The use of extracorporeal circulation (ECC) for intraoperative cardiopulmonary support during lung transplantation has been increasing in the recent years. Our group previously described a novel hybrid extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) circuit for use in lung transplantation. Our novel technique for intraoperative management of this circuit during lung transplantation is described.

In this study, three novel sensitizers with the donor-acceptor-π-spacer-acceptor D-A’-π-A) structure were designed based on the benzothiadiazole (BTD) surrounded by two thiophenes in each side (T4) mono-functionalized by an acid phosphonic (A) T4BTD-A dye by insertion of vinyl and cyanide CN electron-withdrawing moiety in a different position. Their geometrical, electronic and photovoltaic parameters were predicted using density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT) calculations, via the functional BHandH in combination with the Poples basis set 6-311G(d) for small atoms and pseudo-potential basis set LANL2DZ for Titanium atom at the chloroform solvent medium via the implicit CPCM model. Results showed that the inclusion of the C=C and the CN moieties exhibits a decrease in the HOMO–LUMO gap, and a redshift in the absorption spectra. The photoelectric conversion efficiency (PCE) for the T4BTD-A dye was estimated to be about 6.57 % under the standard AM 1.5G solar radiation, which is in excellent agreement with its measured value of 6.40 %, suggesting that our calculations scheme is consistent. Moreover, the predicted PCE value after elongation of T4BTD-A by C=C and CN has increased to 7.11 % and (7.82 %, 8.09 %) respectively. Our results revealed that the addition of CN electron-withdrawing moiety enhances the PCE of the studied dyes, while the position of CN moiety has a slight effect on the PCE of the studied dyes. Additionally, our calculation suggests that the CCCN1 and CCCN2 are good candidates as efficient sensitizers for dye-sensitized solar cell DSSCs applications.

Purpose: Poly-medicated patients, especially those over 65, have increased. Multiple drug use and inappropriate prescribing increase drug-drug interactions, adverse drug reactions, morbidity, and mortality. This issue was addressed with several CDSS alerts. Health professionals have not followed these systems due to their poor alert quality and incomplete databases. Methods: Recent research shows a growing interest in using Text Mining via NLP to extract drug-drug interactions from unstructured data sources to support clinical prescribing decisions. NLP text mining and machine learning classifier training for drug relation extraction were used in this process. Results: In this context, the proposed solution allows to develop an extraction system for drug-drug interactions from unstructured data sources. The system produces structured information, which can be inserted into a database that contains information acquired from three different data sources. Conclusion: The architecture outlined for the drug-drug interaction extraction system is capable of receiving unstructured text, identifying drug entities sentence by sentence, and determining whether or not there are interactions between them.

Diversification rates and evolutionary trajectories are known to be influenced by phenotypic traits and the geographic history of the landscapes that organisms inhabit. One of the most conspicuous traits in butterflies is their wing color pattern, which has been shown to be important in speciation. The evolution of many taxa in the Neotropics has also been influenced by the closure of the Panama Isthmus and the dynamic uplift of the Andes. Using a dated, species-level molecular phylogenetic hypothesis for Preponini, a colorful Neotropical butterfly tribe, we evaluated if diversification rates were constant or varied through time, and if they were dependent on color patterns or biogeographic events. We also estimated the rate of forewing color evolution and ancestral geographic ranges. We found that Preponini originated approximately 28 million years ago and that diversification has increased through time dependent on Andean uplift. Even though some clades show evolutionarily rapid transitions in coloration, these traits seem decoupled from diversification regimes. Preponini apparently originated within South America and range evolution has since been dynamic, congruent with Andean geologic activity, closure of the Panama Isthmus and Miocene climate variability. The potential involvement in mimicry rings with other butterfly groups might explain rapid changes in dorsal color patterns in this tribe.

