Using Open Questions to Understand 650 People’s Experiences with Antipsychotic Drugs

Studies of antipsychotic medication, which are increasingly prescribed for a broad range of problems and circumstances, rarely ask the people who take them to describe their experiences with the drugs. In this study 650 people, from 29 countries, responded, in an online survey, to ‘Overall in my life antipsychotic medications have been ……….?’ and ‘Is there anything else you would like to say, or emphasise, about your experiences with anti-psychotic drugs?’ 14.3% of participants were categorised as reporting purely positive experiences, 27.9% had mixed experiences, and 57.7% reported only negative ones. Negative experiences were positively correlated with age. Thematic analysis identified 749 negative, 180 positive, and 53 mixed statements. The two positive themes were ‘symptom reduction’ (14) and ‘sleep’ (14), with the majority (153) unspecified. The four negative themes (besides ‘unspecified’ - 191) were: ‘adverse effects’ (316), ‘interactions with prescriber’ (169), ‘withdrawal/difficult to get off them’ (62) and ‘ineffective’ (11). The adverse effects included: weight gain, emotional numbing, cognitive dysfunction, sedation, akathisia, withdrawal effects, effects on relationships, and suicidality. ‘Interactions with prescribers’ included lack of information, support, or discussion of alternatives. The only mixed theme was ‘short-term good, long-term bad’ (28). Open questions can add to findings from methodologies focussed on symptom reduction. Clinicians should pay more attention to the need for respectful and collaborative patient-prescriber relationships. At the point of prescription this must include providing the full range of information about antipsychotics, including potential benefits and harms, the difficulty in withdrawing, and information on alternatives treatments such as psychological therapies

The Effects of Resistance Exercise and Its Prevention of Neurodegeneration

One of the growing problems for people, especially in the elderly community is neurodegeneration, cognitive impairment, and dementia. These cases are expected to continue to rise while diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease have no cure. Several studies have examined resistance exercise as a method of improving the outcomes for people with these symptoms. It has been found that resistance exercise is capable of reducing or improving the structural changes of neurodegeneration which leads to cognitive improvements. This review will examine several of these articles and compile them into a format which displays that resistance exercise can be a valuable option to incorporate into a health care plan

Prandtl Number Effects on the Entropy Generation During the Transient Mixed Convection in a Square Cavity Heated from Below

This numerical study considers the mixed convection, heat transfer and the entropy generation within a square cavity partially heated from below with moving cooled vertical sidewalls. All the other horizontal sides of the cavity are assumed adiabatic. The governing equations, in stream function–vorticity form, are discretized and solved using the finite difference method. Numerical simulations are carried out, by varying the Richardson number, to show the impact of the Prandtl number on the thermal, flow fields, and more particularly on the entropy generation. Three working fluid, generally used in practice, namely mercury (Pr = 0.0251), air (Pr = 0.7296) and water (Pr = 6.263) are investigated and compared. Predicted streamlines, isotherms, entropy generation, as well as average Nusselt numbers are presented. The obtained results reveal that the impact of the Prandtl number is relatively significant both on the heat transfer performance and on the entropy generation. The average Nusselt number increase with increasing Prandtl number. Its value varies thereabouts from 3.7 to 3.8 for mercury, from 5.5 to 13 for air and, from 12.5 to 15 for water. In addition, it is found that the total average entropy generation is significantly higher in the case of mercury (Pr«1) and water (Pr»1) than in the case of air (Pr~1). Its value varies approximately from 700 to 1100 W/m3 K for mercury, from 200 to 500 W/m3 K for water and, from 0.03 to 5 W/m3 K for air

Group experience with parents of preschool children with seizure disorders

A project using parent seminars in aiding parents of children with seizure disorders was designed at the request of Dr. James R. Schimschock, pediatric neurologist and director of the Clinic for Neurologically Impaired Children, Good Samaritan Hospital and Medical Center. The clinic provides a diagnostic and educational therapy for neurologically impaired children. In addition to providing multidiscipline diagnostic evaluation, clinic services include operating classrooms for preschool and school-age children. The classrooms function for children with any type of neurologic impairment who are either excluded from school due to their delayed academic performance, their physical or developmental delay, emotional or behavior problems, or the severity of their condition. Having the classroom located in the Good Samaritan Hospital complex provides immediate access to medical assistance if it is required. Information derived from classroom observation is available to the child’s physician. This information is valuable in the medical management of these children and is particularly useful with children having intractable seizure disorders

Novel pathways for fuels and lubricants from biomass optimized using life-cycle greenhouse gas assessment

