Potential health impacts of increasing the cigarette tax in Viet Nam.

BACKGROUND: Even after the implementation of MPOWER, Viet Nam's cigarette tax remains only 36% of the retail price. This falls short of the World Health Organization's (WHO's) recommendation that the tax share be 70% of the retail price. OBJECTIVE: To assess the health impact of different levels of cigarette taxation by estimating the impact on reducing tobacco consumption and smoking-attributable deaths (SADs). METHODS: A static model was developed based on a previous study by Jha et al. The model calculates the reduction in tobacco consumption, estimating the number of SADs averted and savings in health-related costs. The scenarios for increasing cigarette taxes were aligned with the Viet Nam Tobacco Tax Simulation Model developed by the WHO and the Vietnamese Ministry of Finance. RESULTS: Four scenarios proposed by the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Health would prevent an estimated 63 339-581 165 SADs, equivalent to mortality costs of US$577-5296 million. In the ideal scenario, 6 258 361 SADs would be prevented and would save US$57.0 billion. Future young smokers would see the greatest health benefits of increasing the cigarette tax. CONCLUSION: Increasing the cigarette tax could reduce the substantial health impact of tobacco use, and further result in significant financial savings across society. Viet Nam should support efforts to further increase the cigarette tax following WHO recommendations.

Hydrodynamics of liquids of chiral molecules and suspensions containing chiral particles.

We obtain hydrodynamic equations describing a fluid consisting of chiral molecules or a suspension of chiral particles in a Newtonian fluid. The hydrodynamic velocity and stresses arising in a flowing chiral liquid have components that are forbidden by symmetry in a Newtonian liquid. For example, a chiral liquid in a Poiseuille flow between parallel plates exerts forces on the plates, which are perpendicular to the flow. A generic flow results in spatial separation of particles of different chirality. Thus even a racemic suspension will exhibit chiral properties in a generic flow. A suspension of particles of random shape in a Newtonian liquid is described by equations which are similar to those describing a racemic mixture of chiral particles in a liquid.

Holographic quantum liquid.

Quantum liquids are characterized by the distinctive properties such as the low-temperature behavior of heat capacity and the spectrum of low-energy quasiparticle excitations. In particular, at low temperature, Fermi liquids exhibit the zero sound, predicted by Landau in 1957 and subsequently observed in liquid He-3. In this Letter, we ask whether such characteristic behavior is present in theories with a holographically dual description. We consider a class of gauge theories with fundamental matter fields whose holographic dual in the appropriate limit is given in terms of the Dirac-Born-Infeld action in anti-de Sitter space. We find that these systems also exhibit a sound mode at zero temperature despite having a non-Fermi-liquid behavior of the specific heat. These properties suggest that holography identifies a new type of quantum liquid which potentially could be experimentally realized in strongly correlated systems.

Vanishing bulk viscosities and conformal invariance of the unitary fermi gas.

By requiring general-coordinate and conformal invariance of the hydrodynamic equations, we show that the unitary Fermi gas has zero bulk viscosity, zeta=0, in the normal phase. In the superfluid phase, two of the bulk viscosities have to vanish, zeta1=zeta2=0, while the third one zeta3 is allowed to be nonzero.

Viscosity in strongly interacting quantum field theories from black hole physics.

The ratio of shear viscosity to volume density of entropy can be used to characterize how close a given fluid is to being perfect. Using string theory methods, we show that this ratio is equal to a universal value of variant Planck's over 2pi/4pik(B) for a large class of strongly interacting quantum field theories whose dual description involves black holes in anti-de Sitter space. We provide evidence that this value may serve as a lower bound for a wide class of systems, thus suggesting that black hole horizons are dual to the most ideal fluids.

Effective lagrangian and topological interactions in supersolids.

We construct a low-energy effective Lagrangian describing zero temperature supersolids. Galilean invariance imposes strict constraints on the form of the effective Lagrangian. We identify a topological term in the Lagrangian that couples superfluid and crystalline modes. For small superfluid fractions, this interaction term is dominant in problems involving defects. As an illustration, we compute the differential cross section of scatterings of low-energy transverse elastic phonons by a superfluid vortex. The result is model independent.

Universal properties of two-dimensional boson droplets.

We consider a system of N nonrelativistic bosons in two dimensions, interacting weakly via a short-range attractive potential. We show that for N large, but below some critical value, the properties of the N-boson bound state are universal. In particular, the ratio of the binding energies of (N+1)- and N-boson systems, B(N+1)/B(N), approaches a finite limit, approximately 8.567, at large N. We also confirm previous results that the three-body system has exactly two bound states. We find for the ground state B(0)(3)=16.522 688(1)B2 and for the excited state B(1)(3)=1.270 409 1(1)B2.

Pion propagation near the QCD chiral phase transition.

We point out that, in analogy with spin waves in antiferromagnets, all parameters describing the real-time propagation of soft pions at temperatures below the QCD chiral phase transition can be expressed in terms of static correlators. This allows, in principle, the determination of the soft pion dispersion relation on the lattice. Using scaling and universality arguments, we determine the critical behavior of the parameters of pion propagation. We predict that, when the critical temperature is approached from below, the pole mass of the pion drops despite the growth of the pion screening mass. This fact is attributed to the decrease of the pion velocity near the phase transition.

Asymptotic deconfinement in high-density QCD.

We discuss QCD with two light flavors at large baryon chemical potential micro. Color superconductivity leads to partial breaking of the color SU(3) group. We show that the infrared physics is governed by the gluodynamics of the remaining SU(2) group with an exponentially soft confinement scale Lambda(')(QCD) approximately Deltaexp[-a(mu)/(gDelta)], where Delta<< mu is the superconducting gap, g is the strong coupling, and a = 2sqrt[2] pi/11. We estimate that, at moderate baryon densities, Lambda(')(QCD) is O(10 MeV) or smaller. The confinement radius increases exponentially with density, leading to "asymptotic deconfinement." The velocity of the SU(2) gluons is small due to the large dielectric constant of the medium.

Shear viscosity of strongly coupled N = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma.

Using the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence, we relate the shear viscosity eta of the finite-temperature N = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory in the large N, strong-coupling regime with the absorption cross section of low-energy gravitons by a near-extremal black three-brane. We show that in the limit of zero frequency this cross section coincides with the area of the horizon. From this result we find eta = pi / 8N(2)T3. We conjecture that for finite 't Hooft coupling g(2)(YM)N the shear viscosity is eta = f(g(2)(YM)N)N2T3, where f(x) is a monotonic function that decreases from O(x(-2)ln(-1)(1/x)) at small x to pi/8 when x-->infinity.

Domain walls of high-density QCD.

We show that in very dense quark matter there must exist metastable domain walls where the axial U(1) phase of the color-superconducting condensate changes by 2pi. The decay rate of the domain walls is exponentially suppressed and we compute it semiclassically. We give an estimate of the critical chemical potential above which our analysis is under theoretical control.

QCD at finite isospin density.

QCD at finite isospin chemical potential mu(I) has no fermion sign problem and can be studied on the lattice. We solve this theory analytically in two limits: at low mu(I), where chiral perturbation theory is applicable, and at asymptotically high mu(I), where perturbative QCD works. At low isospin density the ground state is a pion condensate, whereas at high density it is a Fermi liquid with Cooper pairing. The pairs carry the same quantum numbers as the pion. This leads us to conjecture that the transition from hadron to quark matter is smooth, which passes several tests. Our results imply a nontrivial phase diagram in the space of temperature and chemical potentials of isospin and baryon number.

Liver carcinoma prevention among Asian Pacific Islanders. Getting hepatitis B shots into arms.

BACKGROUND: For the past 20 years, the hepatitis B virus (HBV) has infected at least 250,000 persons annually in the United States. Persons with chronic HBV infection are at increased risk for liver carcinoma. Among immigrants to the United States from countries with high HBV endemicity, high rates of chronic HBV infection account in large part for their high incidence rates of liver carcinoma. Among those who have not been infected, hepatitis B and hepatitis B-related liver carcinoma can be prevented through hepatitis B vaccine immunizations. In this article, the authors examine hepatitis B vaccine coverage rates from surveys of Asian and Pacific Islander children in Houston, Texas and Los Angeles County, California. METHODS: In Houston, the authors surveyed the parents of 300 students aged 10 to 18 years at a Vietnamese-language school. In Los Angeles County, they surveyed parents of 471 fourth grade students from 6 different Asian and Pacific Islander ethnic groups in 8 public elementary schools. RESULTS: In Houston, 55% of responding parents submitted immunization records indicating that their child had had 3 hepatitis B shots; 3% reported that their child had had no shots. In Los Angeles County, 37% (Filipino) to 67% (Japanese) had had 3 shots; proportions of children having had no shots ranged from 5% to 15%. CONCLUSIONS: Under current immunization practices, the authors estimate that nearly 13,000 Asian and Pacific Islander children living in the United States today will become infected with HBV in the future, resulting in more than 600 liver carcinoma deaths. It is essential that cancer control agencies in the United States take leadership in raising awareness about the role of HBV in the etiology of liver carcinoma and that of the hepatitis B vaccine in preventing it.