Male reproductive competition can select for condition-dependent, conspicuous traits that signal some aspect of fighting ability and facilitate assessment of potential rivals. However, the underlying mechanisms that link the signal to a male’s current condition are difficult to investigate in wild populations, often requiring invasive experimental manipulation. Here, we use digital photographs and chest skin samples to investigate mechanisms of a visual signal used in male competition in a wild primate, the red chest patch in geladas (Theropithecus gelada). We analyzed photographs collected during natural (n=144) and anesthetized conditions (n=38) to understand variability in male and female chest redness, and we used chest skin biopsies (n=38) to explore sex differences in gene expression. Male and female geladas showed similar average redness, but males exhibited a wider within-individual range in redness under natural conditions. These sex differences were reflected at the molecular level, with 10.5% of genes exhibiting significant sex differences in expression. Subadult males exhibited intermediate gene expression patters between adult males and females, pointing to mechanisms underlying the development of the red chest patch. We found that genes more highly expressed in males were associated with blood vessel development and maintenance but not with androgen or estrogen activity. Together, our results suggest male gelada redness variability is driven by increased blood vessel branching in the chest skin, providing a potential link between male chest redness and current condition as increased blood circulation to exposed skin could lead to heat loss in the cold, high-altitude environment of geladas.

The endophytic fungi of certain grasses and other herbaceous plants have long been known to provide plants with anti-herbivore defense compounds, but there is little information about whether the endophytes of trees also engage in such mutualisms. We investigated the influence of the endophytic fungus Cladosporium cladosporioides on the chemical defenses of black poplar (Populus nigra) trees and the consequences for feeding preference and fitness of herbivorous insects and insect community assembly. Endophyte colonization increased both constitutive- and induced poplar defenses. Generalist Lymantria dispar larvae preferred and performed better on uninfected over endophyte-infected poplar leaves, most likely due to higher concentrations of salicinoids in endophytic leaves and the endophyte-produced alkaloid stachydrine. Under field conditions, the endophytic fungus also shapes insect community assembly in young black poplar trees. Our results show that endophytic fungi can play a major role both in defending trees against herbivorous insects and in structuring insect communities.

Ecological processes often exhibit time lags. For plant invasions, lags of decades to centuries between species’ introduction and establishment in the wild (naturalisation) are common, leading to the idea of an invasion debt: accelerating rates of introduction result in an expanding pool of introduced species that will naturalise in the future. Here, I show how a concept from survival analysis, the hazard function, provides an intuitive way to understand and forecast time lags. For plant naturalisation, theoretical arguments predict that lags between introduction and naturalisation will have a unimodal distribution, and that increasing horticultural activity will cause the mean and variance of lag times to decline over time. These predictions were supported by data on introduction and naturalisation dates for plant species introduced to Britain. While increasing trade and horticultural activity can generate an invasion debt by accelerating introductions, the same processes could lower that debt by reducing lag times.

Amyloid arthropathy is often underdiagnosed. The articular forms of AL amyloidosis may mimick the rheumatoid arthritis. The presence of macroglossia should draw attention to chronic polyathralgia.

A document by Mehreen Zaigham. Click on the document to view its contents.

This paper presents a low dropout regulator (LDO) with a wide input voltage range and high power supply rejection (PSR) for Hall sensor front-end circuits, which is fabricated with a 0.18 𝜇m BCD process. A topology in which a closed-loop charge pump biases the gate of two-stage cascode NMOS pass transistors is proposed to increase immunity to Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI) capability for automotive applications. Furthermore, a power-down protection circuit is proposed to maintain the reliability of the system, and a novel implementation of the charge pump unit is presented to improve the influence of the body effect. Detailed derivation regarding the analyses of the simplified small-signal model of the closed-loop charge pump, the loop stability, and the PSR at various frequency bands is given. Simulation and measurement results show that the proposed LDO can operate with the input voltage from 5 V to 40 V, providing up to 60 mA current drive capability, and its minimum operating voltage is 2.5 V with a 10 mA load capacity. Moreover, results verify that measured PSR is better than -45 dB at 1.5 kHz, and measured PSR is better than - 30 dB at 15 MHz. The results confirm that the obtained parameters of line and load regulations are significantly improved to 1.86 mV/V and 1.75 mV/mA, respectively.

Here we describe MyGene2, Geno2MP, VariantMatcher, and Franklin; databases that have made variant-level information together with phenotype or phenotypic features available to researchers, clinicians, health care providers and patients. Following in the footsteps of the Matchmaker Exchange project that connects exome, genome, and phenotype databases at the gene level, these databases plan to connect to each other using Data Connect, a standard for discovery and search of biomedical data from the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH).

