Intent to migrate among nursing students in Uganda: Measures of the brain drain in the next generation of health professionals

Background: There is significant concern about the worldwide migration of nursing professionals from low-income countries to rich ones, as nurses are lured to fill the large number of vacancies in upper-income countries. This study explores the views of nursing students in Uganda to assess their views on practice options and their intentions to migrate. Methods: Anonymous questionnaires were distributed to nursing students at the Makerere Nursing School and Aga Khan University Nursing School in Kampala, Uganda, during July 2006, using convenience sampling methods, with 139 participants. Two focus groups were also conducted at one university. Results: Most (70%) of the participants would like to work outside Uganda, and said it was likely that within five years they would be working in the U.S. (59%) or the U.K. (49%). About a fourth (27%) said they could be working in another African country. Only eight percent of all students reported an unlikelihood to migrate within five years of training completion. Survey respondents were more dissatisfied with financial remuneration than with any other factor pushing them towards emigration. Those wanting to work in the settings of urban, private, or U.K./U.S. practices were less likely to express a sense of professional obligation and/or loyalty to country. Those who have lived in rural areas were less likely to report wanting to emigrate. Students with a desire to work in urban areas or private practice were more likely to report an intent to emigrate for financial reasons or in pursuit of country stability, while students wanting to work in rural areas or public practice were less likely to want to emigrate overall. Conclusion: Improving remuneration for nurses is the top priority policy change sought by nursing students in our study. Nursing schools may want to recruit students desiring work in rural areas or public practice to lead to a more stable workforce in Uganda.University of Washington Department of Global Healt

Harnessing the potential of ligninolytic enzymes for lignocellulosic biomass pretreatment

Abundant lignocellulosic biomass from various industries provides a great potential feedstock for the production of value-added products such as biofuel, animal feed, and paper pulping. However, low yield of sugar obtained from lignocellulosic hydrolysate is usually due to the presence of lignin that acts as a protective barrier for cellulose and thus restricts the accessibility of the enzyme to work on the cellulosic component. This review focuses on the significance of biological pretreatment specifically using ligninolytic enzymes as an alternative method apart from the conventional physical and chemical pretreatment. Different modes of biological pretreatment are discussed in this paper which is based on (i) fungal pretreatment where fungi mycelia colonise and directly attack the substrate by releasing ligninolytic enzymes and (ii) enzymatic pretreatment using ligninolytic enzymes to counter the drawbacks of fungal pretreatment. This review also discusses the important factors of biological pretreatment using ligninolytic enzymes such as nature of the lignocellulosic biomass, pH, temperature, presence of mediator, oxygen, and surfactant during the biodelignification process

SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617.2 Delta variant replication and immune evasion

The B.1.617.2 (Delta) variant of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was first identified in the state of Maharashtra in late 2020 and spread throughout India, outcompeting pre-existing lineages including B.1.617.1 (Kappa) and B.1.1.7 (Alpha)1. In vitro, B.1.617.2 is sixfold less sensitive to serum neutralizing antibodies from recovered individuals, and eightfold less sensitive to vaccine-elicited antibodies, compared with wild-type Wuhan-1 bearing D614G. Serum neutralizing titres against B.1.617.2 were lower in ChAdOx1 vaccinees than in BNT162b2 vaccinees. B.1.617.2 spike pseudotyped viruses exhibited compromised sensitivity to monoclonal antibodies to the receptor-binding domain and the amino-terminal domain. B.1.617.2 demonstrated higher replication efficiency than B.1.1.7 in both airway organoid and human airway epithelial systems, associated with B.1.617.2 spike being in a predominantly cleaved state compared with B.1.1.7 spike. The B.1.617.2 spike protein was able to mediate highly efficient syncytium formation that was less sensitive to inhibition by neutralizing antibody, compared with that of wild-type spike. We also observed that B.1.617.2 had higher replication and spike-mediated entry than B.1.617.1, potentially explaining the B.1.617.2 dominance. In an analysis of more than 130 SARS-CoV-2-infected health care workers across three centres in India during a period of mixed lineage circulation, we observed reduced ChAdOx1 vaccine effectiveness against B.1.617.2 relative to non-B.1.617.2, with the caveat of possible residual confounding. Compromised vaccine efficacy against the highly fit and immune-evasive B.1.617.2 Delta variant warrants continued infection control measures in the post-vaccination era

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Not AvailablePurpose The study was conducted to improve the productivity of the multi-component cellulolytic enzymes using thermophilicAspergilus terreus strain and sweet sorghum bagasse as substrate. One of the major objectives was to study the interactions between different operating parameters and appraise the potential of the optimized process for validation studies. Methods Response surface methodology (RSM) based on central composite design (CCD) was used to optimize the process parameters for cellulase production by thermophilic Aspergillus terreus via a solid-state fermentation (SSF) process. A set of 50 experiments in triplicate with five factors (moisture content, inoculum level, pH, temperature and incubation period), three levels with six axial points (α ± 1.68) and five replications at the central point were conducted in this study with filter paper (FP) cellulase and β-glucosidase as output parameters. Results Micrographs and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of A. terreus RWY revealed a chain of conidia in a columnar arrangement with an average size of conidium being 2.12 μ. Statistical process optimization suggested temperature of 45 °C,pH of 5.8, incubation time of 72 h, inoculum concentration of 10% and initial moisture content of 80% (w/w) as optimum for conducting validation studies. Validation studies showed comparable FP and β-glucosidase activities as predicted by the model equations. In addition to FP and β-glucosidase, A. terreus RWY also produced endoglucanase (EG), β-xylosidase,α-l-arabinofuranosidase, CBHI, xylanase and xylan esterase of 149.54, 26.94, 183.16, 17.52, 1264.47 and 1106.46 U/gds, respectively during the validation process. Response surface optimization also led to a nearly two-fold increase in FP and β-glucosidase activities. Conclusion Coupled with the use of thermophilic strains which confer specific benefits during industrial applications, statistical process optimization holds potential for scale-up studies for cellulase production using the optimized parameters, SSB as substrate and thermophilic A. terreus RWY.Not Availabl