Motile systems in malaria merozoites: how is the red blood cell invaded?

The ability of the malaria parasite to invade erythrocytes is central to the disease process, but is not thoroughly understood. In particular, little attention has been paid to the motor systems driving invasion. Here, Jennifer Pinder, Ruth Fowler and colleagues review motility in the merozoite. The components of an actomyosin motor are present, including a novel unconventional class XIV myosin, now called Pfmyo-A, which, because of its time of synthesis and location, is likely to generate the force required for invasion. In addition, there is a subpellicular microtubule assemblage in falciparum merozoites, the f-MAST, the integrity of which is necessary for invasion.

Educating health educators: a survey of hospital staff completing a certificate in health education course

Health care professionals (nurses, a midwife, a physiotherapist and an occupational therapist) working in a large NHS Trust hospital who had completed the Certificate in Health Education with the support of their employer, were interviewed. The study objectives were to seek their views on the quality of the course, to determine the extent to which participants were able to apply their new found knowledge and skills in the care they provided to patients and the level of support received to allow them to do this. Barriers that prevented staff from routinely applying health education in their work were identified. The findings indicated that the majority found the course content to be good and relevant to their clinical work but they identified lack of time due to the pressure of routine clinical work as the main barrier to the promotion of health education in their clinical area.

Patient documentation. On the records

Documentation of patient care is frequently the Achilles heel of clinical services. The use of a multidisciplinary, semi-structured healthcare record may achieve improvements, but it needs to be coupled with appropriate strategies to overcome professional and cultural barriers to unified documentation. When implementing changes, clinical staff may overestimate their clinical information needs while underestimating the problems of its routine collection.

Beliefs about depression relate to active and avoidant coping in high-symptom adolescents

BACKGROUND

Perceptions of personal attributes as less malleable are associated with more severe depression symptoms and less active coping in youth. Perceptions of depression itself as relatively fixed have been linked to more severe depression symptoms; however, it is not known how beliefs about depression relate to active and avoidant coping behaviors in particular.

METHODS

We gathered information about beliefs about depression and activation and avoidance behaviors among 104 adolescents with high depression symptoms. The primary depression belief examined was prognostic pessimism, or the belief that depression is relatively permanent. We calculated correlations between this belief and activation and avoidance/rumination behaviors.

RESULTS

Prognostic pessimism was negatively correlated with behavioral activation scores (r = -0.31; p = .001), and was positively correlated with behavioral avoidance/rumination scores (r = 0.30; p = .002).

LIMITATIONS

This data was cross-sectional, and relied on self-report measures of depression beliefs and behaviors.

CONCLUSIONS

Adolescents who believe that depression is relatively permanent might feel less motivated to engage in effortful activation behaviors, instead favoring avoidance. These results may help elucidate the ways in which malleability beliefs relate to mental health outcomes among adolescents, and highlight prognostic pessimism as a potential treatment target for reducing depressogenic behaviors.

Patients' rights to access their healthcare records

Improving communication between different healthcare disciplines and with patients is hampered by professional insecurity. In this article, the authors examine the compelling reasons for making records more accessible to patients and describe the potential benefits for patients and professionals.

High frequency properties of a planar ion trap fabricated on a chip

We report on the measurement of the high frequency properties of a planar Penning ion trap fabricated on a chip. Two types of chips have been measured: the first manufactured by photolithographic metal deposition on a p-doped silicon substrate and the second made with printed circuit board technology on an alumina substrate. The input capacitances and the admittances between the different trap's electrodes play a critical role in the electronic detection of the trapped particles. The measured input capacitances of the photolithographic chip amount to 65-76 pF, while the values for the printed circuit board chips are in the range of 3-5 pF. The latter are small enough for detecting non-destructively a single trapped electron or ion with a specifically tuned LC resonator. We have also measured a mutual capacitance of ∼85 fF between two of the trap's electrodes in the printed circuit board chip. This enables the detection of single, or very few, trapped particles in a broader range of charge-to-mass ratios with a simple resistor on the chip. We provide analytic calculations of the capacitances and discuss their origin and possible further reduction.