Review of A family like yours: Breaking the patterns of drug abuse.

Reviews the book, A family like yours: Breaking the patterns of drug abuse by James L. Sorensen and Guillermo Bernal (1987). A family like yours is a self-help guide aimed at families with a drug-abusing member. It attempts to fill a gap in the self-help literature on substance abuse and families. The problem readers may encounter is one of integrating without outside help the overwhelming amount of material presented. The chapters cover many basic concepts in family systems and life cycle theory without sufficient space devoted to particular concepts or points. Points are made with little elaboration, and the reader may not be able to integrate much of the material. However, for the family that is involved in treatment, the book may prove helpful in promoting insights into the functioning of the family and may serve as a valuable adjunct to treatment by provoking questions and insights that can move a family toward change. The authors' emphasis on providing the family support and optimism tempered by realistic limits may also serve to make this book a useful adjunct to treatment. This book serves as a valuable addition to the self-help literature on drug abuse in families and partially fills a gap currently existing in that marketplace. It covers a great deal of material that is not easily available to the lay reader at this time. This book is more likely to be insight provoking, practical, and motivating, however, to the drug abusing family that is in treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

对生产过程中的违规行为分析

对生产过程中的违规违制行为进行分析，并提出预防措施。     

与《阳极组装残极压脱机的应用及改造》一文商榷

改进后的系统不能降低分流集流阀的工作压力，增加的顺序阀旁0通回路使分流阀失去同步分流作用。分流集流阀损坏的原因，是阀芯之间猛烈撞击而造成的。     

New drug development by innovative drug administration--"change" in pharmaceutical field

New drug development can be made by providing products of higher "selectivity for the drug" for medical treatment. There are two ways for the approach to get higher "selectivity of drug": 1) discovery of new compounds with high selectivity of drug; 2) innovation of new drug administration, that is new formulation and/or method with high selectivity of drug by integration and harmonization of various hard/soft technologies. An extensive increase of biological information and advancement of surrounding science and technology may modify the situation as the latter overcomes the former in the 21 century. As the science and technology in the 21 century is said to be formed on "3H", that is, 1. hybrid; 2. hi-quality; 3. husbandry, the new drug development by innovative drug administration is exactly based on the science and technology of 3H. Its characteristic points are interdisciplinary/interfusion, international, of philosophy/ethics, and systems of hard/hard/heart. From these points of view, not only the advance of unit technology but also a revolution in thinking way should be "must" subjects. To organize this type of research well, a total research activity such as ROR (research on research) might take an important and efficient role. Here the key words are the "Optimization technology" and "Change in Pharmaceutical Fields." As some examples of new drug innovation, our trials on several topical mucosal adhesive dosage forms and parenteral administration of peptide drugs such as insulin and erythropoietin will be described.     

Insight, assessment, and clinical skills: Do they have a role in the bureaucracy?

The interrelationship between formal academic training and public sector employment demands the integration of a different set of values, motives, and styles. Denial of the unique identifiers of either system minimizes the effectiveness one has in system involvement or system change. This article explores those interfaces and the unique skills and opportunities inherent in each system. The author's personal experiences as a psychologist and the director of the largest state mental health system in the United States are the basis of these observations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How to read a paper. Statistics for the non-statistician. II: "Significant" relations and their pitfalls

It is possible to be seriously misled by taking the statistical competence (and/or the intellectual honesty) of authors for granted. Some common errors committed (deliberately or inadvertently) by the authors of papers are given in the final box.     

Television minidramas: social marketing and evaluation in Egypt

Television has been extensively used to communicate health messages for over a decade in Egypt. Viewers of the evening soap operas have been seeing six commercials for family planning, oral rehydration solution (ORS), and immunizations. People of all social classes can sing the jingles of the most popular ads. The producers of these health spots use increasingly sophisticated story lines, settings, and characters representing rural peasants, played by popular and well-liked actors. Evaluation of the content and impact of these messages has lagged behind the creative sophistication of their production. This article reviews the context and content of televised health messages in Egypt during the 1980s, critically assesses the evaluation of mass media health education, and suggests strategies for more effective evaluation. The author worked for some years with a private donor agency that funded the production of a number of televised health commercials in Egypt.     

The "rainbow" model: an attempt at a global approach to the drug problem

A global, tridimensional, and comprehensive model for the drug problem is presented. On a flat matrix with five components (growing, production, processing, traffic/distribution, and consumption) and seven dimensions (individual, family, restricted group, neighborhood, city/region, national, and international), six different perspectives are employed (psychobiological, social/political, economics, legal, historical/cultural, and geographical). Each psychoactive substance may be analyzed separately.     

Buying safety: the economics of reproductive risk and abortion in Egypt

This article examines the economics of abortion safety in Egypt. Under Egyptian law induced abortion is restricted to cases in which two physicians certify that the pregnancy presents a danger to the health or life of the mother. Despite this legal restriction, the available data indicate that abortion is quite widely practiced. Multifaceted strands of legal, religious, economic, and health care policy influence both discourse about and access to abortion in Egypt. Interviews with 18 Egyptian women who sought to terminate their pregnancies revealed a wide range of abortion methods that varied in both safety and cost. Three levels of safety were identified: (1) indigenous (wasfa baladi) methods were potentially the least safe; (2) biomedical abortions at clandestine clinics appeared safer than indigenous methods, but were not without risk: and (3) biomedical abortions administered by private gynecologists, were the most safe. Safety is expensive. Wealthy women can literally buy safety, while poor women's lack of financial resources put their lives at great risk.     

