10 research outputs found
Managing the Socially Marginalized: Attitudes Towards Welfare, Punishment and Race
Welfare and incarceration policies have converged to form a system of governance over socially marginalized groups, particularly racial minorities. In both of these policy areas, rehabilitative and social support objectives have been replaced with a more punitive and restrictive system. The authors examine the convergence in individual-level attitudes concerning welfare and criminal punishment, using national survey data. The authors\u27 analysis indicates a statistically significant relationship between punitive attitudes toward welfare and punishment. Furthermore, accounting for the respondents\u27 racial attitudes explains the bivariate relationship between welfare and punishment. Thus, racial attitudes seemingly link support for punitive approaches to opposition to welfare expenditures. The authors discuss the implications of this study for welfare and crime control policies by way of the conclusion
A PfRH5-Based Vaccine Is Efficacious against Heterologous Strain Blood-Stage Plasmodium falciparum Infection in Aotus Monkeys
SummaryAntigenic diversity has posed a critical barrier to vaccine development against the pathogenic blood-stage infection of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. To date, only strain-specific protection has been reported by trials of such vaccines in nonhuman primates. We recently showed that P. falciparum reticulocyte binding protein homolog 5 (PfRH5), a merozoite adhesin required for erythrocyte invasion, is highly susceptible to vaccine-inducible strain-transcending parasite-neutralizing antibody. In vivo efficacy of PfRH5-based vaccines has not previously been evaluated. Here, we demonstrate that PfRH5-based vaccines can protect Aotus monkeys against a virulent vaccine-heterologous P. falciparum challenge and show that such protection can be achieved by a human-compatible vaccine formulation. Protection was associated with anti-PfRH5 antibody concentration and in vitro parasite-neutralizing activity, supporting the use of this in vitro assay to predict the in vivo efficacy of future vaccine candidates. These data suggest that PfRH5-based vaccines have potential to achieve strain-transcending efficacy in humans
Clinical evaluation of the BioFire Global Fever Panel for the identification of malaria, leptospirosis, chikungunya, and dengue from whole blood: a prospective, multicentre, cross-sectional diagnostic accuracy study
BACKGROUND: Acute febrile illness is a common presentation for patients at hospitals globally. Assays that can diagnose a variety of common pathogens in blood could help to establish a diagnosis for targeted disease management. We aimed to evaluate the performance of the BioFire Global Fever Panel (GF Panel), a multiplex nucleic acid amplification test performed on whole blood specimens run on the BioFire FilmArray System, in the diagnosis of several pathogens that cause acute febrile illness. METHODS: We did a prospective, multicentre, cross-sectional diagnostic accuracy study to evaluate the GF Panel. Consenting adults and children older than 6 months presenting with fever in the previous 2 days were enrolled consecutively in sub-Saharan Africa (Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda), southeast Asia (Cambodia, Thailand), central and South America (Honduras, Peru), and the USA (Washington, DC; St Louis, MO). We assessed the performance of six analytes (chikungunya virus, dengue virus [serotypes 1-4], Leptospira spp, Plasmodium spp, Plasmodium falciparum, and Plasmodium vivax or Plasmodium ovale) on the GF Panel. The performance of the GF Panel was assessed using comparator PCR assays with different primers followed by bidirectional sequencing on nucleic acid extracts from the same specimen. We calculated the positive percent agreement and negative percent agreement of the GF Panel with respect to the comparator assays. This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT02968355. FINDINGS: From March 26, 2018, to Sept 30, 2019, 1965 participants were enrolled at ten sites worldwide. Of the 1875 participants with analysable results, 980 (52·3%) were female and the median age was 22 years (range 0-100). At least one analyte was detected in 657 (35·0%) of 1875 specimens. The GF Panel had a positive percent agreement for the six analytes evaluated as follows: chikungunya virus 100% (95% CI 86·3-100), dengue virus 94·0% (90·6-96·5), Leptospira spp 93·8% (69·8-99·8), Plasmodium spp 98·3% (96·3-99·4), P falciparum 92·7% (88·8-95·6), and P vivax or P ovale 92·7% (86·7-96·6). The GF Panel had a negative percent agreement equal to or greater than 99·2% (98·6-99·6) for all analytes. INTERPRETATION: This 1 h sample-to-answer, molecular device can detect common causative agents of acute febrile illness with excellent positive percent agreement and negative percent agreement directly in whole blood. The targets of the assay are prevalent in tropical and subtropical regions globally, and the assay could help to provide both public health surveillance and individual diagnoses. FUNDING: BioFire Defense, Joint Project Manager for Medical Countermeasure Systems and US Army Medical Materiel Development Activity, and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
PANDORA, a new facility for interdisciplinary in-plasma physics
PANDORA, Plasmas for Astrophysics, Nuclear Decays Observation and Radiation
for Archaeometry, is planned as a new facility based on a state-of-the-art
plasma trap confining energetic plasma for performing interdisciplinary
research in the fields of Nuclear Astrophysics, Astrophysics, Plasma Physics
and Applications in Material Science and Archaeometry: the plasmas become the
environment for measuring nuclear decays rates in stellar-like condition (such
as 7Be decay and beta-decay involved in s-process nucleosynthesis), especially
as a function of the ionization state of the plasma ions. These studies are of
paramount importance for addressing several astrophysical issues in both
stellar and primordial nucleosynthesis environment (e.g. determination of solar
neutrino flux and 7Li Cosmological Problem), moreover the confined energetic
plasma will be a unique light source for high performance stellar spectroscopy
measurements in the visible, UV and X-ray domains, offering advancements in
observational astronomy. As to magnetic fields, the experimental validation of
theoretical first and second order Land\'e factors will drive the layout of
next generation polarimetric units for the high resolution spectrograph of the
future giant telescopes. In PANDORA new plasma heating methods will be
explored, that will push forward the ion beam output, in terms of extracted
intensity and charge states. More, advanced and optimized injection methods of
ions in an ECR plasma will be experimented, with the aim at optimizing its
capture efficiency. This will be applied to the ECR-based Charge Breeding
technique, that will improve the performances of the SPES ISOL-facility
currently installed at Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro-INFN. Finally, PANDORA
will be suitable for energy conversion, making the plasma as a source of
electromagnetic radiation, for applications in Material Science and
Archaeometry