MacLeod, professor of music education at UNCG, is a national and international leader in music education. She champions the idea that everyone can and should express themselves musically and artistically. Music is essential, diverse, and continually evolving. It enhances the lives of all people, and it serves as a universal medium for cultural and personal expression.
The ability for controlling the light based on the angle of incidence played an essential role in many technological applications. In the present work, an angular optical filter consists of multilayers designed by Essential Macleod software within the visible and near-infrared regions. By using the transfer matrix method, we have obtained the transmission properties for the p-polarized light depending on the angle of incidence. The proposed filter can be easily used to control the transmission of visible and NIR light depending on the angle of incidence. Transmission of NIR at 1200 nm increases from 21.26 to 78.89% as the incident angle changed from 5 to 55, respectively. Simultaneously, the transmission of the visible light is higher than 87%. These results may have a potential application in controlling the light and heat within the building, solar greenhouse, optical switch and other future applications. Also, the simplicity of the current structure makes it conducive to the industrial design using low-cost and massive product nanofabrication technique.
Essential Macleod
Trypanosoma brucei gambiense causes 97% of all cases of African sleeping sickness, a fatal disease of sub-Saharan Africa. Most species of trypanosome, such as T. b. brucei, are unable to infect humans due to the trypanolytic serum protein apolipoprotein-L1 (APOL1) delivered via two trypanosome lytic factors (TLF-1 and TLF-2). Understanding how T. b. gambiense overcomes these factors and infects humans is of major importance in the fight against this disease. Previous work indicated that a failure to take up TLF-1 in T. b. gambiense contributes to resistance to TLF-1, although another mechanism is required to overcome TLF-2. Here, we have examined a T. b. gambiense specific gene, TgsGP, which had previously been suggested, but not shown, to be involved in serum resistance. We show that TgsGP is essential for resistance to lysis as deletion of TgsGP in T. b. gambiense renders the parasites sensitive to human serum and recombinant APOL1. Deletion of TgsGP in T. b. gambiense modified to uptake TLF-1 showed sensitivity to TLF-1, APOL1 and human serum. Reintroducing TgsGP into knockout parasite lines restored resistance. We conclude that TgsGP is essential for human serum resistance in T. b. gambiense.
Trypanosoma brucei gambiense causes 97% of all cases of African sleeping sickness, a fatal disease of sub-Saharan Africa. Most species of trypanosome, such as T. b. brucei, are unable to infect humans due to trypanolytic factors in human serum. Understanding how T. b. gambiense overcomes these factors and infects humans is of major importance in the fight against this disease. Previous work indicated that a failure to take up some trypanolytic factors by T. b. gambiense contributes to resistance, although other mechanisms are involved. Here, we have examined a T. b. gambiense specific gene, TgsGP, for involvement in resistance to human serum. We show that TgsGP is essential for resistance to lysis as deletion of TgsGP in T. b. gambiense renders the parasites sensitive to most trypanolytic factors. TgsGP deletion in T. b. gambiense modified to overcome the sub-species trait to reduce uptake of some trypanolytic factors resulted in sensitivity to all trypanolytic factors. Reintroducing TgsGP into these knockout parasite lines restored resistance. We conclude that TgsGP is essential for human serum resistance in T. b. gambiense.
This study demonstrates that the TgsGP gene is essential for resistance to human serum in the most clinically important T. brucei sub-species, group 1 T. b. gambiense. Previous work has shown that TgsGP did not confer resistance to human serum when ectopically expressed in T. b. brucei [20], which was confirmed here. As originally hypothesized [20], it appears likely that this is due to other factor(s) or mechanism(s) that works in concert with TgsGP, which are absent in T. b. brucei. By removing TgsGP from T. b. gambiense itself, we have demonstrated that the gene is necessary for resistance to human serum. Elucidation of a gene essential to human serum resistance in group 1 T. b gambiense unlocks new avenues for future treatment of human African sleeping sickness. These include peptide screens that neutralise the TgsGP protein, targeted antibodies or the possibility of using TgsGP as a vaccine candidate, as expression is required for parasite survival in humans. Additionally, there exists the potential that variants of APOL1 may offer protection against T. b. gambiense. Sera from individuals possessing certain APOL1 alleles has been shown to affect the growth of T. b. rhodesiense and it has been suggested that these alleles may be protective against T. b. rhodesiense [28], [29]. However, this has yet to be confirmed in a case control study. Nevertheless, it is likely that there are variant APOL1 alleles that protect against group 1 T. b. gambiense in resistant individuals, such as the reportedly resistant Bambuti people of the Mbomo region in the Democratic Republic of the Congo [30] or recently described asymptomatic and self-cured cases from Côte d'Ivoire [31].
