There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) remains a major public health problem. It is the fourth leading cause of chronic morbidity and mortality in the United States, and is projected to rank fifth in 2020 in burden of disease worldwide, according to a study published by the World Bank/World Health Organization. Yet, COPD remains relatively unknown or ignored by the public as well as public health and government officials. In 1998, in an effort to bring more attention to COPD, its management, and its prevention, a committed group of scientists encouraged the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the World Health Organization to form the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD). Among the important objectives of GOLD are to increase awareness of COPD and to help the millions of people who suffer from this disease and die prematurely of it or its complications. The first step in the GOLD program was to prepare a consensus report, Global Strategy for the Diagnosis, Management, and Prevention of COPD, published in 2001. The present, newly revised document follows the same format as the original consensus report, but has been updated to reflect the many publications on COPD that have appeared. GOLD national leaders, a network of international experts, have initiated investigations of the causes and prevalence of COPD in their countries, and developed innovative approaches for the dissemination and implementation of COPD management guidelines. We appreciate the enormous amount of work the GOLD national leaders have done on behalf of their patients with COPD. Despite the achievements in the 5 years since the GOLD report was originally published, considerable additional work is ahead of us if we are to control this major public health problem. The GOLD initiative will continue to bring COPD to the attention of governments, public health officials, health care workers, and the general public, but a concerted effort by all involved in health care will be necessary.

https://www.who.int/respiratory/copd/GOLD_WR_06.pdf

Global strategy for the diagnosis, management, and prevention of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: GOLD executive summary.

Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(12)61728-0.pdf

Global and regional mortality from 235 causes of death for 20 age groups in 1990 and 2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(12)61766-8.pdf

A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990-2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010

Challenges in assessing the characteristics of influential public health research.

Ethical issues in alcohol, other drugs and addiction-related research

Response to Hser et al. (2014): The necessity for more and better data on the global epidemiology of opioid dependence.

Cancer Center at the University of Louisville, which was supported by the US Smokeless Tobacco Company, Swedish Match and the Kentucky Research Challenge Trust Fund. From 2005 to the present his research has also been supported by unrestricted grants from Swedish Match, Altria Client Services, British American Tobacco and Reynolds American Inc. Services Company to the University of Louisville. B.R. has no personal or financial conflict of interest with respect to these sponsors or other stakeholders in the tobacco or vapor industries. J.E.R. has accepted research funding from the tobacco industry, including Philip Morris USA and Philip Morris International, supporting smoking cessation and harm reduction projects. He currently consults for Philip Morris International on reduced-harm products. J. E.R. is also an inventor and party to a patent purchase agreement with Philip Morris International pertaining to a pulmonary nicotine delivery system. S.S. serves as Senior Scientific Advisor at Pinney Associates, a consulting firm through which he consult to Niconovum USA, Inc., R.J. Reynolds Vapor Company and RAI Service Company, all subsidiaries of Reynolds American Inc. (now owned by British American Tobacco) on smoking cessation and harm reduction, with consultation on combusting cigarettes explicitly excluded from the scope of consultation. The views expressed in this editorial are his own, and not necessarily those of the University of Pittsburgh, Pinney Associates or Reynolds American.

Finding acceptable ways to fund research on e-cigarettes.

The substantial interest among smokers in e-cigarettes and other nicotine vaporisers has taken the tobacco control field by surprise and produced strongly polarised responses. Proponents see these products as a disruptive technology that promises to accelerate the end of tobacco smoking by increasing quitting and providing a safer longer term alternative to the combustible cigarette. Their opponents see them as a threat to tobacco control that will allow the cigarette industry to subvert tobacco control policies, renormalise smoking and recruit new smokers.

It has been very difficult to assess the plausibility of these radically different scenarios because the evidence on who uses these devices and how they are used has been mostly limited to cross-sectional studies. Much better data from prospective studies are needed to clarify how many smokers are using them to quit and with what success; how many are using them as a full-time substitute for smoking; and how many are only using them when smoking is forbidden but otherwise continuing to smoke (dual use). It has also been unclear to what extent adolescents are using these products. Are those using them using them with or without nicotine? How many simply experiment, without continuing to use, and of those who do continue to use how many become smokers and how many of these would have done so in the absence of e-cigarettes?

The tobacco control field has begun to address the evidence gap by a dramatic increase in research over the past 5 years (see figure 1). The current issue contains a good cross section of the types of studies that are being done.



Figure 1 
Publications per year including e-cigarette related terms. Legend: Results …

https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/tobaccocontrol/25/e1/e1.full.pdf

Wayne Hall

Papers

Challenges in assessing the characteristics of influential public health research.

Ethical issues in alcohol, other drugs and addiction-related research

Response to Hser et al. (2014): The necessity for more and better data on the global epidemiology of opioid dependence.

Finding acceptable ways to fund research on e-cigarettes.

Assessing the place of nicotine vaporisers in tobacco control