The current status and future of medical laboratory quality regulation and accreditation in Ghana

High-quality and reliable laboratory services are important components of effective and well-functioning health systems. Accurate, reliable and timely medical laboratory testing is crucial to patient care and disease surveillance. Unfortunately, in many sub-Saharan African countries, medical laboratory systems are adversely affected by the unavailability of medical laboratories, poor laboratory infrastructure and lack of well-trained personnel [1]. Quality in the laboratory is only achieved in a systematic way through the implementation of a quality management system. The results of the study showed that approximately 60?% of the 78 respondents were unaware of the requirements of ISO 15189:2007. A trial of proficiency testing, termed ??blind proficiency testing??, was carried out in which 19 laboratories determined the concentrations of urea and cholesterol in a proficiency testing material. Of the 19 laboratories that determined the concentration of urea, 63?% produced satisfactory results with scores between ?2 and +2. Similarly, 63?% of the participating laboratories obtained satisfactory z scores for cholesterol determination. Some of the laboratories that obtained satisfactory scores for urea determination had unsatisfactory scores for cholesterol determination and vice versa. It is recommended that the Ghanaian government pass a law and establish a standard to regulate medical laboratories in Ghana in order to improve quality in a significant way.     

Hydration of isocyanates in an expandable, self-assembled capsule

A self-assembled capsule facilitates reactions of isocyanates with water. The capsule provides an amphiphilic environment with hydrophobic aromatic ends and hydrophilic glycoluril units at the center. Reaction takes place in the narrow, cylindrical space to form the N,N-dialkylurea, which then appears in a longer capsule.     

Conformations and fluorescence of encapsulated stilbene

Absorption and emission spectra of free and encapsulated stilbene in two different capsules were calculated using the DFT and the TDDFT methodology at the B3LYP, CAM-B3LYP, M06-2X, PBE0, and ωB97X-D/6-31G(d,p) levels of theory. The present work is directed toward the theoretical interpretation of recent experimental results on control of stilbene conformation and fluorescence in capsules [Ams, M. R.; et al. Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2009, 5, 79]. The results of the calculations are in agreement with experiment and show that fluorescence of trans-stilbene persists in the large cage while it is quenched in the small one. It is found that the geometry of trans-stilbene in the ground as well as in the first excited singlet state is unaffected by encapsulation in the large cage, and consequently the absorption and emission spectra are similarly unaffected. In the small cage, the ground state of encapsulated trans-stilbene is distorted, with the two phenyl groups twisted, while the geometry of the excited state, after relaxation, lies at the conical intersection with the ground state. Consequently, there is no emission similar to that of free trans-stilbene, and the state decays nonradiatively to the ground state.     

An integrated map of the murine hippocampal proteome based upon five mouse strains

With the advent of proteomics technologies it is possible to simultaneously demonstrate the expression of hundreds of proteins. The information offered by proteomics provides context-based understanding of cellular protein networks and has been proven to be a valuable approach in neuroscience studies. The mouse hippocampus has been a major target of analysis in the search for molecular correlates to neuronal information storage. Although human and rat hippocampal samples have been successfully subjected to proteomic profiling, no elaborate analysis providing the fundamental experimental basis for protein-expression studies in the mouse hippocampus has been carried out as yet. This led us to construct a master map generated from the individual hippocampal proteomes of five different mouse strains. A proteomic approach, based upon 2-DE coupled to MS (MALDI-TOF/TOF) has been chosen in an attempt to establish a comprehensive reference database of proteins expressed in the mouse hippocampus. 469 individual proteins, represented by 1156 spots displaying various functional states of the respective gene products were identified. Proteomic profiling of the hippocampus, a brain region with a pivotal role for neuronal information processing and storage may provide insight into the characteristics of proteins serving this highly sophisticated function.     

Experimental and computational probes of a self-assembled capsule

[reaction: see text] This research was undertaken to explore the interior surface of a synthetic receptor 1.1 with arylpyridines as guests. The interior surface differentiates the guests through the recognition of their nitrogen atoms. Experimental and computational analyses revealed that there is a delicate balance of attractions and repulsions between the host and the lone pairs of guests.     

Cavitand templated catalysis of acetylcholine

A Zn-salen-modified cavitand templates the catalytic formation of acetylcholine from choline and acetic anhydride.     

A synthetic mimic of protein inner space: buried polar interactions in a deep water-soluble host

A deep water-soluble cavitand was functionalized with a carboxylic acid directed toward the hydrophobic interior of the host. The buried salt-bridge interaction formed with a quinuclidium cationic guest was determined to be worth -3 kcal/mol using a free energy cycle. The strength of the interaction correlates well with buried salt bridges in proteins, indicating that the cavitand interior mimics the hydrophobic inner space of proteins.     

Spectral order and isotonic differential operators of Laguerre–Pólya type

The spectral order on R ⁿ induces a natural partial ordering on the manifold of monic hyperbolic polynomials of degree n. We show that all differential operators of Laguerre–Pólya type preserve the spectral order. We also establish a global monotony property for infinite families of deformations of these operators parametrized by the space ℓ^∞ of real bounded sequences. As a consequence, we deduce that the monoid of linear operators that preserve averages of zero sets and hyperbolicity consists only of differential operators of Laguerre–Pólya type which are both extensive and isotonic. In particular, these results imply that any hyperbolic polynomial is the global minimum of its -orbit and that Appell polynomials are characterized by a global minimum property with respect to the spectral order.     

Can the nearly conformal sextet gauge model hide the Higgs impostor?

New results are reported from large scale lattice simulations of a frequently discussed strongly interacting gauge theory with a fermion flavor doublet in the two-index symmetric (sextet) representation of the SU(3) color gauge group. We find that the chiral condensate and the mass spectrum of the sextet model are consistent with chiral symmetry breaking in the limit of vanishing fermion mass. In contrast, sextet fermion mass deformations of spectral properties are not consistent with leading conformal scaling behavior near the critical surface of a conformal theory. A recent paper could not resolve the conformal fixed point of the gauge coupling from the slowly walking scenario of a very small nearly vanishing β-function (DeGrand et al. [3]). It is argued that overall consistency with our new results is resolved if the sextet model is close to the conformal window, staying outside with a very small non-vanishing β-function. The model would exhibit then the simplest composite Higgs mechanism leaving open the possibility of a light scalar state with quantum numbers of the Higgs impostor. It would emerge as the pseudo-Goldstone dilaton state from spontaneous symmetry breaking of scale invariance. We will argue that even without association with the dilaton, the scalar Higgs-like state can be light very close to the conformal window. A new Higgs project of sextet lattice simulations is outlined to resolve these important questions.