Estimating the National and Local Prevalence of Problem Drug Misuse in Scotland

This report outlines the results of the third national study funded by the Scottish Government to provide estimates of the prevalence of problem drug misuse in Scotland. The estimates refer to the calendar year 2006

Interpreting and responding to expressions of mental pain: the inner and outer dialogues of the mental health nurse

The experience and expression of mental pain can be interpreted in various ways by the mental health nurse and the client during therapeutic interaction. This chapter explores how meanings of mental distress are configured through dialogue between and within the mental health nurse and the person in care. Here, the authors follow Bahktin’s (1981) thesis that meaning making is a dialogical activity, arrived at through engagement with one’s own internal voices and available dialogues and discouses in the surrounding context. Thus the nurses’s understanding or sense making of expressions of mental pain emerges from the interaction between inner (personal, embodied) and outer (professional / therapeutic, social) dialogues. These internal and external ‘voices’ inevitably influence the nurse’s engagement with the client; where these are unquestioned and congruent, the nurse enters into therapeutic engagement with a sense of clarity and purpose and when these dialogues are at variance, the nurse encounters confusion as s / he struggles to find a meaningful interpretation of events so that s / he can engage purposefully with the person in care. The authors ague that while congruent dialogues may facilitate spontaneous knowing and acting, unquestioned interpretations can become habituated knowledge constructions, employing and sustaining professional monologues that dominate the communication process and suppress possible alternative voicings of mental distress. In this chapter we are interested in troubling dialogues in mental health interactions and interventions. We suggest that when inner / outer voices that are perhaps conflictual and somewhat confusing, are met with open curiosity, this approach can promote opportunities for new and transformational dialogue. Further, using vignettes from teaching and research contexts, we offer two interlinked strategies for purposefully engaging with contending dialogues and developing communication about mental pain, thereby enhancing the therapeutic relationship between the nurse and person in care

Interaction of Carbon Nanotubes with Sugar Complexes

The interaction of carbon nanotubes with soft organic molecules such as cyclodextrins and other saccarides has recently been shown to produce water soluble composites. Such systems offer considerable advantages over polymer based composites due to their biocompatibility and noncovalent coupling which can potentially preserve the unique properties of the tubes. The mechanism of interaction for such systems has been proposed to be dominated by hydrophobic and hydrophilic interactions along the surface of the tube. However efforts to characterise and rationalise such noncovalent interactions between the sugar-based materials and the carbon nanotubes have been slow to emerge. In this study a composite system has been formed using HiPco Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes (HCNT) and starch (extracted from rice). This composite was characterised using a range of spectroscopic techniques, which showed clear evidence of an intermolecular interaction between the HCNT and starch. The characterisation of these systems will be presented and evidence to support the notion of a noncovalent interaction is clear

Improving Low-Cost Measurement Techniques to Investigate the Connections Between Fossil Fuels and Air Quality: from Oil and Gas Production to Home Heating

Natural gas, as an energy resource can exert both positive and negative influences on air quality where people live, work, and go to school. Air quality in basins where oil and gas are produced from geologic formations can be potentially degraded by industry activities, but using natural gas in place of solid fuels like wood and coal for home heating and in other applications can potentially result in improved air quality. Low- cost gas sensors have emerged recently with great potential to help inform air quality on the scales that people live in ways that traditional instrumentation is not well suited, though the usefulness of these tools is complicated by cross sensitivity to environmental variables like temperature and humidity, as well as potentially confounding gas species. The ability of low-cost gas sensors to yield meaningful information about air quality, with relevance to human and environmental health, is therefore contingent on progress in terms of sensor signal quantification methods, best practices for experimental design and deployment, along with data quality assessment and interpretation.In this dissertation, such methods are developed and applied, employing low-cost gas sensors to characterize air quality in both indoor and ambient environments, in the context of natural gas production and end use as a home heating fuel. Carbon monoxide (CO) measurements are used to characterize how home heating fuels can differentially influence air quality in homes on the Navajo Nation. CO levels in homes are quantified with uncertainty estimation and are employed to estimate air exchange rates in homes and CO emission rates. Methods to measure air quality in oil and gas production basins using arrays of low-cost gas sensors are also developed and analyzed. Field normalization sensor signal quantification methods employing both artificial neural networks and multiple linear regressions are compared. The sensitivity and robustness of each quantification method is explored for each gas species. To further understand how distributed grids of sensor measurements can inform spatial and temporal patterns of air quality in oil and gas production basins, the performance of these sensor quantification methods are assessed when extended to new sampling locations

