Engineering egress data considering pedestrians with reduced mobility

To quantify the evacuation process, evacuation practitioners use engineering egress data describing the occupant movement characteristics. These data are typically based to young and fit populations. However, the movement abilities of occupants who might be involved in evacuations are becoming more variable—with the building populations of today typically including increasing numbers of individuals: with impairments or who are otherwise elderly or generally less mobile. Thus, there will be an increasing proportion of building occupants with reduced ability to egress. For safe evacuation, there is therefore a need to provide valid engineering egress data considering pedestrians with disabilities. Gwynne and Boyce recently compiled a series of data sets related to the evacuation process to support practitioner activities in the chapter Engineering Data in the SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering. This paper supplements these data sets by providing information on and presenting data obtained from additional research related to the premovement and horizontal movement of participants with physical‐, cognitive‐, or age‐related disabilities. The aim is to provide an overview of currently available data sets related to, and key factors affecting the egress performance of, mixed ability populations which could be used to guide fire safety engineering decisions in the context of building design.     

N-Substituted Nipecotic Acids as (S)-SNAP-5114 Analogues with Modified Lipophilic Domains

Potential mGAT4 inhibitors derived from the lead substance (S)-SNAP-5114 have been synthesized and characterized for their inhibitory potency. Variations from the parent compound included the substitution of one of its aromatic 4-methoxy and 4-methoxyphenyl groups, respectively, with a more polar moiety, including a carboxylic acid, alcohol, nitrile, carboxamide, sulfonamide, aldehyde or ketone function, or amino acid partial structures. Furthermore, it was investigated how the substitution of more than one of the aromatic 4-methoxy groups affects the potency and selectivity of the resulting compounds. Among the synthesized test substances (S)-1-{2-[(4-formylphenyl)bis(4-methoxyphenyl)-methoxy]ethyl}piperidine-3-carboxylic acid, that features a carbaldehyde function in place of one of the aromatic 4-methoxy moieties of (S)-SNAP-5114, was found to have a pIC₅₀ value of 5.89±0.07, hence constituting a slightly more potent mGAT4 inhibitor than the parent substance while showing comparable subtype selectivity.