Characteristics associated with quality of life among people with drug-resistant epilepsy

Quality of Life (QoL) is the preferred outcome in non-pharmacological trials, but there is little UK population evidence of QoL in epilepsy. In advance of evaluating an epilepsy self-management course we aimed to describe, among UK participants, what clinical and psycho-social characteristics are associated with QoL. We recruited 404 adults attending specialist clinics, with at least two seizures in the prior year and measured their self-reported seizure frequency, co-morbidity, psychological distress, social characteristics, including self-mastery and stigma, and epilepsy-specific QoL (QOLIE-31-P). Mean age was 42 years, 54% were female, and 75% white. Median time since diagnosis was 18 years, and 69% experienced ≥10 seizures in the prior year. Nearly half (46%) reported additional medical or psychiatric conditions, 54% reported current anxiety and 28% reported current depression symptoms at borderline or case level, with 63% reporting felt stigma. While a maximum QOLIE-31-P score is 100, participants’ mean score was 66, with a wide range (25–99). In order of large to small magnitude: depression, low self-mastery, anxiety, felt stigma, a history of medical and psychiatric comorbidity, low self-reported medication adherence, and greater seizure frequency were associated with low QOLIE-31-P scores. Despite specialist care, UK people with epilepsy and persistent seizures experience low QoL. If QoL is the main outcome in epilepsy trials, developing and evaluating ways to reduce psychological and social disadvantage are likely to be of primary importance. Educational courses may not change QoL, but be one component supporting self-management for people with long-term conditions, like epilepsy

Micro, Meso, and Macro Data Collection and Analysis, as a Method for Speculative and Artistic Exploration

In this work, an attempt is made to explore the emerging computationally-enhanced private and public environments by analyzing their ecological transitions and its implications on practical, aesthetic, and speculative dimensions. The author has decided to methodologically dissect the multiplicity of information that exists on many possible-to-detect scales (micro, meso, macro), and utilize this extraction as a tool for experimentation and redefinition. With the use of custom-made hardware and software utilities (sensor devices, sentiment analysis algorithms, online APIs, and many more), a vast amount of data is collected and used as a multidimensional layered architecture that constantly shifts and transforms. The extracted and analyzed content of the collection becomes the essence of the work that is shaped and refined through digital and physical making – middleware, recursion, mapping – and by utilizing technological objects within the physical space, the creative process is augmented and amplified, exploring not only new practices and novel applications, but rather redefining behavior, thought-process, and context

Reduction of ortho-nitro-benzoic acid to anthranilic acid

http://www.archive.org/details/reductionofortho00pfafThesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology; Bibliography: leaf 3