A Resource Guide To Empower Older Adults to Make Informed Health Decisions About Prescription Opioids And The Potential For Misuse

INTRODUCTION: In the past two decades, the U.S. has been combating the public health crisis of prescription opioids misuse among older adults. There is an increasing prevalence of older adult misuse and abuse of prescription opioids. However, through greater awareness of proper use and alternatives to prescription opioids, this trend can be reversed. AIM: To develop a resource guide that will empower older adults to engage their health care providers as it pertains to prescription opioid use in the treatment of pain. METHODS: A literature review of research articles, review of fact sheets, and interviews with three medical doctors in various fields of medicine was conducted. RESULTS: A guide was created that included key statistics about older adults, the definition and identification of prescription opioids, reasons for and risks of addiction and abuse, key steps to avoid addiction and abuse, and available resources. DISCUSSION: Research on the misuse and abuse of prescription opioids was limited and, in many cases, outdated. Furthermore, the information available needed to be made more accessible. CONCLUSION: The creation of a resource guide containing critical information about opioids was feasible. The guide can serve as a key first step in prompting conversations with health care providers

Listening to Unheard Voices: Exploring Salespeople’s Perspective on The Value of Corporate Heritage

Purpose This study aims to examine salespeople’s perspectives on the value of corporate heritage to relationship selling and the issue of trust in personal selling situations in the context of emerging markets. Design/methodology/approach An interpretive approach was adopted, and 16 semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior salespeople in heritage institutions operating in Jordan. Findings This study reveals that corporate heritage is a valuable organizational resource for relationship selling. Reflecting the values of “trust” and “affinity,” corporate heritage confers trust to salespeople and their products in personal selling situations. Sales managers are advised to use corporate heritage to strengthen sales activities and empower salespeople. Originality/value While previous research has explained the significance of corporate heritage to relationship marketing, the significance of corporate heritage to relationship selling and the issue of trust in personal selling situations remain unexplored. Jordan represents a context that has been largely neglected despite being typical of the corporate heritage phenomenon

General public knowledge, perceptions and practice towards pharmaceutical drug advertisements in the Western region of KSA

AbstractThis study aims to examine general public knowledge and behavior toward pharmaceutical advertisements in the Western part of KSA. A cross sectional convenience sampling technique was used in this study. A total of 1445 valid questionnaires were received and analyzed using SPSS version 16 at alpha value of 0.05. Majority of respondents were aware of different types of drugs to be advertised and drug advertisements should seek approval from the health authorities. Television and Internet showed the highest effect on consumers. Almost half of the participants preferred an advertised drug over non-advertised one. Most of the respondents indicated that the quality of frequently advertised drugs is not better than those prescribed by the doctors. Majority of participants had positive beliefs toward advertised drugs concerning their role in education and spreading of awareness among the public. Pharmaceutical advertisements harm the doctor–patient relationship as evidenced by one-third of the investigated sample. Moreover, majority of the participants mentioned that they would consult another doctor or even change the current doctor if he/she refused to prescribe an advertised medication. Results of this study could be used to develop awareness programs for the general public and try to enforce the regulations and policies to protect the general public and patients from the business oriented pharmaceutical companies and drug suppliers

Synthesis, Characterization and Thermal Behavior of Four Arms Poly(L-lactide) via Ring Opening Polymerization

Four (4-arms, polyL-Lactide) were prepared by having different repeating units (10, 25, 50 and 100) from Erythritols and L-Lactide. The polymers were characterized by several methods as FT-IR, 1HNMR, 13CNMR, Gel Permission Chromatography and Scanning Electron Microscopy and finally their thermal stability was evaluated. The all characterization methods were confirmed the expected structure of prepared polymers, on the other hand the prepared polymers have a thermal stabilizing above 175° C, therefore, it is expected to be suitable for use in tissue engineering and drug release applications.   Keywords: poly L-Lactide, four arms, ring-opening polymerization, thermal behavior.

Dietary Intake of Children with Type 1 Diabetes in Bahrain: A Case-Control Study

Background & Objectives: Bahrain is reported to rank amongst the top 10 countries for diabetes prevalence worldwide. In particular, growing numbers of children are being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). The objective of this study was to describe the dietary intake of Bahraini children with T1DM as compared to a sample of healthy counterparts and to determine whether the nutrient intakes of Bahraini children with T1DM meet the current recommendations.Design & Setting: This was a case-control study. Dietary intake, estimated using a24-hour dietary recall, for the cases was gathered from the Pediatric Endocrine and Diabetes Unit at the Salmaniya Medical Complex and compared to the 24-hour recalls of children without diabetes recruited from Local Health Centers.Patients & Methods: 50 children aged 6-12 years receiving a confirmed diagnosis of T1DM in the years 2009 and 2010 compared with 55 healthy comparators.Results: Children with T1DM consumed significantly more calories than controls (p<0.001) and significantly more protein relative to their RDA (p<0.029). Both groups failed to meet the RDA values for dietary fiber and for Vitamin D. Sodium intakes were in excess of RDA values although no significant difference was observed between groups (p=0.403).Conclusion: The diets of both children with and without T1DM were found to contain excess protein and sodium and inadequate fiber, vitamin D and calcium. Children with T1DM also appeared to consume excess energy and fat. There is a need to endorse existing dietary guidelines for children with T1DM

