The size of the Fontan population with end-stage heart failure is growing. In this population, heart transplantation has been the only option. This study sought to investigate the efficacy of ...ventricular assist device (VAD) support in Fontan patients.
We conducted a retrospective study of Fontan patients in the Advanced Cardiac Therapies Improving Outcomes Network. We evaluated patient characteristics, and the clinical and physiologic outcomes after VAD implantation.
We identified 45 Fontan patients implanted with VAD. The average age of patients was 10 years (interquartile range: 4.5-18) and 30% were female. The majority had a morphologic right ventricle (69%), moderate or greater ventricular dysfunction (83%), and moderate or greater atrioventricular valve regurgitation (65%). The majority of implants were as a bridge to transplantation (76%), and the majority of patients were Interagency Registry for Mechanically Assisted Circulatory Support Profile 2 (56%). The most commonly employed device was the Medtronic HeartWare HVAD (56%). A total of 13 patients were discharged on device support, and 67% of patients experienced adverse events, the most common of which were neurologic (25%). At 1 year after device implantation, the rate of transplantation was 69.5%, 9.2% of patients continued to be VAD supported, and 21.3% of patients had died. Hemodynamically, VAD was effective in decreasing both Fontan and ventricular end-diastolic pressures in some individuals.
VAD is effective in supporting patients with end-stage Fontan failure awaiting heart transplantation. Future research should focus on identifying clinical and physiologic characteristics predictive of a favorable response to VAD support.
There is a striking association between human cholestatic liver disease (CLD) and inflammatory bowel disease. However, the functional implications for intestinal microbiota and inflammasome-mediated ...innate immune response in CLD remain elusive. Here we investigated the functional role of gut-liver crosstalk for CLD in the murine Mdr2 knockout
model resembling human primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC).
Male
,
crossed with hepatocyte-specific deletion of caspase-8 (
/Casp8
) and wild-type (WT) control mice were housed for 8 or 52 weeks, respectively, to characterise the impact of Mdr2 deletion on liver and gut including bile acid and microbiota profiling. To block caspase activation, a pan-caspase inhibitor (IDN-7314) was administered. Finally, the functional role of
-associated intestinal dysbiosis was studied by microbiota transfer experiments.
mice displayed an unfavourable intestinal microbiota signature and pronounced NLRP3 inflammasome activation within the gut-liver axis. Intestinal dysbiosis in
mice prompted intestinal barrier dysfunction and increased bacterial translocation amplifying the hepatic NLRP3-mediated innate immune response. Transfer of
microbiota into healthy WT control mice induced significant liver injury in recipient mice, highlighting the causal role of intestinal dysbiosis for disease progression. Strikingly, IDN-7314 dampened inflammasome activation, ameliorated liver injury, reversed serum bile acid profile and cholestasis-associated microbiota signature.
MDR2-associated cholestasis triggers intestinal dysbiosis. In turn, translocation of endotoxin into the portal vein and subsequent NLRP3 inflammasome activation contribute to higher liver injury. This process does not essentially depend on caspase-8 in hepatocytes, but can be blocked by IDN-7314.
The particle size effect on torrefaction of pine particles and formation of torrefied pellets has been studied in a thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) and a tubular fixed bed reactor. The fixed bed ...reactor was also used to produce torrefied samples for a single-die press unit for the densification test. Both the TGA and fixed bed reactor torrefaction test results showed that the torrefaction rate was affected by the particle size, especially at high temperatures. Although the temperature gradient inside particles smaller than 1 mm is very small during torrefaction, the internal diffusion of generated vapors inside particles imposes an impact on the global torrefaction reaction rate. The hard core or nonshrinkage particle model with a first order torrefaction reaction can predict the reaction data reasonably well, with the data-fitted effective vapor diffusivity coefficient. The densification tests showed that more energy was required to make pellets from larger torrefied particles, while the water uptake and Meyer hardness tests of pellets revealed that good quality torrefied pellets could be obtained from fine torrefied sawdust particles.
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Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between ethical leadership and group-level performance outcomes and show that group value congruence and group trust play pivotal ...mediating roles in the relationship between ethical leadership and work group performance outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
To examine the proposed model, survey data from 116 branches of a baked goods and beverages chain located in Northern Taiwan were analyzed.
Findings
The results revealed that ethical leadership was positively and significantly related to group in-role performance and group helping behavior; the relationship was fully mediated by group value congruence and group trust after controlling for idealized influence leadership.
Research limitations/implications
This study features a cross-sectional study design, thus limiting the accuracy of inferences about causality.
Practical implications
The results of the current study revealed that ethical leadership behaviors enhance group trust. Hence, these leadership behaviors could be among the best and most appropriate practices to be implemented in China and Taiwan.
Originality/value
The data suggested that ethical leadership was associated with not only individual-level behavior but also group-level performance. Furthermore, this paper also uncovered the mediation mechanism through which ethical leadership enhances group performance.
This work reports a precise measurement of the reactor antineutrino flux using 2.2 million inverse beta decay (IBD) events collected with the Daya Bay near detectors in 1230 days. The dominant ...uncertainty on the neutron detection efficiency is reduced by 56% with respect to the previous measurement through a comprehensive neutron calibration and detailed data and simulation analysis. The new average IBD yield is determined to be (5.91±0.09)×10−43 cm2/fission with total uncertainty improved by 29%. The corresponding mean fission fractions from the four main fission isotopes U235, U238, Pu239, and Pu241 are 0.564, 0.076, 0.304, and 0.056, respectively. The ratio of measured to predicted antineutrino yield is found to be 0.952±0.014±0.023 (1.001±0.015±0.027) for the Huber-Mueller (ILL-Vogel) model, where the first and second uncertainty are experimental and theoretical model uncertainty, respectively. This measurement confirms the discrepancy between the world average of reactor antineutrino flux and the Huber-Mueller model.
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•Marine heatwaves cause a range of ecological impacts.•Consistent definition of marine heatwaves will advance comparison.•Metrics are defined to uniquely define these events.•Three recent marine ...heatwaves illustrate use of the metrics.•We recommend use of these metrics for future studies.
Marine heatwaves (MHWs) have been observed around the world and are expected to increase in intensity and frequency under anthropogenic climate change. A variety of impacts have been associated with these anomalous events, including shifts in species ranges, local extinctions and economic impacts on seafood industries through declines in important fishery species and impacts on aquaculture. Extreme temperatures are increasingly seen as important influences on biological systems, yet a consistent definition of MHWs does not exist. A clear definition will facilitate retrospective comparisons between MHWs, enabling the synthesis and a mechanistic understanding of the role of MHWs in marine ecosystems. Building on research into atmospheric heatwaves, we propose both a general and specific definition for MHWs, based on a hierarchy of metrics that allow for different data sets to be used in identifying MHWs. We generally define a MHW as a prolonged discrete anomalously warm water event that can be described by its duration, intensity, rate of evolution, and spatial extent. Specifically, we consider an anomalously warm event to be a MHW if it lasts for five or more days, with temperatures warmer than the 90th percentile based on a 30-year historical baseline period. This structure provides flexibility with regard to the description of MHWs and transparency in communicating MHWs to a general audience. The use of these metrics is illustrated for three 21st century MHWs; the northern Mediterranean event in 2003, the Western Australia ‘Ningaloo Niño’ in 2011, and the northwest Atlantic event in 2012. We recommend a specific quantitative definition for MHWs to facilitate global comparisons and to advance our understanding of these phenomena.
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Searches for a light sterile neutrino have been performed independently by the MINOS and the Daya Bay experiments using the muon (anti)neutrino and electron antineutrino disappearance channels, ...respectively. In this Letter, results from both experiments are combined with those from the Bugey-3 reactor neutrino experiment to constrain oscillations into light sterile neutrinos. The three experiments are sensitive to complementary regions of parameter space, enabling the combined analysis to probe regions allowed by the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) and MiniBooNE experiments in a minimally extended four-neutrino flavor framework. Stringent limits on sin^{2}2θ_{μe} are set over 6 orders of magnitude in the sterile mass-squared splitting Δm_{41}^{2}. The sterile-neutrino mixing phase space allowed by the LSND and MiniBooNE experiments is excluded for Δm_{41}^{2}<0.8 eV^{2} at 95% CL_{s}.
