Consensus statements for management of Barrett's dysplasia and early-stage esophageal adenocarcinoma, based on a Delphi process

Esophageal adenocarcinoma (EA) is increasingly common among patients with Barrett's esophagus (BE). We aimed to provide consensus recommendations based on the medical literature that clinicians could use to manage patients with BE and low-grade dysplasia, high-grade dysplasia (HGD), or early-stage EA.

Novel semi-interpenetrating hydrogel networks with enhanced mechanical properties and thermoresponsive engineered drug delivery, designed as bioactive endotracheal tube biomaterials

Thermoresponsive polymeric platforms are used to optimise drug delivery in pharmaceutical systems and bioactive medical devices. However, the practical application of these systems is compromised by their poor mechanical properties. This study describes the design of thermoresponsive semi-interpenetrating polymer networks (s-IPNs) based on cross-linked p(NIPAA) or p(NIPAA-co-HEMA) hydrogels containing poly(e-caprolactone) designed to address this issue. Using DSC, the lower critical solution temperature of the co-polymer and p(NIPAA) matrices were circa 34 °C and 32 °C, respectively. PCL was physically dispersed within the hydrogel matrices as confirmed using confocal scanning laser microscopy and DSC and resulted in marked changes in the mechanical properties (ultimate tensile strength, Young's modulus) without adversely compromising the elongation properties. P(NIPAA) networks containing dispersed PCL exhibited thermoresponsive swelling properties following immersion in buffer (pH 7), with the equilibrium-swelling ratio being greater at 20 °C than 37 °C and greatest for p(NIPAA)/PCL systems at 20 °C. The incorporation of PCL significantly lowered the equilibrium swelling ratio of the various networks but this was not deemed practically significant for s-IPNs based on p(NIPAA). Thermoresponsive release of metronidazole was observed from s-IPN composed of p(NIPAA)/PCL at 37 °C but not from p(NIPAA-co-HEMA)/PCL at this temperature. In all other platforms, drug release at 20 °C was significantly similar to that at 37 °C and was diffusion controlled. This study has uniquely described a strategy by which thermoresponsive drug release may be performed from polymeric platforms with highly elastic properties. It is proposed that these materials may be used clinically as bioactive endotracheal tubes, designed to offer enhanced resistance to ventilator associated pneumonia, a clinical condition associated with the use of endotracheal tubes where stimulus responsive drug release from biomaterials of significant mechanical properties would be advantageous. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Eradication of Pseudomonas aeruginosa Biofilms by Atmospheric Pressure Non-Thermal Plasma

Bacteria exist, in most environments, as complex, organised communities of sessile cells embedded within a matrix of self-produced, hydrated extracellular polymeric substances known as biofilms. Bacterial biofilms represent a ubiquitous and predominant cause of both chronic infections and infections associated with the use of indwelling medical devices such as catheters and prostheses. Such infections typically exhibit significantly enhanced tolerance to antimicrobial, biocidal and immunological challenge. This renders them difficult, sometimes impossible, to treat using conventional chemotherapeutic agents. Effective alternative approaches for prevention and eradication of biofilm associated chronic and device-associated infections are therefore urgently required. Atmospheric pressure non-thermal plasmas are gaining increasing attention as a potential approach for the eradication and control of bacterial infection and contamination. To date, however, the majority of studies have been conducted with reference to planktonic bacteria and rather less attention has been directed towards bacteria in the biofilm mode of growth. In this study, the activity of a kilohertz-driven atmospheric pressure non-thermal plasma jet, operated in a helium oxygen mixture, against Pseudomonas aeruginosa in vitro biofilms was evaluated. Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms exhibit marked susceptibility to exposure of the plasma jet effluent, following even relatively short (~10's s) exposure times. Manipulation of plasma operating conditions, for example, plasma operating frequency, had a significant effect on the bacterial inactivation rate. Survival curves exhibit a rapid decline in the number of surviving cells in the first 60 seconds followed by slower rate of cell number reduction. Excellent anti-biofilm activity of the plasma jet was also demonstrated by both confocal scanning laser microscopy and metabolism of the tetrazolium salt, XTT, a measure of bactericidal activity.

Infection-Responsive Drug Delivery from Urinary Biomaterials Controlled by a Novel Kinetic and Thermodynamic Approach

Purpose. The pH-dependent physicochemical properties of the antimicrobial quinolone, nalidixic acid, were exploited to achieve ‘intelligent’ drug release from a potential urinary catheter coating, poly(2-hydroxyethylmethacrylate) (p(HEMA)), in direct response to the elevated pH which occurs at the onset of catheter infection.
Methods. p(HEMA) hydrogels, and reduced-hydrophilicity copolymers incorporating methyl methacrylate, were loaded with nalidixic acid by a novel, surface particulate localization method, and characterized in terms of pH-dependent drug release and microbiological activity against the common urease-producing urinary pathogen Proteus mirabilis.
Results. The pH-dependent release kinetics of surface-localized nalidixic acid were 50- and 10-fold faster at pH 9, representing the alkaline conditions induced by urease-producing urinary pathogens, compared to release at pH 5 and pH 7 respectively. Furthermore, microbiological activity against P. mirabilis was significantly enhanced after loading surface particulate nalidixic acid in comparison to p(HEMA) hydrogels conventionally loaded with dispersed drug. The more hydrophobic methyl methacrylate-containing copolymers also demonstrated this pH responsive behavior, but additionally exhibited a sustained period of zero-order release.
Conclusions. The paradigm presented here provides a system with latent, immediate infection-responsive drug release followed by prolonged zero-order antimicrobial delivery, and represents an ‘intelligent’, infection-responsive, self-sterilizing biomaterial.

