Improving Data Collection to Reduce Maternal and Infant Mortality and Morbidity in Malawi: Evaluating Chimwemwe mu\u27bereki, a Community Based Intervention

Maternal and infant death rates in Malawi are among the highest in the world. Over 17 million people live in this small country in sub-Saharan Africa, where the country’s life expectancy is just 60.6 years (World Bank, 2015). These deaths can be attributed to many complex factors, including cultural practices, lack of adequate medical equipment, long travel distances to health facilities, low staffing at hospitals and clinics, extreme poverty, and malnutrition. Without government support and intervention, community groups must fill in the gaps to make needed improvements to maternal and infant health outcomes. African Mothers Health Initiative (AMHI) enrolls high risk mothers and infants in the capital Lilongwe District to provide home-based clinical care in the remote villages of Malawi. During a needs assessment conducted in the summer of 2016, it was determined AMHI currently lacks robust and ample data to ensure the sustainability of this necessary program through grant funding and evaluation. With more efficient collection and comprehensive data, AMHI can better serve program participants and villages, and identify areas to more efficiently and effectively reduce maternal and infant mortality and morbidity in Malawi. The lives of women and their infant children depend on it

“Greening up”: A Multistep Synthetic Transformation

Green Chemistry is an experimental design theory that aims to reduce the use and generation of hazardous substances in order to address problems we face in the world today like water contamination, global warming, ozone depletion, and pollution. When hazardous substances are replaced with less hazardous substances, both risk and cost can be reduced. Teaching the importance and relevance of green chemistry is imperative to the future of chemistry and the environment. Since most useful organic chemical targets require more than one synthetic step, it is important that undergraduate organic chemistry students be exposed to labs that require multiple transformations. This will allow students to understand how reactions work after observing them first-hand. Additionally, since the ‘traditional’ synthesis of most chemical substances utilizes solvents, reagents, and conditions that are harmful and hazardous to the environment, students had to propose their own green alternatives by completing a 3-step synthesis and determining a greener route. The products were purified, characterized and then a metric system was used to compare the greenness of the reactions. A reaction was considered more green if there were relative decreases in the combination of factors that include cost, environmental toxicity, and waste produced. In total, 22 different targets were attempted to be synthesized

Site specific genetic incorporation of azidophenylalanine in Schizosaccharomyces pombe

The diversity of protein functions is impacted in significant part by the chemical properties of the twenty amino acids, which are used as building blocks for nearly all proteins. The ability to incorporate unnatural amino acids (UAA) into proteins in a site specific manner can vastly expand the repertoire of protein functions and also allows detailed analysis of protein function. In recent years UAAs have been incorporated in a site-specific manner into proteins in a number of organisms. In nearly all cases, the amber codon is used as a sense codon, and an orthogonal tRNA/aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase (RS) pair is used to generate amber suppressing tRNAs charged with the UAA. In this work, we have developed tools to incorporate the cross-linking amino acid azido-phenylalanine (AzF) through the use of bacterial tRNATyr and a modified version of TyrRS, AzFRS, in Schizosaccharomyces pombe, which is an attractive model organism for the study of cell behavior and function. We have incorporated AzF into three different proteins. We show that the majority of AzF is modified to amino-phenyl alanine, but protein cross-linking was still observed. These studies set the stage for exploitation of this new technology for the analysis of S. pombe proteins

Interventions for the management of malignant pleural effusions:An updated network meta-analysis

Talc slurry and poudrage are effective pleurodesis agents. IPCs have lower pleurodesis rates but comparable breathlessness control and reduced risk of repeat invasive procedures. It is essential that patients have access to a range of treatment strategies. https://bit.ly/38v30y

Editorial

A series of N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC)/PR3 palladium(II) and palladium(0) complexes has been synthesized and fully characterized. X-ray crystallographic data have allowed comparison of ligand steric properties. The NHC ligand was found to vary its steric properties as a function of the phosphine co-ligand. These complexes display interesting catalytic properties in the Suzuki-Miyaura reaction performed in aqueous media. The pre-catalyst [PdCl2(IPr)(XPhos)] (IPr = N,N'-bis-(2,6-diisopropylphenyl)imidazol-2-ylidene; XPhos = 2-dicyclohexylphosphino-2',4',6'-triisopropylbiphenyl) was found to be the most efficient system, promoting the coupling of a wide range of aryl chlorides with boronic acids in aqueous media with a typical catalyst loading of 0.03 mol%

