There is an uncertainty about the association between intracranial aneurysms and aortic dissection. We aimed to determine the prevalence of intracranial aneurysms in patients with aortic dissection ...and evaluate the independent risk factors for the presence of intracranial aneurysms in these patients.
Seventy-one patients with a confirmed aortic dissection who underwent additional brain imaging were enrolled as the aortic dissection group, and 2118 healthy individuals with brain imaging, as controls. Demographic data were obtained from their medical records, including age, sex, comorbidities, and arch vessel involvement of aortic dissection. Two readers reviewed all brain images independently regarding the presence, morphology, size, and location of intracranial aneurysms. Baseline characteristics were compared between the aortic dissection group and controls by propensity score matching, and logistic regression analysis was performed for independent risk factors for the presence of intracranial aneurysms.
The prevalence of intracranial aneurysms was 12.96% in the aortic dissection group and 1.85% in controls (
= .022). The mean diameter of intracranial aneurysms was significantly larger in the aortic dissection group (5.79 ± 3.26 mm in aortic dissection versus 3.04 ± 1.57 mm in controls;
= .008), and intracranial aneurysms of >7 mm were also more common in the aortic dissection group (28.6% in aortic dissection versus 5.3% in controls,
= .003). On multivariate analysis, arch vessel involvement of aortic dissection was an independent risk factor for the presence of intracranial aneurysms (odds ratio, 6.246; 95% confidence interval, 1.472-26.50;
= .013).
Patients with aortic dissection have a high prevalence of intracranial aneurysms, and selective screening for brain vessels could be considered in these patients with arch vessel involvement. A further prospective study is needed to demonstrate a substantial prevalence of intracranial aneurysms.
Klebsiella oxytoca naturally produces a large amount of 2,3‐butanediol (2,3‐BD), a promising chemical with wide industrial applications, along with various by‐products. Previously, we have developed ...a metabolically engineered K. oxytoca ΔldhA ΔpflB strain to reduce the formation of by‐products. To improve 2,3‐BD productivity and examine the stability of K. oxytoca ΔldhA ΔpflB strain for industrial application, a semi‐continuous two‐stage simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (STSSF) process was developed. The STSSF with the K. oxytoca ΔldhA ΔpflB mutant using cassava as a carbon source could produce 108 ± 3·73 g(2,3‐BD) l−1 with a yield of 0·45 g(2,3‐BD) g(glucose)−1 and a productivity of 3·00 g(2,3‐BD)l−1 h−1. No apparent changes in the final titre, yield and productivity of 2,3‐BD were observed for up to 20 cycles of STSSF. Also, microbial contamination and spontaneous mutation of the host strain with potential detrimental effects on fermentation efficiency did not occur during the whole fermentation period. These results strongly underpin that the K. oxytoca ΔldhA ΔpflB mutant is stable and that the STSSF process is commercially exploitable.
Significance and Impact of the Study
There is growing interest in the production of 2,3‐butanediol (2,3‐BD) from renewable resources by microbial fermentation because of its wide applications to specialty and commodity chemical industries. Klebsiella oxytoca usually produces 2,3‐BD as a major end product during the fermentation of carbohydrates. This is the first study to provide a high‐efficiency simultaneous saccharification and 2,3‐BD fermentation process. Also, this study proves the stability of a metabolically engineered 2,3‐BD overproducing K. oxytoca strain for industrial application.
Significance and Impact of the Study: There is growing interest in the production of 2,3‐butanediol (2,3‐BD) from renewable resources by microbial fermentation because of its wide applications to specialty and commodity chemical industries. Klebsiella oxytoca usually produces 2,3‐BD as a major end product during the fermentation of carbohydrates. This is the first study to provide a high‐efficiency simultaneous saccharification and 2,3‐BD fermentation process. Also, this study proves the stability of a metabolically engineered 2,3‐BD overproducing K. oxytoca strain for industrial application.
•A new method for biodiesel production from wet wastewater sludge was suggested.•Biodiesel yield increased by 2.5 times when hexane was replaced with xylene.•Both fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) ...contents and quality were enhanced.•Drying process was not necessary as a pretreatment for biodiesel production.
