The GoodNight study—online CBT for insomnia for the indicated prevention of depression: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

BACKGROUND Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) delivered through the Internet is effective as a treatment in reducing insomnia in individuals seeking help for insomnia. CBT-I also lowers levels of depression in this group. However, it is not known if targeting insomnia using CBT-I will lower depressive symptoms, and thus reduce the risk of major depressive episode onset, in those specifically at risk for depression. Therefore, this study aims to examine whether Internet delivery of fully automated self-help CBT-I designed to reduce insomnia will prevent depression. METHOD/DESIGN A sample of 1,600 community-dwelling adults (aged 18-64), who screen positive for both subclinical levels of depressive symptoms and insomnia, will be recruited via various media and randomised to either a 9-week online insomnia treatment programme, Sleep Healthy Using The internet (SHUTi), or an online attention-matched control group (HealthWatch). The primary outcome variable will be depression symptom levels at the 6-month post-intervention on the Patient Heath Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). A secondary outcome will be onset of major depressive episodes assessed at the 6-month post-intervention using 'current' and 'time from intervention' criteria from the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview. DISCUSSION This trial is the first randomised controlled trial of an Internet-based insomnia intervention as an indicated preventative programme for depression. If effective, online provision of a depression prevention programme will facilitate dissemination. TRIAL REGISTRATION Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR), Registration number: ACTRN12611000121965.This study is supported by a grant from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia (GNT1005867)

Gas turbine combustor with integrated ash removal for fine particulates

This paper examines the performance of a novel design of combustor for utilising variable calorific value fuel gases as produced by many biomass gasification processes. An integral ash removal system is incorporated into the combustor to reduce the need for subsequent hot gas or other cleanup systems. The combustor is of cyclonic design with tangential inlets for air, start-up fuel and gasification products. Flame stability for low calorific value gases can be enhanced via the use of ceramic/refractory lined sections if required, with the system operating under lean combustion at all times to minimise NOx. Pressure drop of the cyclonic system is minimised by the use of a tangential outlet, as are combustion instabilities, as large central recirculation zones are avoided and associated instabilities like the precessing vortex core. Ash removal from the system is important to minimise damage to turbine components. Two regions are used for particle removal. The first is the base of the unit of a conventional hopper design, and the other, a unique vortex collector pocket (VCP) carefully positioned by the tangential off-take to take advantage of the accelerating tangential flow into the off-take. This paper focuses on the use of CFD to optimise the combustion performance of the combustor run under different operating conditions as well as the removal of coarse and fine material from the flow

Energy from biomass and the use of small direct fired gas turbine systems

This paper discusses the context for the use of biomass for electricity generation in the UK and similar markets and evaluates the possibility of using cyclonic gasification coupled to small gas turbine systems. In the UK the Government has strongly pushed for a significant increase in the use of renewable energy for electricity generation with only very modest success, nearly 3% coming from this source at present, predominantly hydro and wind. Subsidy for the early tranches of these systems came from an elevated price for generated electricity, but since attempts at price convergence with that pertaining with conventional fossil fuel generation systems has occurred the number of biomass systems being constructed and their net generating capacity has not increased in line with other technologies. Although utilisation technologies exist, and are well proven technologically in Scandinavia, when translated to markets such as the UK, give generating costs which are not competitive with other forms of renewable energy. Problems have arisen with many systems, being predominantly due to fouling/slagging, the different nature of the fuels, and elevated moisture content. In this context this paper describes an EU sponsored programme of work to develop a simple cyclone gasifier and combustor which can produce a medium calorific fuel gas for materials such as sawdust, retain up to about 80% of the total ash/residues in the system, and fire simple, low cost gas turbines for power generation. The system is shown to have a very wide operating range and can handle sawdust with significant quantities of material up to 4mm in size, whilst tolerating significant variation in moisture content and capturing very significant quantities of the ash/particulate matter as well as volatile species

Thermal degradation of monoethanolamine and its effect on CO2 capture capacity.