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The Virgo Environmental Survey Tracing Ionised Gas Emission (VESTIGE) is a blind narrow-band H
α
+ NII imaging survey carried out with MegaCam at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. During pilot ...observations taken in the spring of 2016 we observed NGC 4330, an intermediate mass (
M
*
≃ 10
9.8
M
⊙
) edge-on star forming spiral currently falling into the core of the Virgo cluster. While previous H
α
observations showed a clumpy complex of ionised gas knots outside the galaxy disc, new deep observations revealed a low surface brightness ~10 kpc tail exhibiting a peculiar filamentary structure. The filaments are remarkably parallel to one another and clearly indicate the direction of motion of the galaxy in the Virgo potential. Motivated by the detection of these features which indicate ongoing gas stripping, we collected literature photometry in 15 bands from the far-UV to the far-IR and deep optical long-slit spectroscopy using the FORS2 instrument at the ESO Very Large Telescope. Using a newly developed Monte Carlo code that jointly fits spectroscopy and photometry, we reconstructed the star formation histories in apertures along the major axis of the galaxy. Our results have been validated against the output of CIGALE, a fitting code which has been previously used for similar studies. We found a clear outside-in gradient with radius of the time when the quenching event started: the outermost radii were stripped ~500 Myr ago, while the stripping reached the inner 5 kpc from the centre in the last 100 Myr. Regions at even smaller radii are currently still forming stars fueled by the presence of HI and H
2
gas. When compared to statistical studies of the quenching timescales in the local Universe we find that ram pressure stripping of the cold gas is an effective mechanism to reduce the transformation times for galaxies falling into massive clusters. Future systematic studies of all the active galaxies observed by VESTIGE in the Virgo cluster will extend these results to a robust statistical framework.
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Magnetars are strongly magnetized, isolated neutron stars
with magnetic fields up to around 10
gauss, luminosities of approximately 10
-10
ergs per second and rotation periods of about 0.3-12.0 s. ...Very energetic giant flares from galactic magnetars (peak luminosities of 10
-10
ergs per second, lasting approximately 0.1 s) have been detected in hard X-rays and soft γ-rays
, and only one has been detected from outside our galaxy
. During such giant flares, quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) with low (less than 150 hertz) and high (greater than 500 hertz) frequencies have been observed
, but their statistical significance has been questioned
. High-frequency QPOs have been seen only during the tail phase of the flare
. Here we report the observation of two broad QPOs at approximately 2,132 hertz and 4,250 hertz in the main peak of a giant γ-ray flare
in the direction of the NGC 253 galaxy
, disappearing after 3.5 milliseconds. The flare was detected on 15 April 2020 by the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor instrument
aboard the International Space Station, which was the only instrument that recorded the main burst phase (0.8-3.2 milliseconds) in the full energy range (50 × 10
to 40 × 10
electronvolts) without suffering from saturation effects such as deadtime and pile-up. Along with sudden spectral variations, these extremely high-frequency oscillations in the burst peak are a crucial component that will aid our understanding of magnetar giant flares.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK, ZAGLJ
This Letter reports an improved search for light sterile neutrino mixing in the electron antineutrino disappearance channel with the full configuration of the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment. ...With an additional 404 days of data collected in eight antineutrino detectors, this search benefits from 3.6 times the statistics available to the previous publication, as well as from improvements in energy calibration and background reduction. A relative comparison of the rate and energy spectrum of reactor antineutrinos in the three experimental halls yields no evidence of sterile neutrino mixing in the 2×10^{-4}≲|Δm_{41}^{2}|≲0.3 eV^{2} mass range. The resulting limits on sin^{2}2θ_{14} are improved by approx imately a factor of 2 over previous results and constitute the most stringent constraints to date in the |Δm_{41}^{2}|≲0.2 eV^{2} region.
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