Stability of Extemporaneously Prepared Rufinamide Oral Suspensions

Background: Rufinamide is an oral antiepileptic drug indicated for adjunctive therapy in treating generalized seizures associated with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. Currently, rufinanide is available as 200-mg and 400-mg tablets. A liquid dosage form does not exist at the present time. Lack of a suspension formulation may present an administration problem for many children and adults who are unable to swallow tablets. The availability of a liquid dosage form will provide an easy and accurate way to measure and administer the medication. Objective: To determine the stability of both sugar-containing and sugar-free rufinamide suspensions over a 90-day period. Methods: A suspension of rufinamide 40 mg/mL was prepared by grinding twelve 400-mg tablets of rufinamide tablets in a glass mortar. Sixty milliliters of Ora-Plus and 60 mL of either Ora-Sweet or Ora-Sweet SF (sugar free) were mixed and added to the powder to make a final volume of 120 mL. Three identical samples of each formulation were prepared and placed in 60-mL amber plastic bottles and were stored at room temperature. A 1-mL sample was withdrawn from each of the 6 bottles with a micropipette immediately after preparation and at 7, 14, 28, 56, and 90 days. After further dilution to an expected concentration of 0.4 mg/mL, the samples were assayed using high-performance liquid chromatography. Stability was defined as the retention of at least 90% of the initial concentration. Results: At least 90% of the initial rufinamide concentration remained throughout the 90-day study period in both preparations. There were no detectable changes in color, odor, taste, and pH and no visible microbial growth. Conclusions: Extemporaneously compounded suspensions of rufinamide 40 mg/mL in a 1:1 mixture of Ora-Plus and Ora-Sweet or Ora-Sweet SF were stable for at least 90 days when stored in 59-mL amber polypropylene plastic bottles at room temperature

An unlikely hero? : challenging stigma through community engagement

Purpose � The purpose of this paper is to describe a high-profile social enterprise in Blackpool, England, called Jobs, Friends and Houses (JFH) that has created a visible social identity of recovery and meaningful activity, to assess how stigma is challenged through active and visible community engagement

Detoxification in rehabilitation in England: effective continuity of care or unhappy bedfellows?

There is evidence that residential detoxification alone does not provide satisfactory treatment outcomes and that outcomes are significantly enhanced when clients completing residential detoxification attend rehabilitation services (Gossop, Marsden, Stewart, & Rolfe, 1999; Ghodse, Reynolds, Baldacchino, et al., 2002). One way of increasing the likelihood of this continuity of treatment is by providing detoxification and rehabilitation within the same treatment facility to prevent drop-out, while the client awaits a rehabilitation bed or in the transition process. However, there is little research evidence available on the facilities that offer both medical detoxification and residential rehabilitation. The current study compares self-reported treatment provision in 87 residential rehabilitation services in England, 34 of whom (39.1%) reported that they offered detoxification services within their treatment programmes. Although there were no differences in self-reported treatment philosophies, residential rehabilitation services that offered detoxification were typically of shorter duration overall, had significantly more beds and reported offering more group work than residential rehabilitation services that did not offer detoxification. Outcomes were also different, with twice as many clients discharged on disciplinary grounds from residential rehabilitation services without detoxification facilities. The paper questions the UK classification of residential drug treatment services as either detoxification or rehabilitation and suggests the need for greater research focus on the aims, processes and outcomes of this group of treatment providers

Hypervelocity impact study: The effect of impact angle on crater morphology

The Space Power Institute (SPI) of Auburn University has conducted preliminary tests on the effects of impact angle on crater morphology for hypervelocity impacts. Copper target plates were set at angles of 30 deg and 60 deg from the particle flight path. For the 30 deg impact, the craters looked almost identical to earlier normal incidence impacts. The only difference found was in the apparent distribution of particle residue within the crater, and further research is needed to verify this. The 60 deg impacts showed marked differences in crater symmetry, crater lip shape, and particle residue distribution. Further research on angle effects is planned, because the particle velocities for these shots were relatively slow (7 km/s or less)

Recovery and desistance : what the emerging recovery movement in the alcohol and drug area can learn from models of desistance from offending

