Realising agency: insights from participatory research with learners in a South African sexual and reproductive health programme.

Background: Investing in the capabilities of adolescents is essential to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which focus on realising adolescent girls and young women's (AGYW) rights to education, health, bodily autonomy and integrity, sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and well-being. Despite significant scientific and programmatic progress in understanding and responding to their unique and intersecting vulnerabilities, AGYW continue to face disproportionate risk of STIs, HIV and early pregnancy. Health promotion and preventative interventions stand to be improved by early and meaningful engagement of AGYW in intervention design and delivery.

Folding of the cerebellar cortex is clade-specific in form but universal in degree.

Like the cerebralcortex, the surface of the cerebellum is repeatedly folded. Unlike the cerebralcortex, however, cerebellar folds are much thinner and more numerous; repeatthemselves largely along a single direction, forming accordion-like folds transverseto the mid-sagittal plane; and occur in all but the smallest cerebella. We haveshown previously that while the location of folds in mammalian cerebral cortex isclade-specific, the overall degree of folding strictly follows a universalpower law relating cortical thickness and the exposed and total surface areas predictedfrom the minimization of the effective free energy of an expanding, self-avoidingsurface of a certain thickness.

Management of thoracoabdominal gunshot wounds - Experience from a major trauma centre in South Africa.

Introduction: The management of thoracoabdominal (TA) gunshot wounds (GSW) remains challenging. This study reviewed our experience with treating such injuries over a decade.

Materials And Methods: A retrospective study was conducted at a major trauma centre in South Africa over a ten-year period from December 2012 to January 2022.

Corrigendum: The evolution of HIV self-testing and the introduction of digital interventions to improve HIV self-testing.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/frph.2023.

The evolution of HIV self-testing and the introduction of digital interventions to improve HIV self-testing.

HIV self-testing (HIVST) complements traditional HIV testing programmes by removing barriers and increasing access to testing for key populations, and digital interventions have been developed for HIVST to improve the testing and linkage to care experience for users. The first HIVST kit was proposed in 1986, but it took 10 years for the home sample collection (HSC) HIVST to become available and another 16 years for rapid diagnostic test HIVST to be approved by the Federal Drug Administration. Since then, studies have shown high usability and performance of HIVST, which led the World Health Organization formally recommending HIVST in 2016, and currently almost 100 countries have incorporated HIVST into their national testing strategy.

The mosquito vectors that sustained malaria transmission during the Magude project despite the combined deployment of indoor residual spraying, insecticide-treated nets and mass-drug administration.

The "Magude project" aimed but failed to interrupt local malaria transmission in Magude district, southern Mozambique, by using a comprehensive package of interventions, including indoor residual spraying (IRS), pyrethroid-only long-lasting insecticide treated nets (LLINs) and mass-drug administration (MDA). Here we present detailed information on the vector species that sustained malaria transmission, their association with malaria incidence and behaviors, and their amenability to the implemented control interventions. Mosquitoes were collected monthly between May 2015 and October 2017 in six sentinel sites in Magude district, using CDC light traps both indoors and outdoors.

(Re)imagining research, activism, and rights at the intersections of sexuality, health, and social justice.

The Covid-19 pandemic inaugurated a new global order of public life and health marked by death, despair and alienation. As a crisis of a global scale, it made the task of (re)imagination simultaneously necessary and extremely difficult. It is this double bind of the difficulty and imminence of imagination that motivates the curation of this special issue.

Termites have wider thermal limits to cope with environmental conditions in savannas.

The most diverse and abundant family of termites, the Termitidae, evolved in African tropical forests. They have since colonised grassy biomes such as savannas. These open environments have more extreme conditions than tropical forests, notably wider extremes of temperature and lower precipitation levels and greater temporal fluctuations (of both annual and diurnal variation).

The interplay of directional information provided by unpolarised and polarised light in the heading direction network of the diurnal dung beetle Kheper lamarcki.

