Beginning in 2018, a quality improvement collaborative initiative in Brazil successfully reduced the baseline incidence density of healthcare-associated infections in intensive care settings after 2 years. We describe the adaptations of the quality improvement interventions as the COVID-19 pandemic emerged and how the pandemic affected the project outcomes.

Aspergillus fumigatus has become a leading cause of fungal morbidity and mortality, especially in immunocompromised patients. This fungus is able to grow as a multicellular community and produce a hydrophobic extracellular matrix (ECM), mainly composed of galactomannan and α-1,3 glucans, to protect itself from host defenses and antimicrobial drugs. This matrix envelops the fungus hyphae, binding them into a contiguous sheath on the colony surface, forming a biofilm and increasing the fungal resistance to adverse environmental factors. Adherence to host cells and resistance to physical removal play a key role in fungal colonization and invasion of the host and in a wide range of infections. Here we show that, by using atomic force spectroscopy, it is possible to exploit the peculiar hydrophobicity of the biofilm components (i.e., cell walls, ECM) to detect the biofilm spread, its growth, and lysis on rough surfaces. By means of this approach, we demonstrate that alginate lyase, an enzyme known to reduce negatively charged alginate levels in microbial biofilms, reduces the biofilm adhesion forces suggesting a loss of ECM from the biofilm, which could be used to enhance pharmacological treatments.

We have studied the effect of hole doping via Li substitution in La2CuO4 and La2NiO4. The response to hole doping of the Ni (S=1) sublattice is distinct from that of the Cu (S=1/2) sublattice. These effects are seen most clearly for La2Cu0.5Li0.5O4 and La2Ni0.5Li0.5O4 in which the Li ions form an ordered superlattice. It appears that Ni is in a low-spin d7 configuration whereas Cu is in a d9-ligand “Zhang-Rice” configuration. Despite this difference, the response of both La2CuO4 and La2NiO4 to hole doping is surprisingly independent of whether Sr (which substitutes out of plane for La) or Li (which substitutes in the plane for Cu/Ni) is used as the dopant.

Observations of the birth of some proton-flare regions show that they originate in two or more close active centers.