Initial Commitment to Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis and Circumcision for HIV Prevention amongst Indian Truck Drivers

Studies of HIV prevention interventions such as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PREP) and circumcision in India are limited. The present study sought to investigate Indian truck-drivers initial commitment to PREP and circumcision utilizing the AIDS Risk Reduction Model. Ninety truck-drivers completed an in-depth qualitative interview and provided a blood sample for HIV and HSV-2 testing. Truck-drivers exhibited low levels of initial commitment towards PREP and even lower for circumcision. However, potential leverage points for increasing commitment were realized in fear of infecting family rather than self, self-perceptions of risk, and for PREP focusing on cultural beliefs towards medication and physicians. Cost was a major barrier to both HIV prevention interventions. Despite these barriers, our findings suggest that the ARRM may be useful in identifying several leverage points that may be used by peers, health care providers and public health field workers to enhance initial commitment to novel HIV prevention interventions in India.     

Effect of salt-stress on translocation of photosynthates in pigeon-pea

Summary An investigation was carried out in order to study the effect of salts namely NaC1 and Na₂SO₄ on the rate of translocation of photosynthates in pigeonpea, at the pod filling stage. At the concentration of 10 EC NaC1 only 17% of the¹⁴C assimilates are translocated from the source leaf to the other parts of the plant. Out of this pods receive about 8%. On the other hand even at a concentration of 15 EC Na₂SO₄ about 30% of the total¹⁴C assimilates get translocated and out of this pods receive about 12%. From this it may be concluded that under salt-stress conditions the rate of translocation of photosynthates is adversely affected and between the two salts, NaC1 was discovered to have a marked inhibitory effect.     

Apert syndrome and fetal hydrocephaly

Apert (1906) was the first to identify a syndrome characterized by the association of acrocephaly with syndactyly, acrocephalosyndactylism. Since then Apert syndrome has been recognized as a clinical entity. Although hydrocephalus was rarely reported as an associated malformation, it was suggested that hydrocephalus might be responsible for mental retardation in some cases of Apert syndrome. We report a case of Apert syndrome presenting as fetal hydrocephaly at 28 weeks gestational age, and we review the literature. We suggest that hydrocephalus should be considered as a major associated malformation, and a complete evaluation with sonogram and computed tomography scan is recommended in any newborn suspected of having Apert syndrome after routine cephalometric measurement.     

The homeostatic ensemble for cells

Cells are quintessential examples of out-of-equilibrium systems, but they maintain a homeostatic state over a timescale of hours to days. As a consequence, the statistics of all observables is remarkably consistent. Here, we develop a statistical mechanics framework for living cells by including the homeostatic constraint that exists over the interphase period of the cell cycle. The consequence is the introduction of the concept of a homeostatic ensemble and an associated homeostatic temperature, along with a formalism for the (dynamic) homeostatic equilibrium that intervenes to allow living cells to evade thermodynamic decay. As a first application, the framework is shown to accurately predict the observed effect of the mechanical environment on the in vitro response of smooth muscle cells. This includes predictions that both the mean values and diversity/variability in the measured values of observables such as cell area, shape and tractions decrease with decreasing stiffness of the environment. Thus, we argue that the observed variabilities are inherent to the entropic nature of the homeostatic equilibrium of cells and not a result of in vitro experimental errors.     

FitSNPs: highly differentially expressed genes are more likely to have variants associated with disease

Background  

Candidate single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from genome-wide association studies (GWASs) were often selected for validation based on their functional annotation, which was inadequate and biased. We propose to use the more than 200,000 microarray studies in the Gene Expression Omnibus to systematically prioritize candidate SNPs from GWASs.