Focus Group Data Saturation: A New Approach to Data Analysis

The qualitative research “gold standard” for quality research is data saturation. The limited literature on reporting data saturation and transparency in qualitative research has supported an inconsistent research standard suggesting researchers have not adequately reported data saturation to promote transparency (O’Reilly & Parker, 2012). Confusion regarding how to analyze qualitative data to achieve data saturation, how to write clear qualitative research findings, and present these findings in a usable manner continues (Sandelowski & Leeman, 2012). A phenomenological asynchronous online focus group using WordPress® was employed to answer the research question. Based on the current literature on the topic of focus group data saturation, the study findings were analyzed by group, individual, and day of the study. Additionally, the data was presented in a chart format providing a visible approach to data analysis and saturation. Employing three different methods of data analysis to confirm saturation and transparency provides qualitative researchers with different approaches to data analysis for saturation and enhancement of trustworthiness. Placing data in a visual configuration provides an alternative method of presenting research findings. The data analysis methods presented are not meant to replace existing methods of achieving data saturation but to provide an alternate approach to achieving data saturation and reporting the findings in a clear, usable format

Energy modellers should explore extremes more systematically in scenarios

Scenarios are the primary tool for examining how current decisions shape the future, but the future is affected as much by out-of-ordinary extremes as by generally expected trends. Energy modellers can study extremes both by incorporating them directly within models and by using complementary off-model analyses

Patient Acceptability and Preferences for Solid Oral Dosage Form Drug Product Attributes: A Scoping Review

Brett Hauber,1 Mark V Hand,2 Bruno C Hancock,3 Joseph Zarrella,3 Ljiljana Harding,4 Michaela Ogden-Barker,5 Amy S Antipas,3 Stephen J Watt1 1Pfizer Inc, New York, NY, USA; 2Pfizer Ireland Pharmaceuticals, Ballintaggart, Cork, Ringaskiddy, Ireland; 3Pfizer Inc, Groton, CT, USA; 4Pfizer ApS, Ballerup, Denmark; 5Pfizer Ltd, Sandwich, England, UKCorrespondence: Brett Hauber, Pfizer Inc, 66 Hudson Boulevard, New York, NY, 10018, USA, Tel +16102359462, Email [email protected]: There is no consistent framework for patient-centric drug product design, despite the common understanding that drug product acceptability and preferences influence adherence and, therefore, drug product effectiveness. The aim of this review was to assess current understanding of patient acceptability and preferences for solid oral dosage form (SODF) drug product attributes, and the potential impact of these attributes on patient behaviors and outcomes.Patients and Methods: A scoping review was conducted. Embase, Ovid MEDLINE®, and PubMed® were searched for full-text articles published between January 2013 and May 2023. Following screening and assessment against predefined inclusion criteria, data were analyzed thematically.Results: Nineteen studies were included. Four overarching domains of drug product attributes were identified and summarized in a framework: appearance, swallowability, palatability, and handling. Each domain was informed by specific drug product attributes: texture, form, size, shape, color, marking, taste, mouthfeel, and smell. The most frequently studied domains were swallowability and appearance, while the most studied attributes were size, shape, and texture. Smell, marking, and mouthfeel were the least studied attributes. Texture intersected all domains, while form, shape, and size intersected appearance, swallowability, and handling. Swallowability and size appeared to be the key domain and attribute, respectively, to consider when designing drug products. Few studies explored the impact of drug product attributes on behaviors and outcomes.Conclusion: While existing studies of drug product attributes have focused on appearance and swallowability, this review highlighted the importance of two less well-understood domains—palatability and handling—in understanding patients’ acceptability and preferences for SODF drug products. The framework provides a tool to facilitate patient-centric design of drug products, organizing and categorizing physical drug product attributes into four overarching domains (appearance, swallowability, palatability, and handling), encouraging researchers to comprehensively assess the impact of drug product attributes on patient acceptability, preferences, and outcomes.Plain Language Summary: Medicines come in a variety of types and forms. These include tablets and capsules. Factors, such as the size and shape of tablets, can affect how people take medicines. However, patients are rarely involved in designing the medicines that they take. In this study, researchers summarized 19 studies published between 2013 and 2023. They wanted to understand how different factors, like size and shape, affect patients’ preferences, ability, and willingness to take medicines. Researchers focused on the “physical” aspects of medicines and found 4 common themes: 1) what they look like (appearance), 2) how easy they are to swallow (swallowability), 3) how they taste and feel in the mouth (palatability), and 4) how easy they are to handle (handling). Eight factors were also found: color, markings, shape, size, smell, taste, texture, and how a medicine feels in the mouth (mouthfeel). Most studies focused on what medicines look like and how easy they are to swallow. The factors that researchers mostly looked at were the size, shape, and texture of medicines. The design of medicines can impact patients of different ages, though there may be specific needs for certain groups of patients, including children, older adults, and people with certain diseases. Patient input should become a part of future medicines design to ensure their acceptability.Keywords: preference, acceptability, formulation, drug product attributes, drug product desig

