Elevated PAI-1 is associated with poor clinical outcomes in pediatric patients with acute lung injury.

PurposeDeposition of fibrin in the alveolar space is a hallmark of acute lung injury (ALI). Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) is an antifibrinolytic agent that is activated during inflammation. Increased plasma and pulmonary edema fluid levels of PAI-1 are associated with increased mortality in adults with ALI. This relationship has not been examined in children. The objective of this study was to test whether increased plasma PAI-1 levels are associated with worse clinical outcomes in pediatric patients with ALI.Design/methodsWe measured plasma PAI-1 levels on the first day of ALI among 94 pediatric patients enrolled in two separate prospective, multicenter investigations and followed them for clinical outcomes. All patients met American European Consensus Conference criteria for ALI.ResultsA total of 94 patients were included. The median age was 3.2 years (range 16 days-18 years), the PaO(2)/F(i)O(2) was 141 +/- 72 (mean +/- SD), and overall mortality was 14/94 (15%). PAI-1 levels were significantly higher in nonsurvivors compared to survivors (P < 0.01). The adjusted odds of mortality doubled for every log increase in the level of plasma PAI-1 after adjustment for age and severity of illness.ConclusionsHigher PAI-1 levels are associated with increased mortality and fewer ventilator-free days among pediatric patients with ALI. These findings suggest that impaired fibrinolysis may play a role in the pathogenesis of ALI in pediatric patients and suggest that PAI-1 may serve as a useful biomarker of prognosis in patients with ALI

Desempenho de variedades de bananeira em sistema orgânico na região Semiárida da Bahia.

A produção e o consumo de alimentos orgânicos, incluindo as frutas, crescem anualmente. A República Dominicana (18.621 ha), o Equador (12.062 ha), o Peru (5.681 ha) e a Costa Rica (4.605 ha) são os maiores produtores de banana orgânica (2). Já a União Europeia, Estados Unidos e Canadá são os maiores importadores. Acredita-se que o Brasil possui em torno de 1% de sua área cultivada com banana ? aproximadamente 5.000 ha - em sistema orgánico ou em processo de conversão

Reflection and refraction of an acoustic beam by a sedimentary layer

The reflection and the refraction of an acoustic beam by the sea f loor is discussed . The water is a perfect fluid and the sea floor is a viscous fluid which is divided in two parts : a layer where the fluid is inhomogeneous, and a lower half space where the fluid is homogeneous . The layer joins continuously the acoustical characteristics of the water to Chose of the bottom . In a first part, the reflection coefficient and the refraction coefficient of an harmonic plane wave on the sea floor are analyzed. Then, we observe that the influence of the frequency is very important . In a second part, we show the results for an acoustic beam which is given by a continuons sum of harmonic plane waves .L'étude décrite ici a pour but de modéliser la réflexion et la réfraction d'un faisceau acoustique par le fond de la mer. Le fond marin est assimilé à un fluide dissipatif inhomogène dans sa partie supérieure puis homogène dans sa partie inférieure . La couche inhomogène directement en contact avec l'eau, assimilée à un fluide parfait, relie continûment les caractéristiques acoustiques de l'eau à celles du fond . La première partie de l'étude porte sur les coefficients de réflexion et de réfraction d'une onde plane harmonique par le fond marin, et met largement en évidence l'influence de l'angle d'incidence et de la fréquence sur l'amplitude des ondes réfléchies et réfractées . La deuxième partie s'intéresse à l'émission d'un faisceau acoustique de forme gaussienne représenté par une superposition continue d'ondes planes harmoniques

Enhanced Oil Recovery from Shallow Depths Through the Use of Tight Radius Lateral Drilling [abstract]

Only abstract of poster available.Track I: Power GenerationThere are many heavy oil fields in the world where the oil does not easily flow to the well and conventional production is thereby limited, or currently not economically viable. Missouri alone has billions of barrels of oil along its western edge, that lie just too deep for conventional surface mining (similar to that of the tar sands of Alberta) and yet have an oil that is too heavy to be easily recovered by normal oil well production. Where this oil can be extracted it will add significantly to the reserves of the country. Missouri S&T pioneered the use of high-pressure waterjets as a means of drilling long horizontal holes underground - a technology validated in field tests with Sandia National Laboratories. The technique allows the turning of a drill from an existing vertical well in a radius of less than 9 inches, whereas conventional tools require 20 ft. Once the turn has been made, the drill can then penetrate out horizontally. Once the horizontal wells have been established then one of two different approaches can be taken. The wells may be hydrofraced, as is conventionally done, for example in shale gas recovery, or the sand might be mined. Once the well has been drilled to the edge of a defined area, the drilling head can be reconfigured into a reaming mode in which the jets cut into and mine the oil bearing rock (which in Missouri is up to 30 ft thick). By disintegrating the rock and pumping it to the surface, (in the same way as in Alberta) using a hot water solution, the oil can be removed from the sand, which can then be mixed with a small amount of a binder and re-pumped back into the reamed cavity to provide support for adjacent mining of the material so that all the rock can be mined, and all the oil is recovered. In this way the oil can be recovered without the environmental impacts of the open pit tar sand operations