Investigating diversity gradients helps to understand biodiversity drivers and threats. However, one diversity gradient is seldomly assessed, namely how plant species distribute along the depth gradient of lakes. Here, we provide the first in-depth characterization of depth diversity gradients (DDG) of submerged macrophytes across different lakes. We characterize the DDG for additive richness components (alpha, beta, gamma), assess environmental drivers and address temporal change over recent years. We take advantage of yet the largest dataset of macrophyte occurrence along lake depth (274 depth transects across 28 deep lakes) as well as of physio-chemical measurements (12 deep lakes from 2006 to 2017 across Bavaria), provided publicly online by the Bavarian State Office for the Environment. We found a high variability in DDG shapes across the study lakes. The DDG for alpha and gamma richness are predominantly hump-shaped, while beta richness shows a decreasing DDG. Generalized additive mixed-effect models indicate that the maximum alpha richness within the depth transect (Rmax) is significantly influenced by lake area only, whereas for the corresponding depth (Dmax) are influenced by light quality, light quantity and layering depth. Most observed DDGs seem generally stable over recent years. However, for single lakes we found significant linear trends for Rmax and Dmax going into different directions. The observed hump-shaped DDGs agree with three competing hypotheses: the mid-domain effect, the mean-disturbance hypothesis, and the mean-productivity hypothesis. The DDG amplitude seems driven by lake area (thus following known species-area relationships), whereas skewness depended on physio-chemical factors, mainly water transparency and layering depth. Our results provide insights for conservation strategies and for mechanistic frameworks to disentangle competing explanatory hypotheses for the DDG.

Aim: Urinary incontinence is an important problem that can arise due to neurogenic or functional reasons and can negatively affect the psychological, social and personality development of children. This study was conducted in Eskişehir province, on secondary school students in order to determine the prevalence and nature of urinary incontinence at night and/or daytime. Methods: The study universe included all secondary school students attending state elementary schools in the city center of Eskişehir (N=34.000). Ethics Committee and Provincial Directorate of National Education approval was obtained before conducting the study, which was supported by Eskişehir Osmangazi University Scientific Research Projects Commission (2017-1876) . A data collection form prepared by the researchers, and a consent form were delivered in sealed envelope to the parents via the students. The study data were collected between 09.05.2018-30.05.2018. Only volunteers were included in the study. 6957 questionnaires which have been fully completed from the 7370 surveys have been taken into consideration. The statistical analysis was carried out using the SPSS soft ware package. Results: The number of children found to have urinary incontinence was determined to be 215 (3.1%). It has been determined that 33 children (0.5%) have urinary incontinence only at daytime, 61 children (0.9%) have urinary incontinence both at night and daytime, and 121 children (1.7%) have urinary incontinence only at night. It was observed that 56% of the children suffering from urinary incontinence had not applied to any health institution for treatment before. Conclusions: Children and families with urinary incontinence need medical information and support to cover the cause of the problem and suggestions for solutions. Accompanying pathologies in cases to be detected can be determined in the early period by means of school screenings and medical evaluation and support can prevent the psychosocial and personality development of children from being adversely affected.

Objective: To elucidate the correlation between sleep disturbances and blood pressure during pregnancy in women with no pre-existing hypertension. Design: Prospective cohort study. Setting: Outpatient specialist clinics at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Singapore. Population: Women with viable singleton pregnancies confirmed by ultrasonography at less than 14 weeks of amenorrhea at first visit. Methods: 926 subjects were recruited for this study in the outpatient specialist clinics at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Singapore, between September 1, 2010, and August 31, 2014. They were followed up throughout pregnancy with sleep quality, blood pressure and uterine artery doppler assessed at each visit. Main outcome measures: sleep quality, blood pressure and uterine artery doppler. Results: Sleep progressively worsened as pregnancy advances. Shorter sleep duration and poorer sleep efficiency were associated with higher blood pressure, especially in the first trimester. Mixed model analysis demonstrated overall positive correlation between sleep quality represented by Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) score and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) (p<0.001) and mean arterial pressure (MAP) (p=0.005) during pregnancy after considering all trimesters. Sleep duration was found to be negatively correlated with both systolic blood pressure (SBP) (p=0.029) and DBP (p=0.002) while sleep efficiency is negatively correlated with DBP (p=0.002) only. Overall poor sleep during pregnancy was also found to be correlated to higher uterine artery pulsatility index. Conclusion: Our prospective study demonstrated that sleep quality is significantly correlated with blood pressure during pregnancy with most prominent effect in the first trimester.