Estimation of the solubility parameters of model plant surfaces and agrochemicals: a valuable tool for understanding plant surface interactions

Background Most aerial plant parts are covered with a hydrophobic lipid-rich cuticle, which is the interface between the plant organs and the surrounding environment. Plant surfaces may have a high degree of hydrophobicity because of the combined effects of surface chemistry and roughness. The physical and chemical complexity of the plant cuticle limits the development of models that explain its internal structure and interactions with surface-applied agrochemicals. In this article we introduce a thermodynamic method for estimating the solubilities of model plant surface constituents and relating them to the effects of agrochemicals. Results Following the van Krevelen and Hoftyzer method, we calculated the solubility parameters of three model plant species and eight compounds that differ in hydrophobicity and polarity. In addition, intact tissues were examined by scanning electron microscopy and the surface free energy, polarity, solubility parameter and work of adhesion of each were calculated from contact angle measurements of three liquids with different polarities. By comparing the affinities between plant surface constituents and agrochemicals derived from (a) theoretical calculations and (b) contact angle measurements we were able to distinguish the physical effect of surface roughness from the effect of the chemical nature of the epicuticular waxes. A solubility parameter model for plant surfaces is proposed on the basis of an increasing gradient from the cuticular surface towards the underlying cell wall. Conclusions The procedure enabled us to predict the interactions among agrochemicals, plant surfaces, and cuticular and cell wall components, and promises to be a useful tool for improving our understanding of biological surface interactions

A visual processing advantage for young-adolescent deaf observers: Evidence from face and object matching tasks

It is unresolved whether the permanent auditory deprivation that deaf people experience leads to the enhanced visual processing of faces. The current study explored this question with a matching task in which observers searched for a target face among a concurrent lineup of ten faces. This was compared with a control task in which the same stimuli were presented upside down, to disrupt typical face processing, and an object matching task. A sample of young-adolescent deaf observers performed with higher accuracy than hearing controls across all of these tasks. These results clarify previous findings and provide evidence for a general visual processing advantage in deaf observers rather than a face-specific effect

Physio-chemical characterization of three-component co-amorphous systems generated by a melt-quench method

The purpose of this work was to evaluate the possibility of creating a ternary co-amorphous system and to determine how the properties of a co-amorphous material are altered by the addition of a selected third component. Piroxicam and indomethacin form a stable co-amorphous with the Tg above room temperature. The third component added was selected based on tendency to crystallise (benzamide, caffeine) or form amorphous (acetaminophen, clotrimazole) on cooling. Generated co-amorphous systems were characterised with TGA, HSM, DSC, FTIR, and XRD. Stable ternary co-amorphous systems were successfully generated, which was confirmed using XRD, DSC and FTIR analysis. In all cases, Tg of the ternary system was lower than the Tg of the binary system, although higher than that of the individual third compound. Upon storage for 4 weeks all created ternary systems showed significantly smaller variation in Tg compared to the binary system. Stable three-component co-amorphous systems can be generated via melt quench method using either a crystalline or amorphous third component. Addition of third component can alter the Tg of co-amorphous system and in all cases created more stable co-amorphous system upon storage. Physical parameters may not be sufficient in predicting the resulting Tg, therefore knowledge of chemical interaction must be brought into equation as well

