Integration of physio-biochemical, biological and molecular approaches to improve heavy metal tolerance in plants.

Heavy metal toxicity hinders plant growth and development by inducing oxidative stress, decreasing biomass, impairing photosynthesis, and potentially leading to plant death. The inherent defense mechanisms employed by plants, including metal sequestration into vacuoles, phytochelation, cell wall metal adsorption and an enhanced antioxidant system can be improved via various approaches to mitigate heavy metal toxicity. This review primarily outlines plants direct and indirect responses to HM stress and the tolerance mechanisms by which plants combat the toxic effects of metals and metalloids to understand the effective management of HMs and metalloids in the soil system.

Favourable outcome of prosthetic valve endocarditis in a patient with an Ebstein anomaly.

Unlabelled: Fungal endocarditis is rare, challenging to diagnose and treat and associated with high mortality. We describe a case of endocarditis in a patient with Ebstein's anomaly with a favourable outcome.

Contribution: We emphasise that surgical intervention with source control of the infective vegetation is still the mainstay of treatment and highlight the importance of submitting infected source material for histology, culture and molecular testing to identify the causative organism.

Corynebacterium diphtheriae Infections, South Africa, 2015-2023.

We reviewed Corynebacterium spp. infection cases reported in South Africa during 2015-2023. We analyzed 84 isolates from 83 patients with C.

Search for Magnetic Monopole Pair Production in Ultraperipheral Pb+Pb Collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=5.36 TeV with the ATLAS Detector at the LHC.

This Letter presents a search for highly ionizing magnetic monopoles in 262  μb^{-1} of ultraperipheral Pb+Pb collision data at sqrt[s_{NN}]=5.36  TeV collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. A new methodology that exploits the properties of clusters of hits reconstructed in the innermost silicon detector layers is introduced to study highly ionizing particles in heavy-ion data.

Pathogen aetiology and risk factors for death among neonates with bloodstream infections at lower-tier South African hospitals: a cross-sectional study.

Background: Infections are among the top causes of neonatal mortality, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries. We aimed to describe the clinical characteristics of neonates diagnosed with culture-confirmed bloodstream infections at six lower-tier hospitals in South Africa.

Methods: We did a cross-sectional study of culture-confirmed bloodstream infections among neonates (aged 0-27 days) at six lower-tier hospitals in South Africa.