The immobilization of antimicrobial drugs can be used to expand the application of antibacterial properties to consumer products. The purpose of this study was to stabilize an antimicrobial agent, levofloxacin (LVX), for sustained antibacterial activity by immobilizing the drug molecules in a layered double hydroxide (LDH) and embedded in a polyurethane substrate. As-prepared MgAl-LDH was calcined at 400°C and reconstructed with LVX for intercalation. The X-ray diffraction patterns and cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy images showed lattice expansion along the crystallographic c axis upon LVX intercalation, suggesting successful loading of the drug. Fourier-transform infrared spectra revealed that the structure of LVX was well preserved between LDH layers. Elemental analysis indicated that the loading capacity of LVX in the hybrid was 41.7%. Bacterial-colony forming inhibitory assay on Bacillus subtilis exhibited ~100% antibacterial activity of both LVX alone and LVX-LDH hybrid (LL). To determine sustainability of antibacterial activity by the hybrid, either LVX alone or LL hybrid was loaded in the polyurethane (PU) substrate for which antibacterial activity was evaluated before and after immersion in a phosphate-buffered saline for 3 days. The LVX-composited PU showed a dramatic decrease in antibacterial activity, down to 0% after buffer treatment; LL-composited PU still contained antibacterial activity (~34% of colony suppression) after phosphate-buffered saline immersion.

Nosocomial transmission of COVID-19 among immunocompromised hosts can have a serious impact on COVID-19 severity, underlying disease progression and SARS-CoV-2 transmission to other patients and healthcare workers within hospitals. We experienced a nosocomial outbreak of COVID-19 in the setting of a daycare unit for paediatric and young adult cancer patients. Between 9 and 18 November 2020, 473 individuals (181 patients, 247 caregivers/siblings and 45 staff members) were exposed to the index case, who was a nursing staff. Among them, three patients and four caregivers were infected. Two 5-year-old cancer patients with COVID-19 were not severely ill, but a 25-year-old cancer patient showed prolonged shedding of SARS-CoV-2 RNA for at least 12 weeks, which probably infected his mother at home approximately 7–8 weeks after the initial diagnosis. Except for this case, no secondary transmission was observed from the confirmed cases in either the hospital or the community. To conclude, in the day care setting of immunocompromised children and young adults, the rate of in-hospital transmission of SARS-CoV-2 was 1.6% when applying the stringent policy of infection prevention and control, including universal mask application and rapid and extensive contact investigation. Severely immunocompromised children/young adults with COVID-19 would have to be carefully managed after the mandatory isolation period while keeping the possibility of prolonged shedding of live virus in mind.

Viet thanh nguyen's recent successes might appear to have come out of nowhere. before the sympathizer won the pulitzer prize and Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War was long-listed for the National Book Award, and before he was named a MacArthur Fellow, Nguyen was another hardworking academic, laboring away in a field that no one outside it knew much about. For those who labored alongside him in the same field, the story looks different. When many of us were finishing graduate school and looking for our first teaching jobs, there was a joke going around that all the applicants on the market that year were waiting to find out what Nguyen would do. He had gotten all the job offers in the field, and the other top contenders were hanging out on the waiting list. His irst book, Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America (2002), a study of how the idea of resistance circulates in critical discussions of Asian American literature, landed with a splash, becoming one of those works other scholars had to be familiar with. What made it stand out was his insistence that we not idealize resistance. If the standard story that scholars liked to tell was that Asian American literature adopted a radical posture when it came to race, seeking to critique racism and to conjure alternative social possibilities, Nguyen pointed out that the story was incomplete. Asian Americans, including creative writers, are as heterogeneous ideology-wise as they are heterogeneous in every other way.