New Pharmacological Agents to Aid Smoking Cessation and Tobacco Harm Reduction: What has been Investigated and What is in the Pipeline?

A wide range of support is available to help smokers to quit and aid attempts at harm reduction, including three first-line smoking cessation medications: nicotine replacement therapy, varenicline and bupropion. Despite the efficacy of these, there is a continual need to diversify the range of medications so that the needs of tobacco users are met. This paper compares the first-line smoking cessation medications to: 1) two variants of these existing products: new galenic formulations of varenicline and novel nicotine delivery devices; and 2) twenty-four alternative products: cytisine (novel outside of central and eastern Europe), nortriptyline, other tricyclic antidepressants, electronic cigarettes, clonidine (an anxiolytic), other anxiolytics (e.g. buspirone), selective 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) reuptake inhibitors, supplements (e.g. St John’s wort), silver acetate, nicobrevin, modafinil, venlafaxine, monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOI), opioid antagonist, nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChR) antagonists, glucose tablets, selective cannabinoid type 1 receptor antagonists, nicotine vaccines, drugs that affect gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) transmission, drugs that affect N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDA), dopamine agonists (e.g. levodopa), pioglitazone (Actos; OMS405), noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors, and the weight management drug lorcaserin. Six criteria are used: relative efficacy, relative safety, relative cost, relative use (overall impact of effective medication use), relative scope (ability to serve new groups of patients), and relative ease of use (ESCUSE). Many of these products are in the early stages of clinical trials, however, cytisine looks most promising in having established efficacy and safety and being of low cost. Electronic cigarettes have become very popular, appear to be efficacious and are safer than smoking, but issues of continued dependence and possible harms need to be considered

III. The Good Old Cause and the Fall of the Protectorate

If any single turn of events condemned the Great Rebellion to its final collapse and made the Restoration ultimately inevitable, it surely took place that April night in 1659 when the regiments about London gathered at St James's in defiance of Richard Cromwell, ‘unanimusly crieing up the good ould cause And A Comanwealth, and noe single person’. The coup d'état which virtually ended the Protectorate left England at the mercy of the military grandees who had headed it and the Republican politicians who meant to profit by it. Both groups found themselves sunk too low in credit to erect a new regime in place of the one they destroyed, and after exposing their political bankruptcy for half a year longer they finally committed political suicide by quarrelling between themselves.</jats:p

Sibutramine on cardiovascular outcome.

S ibutramine, a combined norepi-nephrine and serotonin reuptakeinhibitor, is effective in the man-agement of obese patients requiring phar-macotherapy as part of a multimodal approach to weight loss. It improves in-sulin resistance markers, glucose metab-olism, and atherogenic dyslipidemia in both diabetic and nondiabetic patients, most of these effects resulting fromweight loss. However, sibutramine exerts a pe-ripheral sympathomimetic effect that induces a moderate increase in heart rate and attenuates the reduction in blood pressure attributable to weight loss or even slightly increases blood pressure. Since 2002, several cardiovascular adverse event

Authentic Empathy: A Cultural Basis for the Development of Empathy in Children

Culture is important for the development of social skills in children, including empathy. Although empathy has long been linked with prosocial behaviors and attitudes, there is little research that links culture with development of empathy in children. This project sought to investigate and identify specific culturally related empathy elements in a sample of Dene and Inuit children from Northern Canada. Across seven different grade (primary) schools, 92 children aged 7 to 9 years participated in the study. Children’s drawings, and interviews about those pictures, were uniquely employed as empirical data which allowed researchers to gain access to the children’s perspective about what aspects of culture were important to them. Using empathy as the theoretical framework, a thematic analysis was conducted in a top-down deductive approach. The research paradigm elicited a rich data set revealing three major themes: sharing; knowledge of self and others; and acceptance of differences. The identified themes were found to have strong links with empathy constructs such as sharing, helping, perspective-taking, and self–other knowledges, revealing the important role that culture may play in the development of empathy. Findings from this study can help researchers explore and identify specific cultural elements that may contribute to the development of empathy in children. </jats:p

Sample size in usability studies

Usability studies are important for developing usable, enjoyable products, identifying design flaws (usability problems) likely to compromise the user experience. Usability testing is recommended for improving interactive design, but discovery of usability problems depends on the number of users tested. When usability is critical, an extended statistical model would help estimate the number of undiscovered problems; researchers incrementally add participants to the study until it discovers all problems. For estimating required sample size, usability researchers often resort to either magic numbers or the geometric series formula; inaccurate for making predictions, both underestimate required sample size. Most usability practitioners will likely continue to use strategies of iterative low-budget evaluation where quantitative statements are unreliable but also unnecessary