Comparative Study of Malaria Prevalence among Travellers in Nigeria (West Africa) Using Slide Microscopy and a Rapid Diagnosis Test

Malaria is a major disease in Africa and leads to various public health problems. A study was carried out at the Aviation Medical Clinic Laboratory, Murtala Mohammed Airport, Ikeja, Lagos State, Nigeria, in 2014. The work aimed to determine the prevalence of malaria among patients attending the laboratory. Blood samples were therefore collected from 51 patients and subjected to both blood smear microscopy and a rapid immunochromatographic diagnostic test (SD BIOLINE Malaria Ag) for detection of, respectively, malaria parasites and antigens. At the end of the study, 22% of the patients were detected positive by the microscopic examination while 9.8% were tested positive when using SD BIOLINE Malaria Ag. The outcomes of the study show a high prevalence of malaria at the airport. This represents a serious risk factor leading to a high likelihood of spread and occurrence of malaria in other countries including Western countries whereby the disease is nonendemic. It also pointed out that the blood smear microscopy seems to be better than Rapid Diagnosis Test (RDT) for malaria diagnosis

POLARIZATION DEPENDENT DYNAMICS OF CO2_{2} TRAPPED IN AN OPTICAL CENTRIFUGE

Author Institution: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742An optical centrifuge (Yuan \textit{et al}. \textit{PNAS} 2011, 108, 6872) has been employed to prepare carbon dioxide molecules in very high rotational states ("hot'' rotors, $J$ $\sim$ 220) in order to investigate how collisions relax ensembles of molecules with an overall angular momentum that is spatially oriented. We have performed polarization-dependent high resolution transient IR absorption measurements to study the spatial dependence of the relaxation dynamics. Our results show that the net angular momentum of the initially centrifuged molecules persists for at least 10 gas kinetic collisions and that the translational energy distributions are dependent on the probe orientation and polarization. These studies indicate that the centrifuged molecules tend to maintain the orientation of their initial angular momentum for the first set of collisions and that relatively large changes in $J$ are involved in the first collisions

USING A HIGH RESOLUTION MID-IR OPO FOR CHEMICAL DYNAMICS STUDIES OF HIGHLY EXCITED MOLECULES

Author Institution: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742Quantum state-resolved energy flow dynamics are investigated for inelastic collisions of highly vibrationally excited molecules with HCl and DCl using high resolution transient IR absorption spectroscopy with a mid-IR OPO. Pyrazine molecules are optically pumped into high vibrational states with $E_{vib}$ = 37,900 \wn using the quadrupled output Nd:YAG laser at $\lambda$ = 266 nm. The state-resolved outcome of collisions is probed by measuring transient IR absorption for individual quantum states of HCl and DCl. The nascent energy partitioning among the rotational and translational degrees of freedom of the scattered HCl and DCl molecules is used to reveal how isotopic shifts in rotational energy states affect collisional energy transfer

OBSERVATION OF NEW DYNAMICS IN THE STATE-RESOLVED COLLISIONAL RELAXATION OF HIGHLY EXCITED MOLECULES

Author Institution: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742The dynamics of collisional deactivation of highly energized molecules, pyrazine-h$_{4}$ and pyrazine-d$_{4}$, by HCl molecules at 300 K show evidence of a new mechanism for collisional energy transfer. Highly vibrationally excited (E$_{vib}$ = 37,900 \wn) pyrazine-h$_{4}$ and pyrazine-d$_{4}$ molecules are produced in separate experiments by pulsed excitation with the fourth harmonic output of a Nd:YAG laser at $\lambda$ = 266 nm. Collisions between the energized isotopes and HCl molecules are monitored by measuring the nascent transient IR absorption of scattered HCl in individual rotational states. The results indicate that HCl molecules are scattered with a gain in rotational and translational energy, but the largest recoil energies are observed for the lowest rotational energy states of HCl. This behavior is opposite to that seen for other bath molecules including DCl and CO$_{2}$. The results point to differences in intermolecular interactions between the energy donor and acceptor molecules as contributing factors to the observed differences in the mechanism of energy transfer