Silica aerogels have attracted great interest for several decades because of their super thermal insulation property, but their fragility has limited their application in every-day products. Here we ...describe a method to fabricate flexible and thermally-insulated composites by using a flexible poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) matrix and by preventing matrix impregnation of the silica aerogel pores. The silica aerogel was first mixed with ethanol to prevent impregnation of the silica aerogel pores with PDMS molecules. After composite fabrication, the ethanol was removed. The optimum PDMS composite had super thermal insulation (0.018 W/m·K) and was flame-retardant, in addition to being flexible. This method described here will facilitate the application of silica aerogel-incorporated composites as thermal insulation materials for products that require flexibility and flame-retardant properties.
Summary
Background
Tegoprazan is a novel potassium‐competitive acid blocker that has a fast onset of action and can control gastric pH for a prolonged period, which could offer clinical benefit in ...acid‐related disorders.
Aim
To confirm the non‐inferiority of tegoprazan to esomeprazole in patients with erosive oesophagitis (EE).
Methods
In this multicentre, randomised, double‐blind, parallel‐group comparison study, 302 Korean patients with endoscopically confirmed EE (Los Angeles Classification Grades A‐D) were randomly allocated to either tegoprazan (50 or 100 mg) or esomeprazole (40 mg) treatment groups for 4 or 8 weeks. The primary endpoint was the cumulative proportion of patients with healed EE confirmed by endoscopy up to 8 weeks from treatment initiation. Symptoms, safety and tolerability were also assessed.
Results
The cumulative healing rates at week 8 were 98.9% (91/92), 98.9% (90/91) and 98.9% (87/88) for tegoprazan 50 mg, tegoprazan 100 mg and esomeprazole 40 mg, respectively. Both doses of tegoprazan were non‐inferior to esomeprazole 40 mg. The incidence of adverse events was comparable among the groups, and tegoprazan was well‐tolerated.
Conclusion
Once daily administration of tegoprazan 50 or 100 mg showed non‐inferior efficacy in healing EE and tolerability to that of esomeprazole 40 mg.
Ultrafast lasers are an increasingly important tool to control and stabilize emergent phases in quantum materials. Among a variety of possible excitation protocols, a particularly intriguing route is ...the direct light engineering of microscopic electronic parameters, such as the electron hopping and the local Coulomb repulsion (HubbardU). In this work, we use time-resolved x-ray absorption spectroscopy to demonstrate the light-induced renormalization of the HubbardUin a cuprate superconductor,La1.905Ba0.095CuO4. We show that intense femtosecond laser pulses induce a substantial redshift of the upper Hubbard band while leaving the Zhang-Rice singlet energy unaffected. By comparing the experimental data to time-dependent spectra of single- and three-band Hubbard models, we assign this effect to an approximately 140-meV reduction of the on-site Coulomb repulsion on the copper sites. Our demonstration of a dynamical HubbardUrenormalization in a copper oxide paves the way to a novel strategy for the manipulation of superconductivity and magnetism as well as to the realization of other long-range-ordered phases in light-driven quantum materials.
Since the etiology of diabetic chronic kidney disease (CKD) is multifactorial, studies on DNA methylation for kidney function deterioration have rarely been performed despite the need for an ...epigenetic approach. Therefore, this study aimed to identify epigenetic markers associated with CKD progression based on the decline in the estimated glomerular filtration rate in diabetic CKD in Korea. An epigenome-wide association study was performed using whole blood samples from 180 CKD recruited from the KNOW-CKD cohort. Pyrosequencing was also performed on 133 CKD participants as an external replication analysis. Functional analyses, including the analysis of disease-gene networks, reactome pathways, and protein-protein interaction networks, were conducted to identify the biological mechanisms of CpG sites. A phenome-wide association study was performed to determine the associations between CpG sites and other phenotypes. Two epigenetic markers, cg10297223 on AGTR1 and cg02990553 on KRT28 indicated a potential association with diabetic CKD progression. Based on the functional analyses, other phenotypes (blood pressure and cardiac arrhythmia for AGTR1) and biological pathways (keratinization and cornified envelope for KRT28) related to CKD were also identified. This study suggests a potential association between the cg10297223 and cg02990553 and the progression of diabetic CKD in Koreans. Nevertheless, further validation is needed through additional studies.
Early detection and proper management of chronic kidney disease (CKD) can delay progression to end-stage kidney disease. We applied metabolomics to discover novel biomarkers to predict the risk of ...deterioration in patients with different causes of CKD. We enrolled non-dialytic diabetic nephropathy (DMN, n = 124), hypertensive nephropathy (HTN, n = 118), and polycystic kidney disease (PKD, n = 124) patients from the KNOW-CKD cohort. Within each disease subgroup, subjects were categorized as progressors (P) or non-progressors (NP) based on the median eGFR slope. P and NP pairs were randomly selected after matching for age, sex, and baseline eGFR. Targeted metabolomics was performed to quantify 188 metabolites in the baseline serum samples. We selected ten progression-related biomarkers for DMN and nine biomarkers each for HTN and PKD. Clinical parameters showed good ability to predict DMN (AUC 0.734); however, this tendency was not evident for HTN (AUC 0.659) or PKD (AUC 0.560). Models constructed with selected metabolites and clinical parameters had better ability to predict CKD progression than clinical parameters only. When selected metabolites were used in combination with clinical indicators, random forest prediction models for CKD progression were constructed with AUCs of 0.826, 0.872, and 0.834 for DMN, HTN, and PKD, respectively. Select novel metabolites identified in this study can help identify high-risk CKD patients who may benefit from more aggressive medical treatment.
eGFR slope has been used as a surrogate outcome for progression of CKD. However, genetic markers associated with eGFR slope among patients with CKD were unknown. We aimed to identify genetic ...susceptibility loci associated with eGFR slope. A two-phase genome-wide association study identified single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in TPPP and FAT1-LINC02374 , and 22 of them were used to derive polygenic risk scores that mark the decline of eGFR by disrupting binding of nearby transcription factors. This work is the first to identify the impact of TPPP and FAT1-LINC02374 on CKD progression, providing predictive markers for the decline of eGFR in patients with CKD.