Hot excitons are usually neglected in optical spectroscopy in 2D semiconductors for the sake of momentum conservation, as the majority of hot excitons are out of light cones. In this letter, we elaborate the contribution of hot excitons to optical properties of monolayer MoSe2 with photoluminescence (PL) and photoluminescence excitation (PLE) spectroscopy. With the excitation-intensity-dependent PL, temperature-dependent PL and PLE experiments combined with the simulations, we experimentally distinguish the influences of the exciton temperature and the lattice temperature in the PL spectrum. It is concluded that the acoustic phonon assisted photoluminescence accounts for the non-Lorentzian high energy tail in the PL spectrum and the hot exciton effect is significant to linear optical properties of TMDs. Besides, the effective exciton temperature is found to be several tens of Kelvin higher than the lattice temperature at non-resonant optical excitation. It indicates that the exciton temperature needs to be carefully taken into account when considering the exciton related quantum phase phenomena such as exciton condensation. It is experimentally demonstrated that the effective exciton temperature can be tuned by excitation energy.

This paper is concerned with a 2-dimensional Klein-Gordon-Schrödinger system subject to two types of locally distributed damping on a compact Riemannian manifold $\mathcal{M}$ without boundary. Making use of unique continuation property, the observability inequalities, and the smoothing effect due to Aloui, we obtain exponential stability results.

Catchment-scale response functions, such as transit time distribution (TTD) and evapotranspiration time distribution (ETTD), are considered fundamental descriptors of a catchment’s hydrologic and ecohydrologic responses to spatially and temporally varying precipitation inputs. Yet, estimating these functions is challenging, especially in headwater catchments where data collection is complicated by rugged terrain, or in semi-arid or sub-humid areas where precipitation is infrequent. Hence, we developed practical approaches for estimating both TTD and ETTD from commonly available tracer flux data in hydrologic inflows and outflows without requiring continuous observations. Using the weighted wavelet spectral analysis method of Kirchner and Neal [2013] for δ18O in precipitation and stream water, we specifically calculated TTDs that contribute to streamflow via spatially and temporally variable flow paths in a sub-humid mountain headwater catchment in Arizona, USA. Our results indicate that composite TTDs most accurately represented this system for periods up to approximately one month and that a Gamma TTD was most appropriate thereafter. The TTD results also suggested that some contribution of subsurface water was beyond the applicable tracer range. For ETTD and using δ18O as a tracer in precipitation and xylem waters, a Gamma ETTD type best matched the observations, and stable water isotopes were capable tracers for the majority of vegetation source waters. This study contributes to a better understanding of a fundamental question in mountain catchment hydrology; namely, how tracer input fluxes are modulated by spatially and temporally varying subsurface flow paths that support evapotranspiration and streamflow at multiple time scales.

Particle-laden flows in a vertical channel were simulated using an Eulerian–Eulerian, Anisotropic-Gaussian (EE-AG) model. Two sets of cases varying the overall mass loading were done using particle sizes corresponding to either a large or small Stokes number. Primary and turbulent statistics were extracted from these results and compared with counterparts collected from Eulerian–Lagrangian (EL) simulations. The statistics collected from the small Stokes number particle cases correspond well between the two models, with the EE-AG model replicating the transition observed using the EL model from shear-induced turbulence to relaminarization to cluster-induced turbulence as the mass loading increased. The EE-AG model was able to capture the behavior of the EL simulations only at the largest particle concentrations using the large Stokes particles. This is due to the limitations involved with employing a particle-phase Eulerian model (as opposed to a Lagrangian representation) for a spatially intermittent system that has a low particle number concentration.