Effects of improved sanitation on diarrheal reduction for children under five in Idiofa, DR Congo: a cluster randomized trial.

BACKGROUND: The lack of safe water and sanitation contributes to the rampancy of diarrhea in many developing countries. METHODS: This study describes the design of a cluster-randomized trial in Idiofa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, seeking evidence of the impact of improved sanitation on diarrhea for children under four. Of the 276 quartiers, 18 quartiers were randomly allocated to the intervention or control arm. Seven hundred and-twenty households were sampled and the youngest under-four child in each household was registered for this study. The primary endpoint of the study is diarrheal incidence, prevalence and duration in children under five. DISCUSSION: Material subsidies will be provided only to the households who complete pit digging plus superstructure and roof construction, regardless of their income level. This study employs a Sanitation Calendar so that the mother of each household can record the diarrheal episodes of her under-four child on a daily basis. The diary enables examination of the effect of the sanitation intervention on diarrhea duration and also resolves the limitation of the small number of clusters in the trial. In addition, the project will be monitored through the 'Sanitation Map', on which all households in the study area, including both the control and intervention arms, are registered. To avoid information bias or courtesy bias, photos will be taken of the latrine during the household visit, and a supervisor will determine well-equipped latrine uptake based on the photos. This reduces the possibility of recall bias and under- or over-estimation of diarrhea, which was the main limitation of previous studies. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the School of Public Health, Kinshasa University (ESP/CE/040/15; April 13, 2015) and registered as an International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial (ISRCTN: 10,419,317) on March 13, 2015

Behçet's Disease Combined with Various Types of Fistula

Behçet's disease (BD) is a chronic, relapsing, multisystem disorder, characterized by recurrent oral ulcer, genital ulcers, eye lesion, and skin lesion. The underlying pathology is nonspecificvasculitis of all vessel sizes, and severe vasculitis can result in fistula formation of neighboring tissues due to a necroticprocess. Herein, eleven cases of BD combined with fistula are presented. In the present study, various types of fistula were associated; enterocutaneous fistula in six patients, and rectovaginal fistula in two. The other three patients showed aortoduodenal fistula, urethrovaginal fistula and urethrocutaneous fistula. They were treated with a corrective operation, but the prognoses were poor due to frequent relapses

Discovery of Q203, a potent clinical candidate for the treatment of tuberculosis

New therapeutic strategies are needed to combat the tuberculosis pandemic and the spread of multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) forms of the disease, which remain a serious public health challenge worldwide1, 2. The most urgent clinical need is to discover potent agents capable of reducing the duration of MDR and XDR tuberculosis therapy with a success rate comparable to that of current therapies for drug-susceptible tuberculosis. The last decade has seen the discovery of new agent classes for the management of tuberculosis3, 4, 5, several of which are currently in clinical trials6, 7, 8. However, given the high attrition rate of drug candidates during clinical development and the emergence of drug resistance, the discovery of additional clinical candidates is clearly needed. Here, we report on a promising class of imidazopyridine amide (IPA) compounds that block Mycobacterium tuberculosis growth by targeting the respiratory cytochrome bc1 complex. The optimized IPA compound Q203 inhibited the growth of MDR and XDR M. tuberculosis clinical isolates in culture broth medium in the low nanomolar range and was efficacious in a mouse model of tuberculosis at a dose less than 1 mg per kg body weight, which highlights the potency of this compound. In addition, Q203 displays pharmacokinetic and safety profiles compatible with once-daily dosing. Together, our data indicate that Q203 is a promising new clinical candidate for the treatment of tuberculosis

Dimensionless parameters to define process windows of selective laser melting process to fabricate three-dimensional metal structures

© 2022 Elsevier LtdDespite the intense research attention on the three-dimensional printing of metal structures via selective laser melting, a unified understanding of thermal conditions, and more specifically the input energy levels, necessary for minimizing macroscopic-defect generation is still lacking. Although simple and widely used parameters, such as linear or volumetric energy density, can be utilized to represent the characteristic energy level of the process, notable differences in printed morphologies and microstructures are observed in structures fabricated at the same energy density. Consequently, designing a process in terms of laser power and scan speed is largely based on trial-and-error approaches. In this work, based on the dimensional analysis of reported experimental data and numerical computation, the process windows suitable for the fabrication of single tracks were examined for various metals. In addition to the normalized enthalpy that quantifies the input energy level, another dimensionless parameter which measures the thermal penetration depth relative to the thickness of powder layer was found to be critical in defining the process window that resulted in acceptable single-track structure formation. To confirm the validity of the analysis, via the elimination of uncertainties and ambiguities inherent to the empirical data, numerical computations were conducted for single-track fabrications using Ti–6Al–4 V and 316L stainless steel alloys. The results of the numerical simulations showed good agreement with the findings obtained from the empirical data.11Nsciescopu

Current Research in Future Information and Communication Engineering 2022

The digital revolution has transformed the way we communicate, access information, and interact with technology [...

Chemo- and regioselective click reactions through nickel-catalyzed azide???alkyne cycloaddition

Metal-catalyzed cycloaddition is an expeditious synthetic route to functionalized heterocyclic frameworks. However, achieving reactivity-controlled metal-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloadditions from competing internal alkynes has been challenging. Herein, we report a nickel-catalyzed [3 + 2] cycloaddition of unsymmetrical alkynes with organic azides to afford functionalized 1,2,3-triazoles with excellent regio- and chemoselectivity control. Terminal alkynes and cyanoalkynes afford 1,5-disubstituted triazoles and 1,4,5-trisubstituted triazoles bearing a 4-cyano substituent, respectively. Thioalkynes and ynamides exhibit inverse regioselectivity compared with terminal alkynes and cyanoalkynes, affording 1,4,5-trisubstituted triazoles with 5-thiol and 5-amide substituents, respectively. Density functional theory calculations are performed for the elucidation of the reaction mechanism. The computed mechanism suggests that a nickellacyclopropene intermediate is generated by the oxidative addition of the alkyne substrate to the Ni(0)-Xantphos catalyst, and the subsequent C-N coupling of this intermediate with an azide is responsible for the chemo- and regioselectivity

Chemoselective Trifluoroethylation Reactions of Quinazolinones and Identification of Photostability

Herein, we report chemoselective trifluoroethylation routes of unmasked 2-arylquinazolin-4(3H)-ones using mesityl(2,2,2-trifluoroethyl)iodonium triflate at room temperature. Homologous C-, O-, and N-functionalized subclasses are accessed in a straightforward manner with a wide substrate scope. These chemoselective branching events are driven by Pd-catalyzed ortho-selective C???H activation at the pendant aryl ring and base-promoted reactivity modulation of the amide group, leveraging the intrinsic directing capability and competing pronucleophilicity of the quinazolin-4(3H)-one framework. Furthermore, outstanding photostability of the quinazolin-4(3H)-one family associated with nonradiative decay is presented