This study proposes a method to produce biodiesel from wet wastewater sludge. Xylene was used as an alternative cosolvent to hexane for transesterification in order to enhance the biodiesel yield from wet wastewater sludge. The water present in the sludge could be separated during transesterification by employing xylene, which has a higher boiling point than water. Xylene enhanced the biodiesel yield up to 8.12%, which was 2.5 times higher than hexane. It was comparable to the maximum biodiesel yield of 9.68% obtained from dried sludge. Xylene could reduce either the reaction time or methanol consumption, when compared to hexane for a similar yield. The fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) content of the biodiesel increased approximately two fold by changing the cosolvent from hexane to xylene. The transesterification method using xylene as a cosolvent can be applied effectively and economically for biodiesel recovery from wet wastewater sludge without drying process.
Abstract Aim As serum beta-2-microglobulin (B2M) levels are usually elevated in patients with renal failure, they have been suggested as a surrogate marker of cardiovascular mortality for patients ...with chronic kidney disease. Glycation of B2M is cytotoxic and may contribute to the risk of diabetic complications in patients with diabetes. Our objective was to evaluate the relationship between B2M and diabetic complications in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and normal kidney function. Methods A total of 366 patients with T2D and preserved renal function with no clinical evidence of cardiovascular disease were enrolled consecutively into this study. High B2M was defined as a median serum B2M level ≥ 1.8 mg/L. Subclinical atherosclerosis was defined as a carotid artery intima–media thickness (C-IMT) ≥ 0.9 mm or the presence of carotid plaque. The definition of diabetic nephropathy was based on the presence of albuminuria (≥ 30 mg/g creatinine). Results Patients with high B2M were older, and had diabetes of longer duration, higher serum creatinine, microalbuminuria, and increased vascular stiffness and C-IMT compared with patients with low B2M. B2M levels were positively correlated with C-IMT and vascular stiffness, and these associations remained constant after adjusting for age. In addition, after adjusting for age, gender, body mass index, serum creatinine, hypertension, smoking and alcohol consumption, the adjusted odds ratio (OR) for atherosclerosis was 2.01 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.02–3.94 per 1 mg/L increase in B2M. The prevalences of diabetic retinopathy and nephropathy were significantly higher with a high B2M than with a low B2M. The multiple adjusted OR for diabetic nephropathy was 2.29 (95% CI: 1.11–4.72) per 1 mg/L increase of B2M. Conclusion Higher serum B2M was an independent risk factor for subclinical atherosclerosis and diabetic nephropathy in patients with T2D without renal impairment.
Abstract
We present the first linear polarization measurements from the 2015 long-duration balloon flight of
Spider
, which is an experiment that is designed to map the polarization of the cosmic ...microwave background (CMB) on degree angular scales. The results from these measurements include maps and angular power spectra from observations of 4.8% of the sky at 95 and 150 GHz, along with the results of internal consistency tests on these data. While the polarized CMB anisotropy from primordial density perturbations is the dominant signal in this region of sky, Galactic dust emission is also detected with high significance. Galactic synchrotron emission is found to be negligible in the
Spider
bands. We employ two independent foreground-removal techniques to explore the sensitivity of the cosmological result to the assumptions made by each. The primary method uses a dust template derived from
Planck
data to subtract the Galactic dust signal. A second approach, which constitutes a joint analysis of
Spider
and
Planck
data in the harmonic domain, assumes a modified-blackbody model for the spectral energy distribution of the dust with no constraint on its spatial morphology. Using a likelihood that jointly samples the template amplitude and
r
parameter space, we derive 95% upper limits on the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio from Feldman–Cousins and Bayesian constructions, finding
r
< 0.11 and
r
< 0.19, respectively. Roughly half the uncertainty in
r
derives from noise associated with the template subtraction. New data at 280 GHz from
Spider
’s second flight will complement the
Planck
polarization maps, providing powerful measurements of the polarized Galactic dust emission.
Although gastric cancer screening is common among countries with a high prevalence of gastric cancer, there is little data to support the effectiveness of this screening. This study was designed to ...determine the differences in stage at diagnosis of gastric cancer according to the screening history and screening method (upper gastrointestinal series (UGIS) vs endoscopy).
The study population was derived from the National Cancer Screening Programme (NCSP), a nationwide organised screening programme in Korea. The study cohort consisted of 19 168 gastric cancer patients who had been diagnosed in 2007 and who were invited to undergo gastric cancer screening via the NCSP between 2002 and 2007.
Compared with never-screened patients, the odds ratios for being diagnosed with localised gastric cancer in endoscopy-screened patients and UGIS-screened patients were 2.10 (95% CI=1.90-2.33) and 1.24 (95% CI=1.13-1.36), respectively.
