Liver cirrhosis is a leading cause of death and effects millions of people in the United States. Early mortality prediction among patients with cirrhosis might give healthcare providers more ...opportunity to effectively treat the condition. We hypothesized that laboratory test results and other related diagnoses would be associated with mortality in this population. Our another assumption was that a deep learning model could outperform the current Model for End Stage Liver disease (MELD) score in predicting mortality.
We utilized electronic health record data from 34,575 patients with a diagnosis of cirrhosis from a large medical center to study associations with mortality. Three time-windows of mortality (365 days, 180 days and 90 days) and two cases with different number of variables (all 41 available variables and 4 variables in MELD-NA) were studied. Missing values were imputed using multiple imputation for continuous variables and mode for categorical variables. Deep learning and machine learning algorithms, i.e., deep neural networks (DNN), random forest (RF) and logistic regression (LR) were employed to study the associations between baseline features such as laboratory measurements and diagnoses for each time window by 5-fold cross validation method. Metrics such as area under the receiver operating curve (AUC), overall accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity were used to evaluate models.
Performance of models comprising all variables outperformed those with 4 MELD-NA variables for all prediction cases and the DNN model outperformed the LR and RF models. For example, the DNN model achieved an AUC of 0.88, 0.86, and 0.85 for 90, 180, and 365-day mortality respectively as compared to the MELD score, which resulted in corresponding AUCs of 0.81, 0.79, and 0.76 for the same instances. The DNN and LR models had a significantly better f1 score compared to MELD at all time points examined.
Other variables such as alkaline phosphatase, alanine aminotransferase, and hemoglobin were also top informative features besides the 4 MELD-Na variables. Machine learning and deep learning models outperformed the current standard of risk prediction among patients with cirrhosis. Advanced informatics techniques showed promise for risk prediction in patients with cirrhosis.
Abstract
Genomics has benefited from an explosion in affordable high-throughput technology for whole-genome sequencing. The regulatory and functional aspects in non-coding regions may be an important ...contributor to oncogenesis. Whole-genome tumor-normal paired alignments were used to examine the non-coding regions in five cancer types and two races. Both a sliding window and a binning strategy were introduced to uncover areas of higher than expected variation for additional study. We show that the majority of cancer associated mutations in 154 whole-genome sequences covering breast invasive carcinoma, colon adenocarcinoma, kidney renal papillary cell carcinoma, lung adenocarcinoma and uterine corpus endometrial carcinoma cancers and two races are found outside of the coding region (4 432 885 in non-gene regions versus 1 412 731 in gene regions). A pan-cancer analysis found significantly mutated windows (292 to 3881 in count) demonstrating that there are significant numbers of large mutated regions in the non-coding genome. The 59 significantly mutated windows were found in all studied races and cancers. These offer 16 regions ripe for additional study within 12 different chromosomes—2, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 16, 18, 20, 21 and X. Many of these regions were found in centromeric locations. The X chromosome had the largest set of universal windows that cluster almost exclusively in Xq11.1—an area linked to chromosomal instability and oncogenesis. Large consecutive clusters (super windows) were found (19 to 114 in count) providing further evidence that large mutated regions in the genome are influencing cancer development. We show remarkable similarity in highly mutated non-coding regions across both cancer and race.
Nanosized (1–
x
)KNbO
3
–
x
(
BaNi
1
2
Nb
1
2
O
3
-
δ
) (KBNNO) (
x
= 0–0.2) powders with an interval of 0.05 were prepared by solution combustion method using citric acid as the fuel. The effect of ...fuel to oxidizer (F/O) ratio on phase evolution and combustion process was studied and we observed that complete phase formation occurs at 600°C for
φ
e
= 0.55. XRD and Raman analysis confirm that with increase in dopant content, gradual changes occur in phase transition from orthorhombic to cubic. Ba, Ni co-doping made KNbO
3
, visible light active, which was confirmed by UV–Vis absorption spectra. Photocatalytic experiments show that KBNNO 0.1 exhibited better photocatalytic activity in degrading RhB under visible light irradiation compared to KNbO
3
and P25 (commercial TiO
2
-based photocatalyst). The rate constant of KBNNO 0.1 for RhB degradation is 3.17 and 1.4 times higher than KNbO
3
and P25, respectively, under similar visible light illumination. The mechanisms behind photocatalytic activity and photostability have also been studied for the best composition.