The Effect of Creativity on Entrepreneurial Behavior: The Moderating Role of Demographics

This study aims to determine the effect of creativity on entrepreneurial behavior with demographics as a moderating variable. Creativity is critical for improving entrepreneurial behavior (EB). However, few studies exist in the literature about this topic in developing countries. Building on the literature, the study proposed a positive effect between creativity and entrepreneurial behavior. The study also proposed the demographic variables as moderating variables. The population of the study consists of all the entrepreneurs and workers at entrepreneurial enterprises in Jordan. The sample of study was composed of 155 respondents; the responses were gathered using the convenience sampling method. Simple linear regression and hierarchical regression were employed to examine the data. Results show a significant effect of creativity on entrepreneurial behavior. The results also demonstrate that none of the demographic characteristics produce a significant statistical change in the influence of creativity on EB. More studies on creativity and its impact on the EB of firms and employees at entrepreneurial firms are needed

Optical and structure Characteristics of diamond like-carbon thin films produced by PLD.

تم استخدام ليزرND: YAG الطول الموجي ١٠٦٤ نانومتر  في الترسيب بالليزر النبضي  PLD لتكوين غشاء الماس شبيه الكاربون DLC على اساس زجاجي في درجة حرارة الغرفة. التركيب ومورفولوجيا السطح بالفحص بمجهر القوى الذرية  AFM لدراسة الغشاء  وتحويل فورييه لأطياف الأشعة تحت الحمراء FTIR للماس شبيه الكاربون DLC المستخدمة لمعرفة وجود الروابط وكذلك خصائص المجهر الالكتروني الماسح SEM وتشتيت الطاقة بالأشعة السينية EDX . يحتوي غشاء الماس شبيه الكاربون DLC المرسب على بنية مدمجة من الحبيبات المتراصة ويحتوي الغشاء على جسيمات غير منتظمة الشكل ( عناقيد) منDLC واكدت أطياف FTIR ان غشاء DLCيحتوي على ذرات كاربون مع تهجينsp3  وتم التحقيق في الخواص البصرية مع النتائج المتعلقة مثل النفاذية ومعامل الامتصاص وفجوة الطاقة البصرية والانعكاس R ومعامل الخمودKومعامل الانكسارn .     The utilizing of Nd: YAG laser (wave length-1064 nm) in the pulsed laser-deposition-PLD for placing diamond-like carbon DLC-film on glass substratum at the normal temperature of room. The composition and morphology of the surface for the atomic force microscopy (AFM), synthesized film and Fourier transform infrared FTIR-spectra for DLC utilized to know the presence of bonding were characterized by scanning electron microscopy-SEM and energy dispersive x-ray -EDX. Deposited DLC-film has a compact structure of dense grains, and the film contained irregular shape particles (clusters) of DLC. FTIR-spectra confirmed that the DLC-film contains carbon atoms with sp3-hybridization.Were investigated in optical properties with the results concerning the transmittance, absorption coefficient-(α), optical energy-gap, reflectance-R, extinction coefficient-k and refractive index-n

Predicting Intermediate Storage Performance for Workflow Applications

Configuring a storage system to better serve an application is a challenging task complicated by a multidimensional, discrete configuration space and the high cost of space exploration (e.g., by running the application with different storage configurations). To enable selecting the best configuration in a reasonable time, we design an end-to-end performance prediction mechanism that estimates the turn-around time of an application using storage system under a given configuration. This approach focuses on a generic object-based storage system design, supports exploring the impact of optimizations targeting workflow applications (e.g., various data placement schemes) in addition to other, more traditional, configuration knobs (e.g., stripe size or replication level), and models the system operation at data-chunk and control message level. This paper presents our experience to date with designing and using this prediction mechanism. We evaluate this mechanism using micro- as well as synthetic benchmarks mimicking real workflow applications, and a real application.. A preliminary evaluation shows that we are on a good track to meet our objectives: it can scale to model a workflow application run on an entire cluster while offering an over 200x speedup factor (normalized by resource) compared to running the actual application, and can achieve, in the limited number of scenarios we study, a prediction accuracy that enables identifying the best storage system configuration