The sun is the most prominent source of directional information in the heading direction network of the diurnal, ball-rolling dung beetle Kheper lamarcki. If this celestial body is occluded from the beetle's field of view, the distribution of the relative weight between the directional cues that remain shifts in favour of the celestial pattern of polarised light. In this study, we continue to explore the interplay of the sun and polarisation pattern as directional cues in the heading direction network of K.

Global research priorities for COVID-19 in maternal, reproductive and child health: Results of an international survey.

Background: The World Health Organization's "Coordinated Global Research Roadmap: 2019 Novel Coronavirus" outlined the need for research that focuses on the impact of COVID-19 on pregnant women and children. More than one year after the first reported case significant knowledge gaps remain, highlighting the need for a coordinated approach. To address this need, the Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Working Group (MNCH WG) of the COVID-19 Clinical Research Coalition conducted an international survey to identify global research priorities for COVID-19 in maternal, reproductive and child health.

Cytomegalovirus-associated supraglottic mass in a patient on immunosuppressive therapy.

A 33-year-old woman on chronic immunosuppressive treatment for rheumatoid arthritis with a history of inhaled methamphetamine use presented with respiratory failure requiring mechanical ventilation for a prolonged period. After being given plasma exchange, pulses of methylprednisolone and a dose of cyclosporine for suspected ANCA (anti-neutrophilic cytoplasmic autoantibodies) vasculitis, she developed an obstructive supraglottic laryngeal mass that required a tracheostomy to bypass. Biopsy findings revealed the mass to be an inflammatory pseudomass secondary to cytomegalovirus (CMV).

Compass Cue Integration and Its Relation to the Visual Ecology of Three Tribes of Ball-Rolling Dung Beetles.

To guide their characteristic straight-line orientation away from the dung pile, ball-rolling dung beetles steer according to directional information provided by celestial cues, which, among the most relevant are the sun and polarised skylight. Most studies regarding the use of celestial cues and their influence on the orientation system of the diurnal ball-rolling beetle have been performed on beetles of the tribe Scarabaeini living in open habitats. These beetles steer primarily according to the directional information provided by the sun.

Prevalence of asymptomatic gametocyte carriage among school children in Mbita, Western Kenya and assessment of the association between gametocyte density, multiplicity of infection and mosquito infection prevalence.

Asymptomatic gametocyte carriers are reservoirs for sustaining transmission in malaria endemic regions. Gametocyte presence in the host peripheral blood is a predictor of capacity to transmit malaria. However, it does not always directly translate to mosquito infectivity.

Neutralizing Activity of Broadly Neutralizing anti-HIV-1 Antibodies against Primary African Isolates.

Novel therapeutic and preventive strategies are needed to contain the HIV-1 epidemic. Broadly neutralizing human antibodies (bNAbs) with exceptional activity against HIV-1 are currently being tested in HIV-1 prevention trials. The selection of anti-HIV-1 bNAbs for clinical development was primarily guided by their neutralizing activity against HIV-1 Env pseudotyped viruses.

Greater dapivirine release from the dapivirine vaginal ring is correlated with lower risk of HIV-1 acquisition: a secondary analysis from a randomized, placebo-controlled trial.

Introduction: A vaginal ring containing 25 mg of the antiretroviral dapivirine has demonstrated efficacy in reducing women's risk of sexually acquiring HIV-1; however, imperfect ring use likely diluted efficacy estimates in clinical trials. The amount of dapivirine remaining in returned rings may reflect the extent of product use, permitting estimation of HIV protection in the context of consistent use.

Methods: We measured the amount of dapivirine in returned rings from a placebo-controlled trial of the dapivirine vaginal ring conducted between August 2012 and June 2015 among 2629 African women.

Triarylethylene-indolin-2,3-dione molecular conjugates: design, synthesis, docking studies and anti-proliferation evaluation.

A series of 1-1,2,3-triazole-linked ospemifene-isatin and -methylated ospemifene-isatin conjugates were synthesized and assayed for their anti-proliferative activities against estrogen-responsive as well as estrogen-non-responsive cells. The non-cytotoxic conjugate 14e, with an optimal combination of bromo substituents at the C-5/C-7 positions of isatin, proved to be a promising hit with an IC value of 31.62 μM against MCF-7 and 19.