The strategic use and potential demand for an HIV vaccine in Southern Africa

HIV prevalence in Southern Africa is the highest in the world and the impact of HIV/AIDS in the region are devastating at all levels of society, including the wider economy. Government response has lagged behind the pace of the epidemic, but programs are now beginning to focus on a broad range of interventions to combat its further spread and to mitigate its impact. The authors investigate the issues around the targeting of an eventual HIV vaccine. There is at present no vaccine against HIV. Although several candidates are in the trial stage, it is not likely that a vaccine effective against the sub-type of the virus prevalent in Southern Africa will be available for 10-15 years. When it is, it may be expensive, only partially effective, and confer immunity for a limited period only. Vaccination programs will need to make the best use of the vaccine that is available and effective targeting will be essential. The authors identify potential target groups for a vaccine, and estimate how many individuals would be in need of vaccination. They develop a method for estimating how many cases of HIV infection are likely to be avoided for each vaccinated individual. The cases avoided are of two kinds: primary-the individual case that might have occurred in people who are vaccinated, and secondary-the number of people that the vaccinated individual would otherwise have caused to become infected. Both ofthese depend on assumptions about the efficacy and duration of vaccine protection and the extent and nature of sexual risk behavior in the population groups. The authors distinguish between the HIV cases averted per vaccination and the cases averted per 100 recruits into a vaccination program. The cases averted per 100 recruits is used to develop a priority ranking of the identified population groups for vaccination. The authors discuss the issue of ease of access to those groups and how the differential costs would affect the vaccination strategy. They conclude that an expensive vaccine should be administered to commercial sex workers first, while an inexpensive vaccine would be better administered first to general population groups, in particular, schoolchildren. The authors conclude with a discussion of current levels of public and private expenditure on HIV prevention and treatment, and the implications for an assessment of the willingness to pay for an eventual HIV vaccine.Disease Control&Prevention,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,HIV AIDS,Public Health Promotion,Early Child and Children's Health,Adolescent Health,Health Economics&Finance,HIV AIDS and Business,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,HIV AIDS

False Security: Kyllo and Thermal Imaging of the Non-Residential Structure

Article published in the Michigan State University School of Law Student Scholarship Collection

Analyzing Sex Differences and the Dose-Response Relationship Between Aerobic Exercise and Cognitive Processing Speed in Young Active Adults

Available research has identified a positive relationship between 10 minutes of aerobic exercise and improvements in cognitive processing speed (CPS) in young adults, although participant activity level was unclear Additionally, research indicates possible sex differences concerning exercise and CPS, defined as the rate in which human beings take in information and generate a response. PURPOSE: To investigate the potential effects of aerobic exercise bout length on cognitive processing speed in active adults. A secondary aim was to explore differences in CPS and aerobic exercise bout length between sexes. METHODS: Male (n=6) and female (n=6) participants who were classified as physically active based on ACSM guidelines participated in aerobic exercise sessions of different bout lengths (15, 20, and 25 minutes) in a balanced cross-over design. When participants arrived for the three testing trials, they first completed a computerized Symbol Search test. This matching test lasts two minutes and provides a score based on how many matches they answer correctly. Next, the exercise treatment consisted of a 5-minute warm-up, followed by a moderate intensity walk or jog on the treadmill (approximately 50-59% of Heart Rate reserve), and ending with a 5-minute cooldown. Participants then remained seated for ten minutes to allow for their heart rate to return to a resting state. Once in the resting state participants were administered the symbol search test again to determine if there were any changes in CPS following an exercise bout. All treatment sessions were performed at least 24 hours apart. Exercise bout length (T15, T20, T25) and time (pre-/post- exercise) were compared between sexes (M, F) using an ANOVA (1 between, 2 within) α=0.05. RESULTS: The main effects for bout length (p=0.849) and sex (p=0.232), bout length x sex interaction (p=0.563), bout length x time interaction (p=0.491), and bout length x time x sex interaction (p=0.956) were not significant. However, the main effect for time was significant (p=0.0001) where CPS was faster post-exercise (50+9) than pre-exercise (45+9) when pooled across bout length and sex. Also, there was a significant time x sex interaction (p=0.009) where, when pooled across bout length, there was greater CPS improvement from pre- to post-exercise in the males (Pre 46+8, Post 53+8) than in the females (Pre 43+11, Post 46+9). CONCLUSION: Active individuals experience improvements in CPS following an exercise bout. We did not find any significant distinction between bout lengths, indicating that active individuals do not require a specific exercise dose time to elicit improvements in CPS. However, male participants had a statistically significant increase in their processing speed assessment (pre-/post- exercise) compared to the females. This suggests that females may require additional exercise bouts or alternate exercise forms to experience similar improvements as the male participants

Localization and Chemical Speciation of Cadmium in the Roots of Barley and Lettuce

Plants have the potential to accumulate toxic amounts of cadmium (Cd), and understanding how and where Cd is stored in plants is important for ensuring food safety. Previous experiments have determined that a greater amount of Cd is translocated into the leaves of lettuce (Lactuca sativa) as compared to barley leaves (Hordeum vulgare). Preferential retention of Cd in root of barley would explain this difference. Hence, the purpose of this study was to determine the localization and coordination environment of Cd (i.e., the ligands to which Cd was bound) in the different root tissues of lettuce and barley using histochemical staining, electron microscopy and micro X-ray spectroscopy. Retention of Cd in barley roots could be explained by accumulation of Cd at the endodermis, comparatively higher amounts of Cd sequestered in the symplast of cortical cells and binding to xylem cell walls. Increased translocation of Cd to lettuce shoots seemed to be due to a less effective barrier at the endodermis and less sequestration of Cd in the cortex. Regardless of the tissue type, most of the Cd2+ was bound to S ligands in the roots of barley, possibly reflecting accumulation of Cd–phytochelatin and Cd–S molecules in the vacuoles. In lettuce roots, Cd was more evenly distributed among ligands containing S, O and NO3 groups, which is indicative of proportionately more Cd binding to the cell walls, relative to barley. These results will be useful in uncovering the mechanisms of differential Cd-tolerance and sequestration in lettuce and barley

