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Schizophrenia is a chronic condition that requires long-term management. Quality of life is an important outcome measure for individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia; it can be tracked over time allowing evaluation of whether interventions lead to sustainable improvements. Nutrition and dietary interventions are an underutilized treatment for tackling the metabolic consequences of mental illness, which is now recognized as having increased importance in the management of schizophrenia. This study examines the impact of nutrition and dietary interventions on quality of life outcomes for those with schizophrenia.
Methods:
A systematic review of the literature was conducted, assessing the impact of nutritional interventions on quality of life outcomes in individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
Results:
A total of 982 articles were screened, of which nine articles met the inclusion criteria. Quality of life measures varied across studies, which made comparison across studies challenging. Previous studies had relatively small sample sizes and did not have long follow-up durations. Some of the studies found that dietary interventions such as counselling, weight management programs, food diaries and nutritional education improved quality of life, whereas others did not detect any effect.
Conclusions:
The review provides preliminary evidence that nutrition and dietary interventions may benefit quality of life among individuals with schizophrenia. There were however substantial limitations in studies highlighting the need for further research. The paper also highlights the need to standardize assessment tools for future quality-of-life research.
Cosmetics, including makeup, perfumes, and facial care products, have a significant impact on the environment and society, particularly as they are used by many consumers daily. The industry's continued growth further contributes to this impact. This paper reviews 365 articles on existing research on sustainable cosmetics. Findings of this review showed that Italy, Brazil, and Spain are the countries with the highest number of research articles. It was also noted that many studies were from chemical and pharmaceutical disciplines, whereas there is minimal research through a social science lens. These insights provide avenues for future sustainability research in the cosmetics industry.
Technical summary
Cosmetics have become an essential part of daily life, but their impact on the environment and society cannot be ignored. With the cosmetics industry experiencing almost continuous growth, it is imperative to ensure its sustainability. While several studies have examined various aspects of cosmetics and sustainability, there is no comprehensive overview of the literature in this field. To address this gap, this review aims to categorize the extant literature thematically and identify areas that require further research. A systematic review of 365 selected journal articles published from 1992 to 2022 revealed several insights. Firstly, the number of publications in this area has increased significantly over the years. Secondly, Italy has the highest number of publications, and Sustainability is the most popular publication outlet. Thirdly, research output from chemistry, chemical engineering, and pharmacy disciplines is abundant, while social science disciplines have comparatively few studies. Fourthly, experimental procedures are the most commonly used research methods. Finally, ‘process and technology’ is the most studied area, while ‘stakeholder behavior’ is the least studied area. These findings highlight research gaps and suggest future research directions to promote sustainability in the cosmetics industry.
Social media summary
This review looks at 30 years of research on sustainable cosmetics and identifies areas that need to be explored.
Children are no strangers to war and conflict, and for as long as history has been documented, so too has the negative impact of war on children. Attachment theory, which has shone a light upon the ways in which early life experiences can impact individuals across the lifespan, is a helpful lens through which we can view the consequences of war. Similar to the aftermath of war leading to lifelong and transgenerational suffering due to deaths and physical health issues, attachment difficulties created during war further compound long-term damage. Yet, despite our theoretical understanding of the detrimental impact of war on children and on humankind, humanity has failed to find ways to avert, or at least minimise, this unfortunate risk. Instead in this century, we see a growing number of conflicts globally with increasing asylum seekers. In this editorial, we argue that the large-scale disruption to attachment relationships caused by conflict and war is an important consideration for global policy, and that the healthcare community must show leadership in highlighting this serious impact of war.
Official interpretations of Doppler shifts from the final satellite communications of missing Malaysian Airlines MH370 were based on a motion-decoupled ‘Up-Down model’. That model predicted an uncontrolled high-speed gravitationally accelerated dive following fuel starvation. Here, I challenge that model using a more-realistic motion-coupled ‘Declination model’. Aerial, satellite and underwater searches failed to find the predicted official violent crash-site near the 7th arc. Meticulous re-examination of debris damage by air-crash investigator Larry Vance concluded that the aircraft glide-landed under power with extended wing-flaps. The trailing-edges were then damaged, broke off their mountings, flailing about and retracted along the guides to cause the observed wing-flap damage. Larry's conclusions complement interpretations from the ‘Declination model’ which we demonstrate here with three example flight tracks. Our revised Doppler-shift analyses support the hypothesis of a controlled eastward descent. We conclude that the official theory of fuel starvation and a high-speed dive are fundamentally flawed.
Impact factor (IF) is a concept dating back over half a century, created to evaluate the impact of a journal within a particular scientific field. In spite of limitations, IF remains a widely used metric for journals to establish the average number of citations for articles published in a journal. The Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine (IJPM) recently received an IF of 5.1, the first IF for the journal. We believe that this is a reflection of the hard work and dedication of our authors, reviewers, publishers and editorial board. The IJPM is the official research journal of the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland, and while psychiatry is the primary discipline of the journal, the current multidisciplinary approach will continue into the future. The journal has a strong Irish and international readership; while the journal will continue to publish research with an Irish focus, the editorial team are aware of the importance of ongoing global contributions to ensure the journal maintains high-quality publications of an international standard. This is an exciting time to be involved in mental health research, and the journal will continue to publish cutting edge themes with the goal of improving mental healthcare in Ireland and beyond.
