases of violence disproportionally reported for 31 drugs. Primary suspect drugs included varenicline (an aid to smoking cessation), 11 antidepressants, 6 sedative/hypnotics and 3 drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The evidence of an association was weaker and mixed for antipsychotic drugs and absent for all but 1 anticonvulsant/mood stabilizer. Two or fewer violence cases were reported for 435/484 (84.7%) of all evaluable drugs suggesting that an association with this adverse event is unlikely for these drugs. CONCLUSIONS: Acts of violence towards others are a genuine and serious adverse drug event associated with a relatively small group of drugs. Varenicline, which increases the availability of dopamine, and antidepressants with serotonergic effects were the most strongly and consistently implicated drugs. Prospective studies to evaluate systematically this side effect are needed to establish the incidence, confirm differences among drugs and identify additional common features
Modeling Surface and Subsurface Stormflow on Steeply-Sloping Forested Watersheds
A simple conceptual rainfall-runoff model, based on the variable source area concept, was developed for predicting runoff from small, steep-sloped, forested Appalachian watersheds. Tests of the model showed that the predicted and observed daily discharges were in good agreement. The results demonstrate the ability of the model to simulate the flashy hydrologic behavior of these watersheds.
Five subsurface flow models were evaluated by application to existing data measured at Coweeta on a reconstructed homogeneous forest soil. The five models were: Nieber \u27s 2-D and 1-D finite element models (based on Richards\u27 equation), the kinematic wave equation, and two simple storage models developed by the authors, the Boussinesq and kinematic storage models. All five models performed reasonably well on this homogeneous soil. The coupled infiltration model had a large effect on the simulation results. The cost of running the computer models and the computer memory requirements increased as their complexity increased.
Field soil-water and precipitation measurements were made on a small test plot in Robinson Forest, in Eastern Kentucky. These data were used to calculate runoff during four precipitation events and to test three of the subsurface flow models on a natural watershed. Of the models tested, the simple kinematic storage model performed the best. Flow from the test plot was dominated by macropore flow during storm events, and by flow through the soil matrix during baseflow or recession periods. No surface runoff was observed on the test plot during the period of field observations, except on the saturated near-channel source areas; all runoff was initiated by subsurface flow
Radiative and Collisional Jet Energy Loss in the Quark-Gluon Plasma at RHIC
We calculate and compare bremsstrahlung and collisional energy loss of hard
partons traversing a quark-gluon plasma. Our treatment of both processes is
complete at leading order in the coupling and accounts for the probabilistic
nature of the jet energy loss. We find that the nuclear modification factor
for neutral production in heavy ion collisions is sensitive to
the inclusion of collisional and radiative energy loss contributions while the
averaged energy loss only slightly increases if collisional energy loss is
included for parent parton energies . These results are important for
the understanding of jet quenching in Au+Au collisions at at
RHIC. Comparison with data is performed applying the energy loss calculation to
a relativistic ideal (3+1)-dimensional hydrodynamic description of the
thermalized medium formed at RHIC.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
The RMS Survey: The Bolometric Fluxes and Luminosity Distributions of Young Massive Stars
Context: The Red MSX Source (RMS) survey is returning a large sample of
massive young stellar objects (MYSOs) and ultra-compact (UC) \HII{} regions
using follow-up observations of colour-selected candidates from the MSX point
source catalogue. Aims: To obtain the bolometric fluxes and, using kinematic
distance information, the luminosities for young RMS sources with far-infrared
fluxes. Methods: We use a model spectral energy distribution (SED) fitter to
obtain the bolometric flux for our sources, given flux data from our work and
the literature. The inputs to the model fitter were optimised by a series of
investigations designed to reveal the effect varying these inputs had on the
resulting bolometric flux. Kinematic distances derived from molecular line
observations were then used to calculate the luminosity of each source.
Results: Bolometric fluxes are obtained for 1173 young RMS sources, of which
1069 have uniquely constrained kinematic distances and good SED fits. A
comparison of the bolometric fluxes obtained using SED fitting with trapezium
rule integration and two component greybody fits was also undertaken, and
showed that both produce considerable scatter compared to the method used here.
Conclusions: The bolometric flux results allowed us to obtain the luminosity
distributions of YSOs and UC\HII{} regions in the RMS sample, which we find to
be different. We also find that there are few MYSOs with L
10\lsol{}, despite finding many MYSOs with 10\lsol{} L
10\lsol{}.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures, 3 tables, accepted to A&A. The full versions of
tables 1 and 2 will be available via the CDS upon publicatio
On the Nonperturbative Consistency of String Theory
An infinite number of distinct matrix models reproduce the perturbation
theory of string theory. Due to constraints of causality, however, we
argue that none of the existing constructions gives a consistent
nonperturbative definition of the string.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, LaTeX (author's name added
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