Nealbain2904

People with serious mental illness (SMI) are three times more likely to smoke and be heavy smokers than smokers without SMI. Counseling combined with smoking cessation medication (SCM) is the recommended treatment. However until 2017, SCM prescription for SMI smokers was discouraged (FDA black box warning). This study compared use of smoking cessation programs (SCP) and SCM between smokers with and without SMI.

Data regarding SCP and SCM use were extracted from the database of a large HMO that offers free Group and telephone SCP. SCP registration, participation, completion and abstinence rates between July 2013 and December 2019 were compared between smokers with and without SMI, controlling for demographic and health variables.

48,000 smokers registered for a SCP during the study period. Smokers with SMI were 1.8 times more likely to register for a SCP than smokers without SMI. Smokers without SMI were, however, 1.2 times more likely to start the SCP, 1.5 times more likely to complete the SCP and 1.6 tand adapting SCPs to the needs of smokers with SMI, combined with SCM prescription promotion, should improve abstinence.

Smokers with serious mental illness (SMI) were more likely to seek professional help to quit smoking than non-SMI smokers, with over 30% achieving abstinence, discrediting healthcare professional beliefs that SMI smokers don't want to and cannot quit. Smoking cessation program (SCP) completion and smoking cessation medication (SCM) utilization were the strongest predictors of abstinence. SMI smokers were more likely to drop out of SCPs and less likely to use SCMs. Providing support during the quit attempt and adapting SCPs to the needs of smokers with SMI, combined with SCM prescription promotion, should improve abstinence.

A growing literature examines the effect of retirement on cognitive function, but pays little attention to how this relationship may depend upon the nature of retirement. Of particular importance is the growing prevalence of gradual retirement characterized by continued employment - either with a new employer or with the same employer - after retiring from a career job.

We use data from men and women aged 50 or older in the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement to examine the effects of full retirement, partial retirement with the same employer, and partial retirement with a new employer on cognitive function. Our analyses consider the moderating role of career job complexity and exploit distinctive features of the Japanese public pension and mandatory retirement systems to estimate the causal effect of retirement type on cognition.

Results indicate that partial retirement with the same employer has a significant and adverse effect on cognitive function (relative to those not yet retired). In contrast, those who experienced either full retirement or partial retirement with a new employer were, on average, no different from those still in their career job. Partial retirement with a new employer has a beneficial effect on cognition among those who had a high complexity career job.

Results are consistent with the idea that novel work exposures and experiences have a beneficial effect on cognition. They also suggest that ongoing policy efforts to promote partial retirement with the same employer may have unexpected adverse implications for cognitive health.

Results are consistent with the idea that novel work exposures and experiences have a beneficial effect on cognition. They also suggest that ongoing policy efforts to promote partial retirement with the same employer may have unexpected adverse implications for cognitive health.Conifers face increased drought mortality risks because of drought-induced embolism in their vascular system. Variation in embolism resistance may result from species differences in pit structure and function, as pits control the air seeding between water transporting conduits. this website This study quantifies variation in embolism resistance and hydraulic conductivity for 28 conifer species grown in a 50-year-old common garden experiment and assesses the underlying mechanisms. Conifer species with a small pit aperture, high pit aperture resistance and large valve effect were more resistant to embolism, as they all may reduce air seeding. Surprisingly, hydraulic conductivity was only negatively correlated with tracheid cell wall thickness. Embolism resistance and its underlying pit traits related to pit size and sealing were stronger phylogenetically controlled than hydraulic conductivity and anatomical tracheid traits. Conifers differed in hydraulic safety and hydraulic efficiency, but there was no trade-off between safety and efficiency because they are driven by different xylem anatomical traits that are under different phylogenetic control.

We studied the rate of remission of lupus nephritis (LN) in an international cohort of 248 children and adolescents with biopsy proven LN. Five different definitions from scientific studies and the definitions recommended by the American College of Rheumatology and Kidney Disease Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) were used.

Anonymized clinical data in patients with biopsy proven LN class ≥ III (International Society of nephrology/Royal Pathology Society-ISN/RPS) diagnosed and treated in the last 10 years in 23 international centers from 10 countries were collected. We compared the rate of patients in complete and partial remission applying the different definitions.

The mean age at diagnosis was 11 years and 4 month and 177 were females.The number of patients in complete and partial remission varied a lot between the different definitions. At 24 months, between 50% and 78.8% of the patients were in full remission as defined by the different criteria. The number of patients in partial remission was low, between 2.3% and 25%. No difference in achieved remission was found between boys and girls or between children and adolescents (P > 0.05). Patients with East Asian ethnicity reached remission more often than other ethnicities (P = 0.03-0.0008). Patients treated in high income countries showed a higher percentage of complete remission at 12 and 24 months (P = 0.002-0.000001).

The rate of children and adolescents with LN achieving remission varied hugely with the definition used. Our results give important information for long awaited treatment studies in children and young people.

