Statin intensity and postoperative mortality following open repair of intact abdominal aortic aneurysm.

BackgroundThere is a lack of evidence for the association between intensive statin therapy and outcomes following vascular surgery. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between perioperative statin intensity and in-hospital mortality following open abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) repair.MethodsPatients undergoing open AAA repair between 2009 and 2015 were identified from the Premier Healthcare Database. Statin use was classified into low, moderate and high intensity, based on American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association guidelines. Supratherapeutic intensity was defined as doses higher than the recommended guidelines. Multivariable logistic regression analyses were undertaken to assess the association between statin intensity and postoperative major adverse events and in-hospital mortality.ResultsOf 6497 patients undergoing open AAA repair, 3217 (49·5 per cent) received perioperative statin. Statin users were more likely to present with three or more co-morbidities than non-users (26·5 versus 21·8 per cent; P < 0·001). Unadjusted postoperative mortality was significantly lower in statin users (2·6 versus 6·3 per cent; P < 0·001); however, there was no difference in the risk of developing major adverse events. Multivariable analysis showed that statin use was associated with lower odds of death (odds ratio 0·41, 95 per cent c.i. 0·31 to 0·54). Moderate, high and supratherapeutic statin intensities were not associated with lower odds of death or major adverse events compared with low-intensity statin therapy.ConclusionStatin use is associated with lower odds of death in hospital following open AAA repair. High-intensity statins were not associated with lower morbidity or mortality

Multimodal interventions to enhance adherence to secondary preventive medication after stroke: a systematic review and meta-analyses

Summary: Introduction: Nonadherence to secondary preventative medications after stroke is common and is associated with poor outcomes. Numerous strategies exist to promote adherence. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to describe the efficacy of strategies to improve adherence to stroke secondary prevention. Methods: We created a sensitive search strategy and searched multiple electronic databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, CENTRAL, and Web of Knowledge) for studies of interventions that aimed to enhance adherence to secondary preventative medication after stroke. We assessed quality of included studies using the Cochrane tool for assessing risk of bias. We performed narrative review and performed meta-analysis where data allowed. Results: From 12,237 titles, we included seventeen studies in our review. Eleven studies were considered to have high risk of bias, 3 with unclear risk, and 3 of low risk. Meta-analysis of available data suggested that these interventions improved adherence to individual medication classes (blood pressure-lowering drugs – OR, 2.21; 95% CI (1.63, 2.98), [P < 0.001], lipid-lowering drugs – OR, 2.11; 95% CI (1.00, 4.46), [P = 0.049], and antithrombotic drugs – OR, 2.32; 95% CI (1.18, 4.56, [P = 0.014]) but did not improve adherence to an overall secondary preventative medication regimen (OR, 1.96; 95% CI (0.50, 7.67), [P = 0.332]). Conclusion: Interventions can lead to improvement in adherence to secondary preventative medication after stroke. However, existing data is limited as several interventions, duration of follow-up, and various definitions were used. These findings need to be interpreted with caution

A CFD study on two-phase frozen flow of air/water through a safety relief valve

The air-water two phase critical flows through a safety relief valve commonly used in the refrigeration industry is examined with particular emphasis on the prediction of the critical mass flowrates using CFD based approaches. The expansion of the gas through the valve and the associated acceleration is coupled to the liquid phase and results in changes to the velocity slip with the possibility of influencing the choking conditions and the magnitude of the critical mass flows. These conditions are poorly reported in the literature for safety valves. This paper presents a study where the ability of established two phase multi-dimensional modelling approaches to predict such conditions are investigated. Comparison with the simplified mixture model will show that this model tends to underestimate mass flowrates for medium to high liquid mass fraction. However, the two fluid model can adequately account for the thermal and mechanical non equilibrium for these complex flow conditions with the use of simplified droplet sizing rules

How Can Entrepreneurs Motivate Crowdsourcing Participants?

Crowdsourcing is a way to access a global crowd of talented people and to channel their talent and creative effort towards some useful endeavour. Technology entrepreneurs who may have limited resources, especially during the start-up phase of the business, will be attracted to crowdsourcing as a means to access funding, knowledge, subject matter experts, and resources on a global scale. In this article, we review the published research on crowdsourcing as it relates to motivation, and distil the insights from that research that will be useful to technology entrepreneurs. First, we organize the published research into three streams according to crowd type: i) task-based public crowd, ii) information-exchange public crowd, and iii) employee-based crowd. Next, we identify the motivational drivers common to all streams as well as the motivational drivers that are unique to each stream. Finally, we offer five recommendations for technology entrepreneurs seeking to apply crowdsourcing

