Starch was extracted from the tubers of two cocoyam (
Xanthosoma sagittifolium) cultivars (KCX01 and KCX02) planted in three different seasons (summer, winter and spring). Physicochemical properties ...of the starch were determined in order to investigate the seasonal effect on cocoyam starch. Cocoyam tubers planted in the summer showed higher contents of total starch than tubers planted in other seasons. Starches from both cultivars of cocoyam tubers planted in the summer season had significantly (
p
<
0.05) higher average granule sizes, higher contents of amylose, higher ratios of short-to-long chains of amylopectin, and lower values of the average degree of polymerization (DP) of the chain length distribution profiles. The distinct properties of the fine structure of cocoyam starch from tubers planted in summer season were associated with lower values of onset and peak temperatures and enthalpies of gelatinization.
The overlap between the spectroscopic Galactic Archaeology with HERMES (GALAH) survey and Gaia provides a high-dimensional chemodynamical space of unprecedented size. We present a first analysis of a ...subset of this overlap, of 7066 dwarf, turn-off, and sub-giant stars. These stars have spectra from the GALAH survey and high parallax precision from the Gaia DR1 Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution. We investigate correlations between chemical compositions, ages, and kinematics for this sample. Stellar parameters and elemental abundances are derived from the GALAH spectra with the spectral synthesis code SPECTROSCOPY MADE EASY. We determine kinematics and dynamics, including action angles, from the Gaia astrometry and GALAH radial velocities. Stellar masses and ages are determined with Bayesian isochrone matching, using our derived stellar parameters and absolute magnitudes. We report measurements of Li, C, O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, K, Ca, Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Y, as well as Ba and we note that we have employed non-LTE calculations for Li, O, Al, and Fe. We show that the use of astrometric and photometric data improves the accuracy of the derived spectroscopic parameters, especially log g. Focusing our investigation on the correlations between stellar age, iron abundance Fe/H, and mean alpha-enhancement α/Fe of the magnitude-selected sample, we recover the result that stars of the high-α sequence are typically older than stars in the low-α sequence, the latter spanning iron abundances of −0.7 < Fe/H < +0.5. While these two sequences become indistinguishable in α/Fe vs. Fe/H at the metal-rich regime, we find that age can be used to separate stars from the extended high-α and the low-α sequence even in this regime. When dissecting the sample by stellar age, we find that the old stars (>8 Gyr) have lower angular momenta Lz than the Sun, which implies that they are on eccentric orbits and originate from the inner disc. Contrary to some previous smaller scale studies we find a continuous evolution in the high-α-sequence up to super-solar Fe/H rather than a gap, which has been interpreted as a separate “high-α metal-rich” population. Stars in our sample that are younger than 10 Gyr, are mainly found on the low α-sequence and show a gradient in Lz from low Fe/H (Lz > Lz, ⊙) towards higher Fe/H (Lz < Lz, ⊙), which implies that the stars at the ends of this sequence are likely not originating from the close solar vicinity.
As a rare systemic autoinflammatory disease, adult-onset Still's disease (AOSD) has heterogeneous clinical manifestations, response to treatment and outcome. This study tried to assess the clinical ...characteristics, laboratory tests, and treatments of Chinese AOSD patients, and make a retrospective analysis.
We collected from 7 hospitals in China a total of 517 Chinese patients with AOSD who satisfied the Yamaguchi criteria. We retrospectively evaluated their clinical features, laboratory tests, treatments and compared them with published data from different studies. All the data in this study were from medical records and further statistic analyses.
We evaluated a total of 517 AOSD patients, 72% female, average age of onset was 37.7; spiking fever, rash and arthralgia occurred in 472 (91.3%), 413 (79.9%), 378 (73.1%) cases, respectively. There were 439/513 (85.6%) cases with leukocytosis and 456/476 (95.8%) cases with raised serum ferritin. The highest frequently used medications and regimens for remission were glucocorticoids (498/517, 96.3%), methotrexate (273/517, 52.8%) and hydroxychloroquine (174/517, 33.7%). 84.4%. 357/423 of AOSD cases were able to achieve initial remission with different regimens, mostly including glucocorticoids, methotrexate or hydroxychloroquine. 47.2% of them (244/517) received 30<D≤60 mg/d of prednisone to reach final clinical remission. Further analysis indicated that risk factors, such as skin rash, pericarditis, splenomegaly and delayed diagnosis, are highly related to the dosage of prednisone for remission.
Glucocorticoids are mostly selected to induce remission in China and half of them required ~0.5-1mg/kgbw prednisone. In patients with skin rash, pericarditis, splenomegaly or delayed diagnosis, a higher dosage of prednisone was needed to obtain remission.
The short- and long-term effects of prophylactic hemodialysis (HD) immediately after cardiovascular catheterizations on renal function in patients with severe baseline renal insufficiency remain ...unknown though previous studies reported non-beneficial very-short-term effect in less severe patients.
Patients who had pre-procedural serum creatinine (Scr) between 2.5 and 5.5 mg/dl were retrospectively studied. Twenty of them (14 M/6 F, aged 69±2 years) had received prophylactic HD after radiocontrast exposure and constituted the HD group. Another 20 patients were case-matched to the baseline demographics of the HD group and served as the non-HD group. The baseline Scr were 3.9±0.2 and 3.5±0.2 mg/dl, respectively (
p=NS). Although the Scr at 3 months was significantly higher in the HD group (4.3±0.3 vs. 3.4±0.2 mg/dl,
p=0.02), the absolute and percentage increments from baseline to 3 months (0.4±0.2 vs. 0.0±0.2 mg/dl,
p=NS, and 11±5% vs. 1±7%,
p=NS, respectively) and 6 months (0.6±0.3 vs. 0.4±0.4 mg/dl,
p=NS, and 18±8% vs. 8±10%,
p=NS, respectively) were not statistically different. Patients who developed end-stage renal disease requiring permanent HD at 1 year were also similar in both groups (four vs. three, respectively,
p=NS).
Our study confirmed that prophylactic HD immediately after contrast media administration in catheterizations failed to affect the short- and long-term renal and clinical outcomes even in patients with severe baseline renal insufficiency.
Objective
Multiple trials have demonstrated the metabolic effects of sodium/glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors in patients regardless of diabetes status, and recent trials have been conducted ...on the combined sodium/glucose cotransporter 1 and sodium/glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT1/SGLT2) inhibitors. Therefore, a meta‐analysis was conducted to investigate the weight reduction effects and dose‐response relationship of SGLT inhibitors and to assess the relative efficacy of SGLT1/SGLT2 inhibitors.
Methods
Four electronic databases (PubMed, Embase, Cochrane, and Scopus) were searched on November 21, 2020, for articles published from January 1, 2000, up to November 21, 2020.
Results
In total, 116 randomized‐controlled trials were included, with a combined cohort of 98,497 patients. Overall, patients had a mean weight reduction of −1.79 kg (95% CI: −1.93 to −1.66, p < 0.001) compared with placebo. This effect was observed across diabetes status, duration of follow‐up, various comorbidities, and all SGLT drug types. Mean BMI changes were −0.71 kg/m2 (95% CI: −0.94 to −0.47, p < 0.001) compared with placebo. Canagliflozin, empagliflozin, sotagliflozin, and licogliflozin showed a dose‐response relationship for mean weight change. Compared with SGLT2 inhibitors, SGLT1/SGLT2 inhibitors had a significantly larger reduction in weight.
Conclusions
SGLT inhibitors demonstrated weight reduction benefits in this meta‐analysis. Further studies are needed to clarify their role in weight management.
The orphan G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) GPR124/tumor endothelial marker 5 is highly expressed in central nervous system (CNS) endothelium. Here, we show that complete null or ...endothelial-specific GPR124 deletion resulted in embryonic lethality from CNS-specific angiogenesis arrest in forebrain and neural tube. Conversely, GPR124 overexpression throughout all adult vascular beds produced CNS-specific hyperproliferative vascular malformations. In vivo, GPR124 functioned cell-autonomously in endothelium to regulate sprouting, migration, and developmental expression of the blood-brain barrier marker Glut1, whereas in vitro, GPR124 mediated Cdc42-dependent directional migration to forebrain-derived, vascular endothelial growth factor-independent cues. Our results demonstrate CNS-specific angiogenesis regulation by an endothelial receptor and illuminate functions of the poorly understood adhesion GPCR subfamily. Further, the functional tropism of GPR124 marks this receptor as a therapeutic target for CNS-related vascular pathologies.
