The use of long acting injectable antipsychotic medication

Evidence supports the use of long-acting injectable (LAI) antipsychotics in the treatment and prevention psychosis, but these formulations remain under-used in the UK. Overall, LAIs offer many advantages and the advent of second-generation LAIs increased interest in injectables as these newer drugs offer similar benefits to their oral equivalents. LAIs should be one of the options discussed with patients requiring long-term treatment

Nernst branes from special geometry

We construct new black brane solutions in $U(1)$ gauged ${\cal N}=2$ supergravity with a general cubic prepotential, which have entropy density $s\sim T^{1/3}$ as $T \rightarrow 0$ and thus satisfy the Nernst Law. By using the real formulation of special geometry, we are able to obtain analytical solutions in closed form as functions of two parameters, the temperature $T$ and the chemical potential $\mu$. Our solutions interpolate between hyperscaling violating Lifshitz geometries with $(z,\theta)=(0,2)$ at the horizon and $(z,\theta)=(1,-1)$ at infinity. In the zero temperature limit, where the entropy density goes to zero, we recover the extremal Nernst branes of Barisch et al, and the parameters of the near horizon geometry change to $(z,\theta)=(3,1)$.Comment: 37 pages. v2: numerical pre-factors of scalar fields q_A corrected in Section 3. No changes to conclusions. References adde

Interphase chromosome positioning in in vitro porcine cells and ex vivo porcine tissues

Copyright @ 2012 The Authors. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and 85 reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The article was made available through the Brunel University Open Access Publishing Fund.BACKGROUND: In interphase nuclei of a wide range of species chromosomes are organised into their own specific locations termed territories. These chromosome territories are non-randomly positioned in nuclei which is believed to be related to a spatial aspect of regulatory control over gene expression. In this study we have adopted the pig as a model in which to study interphase chromosome positioning and follows on from other studies from our group of using pig cells and tissues to study interphase genome re-positioning during differentiation. The pig is an important model organism both economically and as a closely related species to study human disease models. This is why great efforts have been made to accomplish the full genome sequence in the last decade. RESULTS: This study has positioned most of the porcine chromosomes in in vitro cultured adult and embryonic fibroblasts, early passage stromal derived mesenchymal stem cells and lymphocytes. The study is further expanded to position four chromosomes in ex vivo tissue derived from pig kidney, lung and brain. CONCLUSIONS: It was concluded that porcine chromosomes are also non-randomly positioned within interphase nuclei with few major differences in chromosome position in interphase nuclei between different cell and tissue types. There were also no differences between preferred nuclear location of chromosomes in in vitro cultured cells as compared to cells in tissue sections. Using a number of analyses to ascertain by what criteria porcine chromosomes were positioned in interphase nuclei; we found a correlation with DNA content.This study is partly supported by Sygen International PLC

Moving from evidence-based medicine to evidence-based health.

While evidence-based medicine (EBM) has advanced medical practice, the health care system has been inconsistent in translating EBM into improvements in health. Disparities in health and health care play out through patients' limited ability to incorporate the advances of EBM into their daily lives. Assisting patients to self-manage their chronic conditions and paying attention to unhealthy community factors could be added to EBM to create a broader paradigm of evidence-based health. A perspective of evidence-based health may encourage physicians to consider their role in upstream efforts to combat socially patterned chronic disease

A Theoretical Analysis of How Segmentation of Dynamic Visualizations Optimizes Students' Learning

This article reviews studies investigating segmentation of dynamic visualizations (i.e., showing dynamic visualizations in pieces with pauses in between) and discusses two not mutually exclusive processes that might underlie the effectiveness of segmentation. First, cognitive activities needed for dealing with the transience of dynamic visualizations impose extraneous cognitive load, which may hinder learning. Segmentation may reduce the negative effect of this load by dividing animations into smaller units of information and providing pauses between segments that give students time for the necessary cognitive activities after each of those units of information. Second, event segmentation theory states that people mentally segment dynamic visualizations during perception (i.e., divide the information shown in pieces). Segmentation of dynamic visualisation could cue relevant segments to students, which may aid them in perceiving the structure underlying the process or procedure shown