The incidence of CKD is associated with genetic factors. However, genetic markers associated with the progression of CKD have not been fully elucidated.
We conducted a genome-wide association study among 1738 patients with CKD, mainly from the KoreaN cohort study for Outcomes in patients With CKD. The outcome was eGFR slope. We performed a replication study for discovered single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with P <10 -6 in 2498 patients with CKD from the Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort study. Several expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) studies, pathway enrichment analyses, exploration of epigenetic architecture, and predicting disruption of transcription factor (TF) binding sites explored potential biological implications of the loci. We developed and evaluated the effect of polygenic risk scores (PRS) on incident CKD outcomes.
SNPs in two novel loci, TPPP and FAT1-LINC02374 , were replicated (rs59402340 in TPPP , Pdiscovery =7.11×10 -7 , PCRIC =8.13×10 -4 , Pmeta =7.23×10 -8 ; rs28629773 in FAT1-LINC02374 , Pdiscovery =6.08×10 -7 , PCRIC =4.33×10 -2 , Pmeta =1.87×10 -7 ). The eQTL studies revealed that the replicated SNPs regulated the expression level of nearby genes associated with kidney function. Furthermore, these SNPs were near gene enhancer regions and predicted to disrupt the binding of TFs. PRS based on the independently significant top 22 SNPs were significantly associated with CKD outcomes.
This study demonstrates that SNP markers in the TPPP and FAT1-LINC02374 loci could be predictive markers for the decline of eGFR in patients with CKD.
National Open University, Korea-Exposure to metalworking fluids (MWF) mist and cross-shift decrements in peak expiratory flow (PEF) were evaluated and their relationship was analyzed using several ...statistical methods. The objective of this study was to assess workers, exposure to MWF mineral mist and to find the MWF mist level for predicting cross-shift decrements in PEE A total of 158 workers handling water-soluble MWF had MWF mist exposures with an arithmetic mean (AM) of 0.4 mg/m3 (range：LOD-13.5 mg/m3), and 9.2% of workers (219) showed a cross-shift decline greater than 10% in PEF. MWF mist exposure and cross-shift decrements in PEF that were matched (n=1 13) were linearly significantly associated (R2=0.036, p=0.045) although the correlation was quite weak (r=0.189). We found a slight increase in cross-shift decrements in PEF with increased exposure to MWF aerosol mass concentration. The MWF mist exposure level was categorized into two or three groups by the cutoffs of either the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's Recommended Exposure Level (NIOSH REL: 0.5 mg/m3) or the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists Notice of Intended Change (ACGIH NIC：0.2 mg/m3). The cross-shift decrement in PEF observed from workers exposed to ≧0.2 mg/m3 was slightly higher than that of the exposure level of ≦0.2 Mg/M3 at p=0.207 while significant differences among categorized exposure groups (2 categories, <0.5 and ≧0.5 mg/m3, or 3 categories, <0.2, 0.2-0.5 and ≧0.5 mg/m3) were not detected. In order to find out whether there is a specific level that allows us to predict cross-shift decrements in PEF, several statistical models were constructed. Logistic regression showed that the MWF concentration, whether treated as a continuous variable or a categorical variable, was not significantly associated with cross-shift decrements dichotomized by a cutoff of either 10% or 15% in PER We couldn't find evidence of a significant PEF decrement increase with increasing exposure category. Thus, we concluded that PEF decrements measured in workers exposed to MWF mist concentrations greater than either 0.2 mg/m3 or 0.5 mg/m3 was not significantly different from those found in workers exposed to lower MWF mist concentrations. Further study is needed to establish the level of MWF mineral mist predicting non-malignant resairatorv health effects.
Ultrafast lasers are an increasingly important tool to control and stabilize emergent phases in quantum materials. Among a variety of possible excitation protocols, a particularly intriguing route is ...the direct light-engineering of microscopic electronic parameters, such as the electron hopping and the local Coulomb repulsion (Hubbard \(U\)). In this work, we use time-resolved x-ray absorption spectroscopy to demonstrate the light-induced renormalization of the Hubbard \(U\) in a cuprate superconductor, La\(_{1.905}\)Ba\(_{0.095}\)CuO\(_4\). We show that intense femtosecond laser pulses induce a substantial redshift of the upper Hubbard band, while leaving the Zhang-Rice singlet energy unaffected. By comparing the experimental data to time-dependent spectra of single- and three-band Hubbard models, we assign this effect to a \(\sim140\) meV reduction of the onsite Coulomb repulsion on the copper sites. Our demonstration of a dynamical Hubbard \(U\) renormalization in a copper oxide paves the way to a novel strategy for the manipulation of superconductivity, magnetism, as well as to the realization of other long-range-ordered phases in light-driven quantum materials.
A recent Letter, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 161804 (2016), claims that for typical dark matter axion search experiments using cylindrical haloscopes, the power gain depends on the relative position of a ...cavity with respect to the center of a solenoidal magnetic field due to different electric and magnetic couplings. We review this Letter and find a misinterpretation of the coordinate system. We correct this and see no dependence of the coupling strength on the cavity location and the electric and magnetic energies stored in a cavity mode are equal.
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