Supergiant Barocaloric Effects in Acetoxy Silicone Rubber over a Wide Temperature Range: Great Potential for Solid-state Cooling

Solid-state cooling based on caloric effects is considered a viable alternative to replace the conventional vapor-compression refrigeration systems. Regarding barocaloric materials, recent results show that elastomers are promising candidates for cooling applications around room-temperature. In the present paper, we report supergiant barocaloric effects observed in acetoxy silicone rubber - a very popular, low-cost and environmentally friendly elastomer. Huge values of adiabatic temperature change and reversible isothermal entropy change were obtained upon moderate applied pressures and relatively low strains. These huge barocaloric changes are associated both to the polymer chains rearrangements induced by confined compression and to the first-order structural transition. The results are comparable to the best barocaloric materials reported so far, opening encouraging prospects for the application of elastomers in near future solid-state cooling devices.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures, 2 table

Primary cutaneous actinomycosis caused by Actinomyces meyeri as first manifestation of HIV infection

Primary cutaneous actinomycosis is very uncommon. We report a patient with cutaneous actinomycosis with multiple lesions without any detectable extra-cutaneous lesions. In our patient the actinomycosis was the presenting manifestation of HIV infection

Pulmonary Emphysema Regional Distribution and Extent Assessed by Chest Computed Tomography Is Associated With Pulmonary Function Impairment in Patients With COPD

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate how emphysema extent and its regional distribution quantified by chest CT are associated with clinical and functional severity in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Methods/Design: Patients with a post-bronchodilator forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1)/forced vital capacity (FVC) < 0.70, without any other obstructive airway disease, who presented radiological evidence of emphysema on visual CT inspection were retrospectively enrolled. A Quantitative Lung Imaging (QUALI) system automatically quantified the volume of pulmonary emphysema and adjusted this volume to the measured (EmphCTLV) or predicted total lung volume (TLV) (EmphPLV) and assessed its regional distribution based on an artificial neural network (ANN) trained for this purpose. Additionally, the percentage of lung volume occupied by low-attenuation areas (LAA) was computed by dividing the total volume of regions with attenuation lower or equal to -950 Hounsfield units (HU) by the predicted [LAA (%PLV)] or measured CT lung volume [LAA (%CTLV)]. The LAA was then compared with the QUALI emphysema estimations. The association between emphysema extension and its regional distribution with pulmonary function impairment was then assessed. Results: In this study, 86 patients fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Both EmphCTLV and EmphPLV were significantly lower than the LAA indices independently of emphysema severity. CT-derived TLV significantly increased with emphysema severity (from 6,143 ± 1,295 up to 7,659 ± 1,264 ml from mild to very severe emphysema, p < 0.005) and thus, both EmphCTLV and LAA significantly underestimated emphysema extent when compared with those values adjusted to the predicted lung volume. All CT-derived emphysema indices presented moderate to strong correlations with residual volume (RV) (with correlations ranging from 0.61 to 0.66), total lung capacity (TLC) (from 0.51 to 0.59), and FEV1 (~0.6) and diffusing capacity for carbon monoxide DLCO (~0.6). The values of FEV1 and DLCO were significantly lower, and RV (p < 0.001) and TLC (p < 0.001) were significantly higher with the increasing emphysema extent and when emphysematous areas homogeneously affected the lungs. Conclusions: Emphysema volume must be referred to the predicted and not to the measured lung volume when assessing the CT-derived emphysema extension. Pulmonary function impairment was greater in patients with higher emphysema volumes and with a more homogeneous emphysema distribution. Further studies are still necessary to assess the significance of CTpLV in the clinical and research fields.This research was supported by the Brazilian Council for Scientific and Technological Development (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, Grants Nos. 302702/2017-2 and 302839/2017-8) and the Rio de Janeiro State Research Supporting Foundation (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Grants Nos. E-26/211.867/2016, E-26/202.785/2017, E-26/203.001/2018), and by national funds through FCT, Cardiovascular R&D Center – UnIC (UIDB/00051/2020 and UIDP/00051/2020)

The impact of early protein intake and nutritional status in critically ill patients

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Right coronary artery aneurysm

Int J Cardiol. 2007 Jan 18;114(3):e122-3. Epub 2006 Oct 16. Right coronary artery aneurysm. Luz A, Silveira J, Carvalho H, Gomes L. Abstract Coronary artery aneurysms, characterized by abnormal dilatations of a localized portion of the coronary artery, are an uncommon finding during angiography. We present a case where a giant right coronary aneurysm was detected during angiography, in a patient admitted with a inferior wall myocardial infarction. PMID: 17049395 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE