Solar water evaporation offers a promising solution to address global water scarcity, utilizing renewable energy for purification and desalination. Transition-metal selenite hydrates (specifically nickel and cobalt) have shown potential as solar absorbers with high evaporation rates of 1.83 and 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFYouth with HIV (YWH) face challenges in achieving viral suppression, particularly in the Southern United States, and welcome novel interventions responsive to community needs. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) describes factors that influence behavior change, and the Positive Youth Development (PYD) supports youth-focused program design. We applied TPB and PYD to explore factors supporting care engagement and challenges for YWH in South Texas.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe combination of the ability to absorb most of the solar radiation and simultaneously suppress infrared re-radiation allows selective solar absorbers (SSAs) to maximize solar energy to heat conversion, which is critical to several advanced applications. The intrinsic spectral selective materials are rare in nature and only a few demonstrated complete solar absorption. Typically, intrinsic materials exhibit high performances when integrated into complex multilayered solar absorber systems due to their limited spectral selectivity and solar absorption.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: We adapted a traditional community advisory board to the needs of youth living with HIV (YLWH), resulting in a virtual, asynchronous, and anonymous youth advisory board (YAB). The YAB's evolution fostered participation during the adaptation of an HIV care mobile health application.
Methods: YAB members, comprised of YLWH in South Texas, engaged in the mobile application's formative evaluation, adaptation, and pilot implementation.
Open Forum Infect Dis
August 2023
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) increases morbidity and mortality among people with HIV (PWH). We retrospectively analyzed HBV incidence among 5785 PWH. Fourteen had newly positive hepatitis B s antigen (mean 5.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The morbidity and mortality of the COVID-19 pandemic have disproportionately burdened Hispanic populations in the United States. While health equity research is typically conducted in populations where Hispanics are the minority, this project analyzes COVID-19 racioethnic transmission trends over the first 6 months of the pandemic within a large majority-minority city in South Texas.
Methods: Patients diagnosed with COVID-19 across inpatient, emergency department, and outpatient settings of a large county health system were included in a clinical registry.
Introduction: In 2014, a reflexive screening protocol for Lynch syndrome (LS) via an immunohistochemistry (IHC) assay was shown to be cost-effective; however, the screening rates at a predominant Hispanic-rich institution are unclear. We hypothesized that implementation of a universal tumor screening (UTS) protocol requiring screening for LS via IHC in patients with newly diagnosed colorectal cancer (CRC) at our Hispanic-rich institution would improve detection of LS by increasing screening rates.
Methods And Materials: This is a retrospective analysis of screening rates of 3 sequential cohorts of newly diagnosed patients with CRC between January 2012 and April 2016 at the University Health System and with follow-up at National Cancer Institute-designated Mays Cancer Center at University of Texas Health San Antonio.
Insulin resistance and dysregulation of free fatty acid (FFA) metabolism are core defects in type 2 diabetic (T2DM) and obese normal glucose tolerant (NGT) individuals. Impaired muscle mitochondrial function (reduced ATP synthesis) also has been described in insulin-resistant T2DM and obese subjects. We examined whether reduction in plasma FFA concentration with acipimox improved ATP synthesis rate and altered reactive oxygen species (ROS) production.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAllergen-induced respiratory inflammation facilitates and/or elicits the extravasation of proinflammatory leukocytes by well-understood mechanisms that mediate the movement of multiple cell types. The nonspecific character of these pathways led us to hypothesize that circulating cancer cells use similar mechanisms, promoting secondary tumor formation at distal sites. To test this hypothesis, the frequency of metastasis to the lung as a function of allergic pulmonary inflammation was assessed following the i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current paradigm surrounding allergen-mediated T helper type 2 (Th2) immune responses in the lung suggests an almost hegemonic role for T cells. Our studies propose an alternative hypothesis implicating eosinophils in the regulation of pulmonary T cell responses. In particular, ovalbumin (OVA)-sensitized/challenged mice devoid of eosinophils (the transgenic line PHIL) have reduced airway levels of Th2 cytokines relative to the OVA-treated wild type that correlated with a reduced ability to recruit effector T cells to the lung.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Allergy Clin Immunol
June 2007
Eosinophils are granulocytes typically associated with immune responses to a limited number of specific insults, including helminth infection and exposure to various allergens. Moreover, the overwhelming consensus from the literature is that eosinophils evolved as uniquely destructive leukocytes with cytotoxic activities as an adaptation for host defense. However, recent studies now suggest that the parochial caricature of eosinophils as effector cells with nonspecific killing abilities that evolved as a host defense mechanism against large nonphagotizable parasites is incomplete.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Donor-specific tolerance (DST) is induced after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) and is a potential strategy for prolonging survival of solid organ grafts. DST may persist in recipients with transient mixed hematopoietic chimerism (MC) when solid organ transplantation and HCT are done concomitantly.