Decarbonizing the transportation sector is critical to achieving global climate change mitigation. Although biofuels will play an important role in conventional gasoline and diesel applications, bioderived solutions are particularly important in jet fuels and lubricants, for which no other viable renewable alternatives exist. Producing compounds for jet fuel and lubricant base oil applications often requires upgrading fermentation products, such as alcohols and ketones, to reach the appropriate molecular-weight range. Ketones possess both electrophilic and nucleophilic functionality, which allows them to be used as building blocks similar to alkenes and aromatics in a petroleum refining complex. Here, we develop a method for selectively upgrading biomass-derived alkyl methyl ketones with >95% yields into trimer condensates, which can then be hydrodeoxygenated in near-quantitative yields to give a new class of cycloalkane compounds. The basic chemistry developed here can be tailored for aviation fuels as well as lubricants by changing the production strategy. We also demonstrate that a sugarcane biorefinery could use natural synergies between various routes to produce a mixture of lubricant base oils and jet fuels that achieve net life-cycle greenhouse gas savings of up to 80%. biofuels | lubricants | life cycle assessment | methyl ketones | greenhouse gases C ountries around the world are enacting legislation to curb greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Strategies for decarbonizing road transportation include an array of options from improving engine efficiency and blending bioethanol/biodiesel with gasoline/diesel to using plug-in electric vehicles (1-3). Aviation fuels pose a unique problem because stringent specifications require oxygen-free compounds, limiting the options available (4). Biofuel solutions such as farnesane have been proposed; however, these offer only modest GHG reduction benefits (SI Appendix) and the wide boiling range requirement for jet fuels sets a limit on the amount of single-component renewable fuels that may be blended. At the other end of the spectrum are automotive lubricant base oils where a narrow range of compounds is highly desirable. Poly-α-olefins (PAOs) containing 30 carbon atoms obtained from oligomerization of fossil-derived 1-decene are considered as the benchmark of superior performance for crankcase oils and have a high demand (5). Importantly, the GHG footprint associated with PAO base oils can be higher on a per-mass basis than petroleum-derived fuels if even a fraction of the lubricant is repurposed as fuel at its end of life (6). The goal of our work was to develop a strategy for the flexible production of jet fuels and lubricant base oils in a Brazilian sugarcane refinery designed to achieve a meaningful reduction in life-cycle GHG emissions. Our approach involves conversion of sugars in sugarcane-derived sucrose and hemicellulose to ketones using a combination of chemical and biocatalytic processes. For example, 2-butanone, can be obtained by the dehydration of fermentation-derived 2,3-butanediol (7, 8) or via chemical/biochemical (9, 10) decarboxylation of levulinic acid (11). The fermentation of various biomass-derived sugars using Clostridia strains produces a mixture of acetone, butanol, and ethanol (ABE), which can be used to synthesize a mixture of monoalkylated/dialkylated ketones (12), specifically 2-pentanone and 2-heptanone. Additional synthons may be produced from bioalcohol-derived olefins (13) or biomass-derived furanic platform molecules, such as 2,5-dimethylfuran and 2-methylfuran, via hydrogenolysis to produce 2-hexanone and 2-pentanone, respectively, with as high as 98% selectivity Results and Discussion We begin by identifying heterogeneous catalysts and appropriate reaction conditions for the self-condensation of ketones (1) to produce dimer/trimer condensates 2-4 in high overall yield Significance The development of renewable liquid fuels and bioproducts is critical to reducing global reliance on petroleum and mitigating climate change, particularly for applications where few lowcarbon alternatives exist. We combine chemical catalysis with life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) modeling to create a new platform for producing biobased aviation fuel and automotive lubricant base oils. The recyclable catalysts we developed are capable of converting sugar and biomass-derived alkyl methyl ketones into cyclic enones via condensation reactions. These products can subsequently be hydrodeoxygenated to create a new class of aviation fuel and lubricant candidates with superior cold flow properties, density, and viscosity that substantially reduce GHG emissions relative to conventional petroleum

Advances in nanocatalysts design for biofuels production

The exploitation of nanocatalysts, at the boundary between homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, is tracking new efficient ways to produce renewable biofuels in environmentally friendly conditions. Their solid state makes them recyclable, and their nanomateric particle size enables high activities approaching those offered by homogeneous catalysts, as well as novel and unique catalytic behaviors not accessible to solids above the nanometer range. Furthermore, the use of magnetically active materials has led to the development of nanocatalysts easily recoverable through the application of magnetic fields. In this mini-review, latest achievements in the production of advanced biofuels using stable, highly active, cheap and reusable nanocatalysts are described. Specifically, biodiesel and high density fuels have been chosen as major topics of research for the design of catalytic nanomaterials