Use of uterine balloon tamponade for control of postpartum hemorrhage by community-based health providers in South Sudan.

Objective: To determine whether use of uterine balloon tamponade (UBT) for management of uncontrolled postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) by community-based providers in a resource-limited setting could be feasible, effective, and safe.

Methods: In rural South Sudan, community providers were trained and equipped with a simple UBT device consisting of a catheter, condom, and syringe. Snowball sampling identified cases of UBT use since training.

Genetic variation in GAD1 is associated with cortical thickness in the parahippocampal gyrus.

Patients with schizophrenia show widespread cortical thickness reductions throughout the brain. Likewise, reduced expression of the γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) synthesizing enzyme glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD1) and a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs3749034 in the corresponding gene have been associated with schizophrenia. We tested whether this SNP is associated with reduced cortical thickness, an intermediate phenotype for schizophrenia.

Actinidia DRM1--an intrinsically disordered protein whose mRNA expression is inversely correlated with spring budbreak in kiwifruit.

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are a relatively recently defined class of proteins which, under native conditions, lack a unique tertiary structure whilst maintaining essential biological functions. Functional classification of IDPs have implicated such proteins as being involved in various physiological processes including transcription and translation regulation, signal transduction and protein modification. Actinidia DRM1 (Ade DORMANCY ASSOCIATED GENE 1), represents a robust dormancy marker whose mRNA transcript expression exhibits a strong inverse correlation with the onset of growth following periods of physiological dormancy.

Circadian control of chloroplast transcription by a nuclear-encoded timing signal.

Circadian timekeeping in plants increases photosynthesis and productivity. There are circadian oscillations in the abundance of many chloroplast-encoded transcripts, but it is not known how the circadian clock regulates chloroplast transcription or the photosynthetic apparatus. We show that, in Arabidopsis, nuclear-encoded SIGMA FACTOR5 (SIG5) controls circadian rhythms of transcription of several chloroplast genes, revealing one pathway by which the nuclear-encoded circadian oscillator controls rhythms of chloroplast gene expression.

Identification of the mating-type (MAT) locus that controls sexual reproduction of Blastomyces dermatitidis.

Blastomyces dermatitidis is a dimorphic fungal pathogen that primarily causes blastomycosis in the midwestern and northern United States and Canada. While the genes controlling sexual development have been known for a long time, the genes controlling sexual reproduction of B. dermatitidis (teleomorph, Ajellomyces dermatitidis) are unknown.

Cardiac arrests in schools: assessing use of automated external defibrillators (AED) on school campuses.

Background: Sudden cardiac arrest in schools are infrequent, but emotionally charged events. The purpose of our study was to: (1) describe characteristics and outcomes of school cardiac arrests; and (2) assess the feasibility of conducting school bystander interviews to describe the events surrounding cardiac arrests, assess AED availability and use, and identify barriers to AED use.

Methods: We performed a telephone survey of bystanders to cardiac arrests occurring in K-12 schools in communities participating in the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival (CARES) database and a local cardiac arrest database.

Resurgent ethnicity among Asian Americans: ethnic neighborhood context and health.

In this study I investigate the associations of neighborhood socioeconomic and social environments with the health of Asian Americans living in both Asian ethnic neighborhoods and non-Asian neighborhoods. I use a sample of 1962 Asian Americans from the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS, 2003-04). Three key findings emerge.

Homesickness and adjustment in university students.

The transition to college or university can be an exciting new experience for many young adults. For some, intense homesickness can make this move difficult, even unsustainable. Homesickness--defined as the distress or impairment caused by an actual or anticipated separation from home--carries the unique hallmark of preoccupying thoughts of home and attachment objects.

Nairobi fly (Paederus) dermatitis in South Sudan: a case report.

A 28-year-old nursing student working in Juba, South Sudan, suddenly developed a rash over her mid-right clavicle. Beginning as a 10-cm-diameter erythematous patch with an irregular border, within 24 hours it had developed an increasingly gray, necrotic center, appearing similar to a burn. The patient was seen by 2 local physicians without a diagnosis being made.

Smoking, but not malnutrition, influences promoter-specific DNA methylation of the proopiomelanocortin gene in patients with and without anorexia nervosa.

Objective: Our pilot study evaluates the impact of environmental factors, such as nutrition and smoking status, on epigenetic patterns in a disease-associated gene.

Method: We measured the effects of malnutrition and cigarette smoking on proopiomelanocortin (POMC) promoter-specific DNA methylation in female patients with and without anorexia nervosa (AN). POMC and its derived peptides (alpha melanocyte stimulating hormone and adrenocorticotropic hormone) are implicated in stress and feeding response.

Cumulative genetic risk and prefrontal activity in patients with schizophrenia.

The lack of consistency of genetic associations in highly heritable mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, remains a challenge in molecular psychiatry. Because clinical phenotypes for psychiatric disorders are often ill defined, considerable effort has been made to relate genetic polymorphisms to underlying physiological aspects of schizophrenia (so called intermediate phenotypes), that may be more reliable. Given the polygenic etiology of schizophrenia, the aim of this work was to form a measure of cumulative genetic risk and study its effect on neural activity during working memory (WM) using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Conservation and divergence of four kiwifruit SVP-like MADS-box genes suggest distinct roles in kiwifruit bud dormancy and flowering.

