Kieran Keohane

Silicon microfluidic flow focusing devices for the production of size-controlled PLGA based drug loaded microparticles.

The increasing realisation of the impact of size and surface properties on the bio-distribution of drug loaded colloidal particles has driven the application of micro fabrication technologies for the precise engineering of drug loaded microparticles. This paper demonstrates an alternative approach for producing size controlled drug loaded PLGA based microparticles using silicon Microfluidic Flow Focusing Devices (MFFDs). Based on the precise geometry and dimensions of the flow focusing channel, microparticle size was successfully optimised by modifying the polymer type, disperse phase (Qd) flow rate, and continuous phase (Qc) flow rate. The microparticles produced ranged in sizes from 5 to 50 μm and were highly monodisperse (coefficient of variation <5%). A comparison of Ciclosporin (CsA) loaded PLGA microparticles produced by MFFDs vs conventional production techniques was also performed. MFFDs produced microparticles with a narrower size distribution profile, relative to the conventional approaches. In-vitro release kinetics of CsA was found to be influenced by the production technique, with the MFFD approach demonstrating the slowest rate of release over 7 days (4.99 ± 0.26%). Finally, MFFDs were utilised to produce pegylated microparticles using the block co-polymer, PEG-PLGA. In contrast to the smooth microparticles produced using PLGA, PEG-PLGA microparticles displayed a highly porous surface morphology and rapid CsA release, with 85 ± 6.68% CsA released after 24h. The findings from this study demonstrate the utility of silicon MFFDs for the precise control of size and surface morphology of PLGA based microparticles with potential drug delivery applications.

Enhanced colonic delivery of ciclosporin A self-emulsifying drug delivery system encapsulated in coated minispheres

Abstract Objectives: Investigate the potential of coated minispheres (SmPill®) to enhance localized Ciclosporin A (CsA) delivery to the colon. Methods: CsA self-emulsifying drug delivery systems (SEDDS) were encapsulated into SmPill® minispheres. Varying degrees of coating thickness (low, medium and high) were applied using ethylcellulose and pectin (E:P) polymers. In vitro CsA release was evaluated in simulated gastric and intestinal media. Bioavailability of CsA in vivo following oral administration to pigs of SmPill® minispheres was compared to Neoral® po and Sandimmun® iv in a pig model. CsA concentrations in blood and intestinal tissue were determined by HPLC-UV. Results: In vitro CsA release from coated minispheres decreased with increasing coating thickness. A linear relationship was observed between in vitro CsA release and in vivo bioavailability (r2 = 0.98). CsA concentrations in the proximal, transverse and distal colon were significantly higher following administration of SmPill®, compared to Neoral® po and Sandimmun® iv (p < 0.05). Analysis of transverse colon tissue subsections also revealed significantly higher CsA concentrations in the mucosa and submucosa using SmPill® minispheres (p < 0.05). Conclusions: Modulating E:P coating thickness controls release of CsA from SmPill® minispheres. Coated minispheres limited CsA release in the small intestine and enhanced delivery and uptake in the colon. These findings demonstrate clinical advantages of an oral coated minisphere-enabled CsA formulation in the treatment of inflammatory conditions of the large intestine.

Social networks, social support and social negativity: A qualitative study of head and neck cancer caregivers' experiences

&NA; Head and neck cancer is a serious form of cancer that can generate substantial physical and psychosocial morbidity. Informal caregivers can help patients to manage head and neck cancer and its emotional impacts, both during and after treatment. Caregivers, however, can experience considerable stress as a result of their caring activities. Supportive relationships can protect caregivers from psychosocial strain. Thirty‐one head and neck cancer caregivers were interviewed about their experiences of accessing social support from their social networks; difficulties that they experienced accessing this support; and strategies that they used to address these difficulties. Results suggest that head and neck cancer caregivers strongly value social support, but can find it difficult to obtain, and a number of them experience socially negative responses from their networks. Some carers attempt to answer or supplement support deficiencies by turning to non‐human coping supports, such as pets, spiritual figures or medication. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Trickster's Metempsychosis in the Mythic Age of Globalization: The Recurrence of the Leprechaun in Irish Political Culture

Tribunals, public inquiries and similar institutions, increasingly common in the political culture of the United Kingdom, the European Union, and in America, can be seen as exemplifying the auto-correcting, self-reflexive capacity of political institutions in information-rich and communicatively fluent societies. They represent the modernization of political culture guided by communicative rationality, paralleling the accelerated modernization of globalization. This view is elaborated and modified by an interpretation based on a philosophy of history as recurrence or “metempsychosis” (Nietzsche, Vico, Joyce) and the mythic figure of Trickster as formulated in anthropology and psychoanalysis (Radin, Hyde, Jung). Specifically, the political culture of globalization is cast in terms of the reconfiguration of the archaic and an intensification of myth (Benjamin). An examination of the ongoing Tribunal of Inquiry into Payments to Politicians in Ireland shows how tribunals are theaters in which the politician appears as a recurrence of a Trickster archetype adept at negotiating and playing this liminal and changing context. Tribunals struggle not so much to eradicate and replace Trickster by systems of formal rationality, but to redeem his vital energy and creativity.

