Cannabis legalisation and testing for cannabis use in safety- and risk-sensitive environments

The legalisation of cannabis by the High Court of South Africa, which was confirmed by the Constitutional Court, imposes challenges to occupational medical practitioners acting as medical review officers in compliance testing and fit-for-service medical examinations. The lipophilic character of the psychoactive component of cannabis, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC), and its prolonged elimination half-life, create challenges for the ethically and scientifically correct management of the legal use of cannabis in risk-sensitive environments. Important issues to consider in testing for cannabis use are: the stance of ‘zero tolerance’; screening and confirmation cut-off concentrations; and the bio-matrices used for testing. Constitutional rights relate to privacy, freedom, autonomy, freedom of religion and the equal enjoyment of rights and privileges, which must be balanced against the health and safety of others

Retrospective discounting and augmenting in an overjustification procedure

Salient reward procedures can lead to decrements in the subsequent value or intrinsic motivation for an interesting target activity. Attributional analyses explain this phenomenon in terms of discounting: performing an interesting activity for an incentive induces an external attribution of causality, which is associated with a corresponding decrease in perceived intrinsic motivation. Nonattributional hypotheses explain the value decrement in terms of differential performance during the treatment session. Expected rewards can produce distraction, hurried performance, stereotyped responding, and other effects, all of which can interfere with the enjoyment of the target activity. Three experiments were conducted in which differential performance during the treatment session was ruled out by the use of a retrospective misattribution procedure. Adult subjects performed target activities while listening to background music. After the "treatment" session, but prior to the free-choice test session, experimental subjects were told that the music contained subliminal messages either encouraging or discouraging target activity performance

Cannabis legalisation and testing for cannabis use in safety- and risk-sensitive environments

The legalisation of cannabis by the High Court of South Africa, which was confirmed by the Constitutional Court, imposes challenges to occupational medical practitioners acting as medical review officers in compliance testing and fit-for-service medical examinations. The lipophilic character of the psychoactive component of cannabis, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC), and its prolonged elimination half-life, create challenges for the ethically and scientifically correct management of the legal use of cannabis in risk-sensitive environments. Important issues to consider in testing for cannabis use are: the stance of ‘zero tolerance’; screening and confirmation cut-off concentrations; and the bio-matrices used for testing. Constitutional rights relate to privacy, freedom, autonomy, freedom of religion and the equal enjoyment of rights and privileges, which must be balanced against the health and safety of others.http://www.samj.org.zaam2021ChemistryPublic La

Prohibited substance regulation and compliance testing : a principalism approach

BACKGROUND. Prohibited substance regulation and compliance-testing programmes are required to minimise risks to health and safety in the workplace due to inappropriate use of legal (alcohol, cannabis) and illegal substances. A compliance drug test is, in principle, an invasive biomedical intervention that infringes on the autonomy and other rights of the individual, giving rise to ethical dilemmas. OBJECTIVES. To employ Beauchamp and Childress’ principalism approach to reason and to motivate for the minimum ethical requirements for this type of biomedical intervention. METHODS. The ethical aspects relevant to the mandatory guidelines of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the USA (SAMHSA) protocols and procedures were extracted and interpreted with reference to the principalism approach. RESULTS. The principalism approach was found to be highly applicable to the ethical requirements of a prohibited substance regulation and testing programme. CONCLUSION. Ethical dilemmas could be explained and motivated by using the four principles of respect for autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice as a starting point.http://www.sajbl.org.zaam2021ChemistryPublic La

Miniaturized thin-film filters to connect multiple self-written waveguides

Self-written waveguides (SWWs) have been well investigated within the last decades. In most cases, they are used as low-loss coupling structures, i.e., to connect buried optical structures in photonic integrated circuits. In this work, we extend the field of possible applications for SWWs by embedding a novel thin-film filter to split the beam and connect multiple output ports simultaneously. The multilayer design of the dielectric filter can be customized to enable its application as a dichroic beamsplitter for photonic networks. The embedded thin-film filter was characterized in detail and used to connect an additional optical sensing element, which is also based on SWWs, to demonstrate its usability for measurement of physical quantities

Non-Coexistence of Infinite Clusters in Two-Dimensional Dependent Site Percolation

This paper presents three results on dependent site percolation on the square lattice. First, there exists no positively associated probability measure on {0,1}^{Z^2} with the following properties: a) a single infinite 0cluster exists almost surely, b) at most one infinite 1*cluster exists almost surely, c) some probabilities regarding 1*clusters are bounded away from zero. Second, we show that coexistence of an infinite 1*cluster and an infinite 0cluster is almost surely impossible when the underlying probability measure is ergodic with respect to translations, positively associated, and satisfies the finite energy condition. The third result analyses the typical structure of infinite clusters of both types in the absence of positive association. Namely, under a slightly sharpened finite energy condition, the existence of infinitely many disjoint infinite self-avoiding 1*paths follows from the existence of an infinite 1*cluster. The same holds with respect to 0paths and 0clusters.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figur

Effects of urodilatin on natriuresis in cirrhosis patients with sodium retention

BACKGROUND: Sodium retention and ascites are serious clinical problems in cirrhosis. Urodilatin (URO) is a peptide with paracrine effects in decreasing sodium reabsorption in the distal nephron. Our aim was to investigate the renal potency of synthetic URO on urine sodium excretion in cirrhosis patients with sodium retention and ascites. METHODS: Seven cirrhosis patients with diuretics-resistant sodium retention received a short-term (90 min) infusion of URO in a single-blind, placebo-controlled cross-over study. In the basal state after rehydration the patients had urine sodium excretion < 50 mmol/24 h. RESULTS: URO transiently increased urine sodium excretion from 22 ± 16 μmol/min (mean ± SD) to 78 ± 41 μmol/min (P < 0.05) and there was no effect of placebo (29 ± 14 to 44 ± 32). The increase of URO's second messenger after the receptor, cGMP, was normal. URO had no effect on urine flow or on blood pressure. Most of the patients had highly elevated plasma levels of renin, angiotensin II and aldosterone and URO did not change these. CONCLUSION: The short-term low-dose URO infusion increased the sodium excretion of the patients. The increase was small but systematic and potentially clinically important for such patients. The small response contrasts the preserved responsiveness of the URO receptors. The markedly activated systemic pressor hormones in cirrhosis evidently antagonized the local tubular effects of URO

Condensation Coefficient Measurement for Water in the UMR Cloud Simulation Chamber

A systematic series of condensation coefficient measurements of water have been made using the University of Missouri-Rolla cooled-wall expansion chamber which simulates the thermodynamics of cloud. This coefficient is seen to decrease from a value near unity, at the outset of simulation, to a value in the neighborhood of 0.01 toward the end of a simulation. Final values of this coefficient are sufficiently low as to contribute significantly to the broadening of the drop-size distribution in cloud

Motion and Emotion: Understanding Urban Architecture through Diverse Multisensorial Engagements

Understanding how (dis)abled human bodies interact with the built environment is critical in Urban Design. We examine if somaesthetic theory combined with a neuro-architectural framework can help advance our understanding of human bodily interaction with the built environment. We do so first from a theoretical point of view, and second with an analysis of the situated context: Budolfi Square in Aalborg, Denmark. Our take-home-message is that architects and urban designers need to move beyond the established understanding of the multi-sensory soma, into an understanding of a situated mobile-emotional soma