University students' willingness to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in the United States.

The disproportionate number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United States (US) requires understanding of health behaviors that contributed to low acceptance of public health guidelines. University students were at low risk for complications from COVID-19 infections but at high-risk for infecting others. It is important to understand which characteristics influenced willingness to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

Disposable platform for bacterial lysis and nucleic acid amplification based on a single USB-powered printed circuit board.

Recent advances in electronics and microfluidics have enabled several research groups to develop fully integrated, sample-to-result isothermal nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) platforms for the point of care. However, high component counts and costs have limited translation of these platforms beyond the clinic to low-resource settings-including homes. Many NAATs include complex, multi-component heater electronics based on flex circuits or multiple printed circuit boards (PCBs) to support essential NAAT steps such as lysis, sample deactivation, and nucleic acid amplification.

Automated liquid handling robot for rapid lateral flow assay development.

The lateral flow assay (LFA) is one of the most popular technologies on the point-of-care diagnostics market due to its low cost and ease of use, with applications ranging from pregnancy to environmental toxins to infectious disease. While the use of these tests is relatively straightforward, significant development time and effort are required to create tests that are both sensitive and specific. Workflows to guide the LFA development process exist but moving from target selection to an LFA that is ready for field testing can be labor intensive, resource heavy, and time consuming.

Antibody Screening Results for Anti-Nucleocapsid Antibodies Toward the Development of a Lateral Flow Assay to Detect SARS-CoV-2 Nucleocapsid Protein.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has created an urgent demand for large numbers of inexpensive, accurate, rapid, point-of-care diagnostic tests. Analyte-based assays are suitably rapid and inexpensive and can be rapidly mass-produced, but for sufficiently accurate performance, they require highly optimized antibodies and assay conditions. We used an automated liquid handling system, customized to handle arrays of lateral flow (immuno)assays (LFAs) in a high-throughput screen, to identify anti-nucleocapsid antibodies that will perform optimally in an LFA.

Two-Fluorophore Mobile Phone Imaging of Biplexed Real-Time NAATs Overcomes Optical Artifacts in Highly Scattering Porous Media.

Nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) are common in laboratory and clinical settings because of their low time to result and exquisite sensitivity and specificity. Laboratory NAATs include onboard positive controls to reduce false negatives and specialized hardware to enable real-time fluorescence detection. Recent efforts to translate NAATs into at-home tests sacrifice one or more of the benefits of laboratory NAATs, such as sensitivity, internal amplification controls (IACs), or time to result.

Sensitivity enhancement in lateral flow assays: a systems perspective.

Lateral flow assays (LFAs) are rapid, inexpensive, easy-to-manufacture and -use tests widely employed in medical and environmental applications, particularly in low resource settings. Historically, LFAs have been stigmatized as having limited sensitivity. However, as their global usage expands, extensive research has demonstrated that it is possible to substantially improve LFA sensitivity without sacrificing their advantages.

Foster Care Alumni Achievement in Higher Education: the Role of Trauma.

Foster care alumni lag behind the general population in post-secondary academic achievement. This cross-sectional study uses a random sample of forty-six foster care alumni from a Midwestern public university to explore the relationship between exposure to trauma and post-secondary academic achievement (14.5% response rate; age range 17-24).

A rapid, instrument-free, sample-to-result nucleic acid amplification test.

The prototype demonstrated here is the first fully integrated sample-to-result diagnostic platform for performing nucleic acid amplification tests that requires no permanent instrument or manual sample processing. The multiplexable autonomous disposable nucleic acid amplification test (MAD NAAT) is based on two-dimensional paper networks, which enable sensitive chemical detection normally reserved for laboratories to be carried out anywhere by untrained users. All reagents are stored dry in the disposable test device and are rehydrated by stored buffer.

An improved autonomous DNA nanomotor.

DNA nanomotors are synthetic biochemical devices whose motion can be controlled at the molecular scale. Some DNA devices require several exogenous additions of different types of fuel to operate, which limits their potential uses. However, several devices that operate autonomously have recently been described.