A comparison of ARIMA and ANN techniques in predicting port productivity and berth effectiveness

Business process evaluation is a common norm in small-medium-large industries globally and information obtained during such evaluation have been used in simulating future performance of most industries using mathematical models such as Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) and artificial neural network (ANN). This study explored the possibility of predicting port productivity and berth effectiveness of seaport using ANN and ARIMA. A comparative analysis of multi-layer perceptron (MLP) back propagation algorithm and ARIMA performance was carried out based on ships days at port, days at berth and tonnage which serves as model inputs, while port productivity and berth effectiveness were the model outputs. The MLP-ANN and ARIMA (1, 0, 4- port productivity) and (1, 0, 4-berth effectiveness) results were compared based on their coefficient of correlation and mean square error. The coefficient of correlation for port productivity prediction using MLP-ANN was 0.998. This value outperformed that of ARIMA (0.9862) for port productivity. The coefficient of correlation of 0.9956 and 0.9928 were obtained for berth effectiveness using MLR and ARIMA, respectively

Saccadic Eye Movement Characteristics in Adult Niemann-Pick Type C Disease: Relationships with Disease Severity and Brain Structural Measures

Niemann-Pick Type C disease (NPC) is a rare genetic disorder of lipid metabolism. A parameter related to horizontal saccadic peak velocity was one of the primary outcome measures in the clinical trial assessing miglustat as a treatment for NPC. Neuropathology is widespread in NPC, however, and could be expected to affect other saccadic parameters. We compared horizontal saccadic velocity, latency, gain, antisaccade error percentage and self-paced saccade generation in 9 adult NPC patients to data from 10 age-matched controls. These saccadic measures were correlated with appropriate MRI-derived brain structural measures (e.g., dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, frontal eye fields, supplemental eye fields, parietal eye fields, pons, midbrain and cerebellar vermis) and with measures of disease severity and duration. The best discriminators between groups were reflexive saccade gain and the two volitional saccade measures. Gain was also the strongest correlate with disease severity and duration. Most of the saccadic measures showed strongly significant correlations with neurophysiologically appropriate brain regions. While our patient sample is small, the apparent specificity of these relationships suggests that as new diagnostic methods and treatments become available for NPC, a broader range of saccadic measures may be useful tools for the assessment of disease progression and treatment efficacy.No external funding was received for this study. JCLL self-funded computational, travel and accommodation costs to conduct his component of this research in Melbourne

Access to a floating wind turbine

The offshore wind turbine service industry is now well established with a large number of turbines being successfully operated and maintained. A number of methods and technologies are available to allow the safe transfer of service crews to these primarily fixed monopile installations. The most common of these is the bow transfer method which uses a combination of a high friction fender and a large vessel thrust to minimise relative motion between the bow and the turbine foundation. An upcoming challenge for the offshore wind turbine service industry will be the increasing use of floating foundations in far offshore and deep water sites. A number of structures are currently being developed and the first commercial floating wind farm is expected to be commissioned in late 2017. The use of floating structures will make it more difficult to ensure crew safety and comfort during transfer operations as the interaction between two floating bodies needs to be considered. Thus, the bow transfer method used to access fixed foundations may not be suitable for accessing floating turbine platforms. This paper will use a combination of physical and numerical modelling to assess the ability of a wind farm service vessel to maintain contact with a floating offshore wind turbine structure by use of the bow transfer method

Anion-Dependent Construction of Two Hexanuclear 3D-4F Complexes with a Flexible Schiff Base Ligand

Two hexanuclear 3d-4f Ni-Eu and Cu-Eu complexes [Eu4Ni2L2(OAc)(12)(EtOH)(2)] (1) and [Eu4Cu2L2(OAc)(12)]center dot 2H(2)O (2) are reported which are formed from the salen type Schiff-base ligand H2L (H2L = N,N'-bis(3-methoxysalicylidene)butane-1,4-diamine). In both complexes, four Eu3+ cations are bridged by eight OAc- groups and the chain is terminated at each end by two ML (M = Ni and Cu) units. The structures of 1 and 2 were determined by single crystal X-ray crystallographic studies and the luminescence properties of the free ligand and metal complexes in solution were measured.HHMI Undergraduate Science Education Award 52005907National Science Foundation CHE-0629136, CHE-0741973, CHE-0847763Welch Foundation F-1631, F-816Hong Kong Baptist University FRG/06-07/II-16Hong Kong Research Grants Council HKBU 202407Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD)Open Foundation of Jiangsu Province Key Laboratory of Fine Petrochemical Technology KF1005UT-CNM and UT-AustinChemistr

Quantitative Factors Proposed to Influence the Prevalence of Canine Tick-Bourne Disease Agents in the United States

The Companion Animal Parasite Council hosted a meeting to identify quantifiable factors that can influence the prevalence of tick-borne disease agents among dogs in North America. This report summarizes the approach used and the factors identified for further analysis with mathematical models of canine exposure to tick-borne pathogens