Publications by authors named "J P E Louw"

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has been an important tool for the detection of COVID-19 outbreaks. The retrospective analysis of COVID-19 data is vital to understand the spread and impact of the virus as well as to inform future planning and response efforts. In this study, we evaluated the SARS-CoV-2 RNA levels in wastewater from 21 wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in the City of Cape Town (South Africa) over a period of 12 months and compared the (inactive) SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA in wastewater between wave 2 (November 2020 to January 2021) and wave 3 (June 2021 to September 2021).

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Background: Appendectomy is the surgical treatment for acute appendicitis and barriers to timely care can lead to morbidity and mortality. In South Africa, patients experience delays during the stages of seeking, reaching, and receiving care. This study explored the perceptions and experiences of barriers to accessing appendectomy among patients, caregivers, and surgeons employed at selected public hospitals in the Western Cape, South Africa.

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  • The study investigates the spontaneous control of HIV/SIV viremia and its association with specific MHC class I allotypes, emphasizing the importance of CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) for managing viral loads.
  • Researchers aimed to understand the factors contributing to a phenotype known as elite controllers (ECs) by vaccinating rhesus macaques and analyzing immune responses after infection.
  • Results showed that while vaccination did not prevent infection, it led to lower viral levels in vaccinated macaques, and 81% of them achieved elite control, highlighting differences in immune gene expression between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups.
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  • * Results indicate that adults with FASD experience poorer relationship and educational outcomes, and a higher likelihood of exposure to violence; however, none completed secondary school successfully.
  • * Despite some significant differences, overall discrepancies between individuals with FASD and those without may be less pronounced due to the limited resources and opportunities in rural areas, affecting the visibility of unique challenges for individuals with disabilities.
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It has been known that the large-complex Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model falls under the same universality class as that of van der Waals (mean-field) and saturates the Maldacena-Shenker-Stanford (MSS) bound, both features shared by various black holes. This makes the SYK model a useful tool in probing the fundamental nature of quantum chaos and holographic duality. This work establishes the robustness of this shared universality class and chaotic properties for SYK-like models by extending to a system of coupled large-complex SYK models of different orders.

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