Patient Information about Migranal  

What does Migranal nasal spray do? 

Migranal is used to treat an active migraine headache. It is used by patients who do not get headache relief from other pain relievers. It is not intended to prevent a headache before it occurs. Do not use it to treat common tension headaches. 

What should my health care professional know before I use Migranal? 

The health care professional needs to know if you have any of these conditions: chest pain or difficulty in breathing, heart or blood vessel disease, high blood pressure, risk factors for heart disease such as smoking and high cholesterol, pregnancy or attempted to get pregnancy, breast-feeding. 

How should I use this medicine? 

People need specific instructions on the nasal sprays use. You must prepare your nasal sprayer only when you are ready to use it (at the first sign of a migraine headache). It cannot be prepared ahead of time because it becomes unstable in 8 hours and must be discarded. The dose is one spray in each nostril, with the dose repeated in 15 minutes if needed. Each ampule contains one complete dose (4 sprays). Do not use more than 4 total sprays to treat a migraine headache, and use it only when you need it. Do not use extra doses. 

What other medicines can interact with dihydroergotamine?

 Migranal can interact with any other drug that also causes drowsiness and several other drugs related to treating other diseases. Tell your prescriber about all other medicines you are taking and if you are a frequent user of drinks with caffeine or alcohol, if you smoke, or if you use illegal drugs. These may affect the way your medicine works. 

What side effects may I notice from receiving Migranal?

 Side effects that you should report to your prescriber as soon as possible are blisters on the hands or feet, muscle pain or cramps, pain, tightness or discomfort in the chest, palpitations or changes in heart rate, swelling or itching; weakness in the legs. Check with your prescriber if you get more frequent or severe headaches after you start using Migranal. DO not use more than prescribed. Side effects that usually do not require medical attention are cold hands or feet, mild dizziness or drowsiness, or nasal congestion. 

What do I need to watch for while I receive Migranal?

 Migranal works best when you take it at the first sign of a headache. Lie down in a quiet, dark room after a dose until you feel better. Alcohol can make headaches worse or bring on a new headache. Smoking can increase the side--effects of Migranal.

Introduction to the Grounds of Keele University 

Keele University is situated in 600 acres of landscaped grounds to the west of the Potteries. Conurbation in North Staffordshire. These well-wooded grounds with their lakes, streams and formal flower beds support a wealth of wildlife. The surrounding countryside of the Staffordshire/Shropshire/Cheshire borders is also a rich area for the naturalist and rambler, while the majestic gritstone moorland of North Staffordshire and the limestone dales of - Derbyshire and northeast Staffordshire are not far away. Of the 600 acres some 300 are leased out as Home Farm. Of the remainder, about half is woodland while the rest comprises the campus buildings and sports fields. The landscape we see today owes much to the work of Ralph Sneyd (1793 to 1870) who began planting on a grand scale in 1830, after inheriting the estate from his father.

Throughout the period of its construction, the university has been careful to preserve as many mature trees as possible and to restrict the height of buildings to maintain the feeling of living and working in a landscape. The university has a continuing programme of landscaping, and many ornamental trees have been planted. Keele campus is, then, one of the most picturesque and tranquil in the country, yet is only a short distance from the Potteries and the M6 motorway.

Although the landscape is an artificial one, it nonetheless has rich flora and fauna with more than 110 species of birds, 120 species of flowering plants, more than species of 60 trees, 24 species of butterflies, 380 species of moths, 100 species of beetles and 100 species of flies having been recorded so far. Although there is little of great rarity here, a wide variety of common species and a good network of paths from which to see them make Keele an ideal place to visit for the casual observer, as well as for both the novice and the more experienced naturalist.

Keele University Services for Students 

A. This service provides English--language tuition and support for international students at Keele University. It is a small unit, which provides a supportive and friendly study environment. With its own well-equipped space in the university, many overseas students make the FLU their base for studying and making friends. 

B. This person is available to provide students with information, advice and assistance on a wide variety of residential problems, security concerns and welfare issues for undergraduate and postgraduate students. 

C. These members of staff provide information on, and help with applications for, money advice; student loans; access funds; hardship funds. Information and advice relating to student finance is also offered by the Independent Advice Unit in the Students' Union. 

D. This professional yet friendly service offers help to all categories of students and staff with a very wide range of personal, emotional and academic issues. Counseling is on a "one-to-one" basis with just the person seeking help and the counselor present. You can talk to either a female or a male counselor. Everything said in the sessions is confidential, and information is only passed on if you want it to be. 

E. This office is responsible for the administration and financial management of all exchange and visiting student programs in the university. It is the first place of contact for students from partner universities, and it acts as a reference and coordinating center for Keele students wishing to spend a period abroad as part of their degree. It is also responsible for all students wishing to study at Keele University on the Study Abroad Scheme from non-partner universities.

F. This service offers free, confidential and impartial advice to all students and staff at the university. It is part of the Students' union and is funded by Students' Union resources. The center has comprehensive information, including electronic information systems. There are many leaflets published by the center as well as an extensive stock of externally produced leaflets and publications. 

