Emergency egress for the elderly in care home fire situations

Practitioners are continuing to develop egress modelling software for the design of the built environment. These models require data about human behaviour and factors for calibration, validation and verification. This study aims to address the specific data and knowledge gap: emergency egress of the elderly. Such data are difficult to collect given privacy and consent concerns, with strong relationships generally being required between residences and researchers. Through the observation of nine fire drills at six Canadian long-term care (LTC) and retirement homes, specific evacuation actions and behaviour were observed for 37 staff members and information about the evacuation of 56 residents was collected. These drills demonstrated that emergency egress in LTC and retirement homes is highly staff dependent with 72% of residents recorded requiring full assistance at all stages of movement in evacuation, and that the type of announced/unannounced drill and level of resident care will affect the type of data collected. The development of travel speed and pre-movement is discussed subject to limitation with qualitative behavioural insights of residents that were observed. This study provides valuable methodological discussion on how to conduct behavioural studies in similar highly restricted research environments. Specific attention is given to understanding the considerations that must be made when using fire drills as data sources, and the impact that these can have on using such data for modelling. This study may inform the initial setup and programming of evacuation models from an actions and behavioural perspectives of staff members and residents.     

Family, peer, and neighborhood influences on academic achievement among African-American adolescents: one-year prospective effects

Using a 1-year prospective design, this study examined the influence of family status variables (family income, parental education, family structure), parenting variables (maternal support and restrictive control), peer support, and neighborhood risk on the school performance of 120 African American junior high school students. In addition to main effects of these variables, neighborhood risk was examined as a moderator of the effects of parenting and peer support. Family status variables were not predictive of adolescent school performance as indexed by self-reported grade point average. Maternal support at Time 1 was prospectively related to adolescent grades at Time 2. Neighborhood risk was related to lower grades, while peer support predicted better grades in the prospective analyses. Neighborhood risk also moderated the effects of maternal restrictive control and peer support on adolescent grades in prospective analyses. These findings highlight the importance of an ecological approach to the problem of academic underachievement within the African American Community.     

Public Cellphone Use Does Not Activate Negative Responses in Others…Unless They Hate Cellphones

Ostracism dramatically reduces psychosocial well‐being. Many studies have examined ostracism within digital environments, but to our knowledge no one has examined ostracism as manifested through public cellphone use. Experimental data revealed that public texting or reading on a cellphone was less ostracizing to copresent others than face‐to‐face ostracism but more ostracizing than face‐to‐face inclusion. Though cellphone use was somewhat ostracizing it did not prompt negative psychological effects, supporting the notion of cellphone taken‐for‐grantedness. Exceptions were found for those reporting phone technostress; these individuals were negatively affected by exposure to someone reading on a cellphone. Findings extend the ostracism paradigm to a new context and support research on the importance of attitudes and norms in shaping the effects of public cellphone use.     

Response surface methodology in the control of thermoplastic extrusion of starch

Effect of extrusion temperature, screw speed and moisture content on the gelatinisation properties of extruded corn starch using a single-screw extruder were studied using response surface methodology. The degree of gelatinisation can be effectively controlled by controlling the moisture content of the raw material and the extrusion temperature; control by manipulation of screw speed is also possible when the raw material has a high moisture content. The extrudate produced from starch with a low moisture content exhibited a very low retrogradation capacity, which was independent of the screw speed. It was evident that variation of operating conditions permits the production of an extrudate with various technological characteristics to meet varying food and industrial applications, and the use of response surface analysis seems to be an effective means of studying and optimising these conditions for extrusion technology.     

The formation of active species for oxidative dehydrogenation of propane on magnesium molybdates

Pure and mixed magnesium molybdate phases (MoO₃, MgMoO₄, and MgMo₂O₇) have been examined for the oxidative dehydrogenation reaction of propane. The results are very sensitive to the stoichiometry and method of preparation. The catalysts exhibiting superior activity and selectivity are characterized by a unique temperature-programmed reduction peak that is not present for the poorly active or selective catalysts. Mixtures of MgMoO₄ and MoO₃ or MgMoO₄ and MgMo₂O₇, materials that perform poorly by themselves, show significant improvements in performance upon heating. The solid-state interactions leading to these improvements correspond to the appearance of the characteristic reduction peak. The results suggest that the beneficial synergistic effects seen with mixtures of inactive phases are due to formation of a new phase or species, rather than remote communication between phases (e.g., oxygen spillover). This revised version was published online in November 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Synthetic and Biological Studies of Sesquiterpene Polygodial: Activity of 9‐Epipolygodial against Drug‐Resistant Cancer Cells

Polygodial, a terpenoid dialdehyde isolated from Polygonum hydropiper L., is a known agonist of the transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1). In this investigation a series of polygodial analogues were prepared and investigated for TRPV1‐agonist and anticancer activities. These experiments led to the identification of 9‐epipolygodial, which has antiproliferative potency significantly exceeding that of polygodial. 9‐Epipolygodial was found to maintain potency against apoptosis‐resistant cancer cells as well as those displaying the multidrug‐resistant (MDR) phenotype. In addition, the chemical feasibility for the previously proposed mechanism of action of polygodial, involving the formation of a Paal–Knorr pyrrole with a lysine residue on the target protein, was demonstrated by the synthesis of a stable polygodial pyrrole derivative. These studies reveal rich chemical and biological properties associated with polygodial and its direct derivatives. These compounds should inspire further work in this area aimed at the development of new pharmacological agents, or the exploration of novel mechanisms of covalent modification of biological molecules with natural products.