A CFD study of two-phase frozen flow of air/water through a safety relief valve

The air-water two phase critical flows through a safety relief valve commonly used in the refrigeration industry is examined with particular emphasis on the prediction of the critical mass flowrates using CFD based approaches. The expansion of the gas through the valve and the associated acceleration is coupled to the liquid phase and results in changes to the velocity slip with the possibility of influencing the choking conditions and the magnitude of the critical mass flows. These conditions are poorly reported in the literature for safety valves. This paper presents a study where the ability of established two phase multi-dimensional modelling approaches to predict such conditions are investigated. Comparison with the simplified mixture model will show that this model tends to underestimate mass flowrates for medium to high liquid mass fraction. However, the two fluid model can adequately account for the thermal and mechanical non equilibrium for these complex flow conditions with the use of simplified droplet sizing rules

Gene expression in the liver of female, but not male mice treated with rapamycin resembles changes observed under dietary restriction

It is well known that in mice the extension in lifespan by rapamycin is sexually dimorphic, in that it has a larger effect in females than males. In a previous study we showed that in male C57BL6 mice, rapamycin had less profound effects in both gene expression and liver metabolites when compared to dietary restriction (DR), but no data was available in females. Because recent studies showed that rapamycin increases longevity in a dose dependent manner and at every dose tested the effect remains larger in females than in males, we hypothesized that rapamycin should have a stronger effect on gene expression in females, and this effect could be dose dependent. To test this hypothesis, we measured the changes in liver gene expression induced by rapamycin (14 ppm) with a focus on several genes involved in pathways known to play a role in aging and that are altered by DR. To investigate whether any effects are dose dependent, we also analyzed females treated with two additional doses of rapamycin (22 and 42 ppm). We observed striking differences between male and female in gene expression at 14 ppm, where females have a larger response to rapamycin than males, and the effects of rapamycin in females resemble what we observed under DR. However, these effects were generally not dose dependent. These data support the notion that female mice respond better to rapamycin, and at least with the set of genes studied here, the effect of rapamycin in females resemble the effect of DR. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40064-015-0909-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Crystal structure of 6-(2-fluorophenyl)-3-phenyl-[1,2,4]-triazolo[3,4-b][1,3,4]thiadiazole, C15H9FN4S

Abstract C15H9FN4S, orthorhombic, Pna21 (no. 33), a = 18.9361(2) Å, b = 11.5248(1) Å, c = 6.0142(1) Å, V = 1312.52(3) Å3, Z = 4, R gt (F) = 0.0263, wR ref (F 2 ) = 0.0706, T = 100 K.</jats:p

Crystal structures of 4-phenylpiperazin-1-ium 6-chloro-5-ethyl-2,4-dioxopyrimidin-1-ide and 4-phenylpiperazin-1-ium 6-chloro-5-isopropyl-2,4-dioxopyrimidin-1-ide

The title molecular salts, C10H15N2+·C6H6ClN2O2−, (I), and C10H15N2+·C7H8ClN2O2−, (II), consist of 4-phenylpiperazin-1-ium cations with a 6-chloro-5-ethyl-2,4-dioxopyrimidin-1-ide anion in (I) and a 6-chloro-5-isopropyl-2,4-dioxopyrimidin-1-ide anion in (II). Salt (I) crystallizes with two independent cations and anions in the asymmetric unit. In the crystal structures of both salts, the ions are linked via N—H...O and N—H...N hydrogen bonds, forming sheets which are parallel to (100) in (I) and to (001) in (II). In (I), the sheets are linked via C—H...Cl hydrogen bonds, forming a three-dimensional framework

Mica as an Ultra-Flat Substrate for Studying Mechanically Exfoliated Graphene

Silicon dioxide (SiO2) is a common support for studying two-dimensional materials and creating devices from them. However, graphene conformation to SiO2 roughness worsens the electronic properties, whereas graphene deposited on flat terraces of insulating mica is free of ripples. This thesis solves key challenges in the use of mica to support mechanically exfoliated graphene. Methods of mica cleavage and graphene exfoliation, and settings for electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and Raman spectroscopy were developed. Vacuum annealing was compared for graphene samples of different thicknesses, down to a single layer. Pre- and post-annealing, graphene on mica provided defect-free graphene and no observable strain or doping. In contrast, graphene on SiO2 showed disorder before annealing. Annealing up to 300°C reduced the Raman defect peak but did not remove it. Above 300°C, the defect peak increased. Graphene on SiO2 appeared to become ‘invisible’ with AFM after annealing at 500°C, in line with previous observations with scanning electron microscopy. Other studies attributed this to the graphene being removed, but, here, using substrate markers, Raman spectroscopy and line-averaged AFM showed that the graphene was still present but had conformed to the underlying roughness of the SiO2 so well as to appear nearly invisible. Mica annealed at 400°C showed the formation of potassium carbonate particles following dehydroxylation of the mica surface at a temperature lower than previously reported. In addition, the graphene appeared to act as a mask, protecting the mica underneath it while the surrounding surface was removed at 500°C. Patterning and etching mica are essential to create location grids and etch trenches to suspend deposited materials. The first patterning lithography recipe for mica was established herein using electron-beam lithography. Finally, mechanically exfoliated graphene was successfully transferred to the patterned mica and studied