The "Reservoir" Metaphor in Anti-Venereal-Disease Campaigns in Mid-Twentieth-Century North America.

Focusing on British Columbia during the mid-twentieth century, this article illuminates how North American medical, public-health, and law-enforcement professionals used the "reservoir" metaphor in efforts to control venereal disease (VD). It traces the transition from a pre-Second-World-War paradigm of VD eradication - what I call an focused on the single reservoir of female sex workers, to one concerned with several groups, including the White "male homosexual." The article also demonstrates how conceptualizing VD control in terms of human reservoirs led to analogical reasoning, improvements and setbacks to disease-control efforts, shifting understandings of infection risks, and changes to the built urban environment.

Frequency and significance of qSOFA criteria during adult rapid response team reviews: A prospective cohort study.

Aim: A new definition of sepsis released by an international task-force has introduced the concept of quick Sequential (Sepsis-Related) Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA). This study aimed to measure the proportion of patients who fulfilled qSOFA criteria during a Rapid Response Team (RRT) review and to assess their associated outcomes.

Methods: We conducted a prospective study of adult RRT reviews over a one month period between 6th June and 10th July 2016 in a large tertiary hospital in Melbourne Australia RESULTS: Over a one-month period, there were 282 RRT reviews, 258 of which were included.

1970s and 'Patient 0' HIV-1 genomes illuminate early HIV/AIDS history in North America.

The emergence of HIV-1 group M subtype B in North American men who have sex with men was a key turning point in the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Phylogenetic studies have suggested cryptic subtype B circulation in the United States (US) throughout the 1970s and an even older presence in the Caribbean. However, these temporal and geographical inferences, based upon partial HIV-1 genomes that postdate the recognition of AIDS in 1981, remain contentious and the earliest movements of the virus within the US are unknown.

Antenatal screening for aneuploidy--surveying the current situation and planning for non-invasive prenatal diagnosis in New Zealand.

Aims: To gauge clinical opinion about the current system and possible changes as well as providing a forum for education about Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT).

Methods: A series of workshops for doctors and midwives, supported by the National Screening Unit of the Ministry of Health and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, were held in the main centres of New Zealand. Following a brief education session, a structured evaluation of current screening and future possibilities was undertaken by questionnaire.

Tasks completed by nursing members of a teaching hospital Medical Emergency Team.

Objectives: To assess tasks completed by intensive care medical emergency team nurses.

Research Design: Prospective observational study.

Setting: Australian teaching hospital.

Features of an Intensive Care based Medical Emergency Team nurse training program in a University Teaching Hospital.

Background: Medical Emergency Teams (METs) involve specialist staff who respond to acutely deteriorating ward patients. There is little literature describing the scope of practice and training of MET responders.

Purpose: To describe and discuss an education and training program for Intensive Care Unit (ICU) nurses who function in a high capability teaching hospital MET.

"Patient Zero": the absence of a patient's view of the early North American AIDS epidemic.

This article contextualizes the production and reception of And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts's popular history of the initial recognition of the American AIDS epidemic. Published over twenty-five years ago, the book and its most notorious character, "Patient Zero," are in particular need of a critical historical treatment. The article presents a more balanced consideration-a "patient's view"-of Gaétan Dugas's experience of the early years of AIDS.

Automated training data generation for microscopy focus classification.

Image focus quality is of utmost importance in digital microscopes because the pathologist cannot accurately characterize the tissue state without focused images. We propose to train a classifier to measure the focus quality of microscopy scans based on an extensive set of image features. However, classifiers rely heavily on the quality and quantity of the training data, and collecting annotated data is tedious and expensive.

Analysis of solids, liquids, and biological tissues using solids probe introduction at atmospheric pressure on commercial LC/MS instruments.

Direct analysis of samples using atmospheric pressure ionization (API) provides a more rapid method for analysis of volatile and semivolatile compounds than vacuum solids probe methods and can be accomplished on commercial API mass spectrometers. With only a simple modification to either an electrospray (ESI) or atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) source, solid as well as liquid samples can be analyzed in seconds. The method acts as a fast solids/liquid probe introduction as well as an alternative to the new direct analysis in real time (DART) and desorption electrospray ionization (DESI) methods for many compound types.

A combination atmospheric pressure LC/MS:GC/MS ion source: advantages of dual AP-LC/MS:GC/MS instrumentation.

Modification of commercial LC/MS instrumentation to allow both atmospheric pressure (AP) LC/MS and GC/MS is described. Advantages of this additional capability versus LC/MS alone include higher chromatographic resolution in the GC versus LC mode, greater peak capacity for complex mixture analysis, higher sensitivity for a variety of volatile compounds, and the ability to observe compounds of low polarity that are not readily observed in LC/MS. Advantages over conventional GC/MS include the ability to use higher carrier gas flow and shorter columns for passing less volatile materials through the gas chromatograph, selective ionization, and rapid switching between positive and negative ion modes.

Determination of extractable perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) in water, sweat simulant, saliva simulant, and methanol from textile and carpet samples by LC/MS/MS.

Methods were developed to quantify the amount of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) extracted from textile and carpet samples through contact with water, methanol, and sweat and saliva simulants using LC/MS/MS. The limit of quantitation (LOQ) for samples extracted in water and sweat simulant is 1 ppb (ng PFOA (g sample)(-1)) while the limits of quantitation for samples extracted in saliva simulant and methanol were 3 ppb and 2.5 ppb, respectively.

A calmodulin/inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP3) receptor-binding region targets TRPC3 to the plasma membrane in a calmodulin/IP3 receptor-independent process.

Conformational coupling with the inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP3) receptor has been suggested as a possible mechanism of activation of TRPC3 channels and a region in the C terminus of TRPC3 has been shown to interact with the IP3 receptor as well as calmodulin (calmodulin/IP3 receptor-binding (CIRB) region). Here we show that internal deletion of 20 amino acids corresponding to the highly conserved CIRB region results in the loss of diacylglycerol and agonist-mediated channel activation in HEK293 cells. By using confocal microscopy to examine the cellular localization of Topaz fluorescent protein fusion constructs, we demonstrate that this loss in activity is caused by faulty targeting of CIRB-deleted mutants to intracellular compartments.

Signaling mechanism for receptor-activated canonical transient receptor potential 3 (TRPC3) channels.

Canonical transient receptor potential 3 (TRPC3) is a receptor-activated, calcium permeant, non-selective cation channel. TRPC3 has been shown to interact physically with the N-terminal domain of the inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate receptor, consistent with a "conformational coupling" mechanism for its activation. Here we show that low concentrations of agonists that fail to produce levels of inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate sufficient to induce Ca(2+) release from intracellular stores substantially activate TRPC3.

Comparison of human TRPC3 channels in receptor-activated and store-operated modes. Differential sensitivity to channel blockers suggests fundamental differences in channel composition.

Capacitative calcium entry or store-operated calcium entry in nonexcitable cells is a process whereby the activation of calcium influx across the plasma membrane is signaled by depletion of intracellular calcium stores. Transient receptor potential (TRP) proteins have been proposed as candidates for store-operated calcium channels. Human TRPC3 (hTRPC3), an extensively studied member of the TRP family, is activated through a phospholipase C-dependent mechanism, not by store depletion, when expressed in HEK293 cells.