In the last twenty years, the recovery movement in alcohol and other drugs (AOD) has emerged as a major influence on alcohol and drug policy and practice in the UK, US and Australia. In roughly the same period of time, the desistance movement has become increasingly prominent in academic criminology, and is increasingly influential in criminal justice practice, particularly in the area of probation. Furthermore, the populations involved in recovery and desistance research have significant overlap, yet there has been little shared learning across these areas. The current article explores the evolution of thinking around desistance and what lessons it might offer conceptual models of recovery. It will be argued that one of the most important shared assumptions relates to identity change, and the extent to which these identity changes are intrinsically social or 'relational'. The paper will advance a social identity model as a mechanism for understanding the journey to recovery or desistance and the centrality of reintegration into communities for a coherent model and public policy around addiction recovery

Loss-of-Mains Protection System by Application of Phasor Measurement Unit Technology with Experimentally Assessed Threshold Settings

Loss-of-mains protection is an important component of the protection systems of embedded generation. The role of loss-of-mains is to disconnect the embedded generator from the utility grid in the event that connection to utility dispatched generation is lost. This is necessary for a number of reasons, including the safety of personnel during fault restoration and the protection of plant against out-of-synchronism reclosure to the mains supply. The incumbent methods of loss-of-mains protection were designed when the installed capacity of embedded generation was low, and known problems with nuisance tripping of the devices were considered acceptable because of the insignificant consequence to system operation. With the dramatic increase in the installed capacity of embedded generation over the last decade, the limitations of current islanding detection methods are no longer acceptable. This study describes a new method of loss-of-mains protection based on phasor measurement unit (PMU) technology, specifically using a low cost PMU device of the authors' design which has been developed for distribution network applications. The proposed method addresses the limitations of the incumbent methods, providing a solution that is free of nuisance tripping and has a zero non-detection zone. This system has been tested experimentally and is shown to be practical, feasible and effective. Threshold settings for the new method are recommended based on data acquired from both the Great Britain and Ireland power systems

Life in recovery: a families’ perspective

Although the Life in Recovery series has provided valuable insights into the transformation of the lives of people in recov- ery and has helped to frame that by recovery method and approach, by gender and by location, it has not assessed the impact of recovery on those immediately surrounding the person in recovery. The Families Living in Addiction and Recovery (FLAR) survey was an attempt to address this by inviting family members to report on their experiences, as witnesses and in their own right as people going through their own version of recovery. Based on two half-day work- shops in London and Sheffield, a revised survey for family members was developed that assessed the family member ’ s observations of recovery and their own personal journey. In total, 1,565 surveys were completed and returned, reflecting much of the positive experience of the previous surveys. They also showed the extent of adverse effects of addiction and the subsequent benefits of recovery to family members. However, recovery is not a linear process, and much of the data in this article discusses the impact of user relapse on family member functioning. The implications for ongoing support for family members and further research around the recovery journeys of family members are discussed

The HiZELS/UKIRT large area survey for bright Lyman-alpha emitters at z~9

We present the largest area survey to date (1.4 deg2) for Lyman-alpha emitters (LAEs) at z~9, as part of the Hi-z Emission Line Survey (HiZELS). The survey, which primarily targets H-alpha emitters at z < 3, uses the Wide Field CAMera on the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope and a custom narrow-band filter in the J band to reach a Lyman-alpha luminosity limit of ~10^43.8 erg/s over a co-moving volume of 1.12x10^6 Mpc^3 at z = 8.96+-0.06. Two candidates were found out of 1517 line emitters, but those were rejected as LAEs after follow-up observations. This improves the limit on the space density of bright Lyman-alpha emitters by 3 orders of magnitude and is consistent with suppression of the bright end of the Lyman-alpha luminosity function beyond z~6. Combined with upper limits from smaller but deeper surveys, this rules out some of the most extreme models for high-redshift Lyman-alpha emitters. The potential contamination of narrow-band Lyman-alpha surveys at z>7 by Galactic brown dwarf stars is also examined, leading to the conclusion that such contamination may well be significant for searches at 7.7 < z < 8.0, 9.1 < z < 9.5 and 11.7 < z < 12.2.Comment: To appear in proceedings of "UKIRT at 30: A British Success Story

Community recovery as a public health intervention: The contagion of hope

There is a growing evidence base for recovery as a journey that involves reduced relapse risk, improved citizenship, and better global health and well-being. Although this is the case, there is a risk of omitting one of the prime benefits of a diverse range of recovery activities—the impact on families and the wider community. What the current article does is to summarize evidence around the “social contagion” of recovery through communities and its potential role in transmitting hope and the belief that recovery is possible even to those who are not yet ready to commit to abstinence. And further, that in doing so, visible recovery increases community cohesion and challenges stigmatisation and exclusion of recovery populations. The implications for public health from an emerging visible and high-profile social identity of recovery is discussed