Abstract
A1689-zD1 is one of the most distant galaxies, discovered with the aid of gravitational lensing, providing us with an important opportunity to study galaxy formation in the very early ...universe. In this study, we report the detection of C
ii
158
μ
m and O
iii
88
μ
m emission lines of A1689-zD1 in the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Bands 6 and 8. We measure the redshift of this galaxy as
z
sys
= 7.133 ± 0.005 based on the C
ii
and O
iii
emission lines, consistent with that adopted by Bakx et al. The observed
L
O
III
/
L
C
II
ratio is 2.09 ± 0.09, higher than that of most of the local galaxies, but consistent with other
z
∼ 7 galaxies. The moderate spatial resolution of ALMA data provided us with a precious opportunity to investigate spatial variation of
L
O
III
/
L
C
II
. In contrast to the average value of 2.09, we find a much higher
L
O
III
/
L
C
II
of ∼7 at the center of the galaxy. This spatial variation of
L
O
III
/
L
C
II
was seldom reported for other high-
z
galaxies. It is also interesting that the peak of the ratio does not overlap with optical peaks. Possible physical reasons include a central active galactic nucleus, shock heating from merging, and a starburst. Our moderate spatial resolution data also reveal that in addition to the observed two clumps shown in previous Hubble Space Telescope images, there is a redshifted segment to the west of the northern optical clump. This structure is consistent with previous claims that A1689-zD1 is a merging galaxy, but with the northern redshifted part being some ejected material, or that the northern redshifted material stems from a third more highly obscured region of the galaxy.
In human hepatoma cell line Hep3B/T2, the human heat-shock-inducible gene hsp70 could be induced by insulin. The dose-dependent insulin effect correlates very well with the dissociation constant of ...the insulin receptor, indicating that the insulin effect is mediated by the insulin receptor. The expression of hsp70 gene was neither significantly induced by growth factors of epidermal and platelet-derived growth factors, nor by tumor promoter, calcium ionophore, cAMP, and glucocorticoids. These results indicate that the induction of expression of hsp70 gene by insulin is very specific and not cell cycle-related. Furthermore, the insulin-induced expression of hsp70 gene is transient, occurring specifically from 4 to 8 h after insulin addition.
The subthalamic nucleus (STN) has been adopted as a commonly used surgical target in deep brain stimulation (DBS) procedures for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. Many techniques have been ...developed to facilitate STN DBS targeting, and consequently to improve the surgical outcome. In this work, we conducted a retrospective study on 10 patients who were treated with bilateral STN DBS to assess the target localization accuracy and precision of six methods in STN DBS surgery. A visualization and navigation system integrated with normalized functional and anatomical information was employed to perform the targeting procedures. Actual surgical target location determined by an experienced neurosurgeon with pre-operative image-guided surgical target/trajectory planning and intra-operative electrophysiological exploration and confirmation was considered as the “gold standard” in this evaluation and was compared with those localized using each of the six targeting methods. The mean distance between the actual surgical targets and those planned was 3.0 ± 1.3mm, 3.2 ± 1.1mm, 2.9 ± 1.1mm, 2.7 ± 1.2mm, 2.5 ± 1.0mm, and 1.7 ± 0.8mm for targeting approaches based on T2-weighted magnetic resonance image (MRI), brain atlas, T1 and T2 maps, electrophysiological database, collection of final surgical targets of previous patients, and the combination of these functional and anatomical data respectively. The results demonstrated that the use of functional data along with anatomical data provides reliable and accurate target position for STN DBS.
For the first time, we demonstrate the smallest, fully functional 32Mb 6-T high density SRAM reported in literature with scaled bulk FinFETs for CMOS technology beyond 10nm node. Scaled FinFET ...devices exhibit excellent electrostatic with DIBL of <;45mV/V and sub-threshold swing of <;65mV/decade and competitive drive current. Static noise margin of ~90mV for the high density SRAM operated down to 0.45V is achieved.
PDF
![ALMA Detections of [O iii] ...](http://api.summon.serialssolutions.com/2.0.0/image/issn/XR4PS5YY4K/0004-637X_1538-4357/small "ALMA Detections of [O iii] and [C ii] Emission Lines From A1689-zD1 at z = 7.13")
