The photochemistry of indole and some derivatives

The direct and sensitised photooxidation of the important amino-acid, tryptophan is briefly reviewed with emphasis on its implication in the photoyellowing of wool. The mechanistic aspects of these photooxidations are also discussed.It has been shown that the C2-C3 double bond of tryptophan undergoes oxidative cleavage when exposed to uv radiation. An investigation of a model, 2,3-dimethylindoline, was undertaken to assess the effect of hydrogenating the C2-C3 double bond on the rate of photooxidation. A mechanism for the photodegradation was postulated. The photophysics of indole and indoline have been examined in the gas and solution phases and in various gas matrices at 10K. It was found that matrix isolation was a powerful technique for observing the triplet state and the effect of heavy atom perturbation. It was demonstrated that photodegradation of tryptophan will result in dual exponential decay behaviour. The quenching of N-acetyltryptophanamide by acrylamide, maleic anhydride, urocanic acid and l,3,5-triacroylaminohexahydro-striazine has been studied, using static and dynamic quenching techniques. The photoyellowing of merino wool samples treated with the latter three quenchers, have been investigated. The photophysics of styrene is reviewed. 2-Phenylnorbornene was chosen as a model for styrene in which the olefinic double bond is held in a rigid [2.2.1] bicyclic framework. Time resolved spectroscopy showed that twisting of the double bond was prevented. The fluorescence lifetimes of four cyclic styrenes, phenylcyclobutene, phenylcyclopentene, phenylnorbornene and indene have been compared under various experimental conditions.</p

Corruption practices in drug prescribing in Vietnam – an analysis based on qualitative interviews

Abstract Background Results from a previous study showed that 40 to 60% of the price of off-patent medicines in Vietnam was typically spent to induce prescribers to use the medicines, and to persuade procurement officers within hospitals to buy them. In this article we examine how and why inducements were paid by the pharmaceutical industry to health care providers in Vietnam. Methods We use a theoretically informed analysis to understand pharmaceutical companies’ account of giving inducements and prescribers’ account of taking them, elicited through in-depth interviews. Results Analysis of the emergent concepts derived from our qualitative data led to viewing the constructs from the theoretical framework of opportunities; pressures; and rationalization within a hierarchy of systemic factors and individual factors. Economic survival pressures in an imperfectly competitive market reportedly encouraged pharmaceutical companies and prescribers to be linked financially. Although individual factors such as professional ethics and personal values influenced doctors’ responses to corrupt practices, entrenched systemic issues, including lack of transparency, accountability, poor enforcement of legislation and prevalence of corruption emerged as important factors supporting corrupt practice or even making it very difficult for individuals to opt out of corrupt practices. Conclusions Our theoretically informed analysis of inducements provides an in-depth understanding of an angle of corruption in Vietnam’s health sector, showing the need for multifaceted strategies in the fight against corruption in the health sector. Remedial strategies need to address both systemic and individual factors including interventions to relieve dependencies for survival of health care services on the corrupt system

LIMA: Library for IMage Acquisition a Worldwide Project for 2D Detector Control

International audienceThe LIMA project started in 2009. The goal was to provide a software library for the unified control of 2D detectors. LIMA is a collaborative project involving synchrotrons, research facilities and industrial companies. LIMA supports most detectors used for X-ray detection or other scientific applications. Live display is supported via a video interface and most of the native video camera image formats are supported. LIMA provides a plug-in architecture for on-line processing which allows image pre-treatment before saving e.g. noise reduction algorithm or automatic X-ray beam attenuation during continuous scans. The library supports many file format including EDF, CBF, FITS, HDF5 and TIFF. To cope with increasing detector acquisition speed, the latest LIMA release includes multi-threaded, parallelized image saving with data compression (gzip or lz4). For even higher throughput a new design, based on a distributed multi-computer architecture, of the LIMA framework is envisaged. The paper will describe the LIMA roadmap for the coming years

TANGO Heads for Industry

International audienceThe TANGO Controls Framework* continues to mature and be adopted by new sites and applications. This paper will describe how TANGO has moved closer to industry with the creation of startups and addressing industrial use cases. It will describe what progress has been made since the last ICALEPCS in 2015 to ensure the sustainability of TANGO for scientific and industrial users. It will present TANGO web based technologies and the deployment of TANGO in the cloud. Furthermore it will describe how the community has re-organised itself to fund and improve code sharing, documentation, code quality assurance and maintenance

State of the Tango Controls Kernel Development in 2019

This paper will present the state of of kernel developments in the Tango Controls toolkit and community since the previous ICALEPCS 2017. It will describe what changes have been made over the last 2 years to the Long Term Support (LTS) version, how GitHub has been used to provide Continuous Integration (CI) for all platforms, and prepare the latest source code release. It will present how docker containers are supported, how they are being used for CI and for building digital twins. It will describe the outcome of the kernel code camp(s). Finally it will present how Tango is preparing the next version - V10. The paper will explain why new and old installations can continue profiting from Tango Controls or in other words in Tango 'the more things change the better the core concepts become'

Home blood pressure monitoring: methodology, clinical relevance and practical application: a 2021 position paper by the Working Group on Blood Pressure Monitoring and Cardiovascular Variability of the European Society of Hypertension

The present paper provides an update of previous recommendations on Home Blood Pressure Monitoring from the European Society of Hypertension (ESH) Working Group on Blood Pressure Monitoring and Cardiovascular Variability sequentially published in years 2000, 2008 and 2010. This update has taken into account new evidence in this field, including a recent statement by the American Heart association, as well as technological developments, which have occurred over the past 20 years. The present document has been developed by the same ESH Working Group with inputs from an international team of experts, and has been endorsed by the ESH