Probing formation of cargo/importin-α transport complexes in plant cells using a pathogen effector

Importin-αs are essential adapter proteins that recruit cytoplasmic proteins destined for active nuclear import to the nuclear transport machinery. Cargo proteins interact with the importin-α armadillo repeat domain via nuclear localization sequences (NLSs), short amino acids motifs enriched in Lys and Arg residues. Plant genomes typically encode several importin-α paralogs that can have both specific and partially redundant functions. Although some cargos are preferentially imported by a distinct importin-α it remains unknown how this specificity is generated and to what extent cargos compete for binding to nuclear transport receptors. Here we report that the effector protein HaRxL106 from the oomycete pathogen Hyaloperonospora arabidopsidis co-opts the host cell's nuclear import machinery. We use HaRxL106 as a probe to determine redundant and specific functions of importin-α paralogs from Arabidopsis thaliana. A crystal structure of the importin-α3/MOS6 armadillo repeat domain suggests that five of the six Arabidopsis importin-αs expressed in rosette leaves have an almost identical NLS-binding site. Comparison of the importin-α binding affinities of HaRxL106 and other cargos in vitro and in plant cells suggests that relatively small affinity differences in vitro affect the rate of transport complex formation in vivo. Our results suggest that cargo affinity for importin-α, sequence variation at the importin-α NLS-binding sites and tissue-specific expression levels of importin-αs determine formation of cargo/importin-α transport complexes in plant cells

Local mutations:On the tentative beginnings of molecular oncology in Britain 1980–2000

Popular and scientific accounts of the molecularisation of cancer typically attribute it to advances in laboratory science, particularly molecular geneticists. However, historical research has indicated that clinical expertise input was often vital for advancing such work. The present paper reinforces that view. Looking in detail at British research into the molecular genetics of familial cancers during the 1980s and 1990s, it shows that that research, too, depended on crucial input from family cancer clinics. Moreover, the development of clinical services for familial cancers was in turn shaped by the demands of contributing to molecular genetic research. The paper concludes that accounts of the molecularisation of cancer that suppose a one-way transfer of knowledge and practice from laboratory to clinic misrepresent the complex interactions that were involved in molecularising familial cancers, and that were informed by the particular local and national circumstances in which they took shape

Prenatal pet keeping and caregiver-reported attention deficit hyperactivity disorder through preadolescence in a United States birth cohort

BACKGROUND: While the keeping of pets has been shown to protect against childhood allergic disease and obesity, less is known regarding potential associations of prenatal pet keeping and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We sought to examine the associations between prenatal dog or cat keeping with caregiver-reported ADHD in preadolescents in the Wayne County Health, Environment, Allergy and Asthma Longitudinal Study (WHEALS) birth cohort (N = 1258). METHODS: At an interview with the caregiver at child age 10-12 years, caregivers reported if the WHEALS child had ever been diagnosed with ADHD. Similarly, during an interview with the mother prenatally, pet keeping (defined as dog or cat kept inside ≥1 h/day) was ascertained. Logistic regression models were fit to examine the association of prenatal pet keeping (dog keeping and cat keeping, separately) with ADHD. RESULTS: A subset of 627 children were included in the analyses: 93 who had ADHD and 534 with neurotypical development. After accounting for confounders and loss to follow-up, maternal prenatal dog exposure was associated with 2.23 times (95% CI: 1.15, 4.31; p = 0.017) greater odds of ADHD among boys. Prenatal dog keeping was not statistically significantly associated with ADHD in girls (odds ratio = 0.27, 95% CI: 0.06, 1.12; p = 0.070). Prenatal cat keeping was not associated with ADHD. CONCLUSIONS: In boys, but not girls, maternal prenatal dog keeping was positively associated with ADHD. Further study to confirm these findings and to identify potential mechanisms of this association (e.g., modification of the gut microbiome, exposure to environmental toxicants or pet-related medications) is needed