Left ventricular systolic function evaluated by strain echocardiography and relationship with mortality in patients with severe sepsis or septic shock. a systematic review and meta-analysis

Sepsis-induced myocardial dysfunction is associated with poor outcomes, but traditional measurements of systolic function such as left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) do not directly correlate with prognosis. Global longitudinal strain (GLS) utilizing speckle-tracking echocardiography (STE) could be a better marker of intrinsic left ventricular (LV) function, reflecting myocardial deformation rather than displacement and volume changes. We sought to investigate the prognostic value of GLS in patients with sepsis and/or septic shock

Detection and characterization of hydraulically active fractures in a carbonate aquifer: results from self-potential, temperature and fluid electrical conductivity logging in the Combioula hydrothermal system in the southwestern Swiss Alps

A geophysical and geochemical study has been conducted in a fractured carbonate aquifer located at Combioula in the southwestern Swiss Alps with the objective to detect and characterize hydraulically active fractures along a 260-m-deep borehole. Hydrochemical analyses, borehole diameter, temperature and fluid electrical conductivity logging data were integrated in order to relate electrokinetic self-potential signals to groundwater flow inside the fracture network. The results show a generally good, albeit locally variable correlation of variations of the self-potential signals with variations in temperature, fluid electrical conductivity and borehole diameter. Together with the hydrochemical evidence, which was found to be critical for the interpretation of the self-potential data, these measurements not only made it possible to detect the hydraulically active fractures but also to characterize them as zones of fluid gain or fluid loss. The results complement the available information from the corresponding litholog and illustrate the potential of electrokinetic self-potential signals in conjunction with temperature, fluid electrical conductivity and hydrochemical analyses for the characterization of fractured aquifers, and thus may offer a perspective for an effective quantitative characterization of this increasingly important class of aquifers and geothermal reservoir

Twisted mass chiral perturbation theory for 2+1+1 quark flavours

We present results for the masses of pseudoscalar mesons in twisted mass lattice QCD with a degenerate doublet of u and d quarks and a non-degenerate doublet of s and c quarks in the framework of next-to-leading order chiral perturbation theory, including lattice effects up to O(a^2). The masses depend on the two twist angles for the light and heavy sectors. For maximal twist in both sectors, O(a)-improvement is explicitly exhibited. The mixing of flavour-neutral mesons is also discussed, and results in the literature for the case of degenerate s and c quarks are corrected.Comment: LaTeX2e, 12 pages, corrected typo

Definition of a Solvent System for Spherical Crystallization of Salbutamol Sulfate by Quasi-Emulsion Solvent Diffusion (QESD) Method

International audienceIn this paper we describe how the spherical crystallization process by QESD method can be applied to a water-soluble drug, salbutamol sulfate. The type of solvent, antisolvent, and emulsi®er and the concentration of emulsi®er to be used for the production of spherical particles with a size range 80±500 mm are determined. Furthermore, the solvent/antisolvent ratio and the temperature difference between them (DT) are studied. It was observed that, in the case of salbutamol sulfate, the DT value has no in¯uence on the formation of spherical particles. A very large metastable zone of salbutamol sulfate in water could explain this phenomenon. Finally, the in¯uence of emulsi®er concentration and of maturation time on the size of spherical particles is studied. The results show that these two parameters must be ®xed to control the size of the recovered particles

Cophasage des pupilles d'un télescope multi-pupilles

- La mise en phase, ou cophasage, des pupilles d'un télescope Multi-pupilles nécessite la connaissance des aberrations différentielles de piston entre les pupilles. Un premier estimateur simple de piston peut être obtenu par analyse directe de la Fonction de Transfert Optique. Nous présentons ici la dérivation d'un second estimateur par une approche Moindres Carrés, et nous comparons les performances des deux estimateurs

CHARA/MIRC observations of two M supergiants in Perseus OB1: temperature, Bayesian modeling, and compressed sensing imaging

Two red supergiants of the Per OB1 association, RS Per and T Per, have been observed in H band using the MIRC instrument at the CHARA array. The data show clear evidence of departure from circular symmetry. We present here new techniques specially developed to analyze such cases, based on state-of-the-art statistical frameworks. The stellar surfaces are first modeled as limb-darkened discs based on SATLAS models that fit both MIRC interferometric data and publicly available spectrophotometric data. Bayesian model selection is then used to determine the most probable number of spots. The effective surface temperatures are also determined and give further support to the recently derived hotter temperature scales of red su- pergiants. The stellar surfaces are reconstructed by our model-independent imaging code SQUEEZE, making use of its novel regularizer based on Compressed Sensing theory. We find excellent agreement between the model-selection results and the reconstructions. Our results provide evidence for the presence of near-infrared spots representing about 3-5% of the stellar flux