The maintenance of water balance in arid environments might represent a formidable challenge for Chiroptera, since they have high surface-to-volume ratios. In deserts, bats conserve water, for example, using daily torpor, but they also might experience episodic heat bouts, when they may need to increase total evaporative water loss (TEWL) to thermoregulate. We hypothesized that in bats, habitat aridity and its variability determine a trade-off between water conservation and thermoregulation via evaporative means.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Am Acad Psychiatry Law
December 2021
This study examined the effect of clozapine on time assigned to restrictive housing (RH; i.e., solitary confinement), disciplinary infractions, and assaults on custody staff among patients treated within the North Carolina prison system.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Am Acad Psychiatry Law
December 2021
Involuntary commitment hearings have been conducted utilizing videoconferencing technology for several years. There is limited information available in the published psychiatric literature pertaining to the use of this technology for commitment proceedings. The University of North Carolina Hospitals adopted a remote videoconferencing (tele-hearing) format for its civil commitment proceedings in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and this provided us with the opportunity to investigate the use of such an arrangement.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPeople with serious mental illnesses increasingly are being treated in jails and prisons, and during incarceration are afforded a constitutional right to medical care. This right pertains to both general medical and mental illnesses and both acute and chronic conditions. However, incarcerated patients with treatment-resistant schizophrenia (TRS) often are not offered clozapine, the only medication for this debilitating illness approved by the U.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFElectroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has been used for decades for the treatment of mental illness. Despite its proven efficacy, ECT is rarely offered to individuals with psychiatric disorders who are incarcerated in jails and prisons. There are currently 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGold nanoparticles have been researched for many biomedical applications in diagnostics, theranostics, and as drug delivery systems. When conjugated to fluorophores, their interaction with biological cells can be studied in situ and real time using fluorescence microscopy. However, an important question that has remained elusive to answer is whether the fluorophore is a faithful reporter of the nanoparticle location.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere has been a dramatic increase in the number of individuals incarcerated in the United States during the past several decades. Providing behavioral health care services to incarcerated people within North Carolina's prison system presents several challenges, and progress is being made to deliver care that is consistent with accepted community standards.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSelf-injurious behavior (SIB) is a common, disruptive, and costly occurrence in U.S. prisons.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAm J Obstet Gynecol
November 2018
Changes in the national drug laws have resulted in a marked increase in the number of individuals who have been incarcerated in the United States over the past several decades; women have not been exempt from this trend. Incarcerated women who are pregnant and at risk of experiencing opioid withdrawal often lack access to opioid replacement therapy while in jails and prisons, although this treatment is necessary to prevent significant acute withdrawal that can be detrimental to maternal-fetal health. I contend that pregnant inmates who are at risk of experiencing opioid withdrawal possess a constitutional right to receive opioid replacement therapy while incarcerated and that failure to provide this treatment represents a violation of the Eighth Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo survive high temperatures in a terrestrial environment, animals must effectively balance evaporative heat loss and water conservation. In passerine birds, cutaneous water loss (CWL) is the primary avenue of water loss at thermoneutral temperatures and increases slightly as ambient temperature increases, indicating a change in the permeability of the skin. In the stratum corneum (SC), the outermost layer of the skin, lipids arranged in layers called lamellae serve as the primary barrier to CWL in birds.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Am Acad Psychiatry Law
September 2017
The outermost layer of skin, the stratum corneum (SC), contains a complex mixture of lipids, which controls the rate of cutaneous water loss (CWL) in reptiles, mammals, and birds. However, the molecular structure of SC lipids and how molecular configurations influence CWL is poorly understood. Here, the organization and structure of SC lipids extracted from birds were investigated by means of Langmuir films.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe water vapour permeability barrier of mammals and birds resides in the stratum corneum (SC), the outermost layer of the epidermis. The molar ratio and molecular arrangement of lipid classes in the SC determine the integrity of this barrier. Increased chain length and polarity of ceramides, the most abundant lipid class in mammalian SC, contribute to tighter packing and thus to reduced cutaneous evaporative water loss (CEWL).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn response to increases in ambient temperature (Ta), many animals increase total evaporative water loss (TEWL) through their skin and respiratory passages to maintain a constant body temperature, a response that compromises water balance. In birds, cutaneous water loss (CWL) accounts for approximately 65% of TEWL at thermoneutral temperatures. Although the proportion of TEWL accounted for by CWL decreases to only 25% at high Ta, the magnitude of CWL still increases, suggesting changes in the barrier function of the skin.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFComp Biochem Physiol A Mol Integr Physiol
January 2016
Life in deserts is challenging for bats because of their relatively high energy and water requirements; nevertheless bats thrive in desert environments. We postulated that bats from desert environments have lower metabolic rates (MR) and total evaporative water loss (TEWL) than their mesic counterparts. To test this idea, we measured MR and TEWL of four species of bats, which inhabit the Negev desert in Israel, one species mainly restricted to hyper-arid deserts (Otonycteris hemprichii), two species from semi-desert areas (Eptesicus bottae and Plecotus christii), and one widespread species (Pipistrellus kuhlii).
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