To describe and test a new technique to obtain midstream urine samples in newborns.
This was a prospective feasibility and safety study conducted in the neonatal unit of University Infanta Sofía ...Hospital, Madrid. A new technique based on bladder and lumbar stimulation manoeuvres was tested over a period of 4 months in 80 admitted patients aged less than 30 days. The main variable was the success rate in obtaining a midstream urine sample within 5 min. Secondary variables were time to obtain the sample and complications.
This technique was successful in 86.3% of infants. Median time to sample collection was 45 s (IQR 30). No complications other than controlled crying were observed.
A new, quick and safe technique with a high success rate is described, whereby the discomfort and waste of time usually associated with bag collection methods can be avoided.
The Mpemba effect occurs when a hot system cools faster than an initially colder one, when both are refrigerated in the same thermal reservoir. Using the custom-built supercomputer Janus II, we study ...the Mpemba effect in spin glasses and show that it is a nonequilibrium process, governed by the coherence length ξ of the system. The effect occurs when the bath temperature lies in the glassy phase, but it is not necessary for the thermal protocol to cross the critical temperature. In fact, the Mpemba effect follows from a strong relationship between the internal energy and ξ that turns out to be a sure-tell sign of being in the glassy phase. Thus, the Mpemba effect presents itself as an intriguing avenue for the experimental study of the coherence length in supercooled liquids and other glass formers.
The vertical transmission of severe acute respiratory coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) remains highly debated. Here, we evaluated SARS-CoV-2-transmission in newborns with intrauterine conditions.
This was ...a prospective, observational and multicentric study involving 13 Spanish hospitals included in the GEStational and NEOnatal-COVID cohort. Pregnant women with microbiologically confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection during any trimester of pregnancy or delivery and their newborns were included from March to November 2020. Demographic, clinical and microbiological data were also obtained. Viral loads were analyzed in different maternal and newborn biological samples (placenta, breast milk and maternal blood; urine, meconium and newborn blood).
A total of 177 newborns exposed to SARS-CoV-2 were included. Newborns were tested by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction using nasopharyngeal swabs within the first 24-48 hours of life and at 14 days of life. In total 5.1% were considered to have SARS-CoV-2 infection in the neonatal period, with 1.7% considered intrauterine and 3.4% intrapartum or early postnatal transmission cases. There were no differences in the demographic and clinical characteristics of the pregnant women and their newborns' susceptibility to infections in their perinatal history or background.
Intrauterine transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is possible, although rare, with early postnatal transmission occurring more frequently. Most infected newborns remained asymptomatic or had mild symptoms that evolved well during follow-up. We did not find any maternal characteristics predisposing infants to neonatal infection. All infected newborn mothers had acute infection at delivery.Although there was no presence of SARS-CoV2 in cord blood or breast milk samples, SARS-CoV-2 viral load was detected in urine and meconium samples from infected newborns.
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► CO oxidation using the metal–organic framework HKUST-1 and Ce/HKUST-1. ► Slow segregation of active 5–15nm CuO particles upon MOF collapse. ► Synthesis of the highly active CuO–Ce2O ...nanoparticle catalyst. ► Effective route to immobilize nanoparticles in a monolith reactor.
The oxidation of carbon monoxide using the metal organic framework (MOF) HKUST-1 is studied. Catalytic results and characterizations by XRD, TEM, H2-TPR, SEM and LRS show that HKUST-1 itself is not effective in CO oxidation, but is activated in the reaction atmosphere segregating active 5–15nm CuO particles upon the collapse of the MOF structure. Furthermore, the microporous structure of HKUST-1 is effective to disperse Ce precursors which, upon activation, allow the synthesis of a mixture of CuO and CeO2 nanoparticles in intimate contact. These nanoparticles present a very high activity in CO oxidation. It is shown that this synthesis route employing HKUST-1 as a matrix is useful to immobilize CuO–Ce2O nanoparticles in a monolithic reactor, while keeping a high catalytic activity.
Knowledge about SARS-CoV-2 infection in pregnancy and newborns is scarce. The objective of this study is to analyse clinical and epidemiological characteristics of a cohort of women infected with ...SARS-CoV-2 during pregnancy and their newborns exposed to SARS-CoV-2 during gestation.
Multicentric observational study of Spanish hospitals from the GESNEO-COVD cohort, participants in RECLIP (Spanish Network of Paediatric Clinical Assays). Women with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection by PCR and/or serology during pregnancy, diagnosed and delivering during the period 15/03/2020-31/07/2020 were included. Epidemiological, clinical, and analytical data was collected.
A total of 105 pregnant women with a median of 34.1 years old (IQR: 28.8-37.1) and 107 newborns were included. Globally, almost 65% of pregnant women had some COVID-19 symptoms and more than 43% were treated for SARS-COV-2. Overall, 30.8% of pregnant women had pneumonia and 5 (4.8%) women were admitted to the intensive care unit needing invasive mechanical ventilation. There was a rate of 36.2% of caesarean sections, which was associated with pneumonia during pregnancy (OR: 4.203, CI 95%: 1.473-11.995) and lower gestational age at delivery (OR: 0.724, CI 95%: 0.578-0.906). The prevalence of preterm birth was 20.6% and prematurity was associated with pneumonia during gestation (OR: 6.970, CI95%: 2.340-22.750) and having a positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR at delivery (OR: 6.520, CI95%: 1.840-31.790). All nasopharyngeal PCR in newborns were negative at birth and one positivized at 15 days of life. Two newborns died, one due to causes related to prematurity and another of unexpected sudden death during early skin-to-skin contact after delivery.
Although vertical transmission has not been reported in this cohort, the prognosis of newborns could be worsened by SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy as COVID-19 pneumonia increased the risk of caesarean section deliveries and preterm births.
Spin glasses are a longstanding model for the sluggish dynamics that appear at the glass transition. However, spin glasses differ from structural glasses in a crucial feature: they enjoy a time ...reversal symmetry. This symmetry can be broken by applying an external magnetic field, but embarrassingly little is known about the critical behavior of a spin glass in a field. In this context, the space dimension is crucial. Simulations are easier to interpret in a large number of dimensions, but one must work below the upper critical dimension (i.e., in d < 6) in order for results to have relevance for experiments. Here we show conclusive evidence for the presence of a phase transition in a four-dimensional spin glass in a field. Two ingredients were crucial for this achievement: massive numerical simulations were carried out on the Janus special-purpose computer, and a new and powerful finite-size scaling method.
Abstract
Experiments featuring non-equilibrium glassy dynamics under temperature changes still await interpretation. There is a widespread feeling that temperature chaos (an extreme sensitivity of ...the glass to temperature changes) should play a major role but, up to now, this phenomenon has been investigated solely under equilibrium conditions. In fact, the very existence of a chaotic effect in the non-equilibrium dynamics is yet to be established. In this article, we tackle this problem through a large simulation of the 3D Edwards-Anderson model, carried out on the Janus II supercomputer. We find a dynamic effect that closely parallels equilibrium temperature chaos. This dynamic temperature-chaos effect is spatially heterogeneous to a large degree and turns out to be controlled by the spin-glass coherence length
ξ
. Indeed, an emerging length-scale
ξ
*
rules the crossover from weak (at
ξ
≪
ξ
*
) to strong chaos (
ξ
≫
ξ
*
). Extrapolations of
ξ
*
to relevant experimental conditions are provided.
We have performed a very accurate computation of the nonequilibrium fluctuation-dissipation ratio for the 3D Edwards-Anderson Ising spin glass, by means of large-scale simulations on the ...special-purpose computers Janus and Janus II. This ratio (computed for finite times on very large, effectively infinite, systems) is compared with the equilibrium probability distribution of the spin overlap for finite sizes. Our main result is a quantitative statics-dynamics dictionary, which could allow the experimental exploration of important features of the spin-glass phase without requiring uncontrollable extrapolations to infinite times or system sizes.
To determine the time to reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) negativity after the first positive RT-PCR test, factors associated with longer time to RT-PCR negativity, proportion ...of children seroconverting after proven severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection, and factors associated with the lack of seroconversion.
The Epidemiological Study of Coronavirus in Children of the Spanish Society of Pediatrics is a multicenter study conducted in Spanish children to assess the characteristics of coronavirus disease 2019. In a subset of patients, 3 serial RT-PCR tests on nasopharyngeal swab specimens were performed after the first RT-PCR test, and immunoglobulin G serology for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 antibodies was performed in the acute and follow-up (<14 and ≥14 days after diagnosis) phase.
In total, 324 patients were included in the study. The median time to RT-PCR negativity was 17 days (IQR, 8-29 days), and 35% of patients remained positive more than 4 weeks after the first RT-PCR test. The probability of RT-PCR negativity did not differ across groups defined by sex, disease severity, immunosuppressive drugs, or clinical phenotype. Globally, 24% of children failed to seroconvert after infection. Seroconversion was associated with hospitalization, persistence of RT-PCR positivity, and days of fever.
Time to RT-PCR negativity was long, regardless of the severity of symptoms or other patient features. This finding should be considered when interpreting RT-PCR results in a child with symptoms, especially those with mild symptoms. Seroprevalence and postimmunization studies should consider that 11 in 4 infected children fail to seroconvert.
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