The unique redox cycle of NiII(dtc)2, where dtc– is N,N-diethyldithiocarbamate, in acetonitrile displays 2e– redox chemistry upon oxidation from NiII(dtc)2 → NiIV(dtc)3+ but 1e– redox chemistry upon ...reduction from NiIV(dtc)3+ → NiIII(dtc)3 → NiII(dtc)2. The underlying reasons for this cycle lie in the structural changes that occur between four-coordinate NiII(dtc)2 and six-coordinate NiIV(dtc)3+. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) experiments show that these 1e– and 2e– pathways can be controlled by the addition of pyridine-based ligands (L) to the electrolyte solution. Specifically, the addition of these ligands resulted in a 1e– ligand-coupled electron transfer (LCET) redox wave, which produced a mixture of pyridine-bound Ni(III) complexes, NiIII(dtc)2(L)+, and NiIII(dtc)2(L)2+. Although the complexes could not be isolated, electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) measurements using a chemical oxidant in the presence of 4-methoxypyridine confirmed the formation of trans-NiIII(dtc)2(L)2+. Density functional theory calculations were also used to support the formation of pyridine coordinated Ni(III) complexes through structural optimization and calculation of EPR parameters. The reversibility of the LCET process was found to be dependent on both the basicity of the pyridine ligand and the scan rate of the CV experiment. For strongly basic pyridines (e.g., 4-methoxypyridine) and/or fast scan rates, high reversibility was achieved, allowing NiIII(dtc)2(L) x + to be reduced directly back to NiII(dtc)2 + xL. For weakly basic pyridines (e.g., 3-bromopyridine) and/or slow scan rates, NiIII(dtc)2(L) x + decayed irreversibly to form NiIV(dtc)3+. Detailed kinetics studies using CV reveal that NiIII(dtc)2(L)+ and NiIII(dtc)2(L)2+ decay by parallel pathways due to a small equilibrium between the two species. The rate constants for ligand dissociation (NiIII(dtc)2(L)2+ → NiIII(dtc)2(L)+ + L) along with decomposition of NiIII(dtc)2(L)+ and NiIII(dtc)2(L)2+ species were found to increase with the electron-withdrawing character of the pyridine ligand, indicating pyridine dissociation is likely the rate-limiting step for decomposition of these complexes. These studies establish a general trend for kinetically trapping 1e– intermediates along a 2e– oxidation path.
The heterojunction composites (Ba
0.85
Ca
0.15
)(Zr
0.1
Ti
0.9
)TiO
3
(BCZT)/Bi
2
O
3
with different weight ratios (75:25, 50:50 and 25:75) were successfully synthesized by solid-state route. ...As-synthesized composite powders were characterized by XRD, FESEM, EDX, UV–visible and photoluminescence spectroscopy. Photocatalytic activity evaluation was carried out by the degradation of rhodamine B (RhB) under UV and visible light exposure. The results show that the heterojunction composites BCZT/Bi
2
O
3
display better photocatalytic activity than pure BCZT or Bi
2
O
3
. Among all the heterojunction composites, BCZT/Bi
2
O
3
(50:50) composite exhibits a lower recombination rate of electron–hole pair and shows the highest photocatalytic activity. The rate constant of BCZT/Bi
2
O
3
(50:50) composite for RhB degradation is 15.4 and 2.1 times higher than those of pure BCZT and Bi
2
O
3
under visible light irradiation, respectively. Finally, a possible mechanism for enhanced charge separation and photodegradation is proposed.
