The combination of electrospun nanofibrous membranes and microfluidic channels dramatically improves the sensitivities of HIV immunoassays in microfluidic channels. Simplicity and effectiveness of the new system can potentially pave the way for inexpensive, portable and highly sensitive diagnostic devices.

Diabetes and obesity have sparked interest in identifying healthy, dietary carbohydrates as functional ingredients for controlling blood glucose and insulin levels. Grain sorghum has been known to be a slowly digestible cereal; however, research is limited on its health effects in humans. The objectives of this study were to measure the contents of functional starch fractions, SDS (slowly-digestible starch) and RS (resistant starch), and to investigate the effects of grain sorghum on postprandial plasma glucose and insulin levels in 10 healthy men. A whole-wheat flour muffin (control) was compared with the grain sorghum muffin with both muffins containing 50 g of total starch. Using a randomized-crossover design, male subjects consumed treatments within a one-week washout period, and glucose and insulin levels were observed at 15 minutes before and 0, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90, 120, 180 minutes after consumption. The mean glucose responses reduced after consuming grain sorghum, particularly at 45-120 minute intervals, and mean insulin responses reduced at 15-90 minute intervals compared to control (P < 0.05). The mean incremental area under the curve (iAUC) was significantly lowered for plasma glucose responses about an average of 35% from 3863 ± 443 to 2871 ± 163 mg (∼3 h) dL(-1) (P < 0.05). Insulin responses also reduced significantly from 3029 ± 965 μU (∼3 h) L(-1) for wheat to 1357 ± 204 with sorghum (P < 0.05). Results suggest that grain sorghum is a good functional ingredient to assist in managing glucose and insulin levels in healthy individuals.

The present study examines how dilemma type (personal or impersonal moral dilemma), language (native or foreign) and emotion arousal to a dilemma could affect Chinese-English bilinguals' deontological vs utilitarian moral choices regarding 39 moral dilemmas. How emotion arousal plays a mediating role in the effects of dilemma type and language on moral choices is also investigated. As shown in multilevel analyses, participants made fewer utilitarian choices for personal dilemmas than impersonal dilemmas. Although emotion arousal of dilemmas significantly mediated this effect of dilemma type, the indirect effect of dilemma type through arousal on moral choices was inconsistent with the direct effect of dilemma type on moral choices. For the effect of language, participants made more utilitarian choices in the Footbridge (personal) dilemma that was presented in foreign language than in native language. However, this effect was not mediated by arousal, suggesting that it could not be attributed to the emotion-reducing effect of foreign language. Moreover, there was no language effect on moral choices in analyses that included all 39 dilemmas or only 22 personal dilemmas, indicating the need in future research for further identifying the potential mediators that trigger the foreign language effect on moral choices.

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Life transitions like war, marriage, and immigration presumably organize autobiographical memory. Yet little is known about how the magnitude of a given transition affects this mnemonic impact. To examine this issue, we collected (a) word-cued events, (b) event-dating protocols, (c) personally important events, and (d) transitional impact scores of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and important events from Chinese adults who had been adolescents during the revolution. There were three main findings. First, rusticated participants, who moved from cities to rural areas during the Cultural Revolution, dated autobiographical memories in relation to this collective transition more frequently than nonrusticated participants, with the former group reporting a greater material (but not psychological) change in their lives due to this collective transition than the latter group. Second, material change predicted the degree to which the self-nominated important events served as temporal landmarks in event dating. Third, we observed that the events that people typically considered important and those that typically served as temporal landmarks changed as a function of age but displayed the similar temporal distributions. We conclude by considering the theoretical implications of these findings.