Smoking too few cigarettes to be at risk? Smokers' perceptions of risk and risk denial,a French survey

Background

Past studies on smokers'' risk perception have produced mixed results. We endorsed a new approach to assess smokers'' perceptions of risk by asking them to estimate threshold values for the cancer risk associated with daily consumption of tobacco and number of smoking years. We expected that many smokers would endorse a “risk denial” attitude, with threshold estimates higher than their own smoking consumption and duration.

Methodology

A French national telephone survey (n = 3820; 979 current smokers) included several questions about smoking behaviours and related beliefs.

Results

Among current smokers, 44% considered that smoking can cause cancer only for a daily consumption higher than their own consumption, and an additional 20% considered that the cancer risk becomes high only for a smoking duration higher than their own. Most smokers also agreed with other “risk denial” statements (“smoking is not more dangerous than air pollution,” “some people smoke their whole life but never get sick”). Those who considered they smoked too few cigarettes to be at risk were less likely to report personal fear of smoking related cancer.

Conclusion

Risk denial is quite widespread among smokers and does not simply reflect a lack of information about health risks related to tobacco. Fully informing smokers about their risks may necessitate changing the way they process information to produce beliefs and limiting their capacity to generate self exempting beliefs.     

Synthesis and Surface-Active Properties of Uronic Amide Derivatives,Surfactants from Renewable Organic Raw Materials

Short chemical syntheses were developed to produce a new set of surfactants from uronic acids derived from widely available raw materials. Three different strategies were used to synthesize uronic amide derivatives, the structures of which were totally characterized by spectrometric methods (IR, MS, ¹H-RMN and ¹³C-RMN). The best one, using an acid chloride as the synthetic intermediate, furnished the expected amides as a mixture of anomers in 46–58% global yield. Surface-active properties (CMC, γ_cmc, Γ_max, A _min) of homologous series of uronic acid N-alkylamides from C8 to C18 were also assessed. In general, these sugar-based surfactants exhibited good surface-activities, and appeared as valuable nonionic surfactants compared to octylphenol 9–10 ethylene oxide condensate, the most well-known nonionic surfactant. Increasing the alkyl chain length influenced the CMC values for both glucuronic and galacturonic N-alkylamide derivatives. The galacturonic N-alkylamides decreased γ_cmc at slower values than their counterpart’s glucuronic N-alkylamides.     

Conductive-probe atomic force microscopy characterization of silicon nanowire

The electrical conduction properties of lateral and vertical silicon nanowires (SiNWs) were investigated using a conductive-probe atomic force microscopy (AFM). Horizontal SiNWs, which were synthesized by the in-plane solid-liquid-solid technique, are randomly deployed into an undoped hydrogenated amorphous silicon layer. Local current mapping shows that the wires have internal microstructures. The local current-voltage measurements on these horizontal wires reveal a power law behavior indicating several transport regimes based on space-charge limited conduction which can be assisted by traps in the high-bias regime (> 1 V). Vertical phosphorus-doped SiNWs were grown by chemical vapor deposition using a gold catalyst-driving vapor-liquid-solid process on higly n-type silicon substrates. The effect of phosphorus doping on the local contact resistance between the AFM tip and the SiNW was put in evidence, and the SiNWs resistivity was estimated.     

Recovery and concentration of phenolic compounds in blood orange juice by membrane operations

Cross-flow ultrafiltration (UF) and osmotic distillation (OD) were implemented on laboratory scale to obtain formulations of interest for food and/or pharmaceutical industry starting from the blood orange juice produced in the Calabria region. The freshly squeezed juice, after a depectinization step, was submitted to an UF process in order to recover natural antioxidants, such as hydroxycinnamic acids, hydroxybenzoic acids, flavanones, flavan-3-ols, and anthocyanins. The UF permeate, with an initial total soluble solids (TSS) content of 10.5°Brix, was concentrated by OD up to a final concentration of 61.4°Brix.     

