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BackgroundRussia has particularly low life expectancy for an industrialised country, with mortality at working ages having fluctuated dramatically over the past few decades, particularly among men. Alcohol has been identified as the most likely cause of these temporal variations. One approach to reducing the alcohol problem in Russia is 'brief interventions' which seek to change views of the personal acceptability of excessive drinking and to encourage self-directed behaviour change. Very few studies to evaluate the efficacy of brief interventions in Russia have been conducted. Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a person-centred counselling style which can be adapted to brief interventions in which help is offered in thinking through behaviour in the context of values and goals, to decide whether change is needed, and if so, how it may best be achieved.MethodsThis paper reports on an individually randomised two-armed parallel group exploratory trial. The primary hypothesis is that a brief adaptation of MI will be effective in reducing self-reported hazardous and harmful drinking at 3 months. Participants were drawn from the Izhevsk Family Study II, with eligibility determined based on proxy reports of hazardous and harmful drinking in the past year. All participants underwent a health check, with MI subsequently delivered to those in the intervention arm. Signed consent was obtained from those in the intervention arm only at this point. Both groups were then invited for 3 and 12 month follow ups. The control group did not receive any additional intervention.Results441 men were randomised. Of these 61 did not have a health check leaving 190 in each trial arm. Follow up at 3 months was high (97% of those having a health check), and very similar in the two trial arms (183 in the intervention and 187 in the control).No significant differences were detected between the randomised groups in either the primary or the secondary outcomes at three months in the intention to treat analyses. The unadjusted odds ratio (95% CI) for the effect of MI on hazardous and harmful drinking was 0.77 (0.51, 1.16). An adjusted odds ratio of 0.52 (0.28, 0.94) was obtained in the pre-specified per protocol analysis.ConclusionsThis trial demonstrates that it is possible to engage Russian men who drink hazardously in a brief intervention aimed at reducing alcohol related harm. However the results with respect to the efficacy are equivocal and further, larger-scale trials are warranted.Trial RegistrationISRCTN: ISRCTN82405938

We present a comprehensive study on the influence of Ti doping on K+ migration in the K1–x Fe1–x Ti x O2 solid electrolyte. A novel approach is proposed which is based on modeling of configurational spaces (CSs) and full sets of inequivalent migration pathways by means of density functional theory (DFT) calculations and machine learning (ML) techniques. A 2 × 1 × 1 supercell (32 formula units) of a low-temperature polymorph of the KFeO2 compound with space group symmetry Pbca was used. For the three lowest Ti contents (x = 0.03, 0.06, and 0.09), all symmetrically inequivalent configurations of atomic arrangements (CSs) and K+ migration pathways (total numbers: 128, 59520, and 8630400) were generated. With the DFT-derived energetics of K+ migration at the lowest doping level (x = 0.03), the ML models were trained to predict ionic transport properties by using geometrical descriptors for the pathway-dopant arrangement. The trained ML models were then used to evaluate the K+ migration properties for pathways at higher doping levels. The computational results obtained are in good agreement with the results of a previous experimental study of the title compound. This demonstrates the applicability of the proposed approach for modeling and predicting effects of doping in crystalline solids, such as solid electrolytes and intercalation cathodes. Brief recommendations are given on the application of the proposed combined approach.