Belfast: The Rise and Fall of a Civic Culture?

A discussion of the extent to which Belfast participated in the spirit of civic pride and commitment to urban renewal that historians have identified as a key feature of nineteenth-century British cities.

Religion and Society 1600-1914

An overview of changes in denominational structure and popular religious practice

Popular Culture, 1600-1914

A review of changes in language, custom, amusements during Ulster's transition from a rural to an urban industrial society

Romanticism and Blackwood's Magazine:'An Unprecedented Phenomenon'

Romanticism and Blackwood's Magazine is inspired by the ongoing critical fascination with Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, and the burgeoning recognition of its centrality to the Romantic age. Though the magazine itself was published continuously for well over a century and a half, this volume concentrates specifically on those years when William Blackwood was at the helm, beginning with his founding of the magazine in 1817 and closing with his death in 1834. These were the years when, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge put it in 1832, Blackwood's reigned as 'an unprecedented Phenomenon in the world of letters.' The magazine placed itself at the centre of the emerging mass media, commented decisively on all the major political and cultural issues that shaped the Romantic movement, and published some of the leading writers of the day, including Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey, John Galt, Felicia Hemans, James Hogg, Walter Scott, and Mary Shelley.

'This much-needed volume reminds us not only why Blackwood's was the most influential periodical publication of the time, but also how its writers, writings, and critical agendas continue to shape so many of the scholarly concerns of Romantic studies in the twenty-first century.' - Charles Mahoney, Associate Professor, University of Connecticut, USA

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Notes on Contributors
'A character so various, and yet so indisputably its own': A Passage to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine; R.Morrison & D.S.Roberts
PART I: BLACKWOOD'S AND THE PERIODICAL PRESS
Beginning Blackwood's: The Right Mix of Dulce and Ùtile; P.Flynn
John Gibson Lockhart and Blackwood's: Shaping the Romantic Periodical Press; T.Richardson
From Gluttony to Justified Sinning: Confessional Writing in Blackwood's and the London Magazine; D.Higgins
Camaraderie and Conflict: De Quincey and Wilson on Enemy Lines; R.Morrison
Selling Blackwood's Magazine, 1817-1834; D.Finkelstein
PART II: BLACKWOOD'S CULTURE AND CRITICISM
Blackwood's 'Personalities'; T.Mole
Communal Reception, Mary Shelley, and the 'Blackwood's School' of Criticism; N.Mason
Blackwoodian Allusion and the Culture of Miscellaneity; D.Stewart
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in the Scientific Culture of Early Nineteenth-Century Edinburgh; W.Christie
The Art and Science of Politics in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, c. 1817-1841; D.Kelly
Prosing Poetry: Blackwood's and Generic Transposition, 1820-1840; J.Camlot
PART III: BLACKWOOD'S FICTIONS
Blackwood's and the Boundaries of the Short Story; T.Killick
The Edinburgh of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and James Hogg's Fiction; G.Hughes
'The Taste for Violence in Blackwood's Magazine'; M.Schoenfield
PART IV: BLACKWOOD'S AT HOME
John Wilson and Regency Authorship; R.Cronin
John Wilson and Sport; J.Strachan
William Maginn and the Blackwood's 'Preface' of 1826; D.E.Latané, Jr.
All Work and All Play: Felicia Hemans's Edinburgh Noctes; N.Sweet
PART V: BLACKWOOD'S ABROAD
Imagining India in Early Blackwood's; D.S.Roberts
Tales of the Colonies: Blackwood's, Provincialism, and British Interests Abroad; A.Jarrells
Selected Bibliography
Index

ROBERT MORRISON is Queen's National Scholar at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. His book, The English Opium-Eater: A Biography of Thomas De Quincey was a finalist for the James Tait Black Prize. He has edited writings by Jane Austen, Leigh Hunt, Thomas De Quincey, and John Polidori.
DANIEL SANJIV ROBERTS is Reader in English at Queen's University Belfast, UK. His publications include a monograph, Revisionary Gleam: De Quincey, Coleridge, and the High Romantic Argument (2000), and major critical editions of Thomas De Quincey's Autobiographic Sketches and Robert Southey's The Curse of Kehama; the latter was cited as a Distinguished Scholarly Edition by the MLA. He is currently working on an edition of Charles Johnstone's novel The History of Arsaces, Prince of Betlis for the Early Irish Fiction series.