Stability and bioaccessibility of different forms of carotenoids and vitamin A during in vitro digestion

Vitamin A deficiency is a public health issue in developing countries and promoting dietary carotenoids as precursors is a promising strategy. However, carotenoids present in numerous fruits and vegetables are unstable and poorly bioaccessible. This study evaluated these two parameters during in vitro digestion of carotenoids and retinoids from carrot juice, raw and cooked spinach, micronutrient-fortified flour and standards without food matrix. Standards were unstable whereas vitamin A from fortified flour and native food carotenoids were generally better protected by the food matrix (30–100% remaining versus 7–30% for standards). Hydrothermal cooking did not influence spinach carotenoid digestive stability but decreased their contents, phenomenon compensated by a significantly better micellarisation from 15-fold for β-carotene to 72-fold for lutein. Finally, carrot juice provided the greatest amount of bioaccessible provitamin A with 1850 μg/100 g dry matter (DM) versus 790 and 80 μg/100 g DM in cooked and raw spinach, respectively.     

适合焊接应用的智能激光视觉传感技术

介绍了最新的激光视觉传感技术在汽车、造船、管道和铁路车辆等领域的自动化电弧焊接和激光焊接中的应用.先进且可靠的数字激光传感系统保证了电弧或激光热源能准确地对中准焊缝.在焊接过程中能够根据所测量的间隙和错边等数据实时地调整焊接过程参数,并在线检测焊后的焊缝成形和表面缺陷.从而保证焊接质量,并提高生产效率,降低总体焊接生产成本.应用这些适合焊接的智能化激光视觉传感技术.可以有效地提高焊接产品的质量和价格的竞争力.     

Building siRNAs with Cubes: Synthesis and Evaluation of Cubane-Modified siRNAs

Cubane molecules hold great potential for medicinal chemistry applications due to their inherent stability and low toxicity. In this study, we report the synthesis of a cubane derivative phosphoramidite for the incorporation of cubane into small interfering RNAs (siRNAs). Synthetic siRNAs rely on chemical modifications to improve their pharmacokinetic profiles. However, they are still able to mediate sequence-specific gene silencing via the endogenous RNA interference pathway. We designed a library of siRNAs bearing cubane at different positions within the sense and antisense strands. All siRNAs showed excellent gene-silencing activity, with IC₅₀ values ranging from 45.4 to 305 pM. Incorporating the cubane modification in both the sense and antisense strand led to viable duplexes with good biological activity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of siRNAs bearing a cubane derivative within the backbone.     

Concerning the location of void detachment in annuli

Although the location of void detachment (or the onset of significant voidage) has been well predicted by the Levy, Saha-Zuber and other models for some time, a paper by Rogers based on the McLeod thesis challenged the adequacy and analytical trends of these correlations at low pressure and velocity. We show by direct calculation that the Rogers conclusions are incorrect, that the McLeod experimental void fraction results are predictable by the Chexal-Lellouche-Zolotar model, and that this model produces a location of detachment not very different from that of Levy or Saha-Zuber at these low pressures and velocities. Thus, the standard models remain, in ours estimation, adequate.     

Early Stages of Crystallite Growth of ZnO Obtained from an Oxalate Precursor

A detailed analysis of the microstructure of zinc oxide produced by thermal decomposition of zinc oxalate at temperatures in the range 328° to 650°C is described. Parameters describing the breadth and shape of X-ray diffraction line profiles were obtained by means of pattern decomposition, and a method based on the Voigt function was used to obtain information on the temperature dependence of the microstructure. It was found that the crystallites are prismatic, the dimensions increasing significantly with formation temperature, and that each contains one stacking fault, on average. The results of size determinations are in broad agreement with TEM and SEM measurements. The specific surface area of the crystallites, obtained by the BET method, is compared with the results of X-ray diffraction line-profile analysis, leading to a determination of the variation of "packing factor" with temperature. Results suggest a homogeneous crystallite growth in the initial sintering of the loosely packed zinc oxide powder.     

Towards formalising AADL in Proof Assistants

This paper presents first steps towards a formalisation of the Architecture Analysis and Design Language, mainly concentrating on a representation of its data model. For this, we contrast two approaches: one set-based (using the B modelling framework) and one in a higher-order logic (using the Isabelle proof assistant). We illustrate a transformation on a simplified part of the AADL metamodel concerning flows.