Non-government organisations (NGOs) have long played a role in delivering sanitation services to communities in Southeast Asia and Pacific countries, particularly in rural areas. In contrast with large scale infrastructure focused initiatives, NGO programs commonly focus on building linkages between technical and social realms. Drawing on the breadth and depth of NGO experiences, there are oppo...

In biomedical applications, polyethylene glycol (PEG) functionalization has been a major approach to modify nanocarriers such as nano-graphene oxide for particular biological requirements. However, incorporation of a PEG shell poses a significant diffusion barrier that adversely affects the release of the loaded drugs. This study addresses this critical issue by employing a redox-responsive PEG...

Neisseria gonorrhoeae (Ngo), the etiologic agent of gonorrhea, induce a number of proinflammatory cytokines by contact to epithelial cells. Cytokine genes and a variety of other immune response genes are activated as a result of the regulatory function of immediate early response transcription factors including activator protein 1 (AP-1). Since it is established that phosphorylation of c-Jun, t...

BACKGROUND Infection of the Fallopian tubes (FT) by Neisseria gonorrhoeae (Ngo) can lead to acute salpingitis, an inflammatory condition resulting in damage primarily to the ciliated cells, with loss of ciliary activity and sloughing of the cells from the epithelium. Recently, we have shown that Ngo infection induced apoptosis in FT epithelium cells by a TNF-alpha dependent mechanism that could...

A facile and green strategy is reported for the fabrication of nanosized and reduced covalently PEGylated graphene oxide (nrGO-PEG) with great biocompatibility and high near-infrared (NIR) absorbance. Covalently PEGylated nGO (nGO-PEG) was synthesized by the reaction of nGO-COOH and methoxypolyethylene glycol amine (mPEG-NH2). The neutral and purified nGO-PEG solution was then directly bathed i...