Publications by authors named "McConnell I"

Background: In Wisconsin, COVID-19 case interview forms contain free-text fields that need to be mined to identify potential outbreaks for targeted policy making. We developed an automated pipeline to ingest the free text into a pretrained neural language model to identify businesses and facilities as outbreaks.

Objective: We aimed to examine the precision and recall of our natural language processing pipeline against existing outbreaks and potentially new clusters.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: We investigated the predictive value of 11 serum biomarkers for renal and mortality end points in people with CKD.

Methods: Adults with CKD (=139) were enrolled from outpatient clinics between February 2014 and November 2016. Biomarker quantification was performed using two multiplex arrays on a clinical-grade analyzer.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Sir Peter Lachmann was an exceptional and gifted scientist whose intellectual contributions to biomedical science have been immense.[..

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: A review of Uganda's HIV Early Infant Diagnosis (EID) program in 2010 revealed poor retention outcomes for HIV-exposed infants (HEI) after testing. The review informed development of the 'EID Systems Strengthening' model: a set of integrated initiatives at health facilities to improve testing, retention, and clinical care of HIV-exposed and infected infants. The program model was piloted at several facilities and later scaled countrywide.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Racial inequities for patients with heart failure (HF) have been widely documented. HF patients who receive cardiology care during a hospital admission have better outcomes. It is unknown whether there are differences in admission to a cardiology or general medicine service by race.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: To determine whether there are differences in the outcomes of native joint septic arthritis (SA) in adults, based on medical versus surgical management.

Methods: A 10-year retrospective single-center study was conducted of patients admitted to a tertiary care hospital between January 1, 2006 and December 31, 2015 with a diagnosis of SA to compare outcomes based on the management approach taken: medical (bedside closed-needle joint aspiration) versus surgical (arthrotomy/arthroscopy). Evaluated outcomes included joint recovery, time to recovery, length of stay, disposition to home versus rehabilitation unit, recurrence of SA in the same joint, and mortality.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Uganda's HIV Early Infant Diagnosis (EID) program rapidly scaled up testing of HIV-exposed infants (HEI) in its early years. However, little was known about retention outcomes of HEI after testing. Provision of transport refunds to HEI caregivers was piloted at 3 hospitals to improve retention.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aggregates composed of the microtubule associated protein, tau, are a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease and non-Alzheimer's tauopathies. Extracellular tau can induce the accumulation and aggregation of intracellular tau, and tau pathology can be transmitted along neural networks over time. There are six splice variants of central nervous system tau, and various oligomeric and fibrillar forms are associated with neurodegeneration in vivo.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Uganda introduced an HIV Early Infant Diagnosis (EID) program in 2006, and then worked to improve the laboratory, transportation, and clinical elements. Reported here are the activities involved in setting up a prospective analysis in which the Ministry of Health, with its NGO partners, determined it would be more effective and efficient to consolidate the initial eight-laboratory system for EID testing of HIV dried blood samples offered by two nongovernmental partners operating research facilities into a single well-equipped and staffed laboratory within the Ministry. A retrospective analysis confirmed that redesign reduced overhead cost per PCR test of HIV dried blood samples from US$22.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This paper discusses how best to develop the educational platforms that can foster a wider appreciation of the importance of the One Health concept in medical and veterinary education. There are many compelling examples, from genetics to infectious diseases, where significant advances have been made in medicine and veterinary medicine by applying the principles of One Health, i.e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Uganda scaled-up Early HIV Infant Diagnosis (EID) when simplified methods for testing of infants using dried blood spots (DBS) were adopted in 2006 and sample transport and management was therefore made feasible in rural settings. Before this time only 35% of the facilities that were providing EID services were reached through the national postal courier system, Posta Uganda. The transportation of samples during this scale-up, therefore, quickly became a challenge and varied from facility to facility as different methods were used to transport the samples.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The synthesis of efficient water-oxidation catalysts relies on understanding the oxygen-evolving complex (OEC) of photosystem II, particularly how water binds to it.
  • The study uses manganese catalase as a model to investigate the water oxidation mechanism, revealing two distinct (17)O signals from water exchange at different time scales.
  • Results from CW Q-band ENDOR spectroscopy indicate the identification of a μ-oxo oxygen signal and a possible terminal water after varying exchange times, contributing to insights about the OEC's S(2) state.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Chloride-dependent α-amylases, angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE), and photosystem II (PSII) are activated by bound chloride. Chloride-binding sites in these enzymes contain a positively charged Arg or Lys residue crucial for chloride binding. In α-amylases and ACE, removal of chloride from the binding site triggers formation of a salt bridge between the positively charged Arg or Lys residue involved in chloride binding and a nearby carboxylate residue.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In the current X-ray crystallographic structural models of photosystem II, Glu354 of the CP43 polypeptide is the only amino acid ligand of the oxygen-evolving Mn(4)Ca cluster that is not provided by the D1 polypeptide. To further explore the influence of this structurally unique residue on the properties of the Mn(4)Ca cluster, the CP43-E354Q mutant of the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 was characterized with a variety of biophysical and spectroscopic methods, including polarography, EPR, X-ray absorption, FTIR, and mass spectrometry.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Modern civilization is dependent upon fossil fuels, a nonrenewable energy source originally provided by the storage of solar energy. Fossil-fuel dependence has severe consequences, including energy security issues and greenhouse gas emissions. The consequences of fossil-fuel dependence could be avoided by fuel-producing artificial systems that mimic natural photosynthesis, directly converting solar energy to fuel.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Prion strains are defined by their biological properties after transmission to wild-type mice, specifically by their incubation periods and patterns of vacuolar pathology ('lesion profiles'). Preliminary results from transmissions of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) to wild-type mice provided the first compelling evidence for the close similarity of the vCJD agent to the agent causing bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Complete results from this investigation, including the transmission characteristics of vCJD from brain and peripheral tissues of 10 cases (after primary transmission and subsequent mouse-to-mouse passage), have now been analysed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