Epidemiology, symptoms and treatment of paragonimiasis in Sin Ho district, Lai Chau province, Vietnam.

Sin Ho is a district of the northern mountainous province of Lai Chau, Vietnam, where the people have the habit of eating undercooked crabs. A study on paragoniamiasis carried out from 1994 to 1995 with 1,642 persons in this endemic area, showed that the rate of eating raw-crab was 72.5%. Crab examination (Ranguna kimboiensis) showed an infection rate of Paragonimus metacercaria of 98.1%. With 624 stool samples examined by Kato technique, the infection rate of Paragonimus in humans was 6.4%. With 338 sputum samples examined by direct and centrifuge methods, the infection rate of Paragonimus was 7.4%. Most of the patients were children (63.2%). The infection rate of Paragonimus in dogs was 18.2 - 33.3%. Adult worms, collected from the dogs in the field and from the cats in laboratory, were identified as Paragonimus heterotremus. The main symptoms of Paragonimus patients were cough and hemoptysis (92%), discontinuously developed (96%), without fever (94%), chest pain (70%), pleural effusion (26%), neurogical symptoms (8%), eosinophilia (88.9%), nodular ring shadows in the lungs, as shown by chest X-ray examination and more in lower lobe, (76.2%). Paragonimiasis patients were treated by (a) Praziquantel 25 mg/kg/day x 3 days; the cure rate was 68.8%. (b) Praziquantel 50 mg/kg/day x 3 days; the cure rate was 75%.

Epidemiology of clonorchiasis in Ninh Binh Province, Vietnam.

Clinical and stool examinations for clonorchiasis were carried out in an endemic area, Kim Son District, Ninh Binh Province, Vietnam. Stool examination with the Kato-Katz technic revealed that in 306 residents selected randomly, 42 people (13.7%) were infected with Clonorchis sinensis. The rate was biased towards men (23.4%) as opposed to women (1.5%) and increased with age. No children younger than 10 years old were infected, reflecting difference in a chance for acquisition of infection through a habit of eating raw fish. Few clinical abnormalities were found by blood and urine examinations of the patients. Treatment with praziquantel decreased the infection rate to 5.3% at 6 weeks later. Snails, Melanoides tuberculatus, collected from ponds around the settlements were infected with cercariae at a rate of 13.3%. Farmed fish (Hypophthalmichtys molitrix) in the ponds were infected with metacercariae at rates of 56.4% in small individuals and 100% in large ones. The life cycle of C. sinensis is exclusively completed in the ponds and the traditional habit of eating raw fish in summer was thought to be a major route of infection.

[Critical study of the value of superior mesenteric arteriography in the diagnosis of Meckel's diverticulum. Radiological and clinical findings in 10 cases (author's transl)]. / Etude critique de la valeur de l'artériographie mésentérique supérieure dans le diagnostic des diverticules de Meckel. A propos de 10 observations radiocliniques.

The authors underline the value of selective superior mesenteric arteriography in the diagnosis of Meckel's diverticulum. In the ten cases reported, seven were found to have a Meckel's diverticulum on operation, while it was absent in the other three. Arteriography was able to diagnose its presence correctly in sex patients, gave a false positive diagnosis in three cases, and was considered to be normal in the last case in which a Meckel's diverticulum was present. Valid radiological signs are extravasation of the contrast medium into the lumen of the digestive tract and the presence of a vitellin artery dividing into a vascular network. The single fact of a hypervascularized zone at the end of the superior mesenteric artery dividing into a vascular network. The single fact of a hypervascularized zone at the end of the superior mesenteric artery without definite artery formation is not as valid and its interpretation is difficult.