Screening by endoscopy was more strongly associated with a diagnosis of localised stage gastric cancer compared with screening by UGIS.
Abstract
We report the X-ray timing results of the black hole candidate MAXI J1820+070 during its 2018 outburst using the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (Insight-HXMT) and Neutron Star Interior ...Composition Explorer Mission (NICER) observations. Low-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations (LFQPOs) are detected in the low/hard state and the hard intermediate state, which lasted for ∼90 days. Thanks to the large effective area of Insight-HXMT at high energies and NICER at low energies, we are able to present the energy dependence of the LFQPO characteristics and phase lags from 0.2 to 200 keV, which has never been explored by previous missions. We find that the centroid frequency of the LFQPOs does not change significantly with energy, while the full width at half maximum and fractional rms show a complex evolution with energy. The LFQPO phase lags at high energies and low energies show consistent energy-dependence relations taking the ∼2 keV as reference. Our results suggest that the LFQPOs from high energy come from the LT precession of the relativistic jet, while the low-energy radiation is mainly from the perpendicular innermost regions of the accretion disk.
Aims/hypothesis Several susceptibility genes for type 2 diabetes have been discovered recently. Individually, these genes increase the disease risk only minimally. The goals of the present study were ...to determine, at the population level, the risk of diabetes in individuals who carry risk alleles within several susceptibility genes for the disease and the added value of this genetic information over the clinical predictors. Methods We constructed an additive genetic score using the most replicated single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within 15 type 2 diabetes-susceptibility genes, weighting each SNP with its reported effect. We tested this score in the extensively phenotyped population-based cross-sectional CoLaus Study in Lausanne, Switzerland (n = 5,360), involving 356 diabetic individuals. Results The clinical predictors of prevalent diabetes were age, BMI, family history of diabetes, WHR, and triacylglycerol/HDL-cholesterol ratio. After adjustment for these variables, the risk of diabetes was 2.7 (95% CI 1.8-4.0, p = 0.000006) for individuals with a genetic score within the top quintile, compared with the bottom quintile. Adding the genetic score to the clinical covariates improved the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve slightly (from 0.86 to 0.87), yet significantly (p = 0.002). BMI was similar in these two extreme quintiles. Conclusions/interpretation In this population, a simple weighted 15 SNP-based genetic score provides additional information over clinical predictors of prevalent diabetes. At this stage, however, the clinical benefit of this genetic information is limited.
ABSTRACT
We report on the Insight-HXMT observations of the new black hole X-ray binary MAXI J1820+070 during its 2018 outburst. Detailed spectral analysis via the continuum fitting method shows an ...evolution of the inferred spin during its high soft sate. Moreover, the hardness ratio, the non-thermal luminosity and the reflection fraction also undergo an evolution, exactly coincident to the period when the inferred spin transition takes place. The unphysical evolution of the spin is attributed to the evolution of the inner disc, which is caused by the collapse of a hot corona due to condensation mechanism or may be related to the deceleration of a jet-like corona. The studies of the inner disc radius and the relation between the disc luminosity and the inner disc radius suggest that, only at a particular epoch, did the inner edge of the disc reach the innermost stable circular orbit and the spin measurement is reliable. We then constrain the spin of MAXI J1820 + 070 to be $a_*=0.2^{+0.2}_{-0.3}$. Such a slowly spinning black hole possessing a strong jet suggests that its jet activity is driven mainly by the accretion disc rather than by the black hole spin.
The study described here focuses on the microstructure and mechanical properties of a novel hot-rolled medium-Mn steel (Fe–0.25C–4Mn–1.88Al–0.6Si–0.04Nb–0.08V, wt%) that contained only 4 wt% Mn and ...modest Al content of 1.88 wt%. It was found that a relatively high content (25–53 vol%) of retained austenite was obtained by intercritical annealing process. With increase in intercritical annealing temperature from 700 to 740 and to 760 °C, retained austenite fraction increased from 25.1 to 53.2% and then decreased to 46.1%. Besides, mechanical stability of retained austenite in 700–760 °C intercritically annealed steels decreased with increase in intercritical annealing temperature. The 720 °C intercritically annealed steel yielded excellent mechanical properties with yield strength of 766 MPa, tensile strength of 951 MPa, total elongation of 48.6% and PSE of 46.22 GPa·%, achieved by a high volume fraction of retained austenite (46%) with relatively high mechanical stability. Thus, the 4% Mn steel present in this study indicated excellent mechanical properties of medium-Mn steels can be achieved using low alloy content.
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