A comparative evaluation of pharmacy services in single and no pharmacy towns

BACKGROUND: Recent attention has focused on access of communities to pharmacy services in rural areas. To increase access to pharmacy services in rural Western Australia some doctors have been granted a licence to dispense medication on the rationale that a pharmacy would not be economically viable in that community. However, there have been no studies conducted on whether a doctor dispensing service adequately provides a pharmacy service with respect to access and quality. METHOD: Residents of seven single pharmacy towns and seven non-pharmacy rural towns were surveyed to evaluate pharmacy services delivered by a pharmacist and doctor. The towns were chosen to match closely on key demographic features, with an average population of 1,246 and 1,263 respectively. A random sample of 150 households from each town was sent the questionnaire on pharmacy services (1050 in each group). Data was also collected from the Health Insurance Commission (HIC) on dispensing locations for the residents of the two groups of towns. RESULTS: There was a significant difference in access to pharmacy services with 82.4% of participants from pharmacy towns accessing medications within their town compared to 51.3% of non-pharmacy town participants. The HIC data supported these trends with pharmacy town residents having relatively higher prescription rates within their town compared to non-pharmacy town residents where they were more likely to access prescriptions out of their town. CONCLUSION: Pharmacy town participants were more satisfied with access to health and pharmacy services within their town. Continuation of the doctor dispensing policy requires a greater consideration of the pharmacy needs of rural residents

Facile synthesis of metal-organic framework films via in situ seeding of nanoparticles

A facile in situ nanoparticle seeding method is reported to prepare MIL-101(Cr) films on alumina supports. The in situ seeding of MIL-101(Cr) nanoparticles was promoted by use of dimethylacetamide (DMA). The generality of this approach is further demonstrated for Cu 3(btc) 2 films by using a (poly)acrylate promoter

Postsynthetic modification of coordination networks

Belgium Herbarium image of Meise Botanic Garden

Positivity-preserving and entropy-bounded discontinuous Galerkin method for the chemically reacting, compressible Navier-Stokes equations

This article concerns the development of a fully conservative, positivity-preserving, and entropy-bounded discontinuous Galerkin scheme for simulating the multicomponent, chemically reacting, compressible Navier-Stokes equations with complex thermodynamics. In particular, we extend to viscous flows the fully conservative, positivity-preserving, and entropy-bounded discontinuous Galerkin method for the chemically reacting Euler equations that we previously introduced. An important component of the formulation is the positivity-preserving Lax-Friedrichs-type viscous flux function devised by Zhang [J. Comput. Phys., 328 (2017), pp. 301-343], which was adapted to multicomponent flows by Du and Yang [J. Comput. Phys., 469 (2022), pp. 111548] in a manner that treats the inviscid and viscous fluxes as a single flux. Here, we similarly extend the aforementioned flux function to multicomponent flows but separate the inviscid and viscous fluxes. This separation of the fluxes allows for use of other inviscid flux functions, as well as enforcement of entropy boundedness on only the convective contribution to the evolved state, as motivated by physical and mathematical principles. We also discuss in detail how to account for boundary conditions and incorporate previously developed pressure-equilibrium-preserving techniques into the positivity-preserving framework. Comparisons between the Lax-Friedrichs-type viscous flux function and more conventional flux functions are provided, the results of which motivate an adaptive solution procedure that employs the former only when the element-local solution average has negative species concentrations, nonpositive density, or nonpositive pressure. A variety of multicomponent, viscous flows is computed, ranging from a one-dimensional shock tube problem to multidimensional detonation waves and shock/mixing-layer interaction

Bismuth coordination networks containing deferiprone: synthesis, characterisation, stability and antibacterial activity

A series of bismuth–dicarboxylate–deferiprone coordination networks have been prepared and structurally characterised. The new compounds have been demonstrated to release the iron overload drug deferiprone on treatment with PBS and have also been shown to have antibacterial activity against H. pylori