The efficacy of the combination therapy of albendazole and ivermectin against Trichuris trichiura infection is higher in Tanzania than in Côte d'Ivoire. This study therefore aimed to investigate the difference between the population pharmacokinetics (PK) at these study sites and to determine if an exposure-response analysis could explain the low efficacy of the combination therapy in Côte d'Ivoire. Twenty-four participants (aged 12-19 years) receiving single doses of ivermectin (200 µg/kg) and albendazole (400 mg) were included in the population PK modeling.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCyanobacteria, commonly known as blue-green algae, are prevalent in freshwater systems and have gained interest for their potential in medical applications, particularly in skin regeneration. Among these, sp. strain PCC 7002 stands out because of its rapid proliferation and capacity to be genetically modified to produce growth factors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFActa Crystallogr B Struct Sci Cryst Eng Mater
December 2024
A seventh blind test of crystal structure prediction was organized by the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre featuring seven target systems of varying complexity: a silicon and iodine-containing molecule, a copper coordination complex, a near-rigid molecule, a cocrystal, a polymorphic small agrochemical, a highly flexible polymorphic drug candidate, and a polymorphic morpholine salt. In this first of two parts focusing on structure generation methods, many crystal structure prediction (CSP) methods performed well for the small but flexible agrochemical compound, successfully reproducing the experimentally observed crystal structures, while few groups were successful for the systems of higher complexity. A powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) assisted exercise demonstrated the use of CSP in successfully determining a crystal structure from a low-quality PXRD pattern.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe emergence of FemTech technologies promises to revolutionize women's health and reproductive rights but conceals an insidious trap of surveillance and control in the hands of private and state actors. This article examines the extent to which FemTech technologies, under the guise of empowerment, enable private actors to play a leading role in managing reproductive rights, replacing largely inactive States in this crucial function. The analysis shows how private FemTech companies are becoming critical players in implementing and defending these rights, often in response to the inaction or inadequacies of States.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPER: and polyfluoroalkyl substances have gained increased attention due to their persistence, ubiquitous presence in the environment, and toxicity. We hypothesised that the formation of non-extractable residues [NER] occurs in soils and contributes to the overall persistence of these priority pollutants, and that NER formation is controlled by temperature. To test these hypotheses, we used C-labelled perfluorooctanoic acid [PFOA] as target compound, added it to two arable soils (Cambisol, Luvisol), and incubated them at 10 °C and 20 °C in the dark.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOrganizational failures often cause significant harm to employees, the organization itself, and the environment. Investigations of failures consistently highlight how key employees behaved in (perhaps unintentionally) unethical ways that de-prioritized safety, such as investing fewer resources in safety (vs. other priorities) over time.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSuper-resolution microscopy has been used to show the formation of receptor clusters and adapted lipid organization of cell membranes for many members of the ErbB receptor family. The clustering behaviour depends on the receptor size and shape, possibly ligand binding or expression activity. Using single molecule localization microscopy (SMLM), we also showed this typical clustering for the epidermal growth factor receptor variant III (EGFRvIII) in glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objective: Trichuriasis caused by the human whipworm Trichuris trichiura poses a significant public health concern. Albendazole-ivermectin co-medication is currently the most effective treatment. Studies conducted in Tanzania and Côte d'Ivoire unveiled differences in efficacy for albendazole-ivermectin combination therapy in both countries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntegrated step-selection analyses (iSSAs) are versatile and powerful frameworks for studying habitat and movement preferences of tracked animals. iSSAs utilize integrated step-selection functions (iSSFs) to model movements in discrete time, and thus, require animal location data that are regularly spaced in time. However, many real-world datasets are incomplete due to tracking devices failing to locate an individual at one or more scheduled times, leading to slight irregularities in the duration between consecutive animal locations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhile climate change has been shown to impact several life-history traits of wild-living animal populations, little is known about its effects on dispersal and connectivity. Here, we capitalize on the highly variable flooding regime of the Okavango Delta to investigate the impacts of changing environmental conditions on the dispersal and connectivity of the endangered African wild dog (Lycaon pictus). Based on remote sensed flood extents observed over 20 years, we derive two extreme flood scenarios: a minimum and a maximum flood extent, representative of very dry and very wet environmental periods.