Currently there is no first-line treatment recommended for the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Psychosocial and behavioural interventions are widely used to reduce the burden of negative symptoms. Meta-analytic studies have summarised the evidence for specific approaches but not compared evidence quality and benefit.
Aim
To review and evaluate the evidence from meta-analytic studies of psychosocial and behavioural interventions for the negative symptoms of schizophrenia.
Method
A systematic literature search was undertaken to identify all meta-analyses evaluating psychosocial and behavioural interventions reporting on negative symptom outcomes in people with schizophrenia. Data on intervention, study characteristics, acceptability and outcome were extracted. Risk of bias was evaluated. Results were summarised descriptively, and evidence ranked on methodological quality.
Results
In total, 31 systematic reviews met the inclusion criteria evaluating the efficacy of negative symptom interventions on 33 141 participants. Exercise interventions showed effect sizes (reduction in negative symptoms) ranging from −0.59 to −0.24 and psychological interventions ranging from −0.65 to −0.04. Attrition ranged between 12% to 32%. Across the studies considered heterogeneity varied substantially (range 0–100). Most of the reviews were of very low to low methodological quality. Methodological quality ranking suggested that the effect size for cognitive remediation and exercise therapy may be more robust compared with other approaches.
Conclusions
Most of the interventions considered had a small-to-moderate effect size, good acceptability levels but very few had negative symptoms as the primary intervention target. To improve the confidence of these effect sizes being replicated in clinical settings future studies should minimise risk of bias.
In 2012, the Irish Department of Health published a strategy in relation to alcohol and flagged that a Public Health (Alcohol) Act would be pursued through the Houses of the Oireachtas. This Public Health (Alcohol) Act was intended to reduce alcohol consumption and the harms caused by the misuse of alcohol. The act includes various means for this purpose, including introducing statutory minimum prices on alcohol, restricting alcohol advertising, addition of warning labels to alcohol products, and reducing the visibility of alcohol products in retail outlets. This perspective piece aims to provide an account of how this public health alcohol policy has been implemented in Ireland. The strategy relied in a major way on the World Health Organisation framework for alcohol policy. It took 3 years from the launch of that strategy to get the Public Health (Alcohol) Bill published, in December 2015. It took almost another 3 years to get the Public Health (Alcohol) Act passed by the Houses of the Oireachtas, in October 2018. The Act was signed into law by the President of Ireland in November 2018, and it’s implementation has commenced in the last few years. This perspective piece highlights the complexities and challenges of implementing legislation related to public health policy, but also demonstrates that real action can occur with advocacy from public health clinicians and key stakeholders.
Thanks to forthcoming large-scale surveys, a tremendous number of strong lenses will be discovered in the coming years. The gain in accuracy on H0 from such a large population of lensed quasars is a key question for the future of time-delay cosmography. In such context, lensed systems will have to be modeled in an automated way, with models that are sufficiently generic to apply to every lens. I explore the biases that may arise from unaccounted-for azimuthal structures in mass models. The non-modeled twists in lensing galaxies are expected to bias the shear inference but not H0. Disregarded ellipticity gradients, boxyness and discyness may impact the cosmological inference on a lens-by-lens basis. Nevertheless, the diversity of azimuthal mass profile in lenses balances the bias at a population level and the H0 inference can thus benefits from such large surveys.
Thermal x-rays from neutron stars are mainly radiated by accretion discs originating in the flux of material from a companion star. The companions are white dwarf stars with a range of masses, and some black holes. X-ray bursts are attributed to catastrophic nuclear events on the neutron star surface following accretion from the companion. Structure in the rotating accretion disc is observed as quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs).
Most of our understanding of the location and nature of the beamed emission comes from the pulse profiles, which are available over the whole electromagnetic spectrum. The radio profiles are the most detailed, with observations of polarisation, width and components.
Finding the population of pulsars in the Milky Way galaxy requires a knowledge of the parameters and limitations of the various surveys made with different instruments and in different regions of the sky. We list the available survey data and show how models of the galactic population can be compared with the observational data, allowing estimates of pulsar birthrate and lifetime. Determination of accurate positions of individual pulsars require a Solar System ephemeris and a complex geometrical computation. Binary pulsar orbits display reletivistic effects which can be measured with remarkable precision to yield parameters of orbits and checks on relativistic theory.
The characteristic steps in the rotation rates of pulsars are known as glitches and arise in the irregular transfer of angular momentum from the interior to the crust as a neutron star spins down. They are related to the structure and the fluid dynamics of some superfluid components. The angular momentum is quantised in vortices, which may be pinned to the crystal structure of the crust. Glitches may be related to catastrophic unpinning events and to cracking of the crust itself. Timing noise is quasi-random variation in rotation rate. In many pulsars, the spin-down rate is seen to switch abruptly as the emission changes, indicating that changes in magnetospheric particle flows are responsible for both spin-down and radiation.
Pulsar distances are obtained from their frequency dispersion, geometrically from annual parallax, and from optical identifiction with supernova remnants, globular clusters and binary companions. For most pulsars, distances are only available from observation of effects of propagation in the interstellar medium, particularly neutral hydrogen absorption and frequency dispersion. Interpretation of the dispersion measure requires a model of the electron distribution through the Galaxy.