G. Our information room stocks a wide range of information covering occupations, postgraduate study, funding, employment in the UK, employment overseas and career planning. Our Information Officer will be happy to help you find the information you need. Our "occupations" files contain information about hundreds of different occupations with information from professional bodies, training details, etc. We have various handouts on a range of issues such as CV writing and vacation work. All the handouts are available, on request, in alternative formats, including large print, Braille and disk. We also have reports of careers staff visits to various employers.

]Zeus' Temple Holds Secrets of Ancient Game 

Athens already is preparing for the summer games of 2004. But today's games offer a far different spectacle from the contests of ancient Greece, where naked young men with oiled bodies raced and wrestled and boxed to honor their gods. Those great PanHellenic events began more than 2,700 years ago, first in Olympia and later at Delphi, isthmian and Nemea. And at Nemea, where the games began in 573 B.C., a Berkeley archaeologist has been patiently reconstructing a site whose legends helped inspire the modern Olympics. For Stephen G. Miller, exploring the site at Nemea, 70 miles from Athens, involves more than analyzing artifacts and ruins, dating ancient rock strata or patiently assembling broken pottery shards. It also means reliving the events he's studying. For the last two summers, large crowds have flocked to an ancient Neman stadium (capacity 40,000) to watch a modern re-enactment of the ancient Nemean games. Seven hundred runners from 45 nations--barefoot and clad in white tunics--raced around the reborn stadium in groups of 12. Winners of the races were crowned--just as they were in antiquity--with wreaths of wild celery. Miller is a professor of classics at the University of California at Berkeley, but he also has been a barefoot runner, a slave carrying water for the athletes and a priest presiding over the re-enacted rituals of the legendary Nemean games.  

"Playing those roles gives you a deeper sense of antiquity and a feel for the spirit of the people who lived and worked and played there so long ago," he said recently after returning from this year's field work. Excavating the site every summer since 1973, Miller and his crew have found and re-assembled limestone columns that once stood proudly around the Temple of Zeus. Exactly a decade after they began the excavation and just east of the temple, they found the remains of a great altar to Zeus where athletes and their trainers performed sacrifices and swore oaths just before competing. And from ancient Greek records, two years later, Miller's team also leamed that his Nemea site had once seen major horse races in a hippodrome that must have existed next to the great stadium. In an earthen mound his team could trace the patterns of faint wheel marks indicating that chariots must have raced there too.

 In 1997 Miller and his crew, seeking more evidence of the hippodrome, dug down into a spot where four low rock wails indicate there might be a structure underneath. There they found a wine jug, drinking mugs, coins and a crude little figure of a centaur. The next summer, after digging down 20 feet, they still hadn't reached bottom. Miller wondered what purpose this deep rock-walled pit might have served, and finally concluded it must have been a reservoir holding copious quantities of water from a river near the site that now irrigates vineyards.

"The reservoir is a phenomenal find," Miller said. "We believe it provided water for as many as 150 horses that raced in the hippodrome during the games. But how were the horses fed? And what did they do with that much manure every day? Trying to answer questions like that is one of the joys of the whole project." 

Eight months after finding the reservoir Miller and his team uncovered an ancient chamber that served the Nemean athletes as a locker room -- the apodyterion -- where they anointed themselves with olive oil. They then would have walked 120 feet through a vaulted entrance tunnel -- the crypto esodos --whose walls are still marked by graffiti scratched by the athletes on their way into the stadium. 

The wine jug and cups unearthed in one layer of the buried reservoir may have been left by victors in one of the ancient Nemean races, but just what kind of wine they drank remains unknown. Today, the local red wine served in Nemean taverns is called the Blood of Hercules, honoring the hero who strangled the ferocious Nemean lion there more than 5,000 years ago. As in so much of archaeology, the discoveries that Miller has made at Nemea all seem to recall ancient legends and link them to reality. The Berkeley team, for example, has unearthed a tiny bronze figurine identified as the image of an infant named Opheltes, whose fate inspired the first of the Nemean games.

As Miller recounts the tale, Opheltes was the son of Lykourgos and Eurydice, who had tried for many years to produce an heir. When the Oracle at Delphi warned them that their child must not touch the ground until he had learned to walk, they ordered a Nemean slave woman to care for the infant day and night. One day, when seven warrior heroes passed through Nemea on their way to march against the citadel of Thebes -- they were the legendary "Seven against Thebes" whose bloody war was immortalized by Aeschylus -- the nurse placed the child on a bed of wild celery while she offered drink to the heroes. Instantly, a serpent lurking in the vegetation killed the infant and the warriors re-named the boy Archemoros, the "Beginner-of- Doom," and held the first Nemean games in his honor as a funerary festival. Wreaths of wild celery crowned winners of those games, as they did the modern winners at Nemea last summer. 

As with all classical archaeologists, whoses shed so much surprising light on antiquity, Miller and his students are now ready to organize and classify their treasured finds from the summer season, and to plan for next season's dig. 

"In the earthen mound where we saw the imprints of wheel cuts, we also have a bronze vessel of the kind that was always used for pouring libations," Miller said. "That mound goes back to 600 B.C., so now we wonder what happened there in that complex of religion and athletics even before the Nemean games."

Archaeology doesn't come cheap, and each season at Nemea costs at least $150,000 for the team, the equipment, and the 35 local workers from the nearby town of modern Nemea, whom Miller calls "the core of the project." The money all comes from private sources -- and not the least of Miller's jobs is lecturing to the public and combing the territory for contributions.