Probing the "active site" of diamine oxidase: structure-activity relations for histamine potentiation by O-alkylhydroxylamines on colonic epithelium

The responses of the canine colonic epithelium to histamine are potentiated by O-alkylhydroxylamines. A study of a series of such compounds suggested that active compounds had the structure R-O-NH2, substitution of a nitrogen led to total loss of activity. The locus of the potentiation effect was traced to the inhibition of diamine oxidase. A new series of aliphatic and aromatic O-alkylhydroxylamines were synthesized to explore further the structure-activity relations of this effect. The potentiating effects of these compounds were determined by examining the changes in short circuit current (Isc) produced by histamine and from the activity of a soluble preparation of diamine oxidase. We found that 1) branched compounds are less active than their straight chain counterparts, 2) greater steric bulk of the aliphatic substituent decreased activity, 3) the presence of a double bond had no significant effect though a triple bond reduced activity, 4) longer straight chain compounds were less active than the shorter chain derivatives and 5) all benzylic compounds were less active than the straight chain aliphatics. O-1-benzyl was inactive however the meta or para oxygen substituted compounds as well as the O-(1-E-Cinnamyl) derivative were active. A current model for the action of diamine oxidase proposes a crucial role for a trihydroxyphenylalanine quinone cofactor as part of the active site together with a copper atom. Using molecular modeling based on our inhibition data we are able to define the region of space that is just beyond the reactive carbonyl of the trihydroxyphenylalanine residue at the active site of diamine oxidase. We suggest that a negatively charged species, such as an aspartate or a glutamate, resides in a trough about 7 to 8 A from the trihydroxyphenylalanine carbonyl carbon and this species aids in the strong selective binding of substrates such as putrescine and histamine.     

An ancient scourge: the end of dracunculiasis in Egypt

This paper addresses the question of when guinea worm disease was last found in Egypt, and how written sources from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which mention the disease should be evaluated. This enquiry is relevant to the global eradication campaign now in progress, and the need for countries in which dracunculiasis was once present to prepare a certification of eradication. Sudan, the country which has the largest number of cases today, is Egypt's southern neighbour. Because of the nature of the disease (in endemic areas it is most common among poor, rural people), it may not have come to the attention of urban-based health personnel. In the period before the details of the transmission cycle were known, the attitudes and mindsets of physicians and travellers also have to be taken into account in interpreting written reports of the disease. An examination of documentary sources from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in European languages does not show any clear evidence for dracunculiasis transmission in Egypt during that period. Cases noted in Egypt, especially by the much quoted Dr Clot Bey in the 1820s, most likely originated beyond the borders of the country, in Sudan and, to a lesser extent, from endemic areas in the Middle East. However, many later commentators merely repeated what Clot Bey had written. A further difficulty is that some published reports which apparently concern dracunculiasis in Egypt, actually refer to cases in animals rather than humans.     

Selenium deficiency in patients with cardiovascular diseases and its correction with the drug "selena"

Blood selenium concentrations, erythrocytic glutathione peroxidase (GPO) activity, and plasma lipid peroxides were investigated in patients with ischemic heart disease (IHD) and dilated cardiomyopathy (DCMP). Patients with IHD and DCMP displayed depressed activity of GPO with activation of lipid peroxides associated with lower blood selenium. The daily intake of 300 micrograms of selenium from Selena during a month treatment augmented selenium concentrations by 71% in IHD and DCMP patients. This augmentation showed an inverse correlation with primary plasma selenium concentrations. Plasma malonic dialdehyde levels decreased by 17%. The findings suggest that selenium is involved in the pathogenesis of DCMP and IHD, which may be a ground for selecting patients with selenium deficiency for its correction with Selena.     

Cancer registration in the Faeroe Islands

The main purpose was to establish a cancer registry which could provide data for the treatment and control of cancer in the Faroe Islands. The registry should also be useful for epidemiological research in the future to pinpoint causes of cancer. The initiation of the registry is a result of a workgroup with members from the Faroes Hospital and Health System and from the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology at the Danish Cancer Society. The data items collected in the Faroes registry are identical with the data items in the Danish Cancer Registry. To provide a basis for the registry we have performed a retrospective data collection identifying all cancer cases in the Faroes for the 15 year period 1979-1993. All hospital records and death certificates in the period were scrutinized. The official initiation of the Faroes cancer registry was on 1, January 1994.     

Drug development and registration in Japan: threshold of transition

The responsibility for the regulation of pharmaceuticals is situated within the Pharmaceutical Affairs Bureau (PAB) of the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare. The scientific evaluation of the application is undertaken by a series of committees consisting of independent senior members of the medical and scientific community whereas all communication between them and the pharmaceutical company is conducted through PAB offices (Koseisho). As in the U.S., the Japanese drug application covers product quality, safety, and efficacy, but the actual data requirements differ between the two countries. Some of these differences have a basis in Japanese regulations whereas others emulate from demands set by senior members of the medical fraternity who carry great sway in Japan. These cause concern to international pharmaceutical companies since they may require studies to be duplicated with consequent delays. Moves toward the achievement of global harmonization of regulatory requirements with the associated benefits of reducing the numbers of animals sacrificed in the total development program and of important new medications reaching patients earlier are discussed.