Adaptations to Climate-Mediated Selective Pressures in Humans

Humans inhabit a remarkably diverse range of environments, and adaptation through natural selection has likely played a central role in the capacity to survive and thrive in extreme climates. Unlike numerous studies that used only population genetic data to search for evidence of selection, here we scan the human genome for selection signals by identifying the SNPs with the strongest correlations between allele frequencies and climate across 61 worldwide populations. We find a striking enrichment of genic and nonsynonymous SNPs relative to non-genic SNPs among those that are strongly correlated with these climate variables. Among the most extreme signals, several overlap with those from GWAS, including SNPs associated with pigmentation and autoimmune diseases. Further, we find an enrichment of strong signals in gene sets related to UV radiation, infection and immunity, and cancer. Our results imply that adaptations to climate shaped the spatial distribution of variation in humans

Cold Induces Micro- and Nano-Scale Reorganization of Lipid Raft Markers at Mounds of T-Cell Membrane Fluctuations

Whether and how cold causes changes in cell-membrane or lipid rafts remain poorly characterized. Using the NSOM/QD and confocal imaging systems, we found that cold caused microscale redistribution of lipid raft markers, GM1 for lipid and CD59 for protein, from the peripheral part of microdomains to the central part on Jurkat T cells, and that cold also induced the nanoscale size-enlargement (1/3- to 2/3-fold) of the nanoclusters of lipid raft markers and even the colocalization of GM1 and CD59 nanoclusters. These findings indicate cold-induced lateral rearrangement/coalescence of raft-related membrane heterogeneity. The cold-induced re-distribution of lipid raft markers under a nearly-natural condition provide clues for their alternations, and help to propose a model in which raft lipids associate themselves or interact with protein components to generate functional membrane heterogeneity in response to stimulus. The data also underscore the possible cold-induced artifacts in early-described cold-related experiments and the detergent-resistance-based analyses of lipid rafts at 4°C, and provide a biophysical explanation for recently-reported cold-induced activation of signaling pathways in T cells. Importantly, our fluorescence-topographic NSOM imaging demonstrated that GM1/CD59 raft markers distributed and re-distributed at mounds but not depressions of T-cell membrane fluctuations. Such mound-top distribution of lipid raft markers or lipid rafts provides spatial advantage for lipid rafts or contact molecules interacting readily with neighboring cells or free molecules

Extensive myocardial infiltration by hemopoietic precursors in a patient with myelodysplastic syndrome

BACKGROUND: Although myocardial infiltration with leukemic blasts is a known finding in patients with acute leukemia, this phenomenon in myelodysplasia is not reported in the literature. Cardiac symptoms in patients with myelodysplasia are often due to anemia and may be due to iron overload and side effects of therapy. CASE PRESENTATION: Herein we report the first case of neoplastic infiltration of the heart with associated myocardial necrosis in a patient with myelodysplasia. It was associated with unicellular and multifocal geographic areas of necrosis in the left ventricle and the interventricular septum. It is likely that cardiac compromise in our patient was due to a combination of restrictive cardiomyopathy due to leukemic infiltration, concomitant anemia, cardiac dilatation, conduction blocks and myocardial necrosis. Myocardial necrosis was most likely due to a combination of ischemic damage secondary to anemia and prolonged hypotension and extensive leukemic infiltration. Markedly rapid decrease in ejection fraction from 66% to 33% also suggests the role of ischemia, since leukemic infiltration is not expected to cause this degree of systolic dysfunction over a 24-hour period. The diagnosis was not suspected during life due to concomitant signs and symptoms of anemia, pulmonary infections, and pericardial and pleural effusions. The patient succumbed to cardiac failure. CONCLUSION: Hemopoietic cell infiltration was not considered in the differential diagnosis and contributed to this patient's morbidity and mortality. This case highlights the clinical importance of considering myocardial infiltration in patients with myelodysplasia and cardiac symptoms