BSAVA Formulary: Your questions answered

A new edition of the BSAVA Small Animal Formulary has been published. Ian Ramsey explains what is in and what is out of this new version

A comparison of parental attitudes of mothers of schizophrenic, brain injured, and normal children

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston UniversityA review of the literature on childhood schizophrenia reveals a bipolar difference of opinion concerning etiology. One opinion is that the impact on the child of the mother's behavioral expression of pathological attitudes toward child rearing and the family brings about a schizophrenic reaction; the other opinion is that there is an as yet undiscovered organic reason for the child's symptoms and that pathological attitudes observed in the mother arise as a result of the stress of trying to deal with the disordered child. The present study is designed to compare maternal attitudes of mothers of schizophrenic children, mothers of similarly behaving retarded and brain injured children, and mothers of normal children. The subjects were 15 mothers of hospitalized schizophrenic children with certain speech and behavior symptoms, 15 mothers of hospitalized brain injured and retarded children with similar behavior symptoms, and 26 mothers, all of whose children are and have been free of any serious chronic disorder. The Parental Attitude Research Instrument, developed by Schaefer and Bell at the National Institute of Mental Health, a paper and pencil questionnaire consisting of 23 five-item scales, was administered to each subject. Personal data about the age of the mother, her education, religion, husband's occupation, number of children, and family medical history was obtained from each mother after she had finished the PARI. The results support the hypothesis that the mothers 128 of schizophrenic children do not display more pathological attitudes than mothers of similarly behaving organic children, but that both groups have more pathological attitudes than mothers of normal children. The results support the hypothesis that the mothers of schizophrenic children do not display more pathological attitudes than the mothers of organic children on any of the five factors into which the PARI was analyzed, but that both groups have more pathological attitudes with respect to "Over-possessiveness" than mothers of normals. There were no significant differences between the attitudes of groups S and O on the variables of age of onset of the child's symptoms, age at time of hospitalization, sex of the patient, whether patient was first-born child, and whether the mother had subsequently had a normal child. The results further show that in addition to the differences among the groups based upon the condition of the child, the mothers' attitudes also varied according to their education, religion, and socioeconomic grouping. The findings tend to support the general hypothesis that mothers who are faced with comparably disturbed behavior will manifest comparable attitudes toward child rearing and the family and will manifest more pathological attitudes than mothers of normal children who present no special problem. The findings cast doubt upon the hypothesis that maternal attitudes are the cause of childhood schizophrenia. The likelihood of observed maternal attitudes being a combination of prior and reactive attitudes was discussed. The fact that within each group were mothers with widely disparate attitudes was also discussed. Also noted was the possibility that the severity of symptoms of the organically ill children might not be solely the result of organic factors. The merits of the "spectrum" idea of causation of childhood schizophrenia were highlighted. According to this notion, organic predisposition would occupy one end of the scale and psychological traumata the other. Either extreme or any combination might precipitate the same clinical pattern in different children. It was suggested that intensive investigation might disclose that the characteristics thought to be peculiar to mothers of schizophrenic children may be shared by many or all mothers of severely disordered children

Increasing the Efficiency and Efficacy of the War on Drugs: Utilizing the STRIDE Database to Analyze Cocaine Seizures

This paper analyzes the structure of the illicit cocaine market, and develops a theoretical model analyzing cocaine seizures made by the Drug Enforcement Agency inside the United States. I would like to thank Professor Jonathan Lipow for inspiring me to take on this particular research topic. Professors Barbara Craig, Hirshel Kasper, and Alberto Ortiz also provided needed guidance and assistance as I undertook this project. Special thanks also to Professor Luis Fernandez for chairing the honors seminar meetings, and Congressman John Hall and his staff for working with me to secure data. Most importantly, I would like to recognize my fellow honors students: Lucas Brown, Helen Hare, James Hepp, John Linder, Max Roessler, and Woan Foong Wong, for their input and assistance as I prepared this paper. Finally, I hope I will eventually be able to thank the Freedom of Information Office of the Drug Enforcement Administration for providing me with data essential to the focus of this project

Reversibility and Improved Hydrogen Release of Magnesium Borohydride

Desorption and subsequent rehydrogenation of Mg(BH_4)_2 with and without 5 mol % TiF_3 and ScCl_3 have been investigated. Temperature programmed desorption (TPD) experiments revealed a significant increase in the rate of desorption as well as the weight percentage of hydrogen released with additives upon heating to 300 °C. Stable Mg(B_xH_y)_n intermediates were formed at 300 °C, whereas MgB_2 was the major product when heated to 600 °C. These samples were then rehydrogenated and subsequently characterized with powder X-ray diffraction (pXRD), Raman, and NMR spectroscopy. We confirmed significant conversion of MgB_2 to fully hydrogenated Mg(BH_4)_2 for the sample with and without additives. TPD and NMR studies revealed that the additives have a significant effect on the reaction pathway during both dehydrogenation and rehydrogenation reactions. This work suggests that the use of additives may provide a valid pathway for improving intrinsic hydrogen storage properties of magnesium borohydride

Optimal streaks in a Falkner-Skan boundary layer

This paper deals with the optimal streaky perturbations (which maximize the perturbed energy growth) in a wedge flow boundary layer. These three dimensional perturbations are governed by a system of linearized boundary layer equations around the Falkner-Skan base flow. Based on an asymptotic analysis of this system near the free stream and the leading edge singularity, we show that for acute wedge semi-angle, all solutions converge after a streamwise transient to a single streamwise-growing solution of the linearized equations, whose initial condition near the leading edge is given by an eigenvalue problem first formulated in this context by Tumin (2001). Such a solution may be regarded as a streamwise evolving most unstable streaky mode, in analogy with the usual eigenmodes in strictly parallel flows, and shows an approximate self-similarity, which was partially known and is completed in this paper. An important consequence of this result is that the optimization procedure based on the adjoint equations heretofore used to define optimal streaks is not necessary. Instead, a simple low-dimensional optimization process is proposed and used to obtain optimal streaks. Comparison with previous results by Tumin and Ashpis (2003) shows an excellent agreement. The unstable streaky mode exhibits transient growth if the wedge semi-angle is smaller than a critical value that is slightly larger than $\pi/6$, and decays otherwise. Thus the cases of right and obtuse wedge semi-angles exhibit less practical interest, but they show a qualitatively different behavior, which is briefly described to complete the analysis

Increasing the Efficiency and Efficacy of the War on Drugs: Utilizing the STRIDE Database to Analyze Cocaine Seizures

This paper analyzes the structure of the illicit cocaine market, and develops a theoretical model analyzing cocaine seizures made by the Drug Enforcement Agency inside the United States. I would like to thank Professor Jonathan Lipow for inspiring me to take on this particular research topic. Professors Barbara Craig, Hirshel Kasper, and Alberto Ortiz also provided needed guidance and assistance as I undertook this project. Special thanks also to Professor Luis Fernandez for chairing the honors seminar meetings, and Congressman John Hall and his staff for working with me to secure data. Most importantly, I would like to recognize my fellow honors students: Lucas Brown, Helen Hare, James Hepp, John Linder, Max Roessler, and Woan Foong Wong, for their input and assistance as I prepared this paper. Finally, I hope I will eventually be able to thank the Freedom of Information Office of the Drug Enforcement Administration for providing me with data essential to the focus of this project