Comprehensive HIV care and Anti-Retroviral Therapy in a conflict setting-outcomes, experiences, and lessons learned from Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo

2006 AIDS Conference in Toront

HIV Treatment in a Conflict Setting: Outcomes and Experiences from Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Providing HIV care in conflict settings involves additional obstacles to those generally encountered in other resource-limited settings, say Heather Culbert and colleagues

Meat and Nicotinamide:A Causal Role in Human Evolution, History, and Demographics

Hunting for meat was a critical step in all animal and human evolution. A key brain-trophic element in meat is vitamin B 3 /nicotinamide. The supply of meat and nicotinamide steadily increased from the Cambrian origin of animal predators ratcheting ever larger brains. This culminated in the 3-million-year evolution of Homo sapiens and our overall demographic success. We view human evolution, recent history, and agricultural and demographic transitions in the light of meat and nicotinamide intake. A biochemical and immunological switch is highlighted that affects fertility in the ‘de novo’ tryptophan-to-kynurenine-nicotinamide ‘immune tolerance’ pathway. Longevity relates to nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide consumer pathways. High meat intake correlates with moderate fertility, high intelligence, good health, and longevity with consequent population stability, whereas low meat/high cereal intake (short of starvation) correlates with high fertility, disease, and population booms and busts. Too high a meat intake and fertility falls below replacement levels. Reducing variances in meat consumption might help stabilise population growth and improve human capital

Correction to: Cluster identification, selection, and description in Cluster randomized crossover trials: the PREP-IT trials

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article

Leaching and Early Mass Loss of Boreal Leaves and Wood in Oligotrophic Water

Following immersion in water, allochthonous litter undergoes a process of substantial leaching that is difficult to quantify yet important to exclude from analyses of the role of macroinvertebrates in subsequent breakdown. Laboratory experiments which measured the aqueous release of total phosphorus and dissolved organic carbon from undried leaves (deciduous and coniferous) and woody debris (twigs and bark) revealed that the period of leaching is a prolonged process developing over weeks. Immersion of litter from 6 species of riparian trees in 4 oligotrophic Canadian Shield lakes demonstrated that undried leaves lost 6 to 18% of their mass after 2 wk, and woody debris experienced 0.2 to 27% mass loss after 7 wk. Studies concerned with quantifying the role of macroinvertebrates in the breakdown of allochthonous litter in lentic water should therefore disregard such mass losses