BACKGROUND The Australian National Tobacco Campaign (NTC) was an intensive mass media anti-smoking campaign, the first phase of which commenced in 1997, cost around $A9 million, and reduced smoking prevalence by 1.4%. OBJECTIVE To assess the cost-effectiveness of phase one of the NTC, which ran from June to November 1997. DESIGN AND STUDY POPULATION The quit benefits model (QBM), a Markov-c...

This highly interdisciplinary project extends previous work in combat modeling and in control-theoretic descriptions of decision-making human factors in complex activities. A previous paper has established the first theory of the statistical mechanics of combat (SMC), developed using modern methods of statistical mechanics, baselined to empirical data gleaned from the National Training Center (...

This research compared linear regression and artificial neural network models to identify the most accurate methods of predicting the impact of product cues on consumers’ apparel product evaluations and purchase intentions. The research process and findings are discussed below. Also, we examined the potential effectiveness of the Internet as a strategic tool to (a) build global brand images for...

Near-Threshold Voltage Computing (NTC), where the supply voltage is only slightly higher than the transistors’ threshold voltage, is a promising approach to push back the many-core power wall. A key NTC shortcoming is the higher sensitivity to parameter (process, supply voltage, temperature) variation. This report introduces a μ−architectural model to characterize increased sensitivity to proce...

Pleistocene diversity was much higher than today, for example there were three distinct wolf morphotypes (dire, gray, Beringian) in North America versus one today (gray). Previous fossil evidence suggested that these three groups overlapped ecologically, but split the landscape geographically. The Natural Trap Cave (NTC) fossil site in Wyoming, USA is an ideally placed late Pleistocene site to ...

This paper introduces a disposable battery-driven heating system for loop-mediated isothermal DNA amplification (LAMP) inside a centrifugally-driven DNA purification platform (LabTube). We demonstrate LabTube-based fully automated DNA purification of as low as 100 cell-equivalents of verotoxin-producing Escherichia coli (VTEC) in water, milk and apple juice in a laboratory centrifuge, followed ...

Background: The existing US epidemiological data show that long-term cigarette smokers are at higher risk of developing serious diseases relative to moist snuff consumers. To understand the effects of tobacco consumption, global metabolomic profiles were generated. Here, we describe metabolomic changes in oxidative stress and inflammation pathways. Methods: Matching plasma, urine, and saliva sa...

Near threshold circuits (NTC) are an attractive and promising technology that provides significant power savings with some delay penalty. The feasibility of NTC technology with MOS Current Mode Logic (MCML) based on a 14 nm FinFET process is examined in this work. A 32 bit Kogge Stone adder is chosen as a demonstration vehicle for simulation and feasibility analysis. MCML is shown to yield enha...

Methods This randomized controlled trial was undertaken with 60 anesthesiology residents at a large teaching hospital in an urban area. The study had three groups: 1) wellness intervention group, 2) no-treatment control group with release time (NTC-RT), and 3) no-treatment control group with routine duties (NTC-RD). Residents in the wellness group were given release time in order to participate...

The direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method is a stochastic approach to solve the Boltzmann equation and is built on various numerical schemes for transport, collision and sampling. This work aims to compare and contrast two popular O(N) DSMC collision schemes no-time-counter (NTC) and majorant collision frequency (MCF) with the goal of identifying the fundamental differences. MCF and NTC s...