Biological and technical variables affecting immunoassay recovery of cytokines from human serum and simulated vaginal fluid: A multicenter study

The increase of proinflammatory cytokines in vaginal secretions may serve as a surrogate marker of unwanted inflammatory reaction to microbicide products topically applied for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV-1. Interleukin (IL)-1β and IL-6 have been proposed as indicators of inflammation and increased risk of HIV-1 transmission; however, the lack of information regarding detection platforms optimal for vaginal fluids and interlaboratory variation limit their use for microbicide evaluation and other clinical applications. This study examines fluid matrix variants relevant to vaginal sampling techniques and proposes a model for interlaboratory comparisons across current cytokine detection technologies. IL-1β and IL-6 standards were measured by 12 laboratories in four countries, using 14 immunoassays and four detection platforms based on absorbance, chemiluminescence, electrochemiluminescence, and fluorescence. International reference preparations of cytokines with defined biological activity were spiked into (1) a defined medium simulating the composition of human vaginal fluid at pH 4.5 and 7.2, (2) physiologic salt solutions (phosphate-buffered saline and saline) commonly used for vaginal lavage sampling in clinical studies of cytokines, and (3) human blood serum. Assays were assessed for reproducibility, linearity, accuracy, and significantly detectable fold difference in cytokine level. Factors with significant impact on cytokine recovery were determined by Kruskal−Wallis analysis of variance with Dunn’s multiple comparison test and multiple regression models. All assays showed acceptable intra-assay reproducibility; however, most were associated with significant interlaboratory variation. The smallest reliably detectable cytokine differences (P < 0.05) derived from pooled interlaboratory data varied from 1.5- to 26-fold depending on assay, cytokine, and matrix type. IL-6 but not IL-1β determinations were lower in both saline and phosphate-buffered saline as compared to vaginal fluid matrix, with no significant effect of pH. The (electro)chemiluminescence-based assays were most discriminative and consistently detected <2-fold differences within each matrix type. The Luminex-based assays were less discriminative with lower reproducibility between laboratories. These results suggest the need for uniform vaginal sampling techniques and a better understanding of immunoassay platform differences and cross-validation before the biological significance of cytokine variations can be validated in clinical trials. This investigation provides the first standardized analytic approach for assessing differences in mucosal cytokine levels and may improve strategies for monitoring immune responses at the vaginal mucosal interface

Theoretical Insights into Proton-Coupled Electron Transfer from a Photoreduced ZnO Nanocrystal to an Organic Radical

Proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) at metal-oxide nanoparticle interfaces plays a critical role in many photocatalytic reactions and energy conversion processes. Recent experimental studies have shown that photoreduced ZnO nanocrystals react by PCET with organic hydrogen atom acceptors such as the nitroxyl radical TEMPO. Herein, the interfacial PCET rate constant is calculated in the framework of vibronically nonadiabatic PCET theory, which treats the electrons and transferring proton quantum mechanically. The input quantities to the PCET rate constant, including the electronic couplings, are calculated with density functional theory. The computed interfacial PCET rate constant is consistent with the experimentally measured value for this system, providing validation for this PCET theory. In this model, the electron transfers from the conduction band of the ZnO nanocrystal to TEMPO concertedly with proton transfer from a surface oxygen of the ZnO nanocrystal to the oxygen of TEMPO. Moreover, the proton tunneling at the interface is gated by the relatively lowfrequency proton donor−acceptor motion between the TEMPO radical and the ZnO nanocrystal. The ZnO nanocrystal and TEMPO are found to contribute similar amounts to the inner-sphere reorganization energy, implicating structural reorganization at the nanocrystal surface. These fundamental mechanistic insights may guide the design of metal-oxide nanocatalysts for a wide range of energy conversion processes