The rate of children and adolescents with LN achieving remission varied hugely with the definition used. Our results give important information for long awaited treatment studies in children and young people.Engineering conductive 3D cell scaffoldings offer advantages toward the creation of physiologically relevant platforms with integrated real-time sensing capabilities. Dopaminergic neural cells are encapsulated into graphene-laden alginate microfibers using a microfluidic approach, which is unmatched for creating highly-tunable microfibers. Incorporating graphene increases the conductivity of the alginate microfibers by 148%, creating a similar conductivity to native brain tissue. The cell encapsulation procedure has an efficiency of 50%, and of those cells, ≈30% remain for the entire 6-day observation period. To understand how the microfluidic encapsulation affects cell genetics, tyrosine hydroxylase, tubulin beta 3 class 3, interleukin 1 beta, and tumor necrosis factor alfa are analyzed primarily with real-time reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction and secondarily with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, immediately after manufacturing, after encapsulation in polymer matrix for 6 days, and after encapsulation in the graphene-polymer composite for 6 days. Preliminary data shows that the manufacturing process and combination with alginate matrix affect the expression of the studied genes immediately after manufacturing. In addition, the introduction of graphene further changes gene expressions. Long-term encapsulation of neural cells in alginate and 6-day exposure to graphene also leads to changes in gene expressions.Polymerized hemoglobin (Hb)-based oxygen carriers (HBOCs) are a scalable and cost-effective red blood cell (RBC) substitute. However, previous generations of commercial polymerized HBOCs elicited oxidative tissue injury in vivo due to the presence of low molecular weight polymeric Hb species ( less then 500 kDa) and cell-free Hb (64 kDa). Polymerized human Hb (PolyhHb) locked in the tense quaternary state (T-state) exhibits great promise to meet clinical needs where past polymerized HBOCs failed. This work shows that separation of T-state PolyhHb via a two-stage tangential flow filtration (TFF) purification train such that the Hb polymers are bracketed between 500 kDa and 0.2 μm creates a uniform polymer size and largely eliminates the Hb species which elicit deleterious side effects in vivo. Biophysical characterization of these materials demonstrates their potential effectiveness as an RBC substitute and verifies the low percentage of low molecular weight Hb polymers and cell-free Hb. Size exclusion chromatography confirms that T-state PolyhHb can be consistently produced in a size range between 500 kDa and 0.2 μm. Furthermore, the average molecular weight of all PolyhHb species produced is one or two orders of magnitude larger than that of the commercial polymerized HBOCs Hemolink and Oxyglobin, respectively. Haptoglobin binding kinetics confirms that two-stage TFF processing of PolyhHb reliably removes cell-free Hb and low molecular weight polymeric Hb species. T-state PolyhHbs demonstrate lower auto-oxidation rates compared to unmodified Hb and prior generations of commercial polymerized HBOCs. These results demonstrate T-state PolyhHb's feasibility as a next-generation polymerized HBOC for potential use in transfusion medicine.Ammonia is a natural pollutant in wastewater and removal technique such as ammonia electro-oxidation is of paramount importance. The development of highly efficient and low-costing electrocatalysts for the ammonia oxidation reaction (AOR) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) associated with ammonia removal is subsequently crucial. In this study, for the first time, the authors demonstrate that a perovskite oxide LaNi0.5 Cu0.5 O3-δ after being annealed in Ar (LNCO55-Ar), is an excellent non-noble bifunctional catalyst towards both AOR and HER, making it suitable as a symmetric ammonia electrolyser (SAE) in alkaline medium. In contrast, the LNCO55 sample fired in air (LNCO55-Air) is inactive towards AOR and shows very poor HER activity. Through combined experimental results and theoretical calculations, it is found that the superior AOR and HER activities are attributed to the increased active sites, the introduction of oxygen vacancies, the synergistic effect of B-site cations and the different active sites in LNCO55-Ar. At 1.23 V, the assembled SAE demonstrates ≈100% removal efficiency in 2210 ppm ammonia solution and >70% in real landfill leachate. This work opens the door for developments towards bifunctional catalysts, and also takes a profound step towards the development of low-costing and simple device configuration for ammonia electrolysers.Flexible perovskite solar cells (f-PSCs) have attracted increasing attention because of their enormous potential for use in consumer electronic devices. The key to achieve high device performance is to deposit pinhole-free, uniform and defect-less perovskite films on the rough surface of polymeric substrates. Here, a solvent engineering to tailor the crystal morphology of FA-alloyed perovskite films prepared by one-step blade coating is first deployed. It is found that the use of binary solvents DMFNMP, rather than the conventional DMFDMSO, enables to deposit dense and uniform FA-alloyed perovskite films on both the rigid and flexible substrates. As a decisive step, an embedding 2D/3D perovskite heterostructure is in situ formed by incorporating a small amount of 4-guanidinobutanoic acid (GBA). Accordingly, photovoltage increases up to 100 mV are realized due to the markedly suppressed nonradiative recombination, leading to high efficiencies of 21.45% and 20.16% on the rigid and flexible substrates, respectively.