Immune restoration in the context of HAART

The advent of highly active antiretroviral combination therapy (HAART) has resulted in significantly improved survival of patients and a reduction in the progression of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. At the root of these clinical benefits is a dramatic reduction in HIV viral load. HAART induces a sustained effective suppression of HIV replication in most patients and leads to a preservation or restoration of immune function. The restoration of an impaired immune system is assessed by clinical parameters, immunological changes which can be measured in the laboratory and a marked reduction in the morbidity and mortality of patients. To understand the features of immune restoration it is necessary to review the immunopathogenesis of HIV infection and highlight areas where improvement of function occurs with HAART. Southern African Journal of HIV Medicine Vol. 5 (1) 2004: 8-1

Comparison of single-layer and double-layer anti-reflection coatings using laser-induced damage threshold and photothermal common-path interferometry

The dielectric thin-film coating on high-power optical components is often the weakest region and will fail at elevated optical fluences. A comparison of single-layer coatings of ZrO2, LiF, Ta2O5, SiN, and SiO2 along with anti-reflection (AR) coatings optimized at 1064 nm comprised of ZrO2 and Ta2O5 was made, and the results of photothermal common-path interferometry (PCI) and a laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) are presented here. The coatings were grown by radio frequency (RF) sputtering, pulsed direct-current (DC) sputtering, ion-assisted electron beam evaporation (IAD), and thermal evaporation. Test regimes for LIDT used pulse durations of 9.6 ns at 100 Hz for 1000-on-1 and 1-on-1 regimes at 1064 nm for single-layer and AR coatings, and 20 ns at 20 Hz for a 200-on-1 regime to compare the //ZrO2/SiO2 AR coating

A Study of Attitudes of Seventh-day Adventist Members in the Greater Toronto Area

This paper presents a study of the attitudes of Seventh-day Adventist members in the Greater Toronto Area. It provides a data that would lay effective plans for the evangelization of greater Toronto. Survey instrument was used.https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/hrsa/1019/thumbnail.jp

From the editor

No abstract available

Combination counselling

No abstract available

Is the HCV-HIV co-infection prevalence amongst injecting drug users a marker for the level of sexual and injection related HIV transmission?

BACKGROUND: Amongst injecting drug users (IDUs), HIV is transmitted sexually and parenterally, but HCV is transmitted primarily parenterally. We assess and model the antibody prevalence of HCV amongst HIV-infected IDUs (denoted as HCV-HIV co-infection prevalence) and consider whether it proxies the degree of sexual HIV transmission amongst IDUs. METHODS: HIV, HCV and HCV-HIV co-infection prevalence data amongst IDU was reviewed. An HIV/HCV transmission model was adapted. Multivariate model uncertainty analyses determined whether the model's ability to replicate observed data trends required the inclusion of sexual HIV transmission. The correlation between the model's HCV-HIV co-infection prevalence and estimated proportion of HIV infections due to injecting was evaluated. RESULTS: The median HCV-HIV co-infection prevalence (prevalence of HCV amongst HIV-infected IDUs) was 90% across 195 estimates from 43 countries. High HCV-HIV co-infection prevalences (>80%) occur in most (75%) settings, but can be lower in settings with low HIV prevalence (0.75). The model without sexual HIV transmission reproduced some data trends but could not reproduce any epidemics with high HIV/HCV prevalence ratios (>0.85) or low HCV-HIV co-infection prevalence (10%. The model with sexual HIV transmission reproduced data trends more closely. The proportion of HIV infections due to injecting correlated with HCV-HIV co-infection prevalence; suggesting that up to 80/60/90%. CONCLUSION: Substantial sexual HIV transmission may occur in many IDU populations; HCV-HIV co-infection prevalence could signify its importance

Partial regularity for local minimizers of splitting-type variational integrals

We consider local minimizers u:\mathbb{R}^{n}\supset\Omega\rightarrow\mathbb{R}^{N} of anisotropic variational integrals of (p,q)-growth with exponents 2\leq p\leq q\leq\mbox{min}\left\{ 2+p,p\frac{n}{n-2}\right\}. If the integrand is of splitting-type, then partial C^{1}-regularity of u is established

A Study of Racial Transition in the Seventh-day Adventist Church

This report describes a study of the impact of, attitudes toward, and management of racial transition in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Its purpose was to examine the phenomena of changing racial patterns in the Adventist church. Six conferences were included - Greater New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Southeastern California, Southern California, and Texas. Questionnaires where used to collect the data.https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/hrsa/1079/thumbnail.jp

A 2D-variant of a theorem of Uraltseva and Urdaletova for higher order variational problems

If \Omega is a domain in \mathbb{R}^{2} and if u:\Omega\rightarrow\mathbb{R} locally minimizes the energy \int_{\Omega}\left[h_{1}(\left|(\nabla^{2}u)_{I}\right|)+h_{2}(\left|(\nabla^{2}u)_{II}\right|)\right]dx, where (\nabla^{2}u)_{I}, (\nabla^{2}u)_{II} denotes a decomposition of the Hessian matrix \nabla^{2}u, then we prove the higher integrability and even the continuity of \nabla^{2}u under rather general assumptions imposed on the N-functions h_{1}, h_{2}

Existence of global solutions for a parabolic system related to the nonlinear Stokes problem

In this note we consider an initial-boundary value problem describing a nonlinear variant of the nonstationary Stokes equation. We prove the existence of a (unique) global solution with Galerkin-type arguments