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Many doubts have been expressed about the capacity of states to administer federally supported social service programs. This article relies on institutional theory, punctuated equilibrium theory, and evidence from two states to analyze the way states administer the programs in times of fiscal crisis. The particular context is the fiscal crisis of the early 2000s in substance abuse programs. The analysis suggest that, during the crisis, state administrative authorities and the providers they funded refocused services on federal rather than local priorities. The states and providers also further integrated substance abuse services with the services of other programs and promoted managerial practices that seemed to loosen the match between services and clients. The findings point to some of the ways in which the states’ capacities to respond to crises can be undermined by the national trend toward encouraging state discretion. Findings also reveal challenges for state-level crisis management.

The Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) has developed a process for managing chemical reactivity hazards, such as water-reactive/pyrophoric sodium hydride. This coupled with a recent fire while handling sodium hydride, at a pharmaceutical production facility, revealed gaps in the handling and emergency response process as well as in the emergency response materials used for spills of sodium hydride. A detailed action plan (DAP) was developed for personnel handling sodium hydride, as well as emergency first responders. The DAP identified actions in the event of a spill or fire for material handlers, emergency first responders, and the subsequent safe disposition of the contained material. Development of the DAP for sodium hydride required in-house testing of various fire-extinguishing agents and the benchmarking of best practices within the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. The optimum method or template chosen to develop the DAP was adaptable to conditions both in warehouses and in production buildings. Laboratory testing followed by field testing with up to 0.5 kg of sodium hydride identified damp sand in combination with liquid nitrogen as the superior agents to smother, contain, and permit transport to a suitable disposition area for destruction of unreacted sodium hydride. The template and method used to create the sodium hydride DAP may have applications for other water-reactive/pyrophoric reagents. The use of wet sand with liquid nitrogen as a smothering agent promises to be a unique and potentially breakthrough method for smothering and transporting spilled water-reactive/pyrophoric reagents. Additional testing is planned for other water-reactive/pyrophoric reagents to assess the use of these emergency response materials and to develop additional DAPs. © 2005 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog

Autotaxin is an extracellular phospholipase D that catalyzes the hydrolysis of lysophosphatidyl choline (LPC) to bioactive lipid lysophosphatidic acid (LPA). LPA has been implicated in many pathological processes relevant to cancer, including cell migration and invasion, proliferation, and survival. The most potent autotaxin inhibitor described to date is the LPA analogue S32826 (IC50 5.6 nM). S32826 and many other autotaxin inhibitors are notably lipophilic, creating a need to improve their physical properties. Polymers are becoming an increasingly useful tool in the delivery of drugs and have the potential to improve the properties of small molecules. Herein we report the synthesis of a S32826 dendrimer conjugate and its biological evaluation. The conjugate was found to inhibit autotaxin activity using two different substrates and to decrease the migration of an ovarian cancer cell line modified to overexpress autotaxin. Furthermore, the conjugate potentiated activation of caspase 3/7 induced by carboplatin.