Amine scrubbing is a proven technology in the oil and gas industries. Its use in coal fired power plants is not fully understood and the likelihood of solvent degradation is high. Decreased absorption efficiency, undesirable by-products and the environmental impact of their disposal are the main consequences. In the present study, samples of monoethanolamine were thermally degraded, at 160 °C for between 2 and 8 weeks, and their CO2 removal capacity deterioration was determined. The findings show that thermal degradation at 160 °C for 8 weeks reduced monoethanolamine concentration by 95%, but the remaining solvent still retained 22% of its capacity to remove CO2, probably due to the capacity of some of the degradation products to remove CO2. Therefore, the requirement for monoethanolamine make-up in operational amine scrubbing systems may not be quite as serious as initially believed. A 20% higher MEA loss was determined in the samples with 0.37 initial CO2 loading (mol CO2/mol MEA). 2-Oxazolidone, N-(2-hydroxyethyl)-ethylenediamine and 1-(2-hydroxyethyl)-2-imidazolidinone were identified as the major monoethanolamine degradation products, the latter being indicated as the most stable product with concentrations of up to 17% (v/v). Corrosion (1.95 mm/year) of the stainless steel (type 316) equipment, used during the experiments, was also observed

Ex-vivo HRMAS of adult brain tumours: metabolite quantification and assignment of tumour biomarkers

Background: High-resolution magic angle spinning (HRMAS) NMR spectroscopy allows detailed metabolic analysis of whole biopsy samples for investigating tumour biology and tumour classification. Accurate biochemical assignment of small molecule metabolites that are “NMR visible” will improve our interpretation of HRMAS data and the translation of NMR tumour biomarkers to in-vivo studies. Results: 1D and 2D 1H HRMAS NMR was used to determine that 29 small molecule metabolites, along with 8 macromolecule signals, account for the majority of the HRMAS spectrum of the main types of brain tumour(astrocytoma grade II, grade III gliomas, glioblastomas, metastases, meningiomas and also lymphomas). Differences in concentration of 20 of these metabolites were statistically significant between these brain tumour types. During the course of an extended 2D data acquisition the HRMAS technique itself affects sample analysis: glycine, glutathione and glycerophosphocholine all showed small concentration changes; analysis of the sample after HRMAS indicated structural damage that may affect subsequent histopathological analysis. Conclusions: A number of small molecule metabolites have been identified as potential biomarkers of tumour type that may enable development of more selective in-vivo 1H NMR acquisition methods for diagnosis and prognosis of brain tumours

Successful use of axonal transport for drug delivery by synthetic molecular vehicles

We report the use of axonal transport to achieve intraneural drug delivery. We constructed a novel tripartite complex of an axonal transport facilitator conjugated to a linker molecule bearing up to a hundred reversibly attached drug molecules. The complex efficiently enters nerve terminals after intramuscular or intradermal administration and travels within axonal processes to neuron cell bodies. The tripartite agent provided 100-fold amplification of saturable neural uptake events, delivering multiple drug molecules per complex. _In vivo_, analgesic drug delivery to systemic and to non-targeted neural tissues was greatly reduced compared to existing routes of administration, thus exemplifying the possibility of specific nerve root targeting and effectively increasing the potency of the candidate drug gabapentin 300-fold relative to oral administration

The Application of a Hypothesis-driven Strategy to the Sensitive Detection and Location of Acetylated Lysine Residues

The application of a hypothesis-driven method for the sensitive determination of lysine acetylation sites on enzymatically digested proteins is described. Comparative sensitivity tests were carried out using serial dilution of an acetylated bovine serum albumin (AcBSA) digest to assess the performance of a multiple reaction monitoring (MRM)–based approach as compared to a more conventional precursor scanning (PS) method. Both methods were capable of selectively detecting an acetylated peptide at the low femtomole level when spiked into a background of 500 fmol six-protein tryptic digest. The MRM approach was roughly tenfold more sensitive than precursor scanning with one acetylated peptide detected and sequenced at the level of 2 fmol on-column. The technique was subsequently applied to a gel-derived sample of cytokeratin-8 (CK8) shown to contain acetylated lysine residues by Western blot analysis. The strategy applied herein, termed MRM-initiated detection and sequencing (MIDAS), resulted in the facile identification of novel sites of acetylation on this protein