One other benefit of our study is the trypanosome research community now possesses a representative group 1 T. b. gambiense strain that is easily cultured, is no longer human serum resistant, yet only differs from the wild-type by a single gene. This is a powerful biological resource that could replace T. b. brucei as the common laboratory model for the human disease, which maybe useful, particularly as several drugs display different efficacies between sub-species [1]. As such, identifying TgsGP as a gene essential for resistance to human serum in group 1 T. b. gambiense will likely be important to future control of the disease.
Contrary to Banting's and Best's later accounts, Macleod was an active, essential supervisor of a research effort that, by the spring of 1922, had resulted in the discovery of insulin.His elaboration of the early crude results, his handling of the clinical trials, and his highly professional presentations of the research particularly impressed the Swedish investigators who rightly recommended that he share the 1923 Nobel Prize formedicine or physiology with Banting (see also Nobel Prizes in Canada).
His book: MacLeod, K.T. "An essential introduction to cardiac electrophysiology" (Imperial College Press, Singapore, London) 2014. ISBN: 978-1-908977-34-2 is a recommended text at Imperial and other universities.
Gifts to the McLeod Foundation help fund essential programs, services and equipment supporting McLeod Health Seacoast. These efforts have been made possible by the generous gifts of individuals and community partners who believe in making quality healthcare available to everyone in our community.
The knowledge that the isles of Langerhans of the pancreas have the function of secreting into the blood a hormone which plays an essential role in the regulation of the metabolism of the carbohydrates, is the outcome of numerous investigations extending over many years, and to the development of this knowledge workers in various fields of medical science have contributed.
Gifts to the McLeod Foundation help fund essential programs, services and equipment supporting McLeod Health Loris. These efforts have been made possible by the generous gifts of individuals and community partners who believe in making quality healthcare available to everyone in our community.
This essential handbook provides foundational orientation and training content for paraprofessionals. Its accessible style, focus on inclusive contexts, and practical applications should make it a go-to resource for collaborative teams.
Biometrics is an expanding technology used to measure unique identity verification characteristics in humans including fingerprints, facial and iris features1. For optical biometrics, a light is emitted on a face or fingerprints, and is reflected back to the bandpass filter eliminating ambient light, which transmits the light with high signal-to-noise ratio in the desired spectral band to a detector. Notably, a narrow bandpass filter is defined as an optical filter that passes one or more desired wavelength bands while blocking others. Thin film narrow bandpass filters (TFNBFs) are an essential component for the control of the recognition rate for biometrics, which can manipulate the specific transmittance for contrast tuning of the image2,3. TFNBFs commonly consist of multiple layered thin films with different refractive indices, which produce differences in the spatial and spectral distribution of light induced by the thin-film interference effect4.
Based on the EMP simulations, transmittance at 485 nm can be selectively modulated when thickness and a sequence of inserted Ti metal films is precisely controlled in the deposition of 26-layers thin films: the deposition sequence and thickness of the Ti, TiO2 and SiO2 thin films are shown in Fig. 6 and Table 1. For comparison, 23-layered TiO2/SiO2 films were also prepared as shown in Fig. S5 and Table 1. There was little difference in the total thickness between 23-layers and 26-layers thin films. Interfacial diffusion among thin films was not observed in the 26-layers thin films. Transmittance of the 23-layer and 26-layer thin films in the wavelength range from 300 and 1100 nm was evaluated, as presented in Fig. 7. For 23-layer films, transmittance of 90.5% with a FWHM of 21 nm was observed at low cutoff frequency (485 nm). Transmittance of 65.98% and 57.21% was observed at high cutoff frequency of 400 nm and 680 nm, respectively. With the insertion of Ti metal layers, a high transmittance of 80.42% with FWHM of 19 nm at 485 nm was observed. A lower transmittance of 10.29% and 10.48% was observed at 400 nm and 680 nm, respectively. That is, increased \(\Delta T\) at both a low cutoff frequency (485 nm) and a high cutoff frequency (400 nm, 680 nm) is achieved in the 26-layer thin films. Simulated transmittance spectra of multilayered thin films with different metal layers including Si, Ag, Zn and Al are presented in Fig. S6, and this comparison indicates that Ti is effective as the metallic layer to obtain selective transmittance at specific wavelengths. Experimental results matched well with simulated optical properties as shown in Fig. 7. Transmittance spectra of Ti/TiO2/SiO2 multilayer thin films with an increasing number of Ti layers is shown in Fig. 8, which implies that Ti layers are beneficial to improve the spectral selectivity. However, as shown in Fig. S7, further increasing the number of Ti layers gradually decreases transmittance in the wavelength range of 300 nm to 1100 nm providing a poor signal-to-noise ratio. For application of multilayer thin films to narrow bandpass filters, a square bandwidth with a steep slope of the transmittance at specific wavelength is essential, highlighted in the red squares in the inset of Fig. 7. 2ff7e9595c
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