MADS-box genes similar to Arabidopsis SHORT VEGETATIVE PHASE (SVP) have been implicated in the regulation of flowering in annual species and bud dormancy in perennial species. Kiwifruit (Actinidia spp.) are woody perennial vines where bud dormancy and out-growth affect flower development.

Maintenance of DNA methylation: Dnmt3b joins the dance.

DNA methylation mostly occurs within the context of CpG dinucleotides and is essential for embryonic development and gene repression. It is generally accepted that DNA methyltransferases carry out specific and non-overlapping functions, Dnmt3a and Dnmt3b being responsible for the establishment of methylation around the time of implantation and Dnmt1 ensuring that methylation is faithfully copied to daughter cells via what has come to be known as "maintenance methylation." This longstanding view has been challenged over the years with the observation that Dnmt1 alone is incapable of perfect maintenance methylation.

Creating healthy camp experiences.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has created recommendations for health appraisal and preparation of young people before participation in day or resident camps and to guide health and safety practices for children at camp. These recommendations are intended for parents, primary health care providers, and camp administration and health center staff. Although camps have diverse environments, there are general guidelines that apply to all situations and specific recommendations that are appropriate under special conditions.

Can adapted EWS improve response to deterioration?

All nurses must ensure deteriorating patients are identified early, and a timely and effective response is implemented. This article discusses a new early warning system and training programme, which are intended to prevent avoidable cardiac arrests.

Contextualizing acculturation: gender, family, and community reception influences on Asian immigrant mental health.

This article investigates differences in the mental health among male and female immigrants from an ecological perspective, testing the influences of both individual acculturation domains and social contexts. Data from the first nationally representative psychiatric survey of immigrant Asians in the US is used (N = 1,583). These data demonstrate the importance of understanding acculturation domains (e.

An FTIR study of the induction and release of kiwifruit buds from dormancy.

Background: Many deciduous, perennial fruit crops require winter chilling for adequate budbreak and flowering. Recent research has shown that changes in sugar and amino acid profiles are associated with the release of buds from dormancy. This paper uses FTIR spectrometry to provide an alternative mechanism for tracking metabolic changes in the meristems of kiwifruit buds during winter dormancy.

The influence of dicarboxylic acid structure on the stability of colloidal hematite.

Low molecular weight organic acids comprise an important pool of reactive ligands in aquatic systems. These acids readily bind to nano-sized mineral particles and thereby strongly influence a particle's physicochemical behavior. Predicting this influence requires the integration of molecular-level details that control surface complexation mechanisms and structures with macro-scale observations of mineral colloid behavior.

Residential segregation and birth weight among racial and ethnic minorities in the United States.

Racial and ethnic minorities are often residentially segregated from whites in urban settings, a fact which has important health consequences. Research on the relationship between residential segregation and health outcomes lacks national-level investigation of racial and ethnic minority groups other than African Americans. I use multilevel analyses to examine the associations of residential isolation and clustering with birth weight among Asian, black, and Latino Americans using data from the National Center for Health Statistics' Natality Files and the U.

Injury patterns at US and Canadian overnight summer camps: first year of the Healthy Camp study.

Objective: To describe injury patterns at overnight summer camps in 2006, and identify risk factors for more significant injury.

Design: Surveillance data obtained from Healthy Camp Study from 2006 were analyzed from 71 overnight camps, representing 437,541 camper-days and 206,031 staff-days.

Results: Injuries were reported in 218 campers and 81 staff.

Does place of education matter? Contextualizing the education and health status association among Asian Americans.

The educational gradient in health is one of the most robust associations in social science research. Results of the current study indicate that, like the pattern observed among other racial and ethnic minority groups, the well-established educational gradient in health is attenuated among Asian Americans. We also show that the gradient association between educational attainment and self-rated health among Asian Americans depends on whether they receive the bulk of their education in the United States or abroad.

A rapid transcriptional activation is induced by the dormancy-breaking chemical hydrogen cyanamide in kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa) buds.

Budbreak in kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa) can be poor in locations that have warm winters with insufficient winter chilling. Kiwifruit vines are often treated with the dormancy-breaking chemical hydrogen cyanamide (HC) to increase and synchronize budbreak. This treatment also offers a tool to understand the processes involved in budbreak.

The associations between socio-economic status and major depressive disorder among Blacks, Latinos, Asians and non-Hispanic Whites: findings from the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Studies.

Background: This study examined whether there were associations between individual measures of socio-economic status (SES) and the 12-month prevalence of major depressive disorder (MDD) in representative samples of Blacks, Latinos, Asians and Whites in the USA.

Method: The data used were from the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Studies (CPES).

Results: There was an association between household income and MDD among Whites.

Characterizing rare-event property distributions via replicate molecular dynamics simulations of proteins.

As computational resources increase, molecular dynamics simulations of biomolecules are becoming an increasingly informative complement to experimental studies. In particular, it has now become feasible to use multiple initial molecular configurations to generate an ensemble of replicate production-run simulations that allows for more complete characterization of rare events such as ligand-receptor unbinding. However, there are currently no explicit guidelines for selecting an ensemble of initial configurations for replicate simulations.

Modeling and simulation of chemomechanics at the cell-matrix interface.

Chemomechanical characteristics of the extracellular materials with which cells interact can have a profound impact on cell adhesion and migration. To understand and modulate such complex multiscale processes, a detailed understanding of the feedback between a cell and the adjacent microenvironment is crucial. Here, we use computational modeling and simulation to examine the cell-matrix interaction at both the molecular and continuum lengthscales.