Methods: In a canine model of allogeneic HCT after nonmyeloablative conditioning, DST to skin grafts was evaluated in dog leukocyte antigen (DLA)-identical recipients with stable MC (n=11), or after rejection of the hematopoietic cell (HC) graft (n=19).
Tumor-associated eosinophilia has been observed in numerous human cancers and several tumor models in animals; however, the details surrounding this eosinophilia remain largely undefined and anecdotal. We used a B16-F10 melanoma cell injection model to demonstrate that eosinophil infiltration of tumors occurred from the earliest palpable stages with significant accumulations only in the necrotic and capsule regions. Furthermore, the presence of diffuse extracellular matrix staining for eosinophil major basic protein was restricted to the necrotic areas of tumors, indicating that eosinophil degranulation was limited to this region.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA dog model of stable mixed hematopoietic chimerism was established in which leukocyte-antigen-identical littermates receive nonmyeloablative total body irradiation before hematopoietic cell transplantation and postgrafting immunosuppression with mycophenolate mofetil and cyclosporine. Unmodified donor lymphocyte infusion (DLI) into stable mixed chimeras failed to increase donor chimerism, while DLI from donors sensitized to recipient minor-histocompatibility antigens promptly converted all recipients to complete donor chimerism. This established a model for studying approaches to enhance the graft-versus-host (GVH)-effect, a potential surrogate for graft-versus-leukemia activity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInclusion of vitamin-containing soft drink and oil solution of beta-carotene in the diet of the 4-14 years old children suffering from gastrointestinal diseases lead to vitamin and antioxidant status improvement with simultaneous positive effects on their clinical condition. Polyhypovitaminosis frequency had decreased. Thus, there is every reason to fortify diets of the patients suffering from gastrointestinal diseases with vitamins-antioxidants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe investigation of sufficiency of vitamin C, A, E, B2, B6, carotenoids and iron dietary intake has been carried out in 61 pregnant women in spring and early autumn 1998. There were no women adequately supplied with all vitamins irrespective of season and residence. Most of them (70-80 per cent) had combined deficiency of 3-5 vitamins in spring.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe peptic ulcer of stomach and duodenum are the more often occuring complications of steroid treatment in children with chronic glomerulonephrite. Dinamic investigation has shown that the using of beta-carotin oily solution in therapy of this complications increases the efficiency of traditional treatment. It has been shown that beta-carotene administration speeds the reparation of stomach and duodenum ulcers, saves adequate serum concentration of beta-carotene and retinol.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBasing on the comparative clinical and biochemical evaluation of the usage of the specialized product "Tetraphen" (Russia) and early utilized product "Phenyl-Free" (USA) it has been shown that "Tetraphen" does not yield to "Phenyl-Free", while some of its parameters (energy value, carbohydrate content) even in the higher degree correspond to the physiologic requirements of this aged children suffering from phenylketonuria. Intake of this product in smaller doses completely covers their requirements for the basic food ingredients. High frequency of carotenoids insufficiency in children received both "Tetraphen" and "Phenyl-Free" demonstrate necessity of the diet correction by means of beta-carotene additional supplementation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe results of clinical trials of efficiency of foods enriched by vitamins and beta-carotene in people suffered from Chernobyl's accident are presented. The level of beta-carotene in clinical diets was the same during trial. Daily consumption of enriched food supplying ingestion of 4-5 mg of beta-carotene increased the level of beta-carotene in serum by 2-4 times.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFComposition of carotenoids and its variability were studied in blood serum of different groups of Norisk's population by the method of HPLC in winter 1993. It was shown that prevalence carotenoids in serum of men are licopen and lutein, in serum of women are lutein, licopen and beta-carotene, in serum of children are lutein, criptoxantine, licopen and beta-carotene. Total level of carotenoids in men by 1.
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