Comparative in Vitro Cytotoxicity Study of Silver Nanoparticle on Two Mammalian Cell Lines

In this study the cytotoxic effect of commercially available silver (Ag) nanoparticle was evaluated using human dermal and cervical cancer cell lines. Prior to the cellular studies a full particle size characterisation was carried out using Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS), Transmission Electron Microscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy in distilled water and cell culture media. The Zeta Potential (ZP)associated with the Ag nanoparticle was also determined in order to assess its stability in the solutions and its possible interaction with the media. The DLS and ZP study have suggested interaction of Ag nanoparticles with the media, which can lead to secondary toxicity. The toxic effects of Ag nanoparticles were then evaluated using different cytotoxic endpoints namely the lysosomal activity, mitochondrial metabolism, basic cellular metabolism, cellular protein content and cellular proliferative capacity. The cytotoxic effect of Ag nanoparticle was dependant on dose, exposure time and on the cell line tested. Further investigation was carried out on HeLa and HaCaT cell lines to elucidate the mechanism of its cytotoxicity. The Ag nanoparticle was noted to induce elevated levels of oxidative stress, glutathione depletion and damage to the cell membrane as found from the adenylate kinase assay and that leads to the apoptosis. Overall, significant differences were observed between the sensitivity of the two cell lines which can be understood in terms of their natural antioxidant levels

Solution layer deposition: A technique for the growth of ultra-pure manganese oxides on silica at room temperature

With the ever increasing miniaturization in microelectronic devices, new deposition techniques are required to form high-purity metal oxide layers. Herein, we report a liquid route to specifically produce thin and conformal amorphous manganese oxide layers on silicon substrate, which can be transformed into a manganese silicate layer. The undesired insertion of carbon into the functional layers is avoided through a solution metal–organic chemistry approach named Solution Layer Deposition (SLD). The growth of a pure manganese oxide film by SLD takes place through the decoordination of ligands from a metal–organic complex in mild conditions, and coordination of the resulting metal atoms on a silica surface. The mechanism of this chemical liquid route has been elucidated by solid-state 29Si MAS NMR, XPS, SIMS, and HRTEM

Go Forth and Multiply: Revisiting Religion and Fertility in the United States, 1984-2008

Many studies on the fertility differential by religion have considered both Catholics and Protestants to be equally homogenous groups. Contrary to these studies, we contend that Protestant fertility must be studied in the context of heterogeneous groups. Specifically, conservative Protestantism, with its beliefs about artificial birth control mirroring Catholic teaching, should be examined separately from other Protestant traditions. Using data from the General Social Survey we find that conservative Protestants and Catholics had about the same level of fertility, while mainline Protestants have a fertility rate that is significantly lower than that of Catholics. We also examine the changes in these differences over time

Comparison of A-mode and B-mode Ultrasound for Measurement of Subcutaneous Fat

With lower-cost devices and technologic advancements, ultrasound has been undergoing a resurgence as a method to measure subcutaneous adipose tissue. We aimed to determine whether a low-cost, 2.5-MHz amplitude (A-mode) ultrasound, designed specifically for body composition assessment, could produce subcutaneous fat thickness measurements comparable to an expensive, 12-MHz brightness (B-mode) device. Fat thickness was measured on 40 participants (20 female, 20 male; 29.7 ± 11.1 y of age; body mass index 24.9 ± 4.5 kg/m2) at 7 sites (chest, subscapula, mid-axilla, triceps, abdomen, suprailiac and thigh) with both devices. Intraclass correlations exceeded 0.75 at all measurement sites. Mean differences in fat thickness were not significantly different (p \u3e 0.05) and within ± 1.0 mm. Variability between devices was greatest at the abdomen, the site with the greatest thickness. The low-cost, low-resolution A-mode ultrasound provides subcutaneous fat thickness measurements similar to the more expensive, high-resolution B-mode ultrasound