CD8(+) cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) responses have been shown to be important in the control of human and simian immunodeficiency virus infections. Infection of sheep with visna/maedi virus (VISNA), a related lentivirus, induces specific CD8(+) CTL in vivo, but the specific viral proteins recognized are not known. To determine which VISNA antigens were recognized by sheep CTL, we used recombinant vaccinia viruses expressing the different genes of VISNA: in six sheep (Finnish LandracexDorset crosses, Friesland and Lleyn breeds) all VISNA proteins were recognized except TAT.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This mini review presents a general introduction to photosystem II with an emphasis on the oxygen evolving complex. An attempt is made to summarise what is currently known about substrate interaction in the oxygen evolving complex of photosystem II in terms of the nature of the substrate, the timing and the location of its binding. As the nature of substrate water binding has a direct bearing on the mechanism of O-O bond formation in PSII, a discussion of O-O bond formation follows the summary of current opinion in substrate interaction.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Canine cutaneous histiocytoma is a common skin tumour of Langerhans cell origin. Langerhans cells are members of the dendritic cell family of antigen-presenting cells and are located in the epidermis. They are unique among the dendritic cell lineage in that they express high levels of the adhesion molecule E-cadherin.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Beta-2-microglobulin (beta(2)m) is the light chain of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I cell surface heterodimer. beta(2)m is well conserved across most species with few polymorphisms seen within species. The aims of this study were to clone and express ovine beta(2)m and investigate if allelic variation of ovine beta(2)m exists.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The interactions of Salmonella enterica subspecies I serotype Abortusovis (S. Abortusovis) with ovine afferent lymph dendritic cells (ALDCs) were investigated for their ability to deliver Maedi visna virus (MVV) GAG p25 antigens to ALDCs purified from afferent lymph. Salmonellae were found to enter ALDC populations by a process of cell invasion, as confirmed by electron and confocal microscopy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The central importance of dendritic cells (DC) in both innate and acquired immunity is well recognized in the mammalian immune system. By contrast DC have yet to be characterized in avian species despite the fact that avian species such as the chicken have a well-developed immune system. CD83 has proven to be an excellent marker for DC in human and murine immune systems.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Canine cutaneous histiocytoma (CCH) has been identified as a tumour of epidermal Langerhans cells (LCs) on the basis of immunophenotypic studies. Neoplastic Langerhans cells (CCH-LCs) were isolated from lesions of canine cutaneous histiocytoma. The CCH-LC cells expressed CD1b, CD11/18, CD45, MHC-I, and MHC-II.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF