Background: There are currently 2.5 million people economically inactive in the UK due to sickness. The government is considering a range of new initiatives to bring them back into the workforce; however, a lack of occupational health (OH) professionals, who play an important part in the recovery of physical and mental conditions that would otherwise inhibit employees from working, is hindering these efforts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOuter membrane vesicles (OMVs) are small membrane enclosed sacs released from bacteria which serve as carriers of biomolecules that shape interactions with the surrounding environment. The periodontal pathogen, , is a prolific OMV producer. Here, we investigated how the structure of lipid A, a core outer membrane molecule, influences OMV production, OMV-dependent TLR4 activation, and biofilm formation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is common among Veterans but overlapping symptoms with other prevalent psychiatric disorders (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD]) complicate diagnosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe synthetic toolbox for stimuli-responsive polymers has broadened to include many tunable variables, making these materials applicable in diverse technologies. However, unraveling the key composition-structure-function relationships to facilitate ground-up design remains a challenge due to the inherent dispersity in sequence and conformations for synthetic polymers. We here present a systematic study of these relationships using a model system of copolymers with a thermoresponsive (-isopropylacrylamide) backbone in addition to metal-chelating (acrylic acid) and hydrophobic structural comonomers and evaluate their efficiency at isolating technologically critical lanthanide ions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF