We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has required healthcare systems and hospitals to rapidly modify standard practice, including antimicrobial stewardship services. Our study examines the impact of COVID-19 on the antimicrobial stewardship pharmacist.
Design:
A survey was distributed nationally to all healthcare improvement company members.
Participants:
Pharmacist participants were mostly leaders of antimicrobial stewardship programs distributed evenly across the United States and representing urban, suburban, and rural health-system practice sites.
Results:
Participants reported relative increases in time spent completing tasks related to medication access and preauthorization (300%; P = .018) and administrative meeting time (34%; P = .067) during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to before the pandemic. Time spent rounding, making interventions, performing pharmacokinetic services, and medication reconciliation decreased.
Conclusion:
A shift away from clinical activities may negatively affect the utilization of antimicrobials.
To investigate the touch-contact antimicrobial efficacy of novel cold spray surface coatings composed of copper and silver metals, regard to their rate of microbial elimination.
Design:
Antimicrobial time-kill assay.
Setting:
Laboratory-based study.
Methods:
An adapted time-kill assay was conducted to characterize the antimicrobial efficacy of the developed coatings. A simulated touch-contact pathogenic exposure to Gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus (ATCC 25923), Gram-negative Pseudomonas aeruginosa (ATCC 27853), and the yeast Candida albicans (ATCC 10231), as well as corresponding resistant strains of gentamicin-methicillin–resistant S. aureus (ATCC 33592), azlocillin-carbenicillin–resistant P. aeruginosa (DSM 46316), and a fluconazole-resistant C. albicans strain was undertaken. Linear regression modeling was used to deduce microbial reduction rates.
Results:
A >7 log reduction in microbial colony forming units was achieved within minutes on surfaces with cold spray coatings compared to a single log bacterial reduction on copper metal sheets within a 3 hour contact period. Copper-coated 3-dimensional (3D) printed acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) achieved complete microbial elimination against all tested pathogens within a 15 minute exposure period. Similarly, a copper-on-copper coating achieved microbial elimination within 10 minutes and within 5 minutes with the addition of silver powder as a 5 wt% coating constituent.
Conclusions:
In response to the global need for alternative solutions for infection control and prevention, these effective antimicrobial surface coatings were proposed. A longitudinal study is the next step toward technology integration.
In this study, we evaluated the efficacy, expressed as a mean weight decrease of the whole echinococcal cyst mass, of novel benzimidazole salt formulations in a murine Echinococcus granulosus infection model. BALB/c mice were intraperitoneally infected with protoscoleces of E. granulosus (genotype G1). At 9 months post-infection, treatment with albendazole (ABZ), ricobendazole (RBZ) salt formulations, and RBZ enantiomer salts (R)-(+)-RBZ-Na and (S)-(−)-RBZ-Na formulations were initiated. Drugs were orally applied by gavage at 10 mg kg−1 body weight per day during 30 days. Experimental treatments with benzimidazole sodium salts resulted in a significant reduction of the weight of cysts compared to conventional ABZ treatment, except for the (S)-(−)-RBZ-Na enantiomer formulation. Scanning electron microscopy and histological inspection revealed that treatments impacted not only the structural integrity of the parasite tissue in the germinal layer, but also induced alterations in the laminated layer. Overall, these results demonstrate the improved efficacy of benzimidazole salt formulations compared to conventional ABZ treatment in experimental murine cystic echinococcosis.
Depression has frequently been reported to be associated with other physical diseases and changes in the cytokine system. We aimed to investigate associations between a medical history of depression, its comorbidities and cytokine plasma levels in the Bavarian Nutrition Survey II (BVS II) study sample and in patients suffering from an acute depressive episode.
The BVS II is a representative study of the Bavarian population aged 13–80 years. The disease history of its 1050 participants was assessed through face-to-face interviews. A sub-sample of 568 subjects and 62 additional acutely depressed inpatients of the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry participated in anthropometric measurements and blood sampling. Tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and soluble TNF receptor (sTNF-R) p55 and sTNF-R p75 plasma levels were measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays.
A history of depression was associated with a higher incidence of high blood pressure, peptic ulcer, dyslipoproteinemia, osteoporosis, allergic skin rash, atopic eczema and thyroid disease.
Within the BVS II sample, participants with a history of depression differed from subjects who had never had depression with regard to sTNF-R p55 and sTNF-R p75 levels even when controlling for age, BMI and smoking status. Acutely depressed inpatients showed even higher levels of sTNF-R p55 and sTNF-R p75 than subjects in the normal population. TNF-α levels were also significantly elevated in acutely depressed patients.
These results confirm earlier studies regarding the comorbidities of depression and support the hypothesis that activation of the TNF-α system may contribute to the development of a depressive disorder.
A frequently observed fact in clinical practice is the relationship between Substance Abuse Disorders and Personality Disorders (PD). Epidemiological investigations have found that diagnoses of PD seem to increase vulnerability to other pathologies, including substance abuse and addiction, and it is possible to speak of comorbidity or dual pathology.
Objective
To describe the comorbidity between PD and substance abuse disorders.
Methods
Systematic review of the literature on the subject. The databases consulted were Dialnet, Pubmed and Cochrane.
Results
The various studies allow estimating that between 65% and 90% of subjects treated for substance abuse or dependence have at least one concomitant PT. Studies show a higher prevalence of Cluster C for alcohol consumption and Histrionic, Narcissistic, Boundary and Antisocial Disorders (Cluster B) for illegal drugs, mainly cocaine. Cluster B is the one that the literature has most related to substance use. It is also the group in which there is a greater predominance of impulsivity, which would be worth remembering its role as a vulnerability factor for addictions.
Conclusions
What the research has shown is that a good deal of the problems that accompany substance use come from dysfunctional patterns of behavior that are maintained over time with high stability and can justify, in part, both the persistence of The addictive behavior as the difficulty of handling the patients who present them. At present, although the high comorbidity between TP and substance use is sufficiently documented, many questions still remain to be solved.
Disclosure of interest
The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.
There is a higher incidence of borderline personality disorder (BPD) in families and offspring of people with the disorder, suggesting that both genetic and environmental factors are vulnerable to the condition that is passed from generation to generation.
Objectives
Identify the parenting strategies used by these mothers as potential targets for psychological intervention.
Method
Literature review of the scientific literature.
Results
The literature shows that mothers with BPD often have very characteristic parenting practices and that they are conditioned by what is inherent to BPD – oscillations between a search for excessive control of the other person for fear of abandonment and neglect behaviors, attachment insecure or disorganized. They are between extremes of over-involvement and lack of involvement with the child, that is, mothers who show themselves in some cold, avoidant and rejecting moments and in others that are excessively demanding, invasive and over-involved with the child, consistently denoting a pattern. Of relationship that goes from one end to the other.
Conclusions
Attachment-based interventions work through corrective experiences in the therapeutic relationship, work on their attachment style, giving the mother an opportunity to reflect on her own childhood experiences with her caregivers and how they led her to Have an insecure or disorganized attachment, while being encouraged to connect these reflections with your current experiences with your child.
Disclosure of interest
The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.
There is no agreement regarding which solvent is more suitable to obtain sol–gel–derived titania (TiO2) samples with an enhanced photocatalytic behavior. Furthermore, the solvent effect on the preparation of TiO2-RGO (reduced graphene oxide) nanocomposites has not been published yet and could be an attractive experimental strategy to modulate structure and properties. On the basis of these observations, TiO2-RGO nanocomposites were fabricated in this study. It was evaluated for the influence of using either isopropyl (IsoprOH) or ethyl (EtOH) alcohol on the textural and photocatalytic properties of the prepared materials. The use of IsoprOH led to samples with smaller crystallite size, narrower apparent band gap, smaller isoelectric point, larger adsorption capacity, and higher photocatalytic activity. In addition, the incorporation of RGO into TiO2 greatly improved the adsorption capacity and photocatalytic activity of the latter. However, the optimal loading of RGO to prepare composites with enhanced photocatalytic activities was 1 wt%. This finding can be related to the stacking of RGO sheets when concentrations above 1 wt% are used, which could prevent UV light to reach the TiO2 particles and also decrease the photocatalytic capacity of the composites. Moreover, materials with RGO concentration above 1 wt% could exhibit a highly negatively charged surface, which may decrease the separation of the generated electron–hole pairs and lead to faster recombination rates of charge carriers.
The analysis of multilayer networks is among the most active areas of network science, and there are several methods to detect dense “communities” of nodes in multilayer networks. One way to define a community is as a set of nodes that trap a diffusion-like dynamical process (usually a random walk) for a long time. In this view, communities are sets of nodes that create bottlenecks to the spreading of a dynamical process on a network. We analyze the local behavior of different random walks on multiplex networks (which are multilayer networks in which different layers correspond to different types of edges) and show that they have very different bottlenecks, which correspond to rather different notions of what it means for a set of nodes to be a good community. This has direct implications for the behavior of community-detection methods that are based on these random walks.
We study the effects of mergers on non-parametric morphologies of galaxies. We compute the Gini index, M20, asymmetry and concentration statistics for z = 0 galaxies in the Illustris simulation and compare non-parametric morphologies of major mergers, minor merges, close pairs, distant pairs and unperturbed galaxies. We determine the effectiveness of observational methods based on these statistics to select merging galaxies.
The collective response of electrons in an ultrathin foil target irradiated by an ultraintense (${\sim}6\times 10^{20}~\text{W}~\text{cm}^{-2}$) laser pulse is investigated experimentally and via 3D particle-in-cell simulations. It is shown that if the target is sufficiently thin that the laser induces significant radiation pressure, but not thin enough to become relativistically transparent to the laser light, the resulting relativistic electron beam is elliptical, with the major axis of the ellipse directed along the laser polarization axis. When the target thickness is decreased such that it becomes relativistically transparent early in the interaction with the laser pulse, diffraction of the transmitted laser light occurs through a so called ‘relativistic plasma aperture’, inducing structure in the spatial-intensity profile of the beam of energetic electrons. It is shown that the electron beam profile can be modified by variation of the target thickness and degree of ellipticity in the laser polarization.
The past two decades have seen a significant advancement in the detection, classification and understanding of exoplanets and binary star systems. The vast majority of these systems consist of stars on the main sequence or on the giant branch, leading to a dearth of knowledge of properties at early times (<50 Myr). Only one transiting planet candidate and a dozen eclipsing binaries are known among pre-main sequence objects, yet these are the systems that can provide the best constraints on stellar and planetary formation models. We have recently completed a photometric survey of 3 young (<50 Myr), nearby (D<150 pc) moving groups with a small-aperture instrument, nicknamed “AggieCam”. We detected 7 candidate Hot Jupiters and over 200 likely pre-main sequence binaries, which are now being followed up photometrically and spectroscopically.
Tic disorders are moderately heritable common psychiatric disorders that can be highly troubling, both in childhood and in adulthood. In this study, we report results obtained in the first epigenome-wide association study (EWAS) of tic disorders. The subjects are participants in surveys at the Netherlands Twin Register (NTR) and the NTR biobank project. Tic disorders were measured with a self-report version of the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale Abbreviated version (YGTSS-ABBR), included in the 8th wave NTR data collection (2008). DNA methylation data consisted of 411,169 autosomal methylation sites assessed by the Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChip Kit (HM450k array). Phenotype and DNA methylation data were available in 1,678 subjects (mean age = 41.5). No probes reached genome-wide significance (p < 1.2 × 10−7). The strongest associated probe was cg15583738, located in an intergenic region on chromosome 8 (p = 1.98 × 10−6). Several of the top ranking probes (p < 1 × 10−4) were in or nearby genes previously associated with neurological disorders (e.g., GABBRI, BLM, and ADAM10), warranting their further investigation in relation to tic disorders. The top significantly enriched gene ontology (GO) terms among higher ranking methylation sites included anatomical structure morphogenesis (GO:0009653, p = 4.6 × 10−15) developmental process (GO:0032502, p = 2.96 × 10−12), and cellular developmental process (GO:0048869, p = 1.96 × 10−12). Overall, these results provide a first insight into the epigenetic mechanisms of tic disorders. This first study assesses the role of DNA methylation in tic disorders, and it lays the foundations for future work aiming to unravel the biological mechanisms underlying the architecture of this disorder.
The aim of this study was to investigate the activities of important enzymes involved in the phosphoryl transfer network (adenylate kinase and creatine kinase (CK)), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), respiratory chain complexes and biomarkers of cardiac function in rat experimentally infected by Trypanosoma evansi. Rat heart samples were evaluated at 5 and 15 days post-infection (PI). At 5 day PI, there was an increase in LDH and CK activities, and a decrease in respiratory chain complexes II, IV and succinate dehydrogenase activities. In addition, on day 15 PI, a decrease in the respiratory chain complex IV activity was observed. Biomarkers of cardiac function were higher in infected animals on days 5 and 15 PI. Considering the importance of the energy metabolism for heart function, it is possible that the changes in the enzymatic activities involved in the cardiac phosphotransfer network and the decrease in respiratory chain might be involved partially in the role of biomarkers of cardiac function of T. evansi-infected rats.
Background: Although some prior studies have provided evidence to question the historical belief that pulmonary vascular resistance index ⩾6 Wood Units×m2 should be a contraindication to heart transplantation in children, no national analyses specific to the modern area have addressed this question. Methods: Data were analysed for paediatric heart transplant recipients from 1 January, 2002 to 1 September, 2012 (n=699). The relationship between pulmonary vascular resistance and all-cause 30-day mortality was evaluated using univariate and multivariate analyses. Results: The 30-day mortality included 10 patients (1.43%), which is lower than in the previous analyses. Receiver operating curve analysis of pulmonary vascular resistance index as a predictor of mortality yielded a cut-off value of 3.37 Wood Units×m2, but the area under the curve and specificity of this threshold was weaker than in previous analyses. Whereas pulmonary vascular resistance index treated as a dichotomised variable was a significant predictor of mortality in univariate (odds ratio 4.92, 95% confidence interval 1.04–23.33, p=0.045) and multivariate (odds ratio 5.26, 95% confidence interval 1.07–25.80, p=0.041) analyses, pulmonary vascular resistance index treated as a continuous variable was not a significant predictor of mortality in univariate (p=0.12) or multivariate (p=0.11) analyses. Conclusions: The relationship between pulmonary vascular resistance and post-heart transplant mortality in children is less convincing in this analysis of a comprehensive, contemporary database than in previous series. This suggests the possibility that modern improvements in the management of post-transplant right ventricular dysfunction have mitigated the contribution of pulmonary hypertension to early mortality.
The aim of this study was to evaluate the purine levels of lambs experimentally infected with Haemonchus contortus. A total of 12 healthy lambs were divided into two groups, composed of 6 animals each: Group A represented the healthy animals (uninfected), while in Group B the animals were infected with 15 000 larvae of H. contortus. Blood was drawn on days 15, 45 and 75 post-infection (PI) in order to perform the purine analysis (ATP, ADP, AMP, adenosine, inosine, hypoxanthine, xanthine and uric acid) by high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) in serum. On day 15 PI a significant (P<0·05) increase in the levels of ATP and inosine was observed in the infected animals, unlike the levels of ADP, adenosine, xanthine and uric acid which were reduced. On day 45 PI a significant (P<0·05) increase in the ATP and xanthine levels in infected animals was observed, contrasting with reduced levels of ADP and uric acid. Finally, on day 75 PI an increase occurred in the levels of ATP, adenosine and hypoxanthine in infected lambs, concomitant with a reduction in the levels of ADP and uric acid (P<0·05). These changes in purine levels may influence the inflammatory process and the pathological events.
The Vista Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) ESO Public Survey is an ongoing time-series, near-infrared (IR) survey of the Galactic bulge and an adjacent portion of the inner disk, covering 562 square degrees of the sky, using ESO's VISTA telescope. The survey has provided superb multi-color photometry in 5 broadband filters (Z, Y, J, H, and Ks), leading to the best map of the inner Milky Way ever obtained, particularly in the near-IR. The main part of the survey, which is focused on the variability in the Ks-band, is currently underway, with bulge fields observed between 34 and 73 times, and disk fields between 34 and 36 times. When the survey is complete, bulge (disk) fields will have been observed up to a total of 100 (60) times, providing unprecedented depth and time coverage in the near-IR. Here we provide a first overview of stellar variability in the VVV data.
A new beam-combination and detection system has been installed in the Sydney University Stellar Interferometer working at the red end of the visual spectrum (λλ 500–950 nm) to complement the existing blue-sensitive system (λλ 430–520 nm) and to provide an increase in sensitivity. Dichroic beam-splitters have been introduced to allow simultaneous observations with both spectral systems, albeit with some restriction on the spectral range of the longer wavelength system (λλ 550–760 nm). The blue system has been upgraded to allow remote selection of wavelength and spectral bandpass, and to enable simultaneous operation with the red system with the latter providing fringe-envelope tracking. The new system and upgrades are described and examples of commissioning tests presented. As an illustration of the improvement in performance the measurement of the angular diameter of the southern F supergiant δ CMa is described and compared with previous determinations.