Reflexive Modernization and Systematically Distorted Communications: An Analysis of an Environmental Protection Agency Hearing

This paper critically examines oral hearings conducted by the Irish state Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on proposed industrial developments in Clare and Limerick. Data comes from participant observation at two hearings, and documentary analysis of submissions. The hypothesis that the oral hearing can be formulated as an example of ‘reflexive modernization’ (as in Beck) is tested against the standard of ideal speech preferred by Habermas. The evidence suggests that the institution of the EPA Public Hearing is best understood as an instance of systematically distorted communication.

Collision Culture: Road Traffic Accidents and the Experience of Accelerated Modernisation in Ireland:

This paper interprets the phenomenon of road traffic accidents in contemporary Irish society as a symptom of crisis arising from processes of social transformation. Empirical data from the National Roads Authority, from Local Authority Engineers, and from the Gardaí, showing the typical traffic accident pattern, is used to develop a more general hypothesis of the uneasy coexistence of traditional and modern forms of life in contemporary Ireland. This theme is developed by a discussion of ambiguity and ambivalence arising from the hazardous experiences of accelerated modernization coexisting with vestigial and reinstitutionalised forms of traditional culture. The paper concludes by considering the driving practices of Irish motorists in terms of improvisation in conditions of uncertainty as the artful reformation of habitus.

Health, Social Inequality and Taxation: How Ireland's Schizmogenic Social Model Undermines the Well-Being of the European Body Politic

Before the recent economic recession Ireland had become one of the most affluent societies in the world, and the so-called Irish social model of low taxes and low public services provision was seen as one to be emulated, particularly amongst the accession states to the EU. However, Ireland has also become one of the most unequal societies in the OECD, and one of the unhealthiest, measured by all of the standard morbidity and epidemiological indicators, and the social gradient of health corresponds closely with social inequality. Irelands healthcare system, always relatively underdeveloped in comparison to most European countries, reflects social inequality; it is a two-tiered system wherein a minority with private health insurance enjoy access to good care and facilities, while the rest make do with an underdeveloped, under-resourced and overstretched public health system and subsidise the private services. The Irish social model is schizmogenic, generating and amplifying social inequalities. This is clearly visible in the domain of health, which has become a crucible of public de-legitimation and political foment. Irelands problems are problems for the health and well-being of the European body politic, insofar as other members emulate the Irish model, cutting corporate taxes and reducing public services in a race to the bottom away from the Rhinish and Nordic social models.

Model Homes for Model(led) Citizens: Domestic Economies of Desire in Prosperity Square

The construction of identity and the cultivation of model citizens are explored in the context of a model housing project for the working classes in 19th-century Cork, Ireland. Historical and contemporary ethnographic analysis reveals the deployment of disciplinary technologies to demarcate the respectable working classes from the unruly mob. Power as subjectification is manifest in the anticipatory socialization and self-presentation of prospective tenants to the normalizing gaze of the community and in the performances of good citizenship by past and present residents. Evasions, resistances, and neurotic responses to the civilizing process are also examined.

Re‐membering the European citizen: The social construction of collective memory in Weimar

Abstract Collective re‐membering is examined in the context of the production of Weimar as European city of Culture. Weimar, cradle of German culture, and location of the prototype concentration camp, is formulated as a site of antagonism. The relationship between a walking/talking tour of the city and remembering is discussed with reference to Freud and Wittgenstein. Re‐membering is considered as suturing, and as ideological interpellation, hegemonic practices which are deployed in the context of walking in the city. The subject interpellated in Weimar, European city of Culture, is the blase cosmopolitan (Simmel) and the flâneur (Benjamin) a subject capable of living with irreconcilable antagonism; an ideal type citizen that would be the keystone of European unity. Limitations of this hegemonic project are considered in light of the conditions of post‐modernity.

Introduction: thematic section on social pathologies of contemporary modernity

Social pathology was once a mainstream concern of the social sciences, but over the years it has become associated with conventional, ‘old fashioned’, or normatively conservative standpoints. For instance, the social science focus on social pathologies of the early and mid-twentieth century was on specific topics, such as alcoholism, crime and delinquency and (what was seen at that time as) sexual deviance. Conscious of this problematic antecedence and its narrowly ideological and moralistic legacy, this Social Pathologies of Contemporary Modernity thematic section of Distinktion breaks decisively from this anachronistic context, as indicated by its three distinct emphases: the focus on the Social – i.e. historical and cultural as opposed to reductive psychological and biomedical – sources of Contemporary epidemic pathologies; and, extending beyond the urgency of the new pathologies and beyond the immediate and particular context(s) of the present societ(ies) in which they occur, the analysis extends to encompass principles and processes of global Western modernity as a whole. Our central hypothesis is that the characteristic malaises and disorders of our times are related to cultural pathologies of the social body and disorders of the collective esprit de corps of contemporary society. Hence, our focus is on understanding contemporary problems of health and well-being in the light of radical changes of social structures and institutions, extending to deep crises in our civilization as a whole in the wake of two recent and ongoing ‘revolutions’, namely the conditions of post-modernity and the hegemony of neo-liberalism. The social pathologies of contemporary modernity – depression, stress-related illnesses, eating disorders, suicide and deliberate self-harm, to name just a few – are the subject of much discussion today, and they are the problems recognized and targeted by mental health professionals and in public health campaigns promoting mindfulness and well-being. While sympathetic to these problems and while aware of these developments in public mental health promotion and appreciative of them insofar as they are well-intentioned, this thematic section of Distinktion is concerned with understanding more widespread social pathologies than fall within the conventional remit of mental health and well-being.