The Crystallisation of Pharmaceuticals Using Tailored Supramolecular Gels

Due to ever increasing pressure for pharmaceutical companies to characterise and patent the polymorph landscape of new APIs, it is important that as many forms as possible are identified in the early stages of drug development. Novel polymorph screening techniques are required to expand the scope of traditional solution-phase methods, and access highly metastable or difficult to nucleate solid forms. This work exemplifies a modern polymorph screen, using a wide variety of experimental and computational methods to comprehensively characterise the polymorph landscape of mexiletine hydrochloride. Instead of the six forms described in previous literature, this screen revealed seven: an enantiotropic pair of anhydrous polymorphs that are stable at different temperatures, one anhydrous metastable form, three families of isostructural channel solvates, and a fourth solvate of unknown structure. Two new channel solvates, and new routes to three known forms were discovered by crystallising mexiletine within drug-mimetic supramolecular gels. As gelation was often turned off when a new polymorph crystallised within the gel, these changes in solid form are likely driven by strong interactions between the drug and gelator. The crystallisation of high temperature stable Form 2 from a gel at room temperature is a particularly striking example of the powerful stabilising effect of these tailored supramolecular gels. A complementary study into the gel-phase crystallisation of diatrizoic acid showed that the drug followed the same two-step crystallisation regime as the gelator, leading to the formation of two novel drug-gelator salt solvates. These results suggest that the polymorph landscape of the gelator has influenced the drug crystallisation, which may provide a new avenue of inquiry for the design of supramolecular gelators for pharmaceutical crystallisation. From this work, it is clear that supramolecular gels are a valuable tool for pharmaceutical polymorph screening

FRIENDING AND GOAL ATTAINMENT: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY IN VIRTUAL WORLD

Encouraging individual goal pursuit through social influence is a growing trend. While friendships can be both an asset but also a burden, the impact friends have on goal attainment is not well established in the literature. We explore the influence that friend quantity and quality have on individual task-oriented goal-directed behavior using a unique set of online gaming data with a sample of about 33,000 individuals. Our results indicate a nonlinear relationship that suggests the number as well as the intimacy level of friendships positively impact individual goal achievement, but too much social friending becomes detrimental to individual goal pursuit. Females benefit slightly more from friendship amount and intimacy level, but also suffer more from too many exchanges with friends. Similarly, novice individuals not only benefit more from social influence than more experienced individuals in terms of goal pursuit, but also hurt more from friending behaviors. Our follow-up surveys with actual gamers provide additional evidence that friends indeed proffer information and emotional support that can promote goal attainment. However, too much friending can hurt goal completion due to information overload and time demands. These findings have important implications for consumers and managers regarding how social others influence individual goal attainment

New Graduate Nurse Satisfaction After Completion of Nurse Residency Program

Transitioning from novice nurse to competent nurse can come with a great amount of stress, anxiety, and apprehension. Many new nurses feel inadequate and leave their first nursing job within one year for various reasons. Research has indicated that new nurse graduates who complete a nurse residency program (NRP) have a better sense of knowledge, critical thinking skills, and sense of belonging. Whereas nurses who do not complete a residency program often feel insufficient and are less prepared. Although there are various types of general orientation programs available, it is important to educate new graduates on the advantages and significance that a NRP can offer. Henderson, Ossenberg, and Tyler (2015) recommended that interactive content days, along with supervised content days, promoted success in new graduate nurses. However, Williams, Scott, Tyndall, and Swanson (2018) recommended that there is no significant relationship between the type of mentoring and staff turnover rate if a nurse completes a one-to-one mentoring program or a group mentoring program. Therefore, it is important for new graduates to examine and choose a program wisely that will assist them to succeed in their professional career

Unlock your insight:employing a gamified app to engage manufacturers with servitization

This paper discusses the creation and dissemination of the gamified software application Unlock Your Insight. The app is based on an original workshop activity designed to engage representatives from the manufacturing industry with research into servitization. Both the workshop activity and the app encourage participants and users to reflect upon their organization’s competitive strategy; comparing their current and future visions in relation to the competitiveness of their product, price or package that they offer their customers. We argue that the gamification and digitalization of the activity allowed servitization research to be disseminated further and more quickly than previously possible

The SoTL Body: Identifying and Navigating Points of Entry

The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) as a field invites researchers to examine their teaching practice with the goal of understanding its impact and effect on student learning (Hutchings & Shulman, 1999). Though inclusive by nature – belonging to no discipline yet informing practice in all – SoTL does have its own discourse, assumptions, and literature that may intimidate disciplinary scholars. This paper uses the human body as a metaphor to explain how researchers from diverse disciplines can use familiar entry points to ease their transition into SoTL. We identify and analyze parts and systems of the human and research body, revealing connections between particular disciplinary research bodies and the SoTL research body – connections that we hope provide disciplinary scholars with the confidence they need to navigate and engage in SoTL

Tormenting thoughts: The posterior cingulate sulcus of the default mode network regulates valence of thoughts and activity in the brain's pain network during music listening

Many individuals spend a significant amount of their time “mind-wandering”. Mind-wandering often includes spontaneous, nonintentional thought, and a neural correlate of this kind of thought is the default mode network (DMN). Thoughts during mind-wandering can have positive or negative valence, but only little is known about the neural correlates of positive or negative thoughts. We used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and music to evoke mind-wandering in n = 33 participants, with positive-sounding music eliciting thoughts with more positive valence and negative-sounding music eliciting thoughts with more negative valence. Applying purely data-driven analysis methods, we show that medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC, part of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex) and the posterior cingulate sulcus (likely area 23c of the posterior cingulate cortex), two sub-regions of the DMN, modulate the valence of thought-contents during mind-wandering. In addition, across two independent experiments, we observed that the posterior cingulate sulcus, a region involved in pain, shows valence-specific functional connectivity with core regions of the brain's putative pain network. Our results suggest that two DMN regions (mOFC and posterior cingulate sulcus) support the formation of negative spontaneous, nonintentional thoughts, and that the interplay between these structures with regions of the putative pain network forms a neural mechanism by which thoughts can become painful.publishedVersio

Student Tributes to Professor Kent Newmyer

The following are the published remarks of the students and former students of Professor Kent Newmyer who spoke at a celebration honoring his work on Friday, November 8, 2019, at the University of Connecticut School of Law