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Ovesen Kock posted an update 10 hours, 30 minutes ago
Barriers to using text messaging and SIM card scanning included low phone ownership (35%), illiteracy concerns, and frequent selling or changing of mobile phones. Future work is needed to explore the feasibly of implementing biometric fingerprint scanning or other technologies to monitor engagement in HIV care.Management of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) is becoming increasingly important with HIV-positive people living normal life spans. We aimed to establish the level of HAND awareness among doctor and nurse occupational health practitioners, screening used to detect impairment, factors limiting screening for HAND, and training needs. One-hundred-and-five members of the nursing and physician professional societies for occupational health practitioners in South Africa and Occupational Health Departments at five South African universities responded to an email invitation to complete an online survey addressing demographics, HAND knowledge, screeners being used to screen for HAND and related training needs. While 80% had heard of HAND, few (13.3%) were aware of the Frascati criteria. Only 2% had received training addressing HAND; 11.4% screened for HAND; 45.7% did not know what screening tool to us; 80% preferred spending less then 15 min on screening. The largest obstacle to screening was lack of expertise (77.1%) but 77.3% thought it important to screen for HAND. 94.3% wanted screening training. Health providers are poorly informed about HAND and lack expertise and tools to screen for HAND in their treatment programs. While few had relevant training, they recognize the importance of screening for HAND in the workplace and desire training.Two different genotypes of Pinus massoniana seedlings (aluminum-resistant FJ5 and aluminum-sensitive GD20) were used, the effects of different exogenous malic acid (0.00, 0.01, 0.02, 0.04, 0.08, 0.16 mmol·L-1) on the growth attributes of P. massoniana seedlings treated by the Al3+ concentration of 0.8 mmol·L-1 were studied, to provide a basis for the growth in acidified soil. In our experiment, the seedling growth was inhibited by Al3+ treatment. After treatment with a low concentration of exogenous malic acid, the activities of antioxidant enzymes in leaves were enhanced, the concentrations of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), superoxide (O2-·), malondialdehyde (MDA) and osmotic adjustment substances were reduced accordingly. GD20 exhibited more severe changes compared with FJ5. The larger ones of the contribution rates of the indices in principal component analysis were H2O2, Glutathione Reductase (GR). These results indicated that Al3+ with high concentration inhibits the growth of P. Metabolism inhibitor massoniana. Malic acid could effectively alleviate the toxicity, and the mitigation effect on the aluminum-sensitive species, which genotype is more sensitive to the response of Al3+ toxicity, was more effective than that on the aluminum-resistant. How to select and cultivate more resistant species, by using the main parameter (H2O2 and GR), is worthy in further study.In recent decades, single particle tracking (SPT) has been developed into a sophisticated analytical approach involving complex instruments and data analysis schemes to extract information from time-resolved particle trajectories. Very often, mobility-related properties are extracted from these particle trajectories, as they often contain information about local interactions experienced by the particles while moving through the sample. This tutorial aims to provide a comprehensive overview about the accuracies that can be achieved when extracting mobility-related properties from 2D particle trajectories and how these accuracies depend on experimental parameters. Proper interpretation of SPT data requires an assessment of whether the obtained accuracies are sufficient to resolve the effect under investigation. This is demonstrated by calculating mean square displacement curves that show an apparent super- or subdiffusive behavior due to poor measurement statistics instead of the presence of true anomalous diffusion. Furthermore, the refinement of parameters involved in the design or analysis of SPT experiments is discussed and an approach is proposed in which square displacement distributions are inspected to evaluate the quality of SPT data and to extract information about the maximum distance over which particles should be tracked during the linking process.Glucan (from Alcaligenes faecalis) is a polymer composed of β-1,3-linked glucose residues, and it has been addressed in different medical fields, namely in nanotechnology, as a vaccine or a drug delivery system. However, due to their small size, nanomaterials may present new risks and uncertainties. Thus, this work aims to describe the production of glucan nanoparticles (NPs) with two different sizes, and to evaluate the influence of the NPs size on immunotoxicity. Results showed that, immediately after production, glucan NPs presented average sizes of 129.7 ± 2.5 and 355.4 ± 41.0 nm. Glucan NPs of 130 nm presented greater ability to decrease human peripheral blood mononuclear cells and macrophage viability and to induce reactive oxygen species production than glucan NPs of 355 nm. Both NP sizes caused hemolysis and induced a higher metabolic activity in lymphocytes, although the concentration required to observe such effect was lower for the 130 nm glucan NPs. Regarding pro-inflammatory cytokines, only the larger glucan NPs (355 nm) were able to induce the secretion of IL-6 and TNF-α, probably due to their recognition by dectin-1. This higher immunomodulatory effect of the larger NPs was also observed in its ability to stimulate the production of nitric oxide (NO) and IL-1β. On the contrary, a small amount of Glu 130 NPs inhibited NO production. In conclusion, on the safe-by-design of glucan NPs, the size of the particles should be an important critical quality attribute to guarantee the safety and effectiveness of the nanomedicine.This paper reports a simple approach for the preparation of new photo-active conjugated porous polymers (CPPs) based on phenanthrene building blocks with a high Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area. Starting from 2,7-diiodophenanthrene-9,10-dione and its bis-dioxolane derivative with different alkynyl comonomers, we prepared a series of CPPs by C-C Sonogashira-Hagihara coupling activated by microwaves. Moreover, we demonstrated that these functionalized CPPs after hydrolysis to the corresponding diketones show much higher BET surface areas than those obtained directly from the phenanthrene-9,10-dione monomer. Reaction of diketone-hydrolyzed polymers with 2,4-difluoro-6-hydroxybenzaldehyde yields phenantroimidazole derivatives. Indeed, these structurally robust polymers result in efficient, recyclable, heterogeneous photo-organocatalysts for the aza-Henry reaction (C-H functionalization) induced by visible-light irradiation.