In the present study, first 0.9KNbO
3
–0.1BaNi
0.5
Nb
0.5
O
3
(KBNNO) nanosized powder was synthesized by solution combustion method and then a series of KBNNO:Ag
2
O and KBNNO:Bi
2
O
3
composites ...with varying weight ratios (75:25, 50:50, and 25:75) were prepared by a simple precipitation technique/solid-state method. Preparation method and processing temperature have significant effect on phase stability and interface formation. The structural, morphological and photoabsorption behaviour of the synthesized powders were studied systematically by XRD, TEM, XPS and UV–visible spectroscopy. The photocatalytic performance of the photocatalysts was evaluated for the degradation of rhodamine B (RhB) solution under visible light exposure. In particular, KBNNO:Ag
2
O composites exhibited better photodegradation of RhB. KBNNO:Ag
2
O (50:50) nanocomposite can completely mineralize the RhB in 25 min, whereas KBNNO:Bi
2
O
3
(25:75) can mineralize 96% of RhB in 45 min. The rate constant (
k
) for dye degradation of KBNNO:Ag
2
O (50:50) (0.113 min
−1
) sample showed the highest value which was 4.71 and 5.94 times better than that of KBNNO and Ag
2
O under visible light irradiation. The rate constant for KBNNO:Bi
2
O
3
(25:75) (0.048 min
−1
) exhibited the highest
k
value which is 1.94 and 3.13 times greater than that of KBNNO and Bi
2
O
3
under similar irradiation condition. The significant absorption in visible region and reduced recombination time of charge carriers in the composite than the parent materials were responsible for excellent photocatalytic properties. The mechanism for degradation was also studied in detail. Moreover, a reasonable degradation of 95% (on an average) was observed after five cycles, suggesting a good photocatalytic stability of the composites.
Pb-doped BiFeO3 powders were synthesized by simultaneous precipitation method and their dielectric and ferroelectric properties were investigated after sintering in air. Bulk densities up to 93% of ...theoretical density can be achieved with Pb-doping. The dielectric and ferroelectric properties also improved significantly with respect to pure BiFeO3 after Pb-doping.
Phase pure Lithium orthosilicate (Li4SiO4) nanopowder was synthesized by solution combustion method using glycine as the fuel and silicic acid as a silica source. The effect of the fuel-to-oxidizer ...ratio (Φe) (0.6–1.0) in the combustion process and phase evolution was studied. We found that by controlling the fuel-to-oxidizer ratio of the starting solution phase purity can be achieved at 700 °C. Li4SiO4 powder was also prepared by solid state method and phase purity was achieved at 800 °C. The surface area, powder morphology, sintering behavior and CO2 capture properties of the Li4SiO4 were investigated. The powder synthesized by solution combustion route showed higher surface area, sinterability and CO2 absorption capacity compared to the solid state route powder. It could be attributed to the nanostructured morphology of the particles. The grain size in the sintered sample could be kept well below 5 μm. The current report provides a novel method to fabricate lithium orthosilicate, and shows promise for application as high temperature CO2 absorption as well as solid breeder in fusion reactor.
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•Nanoscale Li4SiO4 powder prepared by glycine-nitrate solution combustion technique.•The effect of fuel-to-oxidizer ratio on combustion and phase evolution was studied.•Particle size, morphology, surface area was compared with solid-state route sample.•Combustion-derived powder shows improved CO2 absorption at high temperature.•Combustion route powder shows greater sinterability and smaller grain size (<5 μm).
Co-Ti co-substituted SrM hexagonal ferrite (SrCo1.5Ti1.5Fe9O19) was synthesized by sol-gel combustion and solid state route. The effects of sources of TiO2 raw materials; titanium tetra-isopropoxide ...(TTIP) and titanyl nitrate (TN) on the phase formation behavior and properties of the ferrite were studied. The thermal decomposition behavior of the gel was studied using TG-DSC. The phase formation behavior of the ferrite was studied by using X-ray powder diffraction and FTIR analysis. Phase formation was comparatively easier in the TN-based sol-gel process. The morphology of powder and sintered ferrite was investigated using scanning electron microscope. Magnetic properties like magnetization, coercivity, permeability, tan δµ and dielectric properties were investigated. The ferrite synthesized by sol-gel based chemical route showed higher saturation magnetization, permeability and permittivity compared to the ferrite synthesized by solid state route.
•SrCo1.5Ti1.5Fe9O19 ferrite was successfully prepared by sol–gel combustion process.•Sol-gel synthesis of the ferrite using titanyl nitrate has been reported first time.•Phase formation was easier in the titanyl nitrate based sol-gel process.•Better magneto-dielectric properties were observed in sol-gel processed ferrite.
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