“Home and All It Meant”: Bowdoin College, Nostalgia, and Morale in World War II

Why would hundreds of young men fighting in World War II maintain correspondence with their college president and dean? Based on letters between former Bowdoin students, President Kenneth C. M. Sills, and Dean Paul Nixon, this article argues that Bowdoin College, and institutions like it, helped strengthen and maintain soldiers’ resolve in wartime as a nostalgia-based intermediate motivator. Instead of professing strong ideological beliefs or noting their attachment to their closest comrades, these former students openly discussed their longing for their alma mater and all the peace-time comforts it represented. For many of them Bowdoin, the “home” they had left to go to war, was a way of life worth defending and dying for. Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai graduated from Bowdoin College in 2003 and is currently a history Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia. While his primary field of interest is nineteenth century U.S. history, he became intrigued by these World War II letters and their meaning after he discovered them in spring 2001. An earlier version of this essay was presented as his undergraduate honors thesis

Fighting drug-resistant Plasmodium falciparum: the challenge of artemisinin resistance

AbstractFollowing a decade-long scale up of malaria control through vector control interventions, the introduction of rapid diagnostic tests and highly efficacious Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT) along with other measures, global malaria incidence declined significantly. The recent development of artemisinin resistance on the Cambodia-Thailand border, however, is of great concern. This review encompasses the background of artemisinin resistance in Plasmodium falciparum, its situation, especially in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS), and the responses taken to overcome this resistance. The difficulties in defining resistance are presented, particularly the necessity of measuring the clinical response to artemisinins using the slow parasite-clearance phenotype. Efforts to understand the molecular basis of artemisinin resistance and the search for molecular markers are reviewed. The markers, once identified, can be applied as an efficient tool for resistance surveillance. Despite the limitation of current surveillance methods, it is important to continue vigilance for artemisinin resistance. The therapeutic efficacy “in vivo study'’ network for monitoring antimalarial resistance in the GMS has been strengthened. GMS countries are working together in response to artemisinin resistance and aim to eliminate all P. falciparum parasites. These efforts are crucial since a resurgence of malaria due to drug and/or insecticide resistance, program cuts, lack of political support and donor fatigue could set back malaria control success in the sub-region and threaten malaria control and elimination if resistance spreads to other regions

Declining Artesunate-Mefloquine Efficacy against Falciparum Malaria on the Cambodia–Thailand Border

Emerging resistance in Southeast Asia raises concern over possible spread or similar evolution of resistance to other artemisinin-based combination therapies in Africa

Assessment of the deformability and velocity of healthy and artificially impaired red blood cells in narrow polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microchannels

Malaria is one of the leading causes of death in underdeveloped regions. Thus, the development of rapid, efficient, and competitive diagnostic techniques is essential. This work reports a study of the deformability and velocity assessment of healthy and artificially impaired red blood cells (RBCs), with the purpose of potentially mimicking malaria effects, in narrow polydimethylsiloxane microchannels. To obtain impaired RBCs, their properties were modified by adding, to the RBCs, different concentrations of glucose, glutaraldehyde, or diamide, in order to increase the cells' rigidity. The effects of the RBCs' artificial stiffening were evaluated by combining image analysis techniques with microchannels with a contraction width of 8 mu m, making it possible to measure the cells' deformability and velocity of both healthy and modified RBCs. The results showed that healthy RBCs naturally deform when they cross the contractions and rapidly recover their original shape. In contrast, for the modified samples with high concentration of chemicals, the same did not occur. Additionally, for all the tested modification methods, the results have shown a decrease in the RBCs' deformability and velocity as the cells' rigidity increases, when compared to the behavior of healthy RBCs samples. These results show the ability of the image analysis tools combined with microchannel contractions to obtain crucial information on the pathological blood phenomena in microcirculation. Particularly, it was possible to measure the deformability of the RBCs and their velocity, resulting in a velocity/deformability relation in the microchannel. This correlation shows great potential to relate the RBCs' behavior with the various stages of malaria, helping to establish the development of new diagnostic systems towards point-of-care devices.This work results of the project NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-028178, MalariaChip, supported by Programa Operacional Regional do Norte-Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and by Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT), IP. Work also supported by Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT) with the reference project UID/EEA/04436/2013, by FEDER funds through the COMPETE 2020-Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalizacao (POCI) with the reference project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006941; and by project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016861 (with associated reference PTDC/QEQ-FTT/4287/2014). S.O. Catarino thanks the FCT for the SFRH/BPD/108889/2015 grant, supported by national funds from Ministerios da Ciencia, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior and by FSE through the POCH-Programa Operacional Capital Humano.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Comparison of chloroquine, sulfadoxine/pyrimethamine, mefloquine and mefloquine-artesunate for the treatment of falciparum malaria in Kachin State, North Myanmar.

Multi-drug resistant falciparum malaria is widespread in Asia. In Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam the national protocols have changed largely to artesunate combined treatment regimens but elsewhere in East and South Asia chloroquine (CQ) and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) are still widely recommended by national malaria control programmes. In Kachin State, northern Myanmar, an area of low seasonal malaria transmission, the efficacy of CQ (25 mg base/kg) and SP (1.25/25 mg/kg), the nationally recommended treatments at the time, were compared with mefloquine alone (M; 15 mg base/kg) and mefloquine combined with artesunate (MA; 15:4 mg/kg). An open randomized controlled trial enrolled 316 patients with uncomplicated Plasmodium falciparum malaria, stratified prospectively into three age-groups. Early treatment failures (ETF) occurred in 41% (32/78) of CQ treated patients and in 24% of patients treated with SP (18/75). In young children the ETF rates were 87% after CQ and 35% after SP. Four children (two CQ, two SP) developed symptoms of cerebral malaria within 3 days after treatment. By day 42, failure rates (uncorrected for reinfections) had increased to 79% for CQ and 81% for SP. ETF rates were 2.5% after treatment with M and 3.9% after treatment with MA (P > 0.2). Overall uncorrected treatment failure rates at day 42 following M and MA were 23% and 21%, respectively. Chloroquine and SP are completely ineffective for the treatment of falciparum malaria in northern Myanmar. Mefloquine treatment is much more effective, but three day combination regimens with artesunate will be needed for optimum efficacy and protection against resistance

Key Knowledge Gaps for Plasmodium vivax Control and Elimination

There is inadequate understanding of the biology, pathology, transmission, and control of Plasmodium vivax, the geographically most widespread cause of human malaria. During the last decades, study of this species was neglected, in part due to the erroneous belief that it is intrinsically benign. In addition, many technical challenges in culturing the parasite also hampered understanding its fundamental biology and molecular and cellular responses to chemotherapeutics. Research on vivax malaria needs to be substantially expanded over the next decade to accelerate its elimination and eradication. This article summarizes key knowledge gaps identified by researchers, national malaria control programs, and other stakeholders assembled by the World Health Organization to develop strategies for controlling and eliminating vivax malaria. The priorities presented in this article emerged in these technical discussions, and were adopted by expert consensus of the authors. All involved understood the priority placed upon pragmatism in this research agenda, that is, focus upon tools delivering better prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and surveillance of P. vivax

Responding to AIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria, and Emerging Infectious Diseases in Burma: Dilemmas of Policy and Practice

Beyrer and colleagues discuss infectious disease threats in Burma and suggest policy options for responding to them

Divergent Goals and Commitments in Global Malaria Intervention

Anthony Kiszewski discusses the implications of a new study that finds that global malaria funding remains inadequate