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHydrogels are usually depicted as a homogenous polymer block with a distinct surface. While defects in the polymer structure are looked into frequently, structural irregularities on the hydrogel surface are often neglected. In this work, thin hydrogel layers of ≈100 nm thickness (nanogels) are synthesized and characterized for their structural irregularities, as they represent the surface of macrogels.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: In hormone receptor-positive (ER+/PR+) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-) early-stage breast cancer (EBC), gene expression tests such as the Prosigna are increasingly used since classic clinicopathological parameters and the proliferation factor Ki-67 often do not allow a definite therapy decision regarding an adjuvant chemotherapy. While the Prosigna test has been validated for postmenopausal patients, few data are available regarding its use in premenopausal patients. The present study compared the Prosigna test with the Ki-67 index in premenopausal patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPosttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with lower cortical thickness (CT) in prefrontal, cingulate, and insular cortices in diverse trauma-affected samples. However, some studies have failed to detect differences between PTSD patients and healthy controls or reported that PTSD is associated with greater CT. Using data-driven dimensionality reduction, we sought to conduct a well-powered study to identify vulnerable networks without regard to neuroanatomic boundaries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUsing neuroimaging and electrophysiological data to infer neural parameter estimations from theoretical circuits requires solving the inverse problem. Here, we provide a new Julia language package designed to i) compose complex dynamical models in a simple and modular way with ModelingToolkit.jl, ii) implement parameter fitting based on spectral dynamic causal modeling (sDCM) using the Laplace approximation, analogous to MATLAB implementation in SPM12, and iii) leverage Julia's unique strengths to increase accuracy and speed by employing Automatic Differentiation during the fitting procedure.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Infection with the soil-transmitted helminth Strongyloides stercoralis affects up to 600 million people globally, most of whom live in rural areas with poor sanitation. If untreated, infection leads to long-lasting morbidity and might even be life-threatening. Moxidectin might be a promising alternative to ivermectin, the only currently recommended single-dose treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSeleniferous oxyanions are groundwater contaminants from both anthropogenic and natural sources, while pure amorphous selenium nanoparticles have a variety of industrial applications. Biology can achieve the multicomponent 6 e/8 H reduction of selenate to amorphous selenium using multiple metalloenzymes, like selenate and selenite reductase. Inspired by biology, we developed a new homogeneous system that can generate pure elemental selenium with no caustic waste.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFToxic breakdown products of young (L.) Crantz, glucosinolates can eliminate microorganisms in the soil. Since microorganisms are essential for phosphate cycling, only insensitive microorganisms with phosphate-solubilizing activity can improve phosphate supply.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe study whether neural quantum states based on multilayer feed-forward networks can find ground states which exhibit volume-law entanglement entropy. As a testbed, we employ the paradigmatic Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model. We find that both shallow and deep feed-forward networks require an exponential number of parameters in order to represent the ground state of this model.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFACS Appl Mater Interfaces
August 2023
The lack of internal polarization fields in cubic group-III nitrides makes them promising arsenic-free contenders for next-generation high-performance electronic and optoelectronic applications. In particular, cubic InGaN semiconductor alloys promise band gap tuning across and beyond the visible spectrum, from the near-ultraviolet to the near-infrared. However, realization across the complete composition range has been deemed impossible due to a miscibility gap corresponding to the amber spectral range.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWith the increased global interest in sequestering carbon in soil, it is necessary to understand the composition of different pools of soil organic matter (SOM) that cycle over suitably short timeframes. To explore in detail the chemical composition of agroecologically relevant yet distinct fractions of SOM, the light fraction of SOM (LFOM), the 53-μm particulate organic matter (POM), and the mobile humic acid (MHA) fractions were sequentially extracted from agricultural soils and characterized using both C cross polarization magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance (CPMAS NMR) spectroscopy and also Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS). The NMR results showed a decrease in the O-alkyl C region assigned to carbohydrates (51-110 ppm) and an increase in the aromatic region (111-161 ppm) proceeding from the LFOM to the POM and then to the MHA fraction.
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