Predicting economic resilience of territories in Italy during the COVID-19 first lockdown

This paper aims to predict the economic resilience to crises of territories based on local pre-existing socioeco-nomic characteristics. Specifically, we consider the case of Italian municipalities during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, leveraging a large-scale dataset of cardholders performing transactions in Point-of-Sales. Based on a set of machine learning classifiers, we show that network-based measures and variables related to the social, economic, demographic and environmental dimensions are relevant predictors of the economic resilience of Italian municipalities to the crisis. In particular, we find accurate classification performance both in balanced and un-balanced scenarios, as well as in the case we restrict the analysis to specific geographical areas. Our analysis predicts that territories with larger income per capita, soil consumption, concentration of real estate activities and commuting network centrality in terms of closeness and Pagerank constitute the set of most affected areas, experiencing the strongest reduction of economic activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, we provide an application of an early-warning system able to provide timely evidence to policymakers about the detrimental effects generated by natural disasters and severe crisis episodes, thus contributing to optimize public decision support systems

Statistical characterization of residual noise in the low-rank approximation filter framework, general theory and application to hyperpolarized tracer spectroscopy

The use of low-rank approximation filters in the field of NMR is increasing due to their flexibility and effectiveness. Despite their ability to reduce the Mean Square Error between the processed signal and the true signal is well known, the statistical distribution of the residual noise is still undescribed. In this article, we show that low-rank approximation filters are equivalent to linear filters, and we calculate the mean and the covariance matrix of the processed data. We also show how to use this knowledge to build a maximum likelihood estimator, and we test the estimator's performance with a Montecarlo simulation of a 13C pyruvate metabolic tracer. While the article focuses on NMR spectroscopy experiment with hyperpolarized tracer, we also show that the results can be applied to tensorial data (e.g. using HOSVD) or 1D data (e.g. Cadzow filter).Comment: 26 pages, 7 figure

A Path-integral for the Master Constraint of Loop Quantum Gravity

In the present paper, we start from the canonical theory of loop quantum gravity and the master constraint programme. The physical inner product is expressed by using the group averaging technique for a single self-adjoint master constraint operator. By the standard technique of skeletonization and the coherent state path-integral, we derive a path-integral formula from the group averaging for the master constraint operator. Our derivation in the present paper suggests there exists a direct link connecting the canonical Loop quantum gravity with a path-integral quantization or a spin-foam model of General Relativity.Comment: 19 page

Positive Fluid Balance Is Associated with Higher Mortality and Prolonged Mechanical Ventilation in Pediatric Patients with Acute Lung Injury

Introduction. We analyzed a database of 320 pediatric patients with acute lung injury (ALI), to test the hypothesis that positive fluid balance is associated with worse clinical outcomes in children with ALI. Methods. This is a post-hoc analysis of previously collected data. Cumulative fluid balance was analyzed in ml per kilogram per day for the first 72 hours after ALI while in the PICU. The primary outcome was mortality; the secondary outcome was ventilator-free days. Results. Positive fluid balance (in increments of 10 mL/kg/24 h) was associated with a significant increase in both mortality and prolonged duration of mechanical ventilation, independent of the presence of multiple organ system failure and the extent of oxygenation defect. These relationships remained unchanged when the subgroup of patients with septic shock (n = 39) were excluded. Conclusions. Persistently positive fluid balance may be deleterious to pediatric patients with ALI. A confirmatory, prospective randomized controlled trial of fluid management in pediatric patients with ALI is warranted

Assessment of various strategies for the preservation of clonal genetic resources in oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.)

Three different approaches for the preservation of oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) clonal genetic resources and their impacts on the induction of the « mantled » somaclonal variation were assessed. In vitro long term preservation of somatic embryos stock-cultures was studied : after a 5 year cultivation period, 75 % of clonal lines were still normal. Between 8 and 13 years of embryo cultures, half of the considered clonal lines were found to be « mantled ». Finally, 40 % were found to be normal over 15 years of in vitro conservation. Clonal conformity of ramets resulting from the re-cloning of somaplants depended, on one hand, on the floral status of the mother plant at the time of sampling and, on the other hand, on its origin. Re-cloning of abnormal regenerants led, in all cases, to 100 % abnormal offspring. The age of the ramet used as mother palm at the time of sampling was found to be critical for true-to-type regeneration. There is a high risk of obtaining variant regenerant palms if the clonal mother palm is sampled at nursery stage. Field observations carried out on palms originating from somatic embryos cryopreserved at -196 °C showed floral conformity rates comparable to those obtained from standard not-cryopreserved clonal palms, for 6 out of the 8 clonal lines studied. From the 2 remaining clonal lines, a few regenerant palms originating from standard batch were found to be « mantled », whereas those resulting from cryopreserved embryos were all normal. The assumption of changes in levels of genomic DNA methylation during preservation was discussed, together with the capacity of our cryopreservation protocol to select embryogenic cells which were only suited to trueto-type regeneration