Down Regulation with Luteal GnRH Agonist Therapy in Euploid Embryo Transfers Does Not Impact Pregnancy Rates

Introduction : Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists have been used during assisted reproductive technology (ART) treatment for pituitary suppression and stimulation. Currently, clinical opinion is divided about whether GnRH agonist therapy improves pregnancy rates when used for luteal down-regulation in a frozen euploid embryo transfer (FET). This study evaluated the clinical utility of GnRH agonist down-regulation in single, euploid FET cycles. Methods : A retrospective analysis was performed, using data from patients who underwent a single, euploid FET cycle from 2012 to 2019. Patients were segregated into two cohorts: Group A: single, euploid FET with down-regulation using GnRH agonist; Group B: single, euploid FET without down-regulation using GnRH agonist. Primary outcomes include pregnancy rates among cohorts. Results : Group A demonstrated a pregnancy rate of 72.92% in 96 cycles. Group B demonstrated a pregnancy rate of 73.27% in 5,668 cycles. There was no difference in pregnancy rates between groups, X2(2, N = 5764) = .0061, p = .94. A subgroup of patients (n=5) with endometriosis in Group A achieved an 80% (4/5) pregnancy rate. Discussion : Single, euploid FET cycle pregnancy rates were not affected by the use of down-regulation with a GnRH agonist. Increased pregnancy rates found with prolonged GnRH agonist use in other studies weren’t seen with short term use for FET cycles. Future research should focus on molecular markers and gene transcription signatures to attempt to define whether there is an ideal population of patients who would benefit from GnRH agonist down-regulation prior to FET

Suitability Evaluation of Ash-And-Slag Waste from Coal Power Plants as Soil Components

The chemical and fractional composition of ash-and-slag waste and fly ash materials of three large combined heat and power plants in Central Russia was compared in this study to assess their influence on the germination of oats as an indicator of the phytotoxic effect of these materials as soil components. It was found that these materials have an acceptable chemical composition from the viewpoint of their release into the environment, but there are factors such as fractional composition that significantly affect the growth and the development of plants when using these materials as soil components during soil reclamation. Keywords: Ash-And-Slag waste, coal fly ash, Chemical and fractional compositio

The Northern Sea Route in the conditions of the global economic environment of the transport market

The paper discusses the prospects for the use of the Northern Sea Route as an option of the transit cargo transportation in international traffic in the conditions of the development of alternative means of communication and the global economic environment of the transport market. The reasons for the low demand for the Northern Sea Route are analyzed. The demand for transportation is predicted

Geomechanical Modeling Using Variable Order Spectral Element Method at Non-Conformal Meshes

The paper considers an overview of the problems of mathematical modeling of geomechanical processes occurring in rocks during the geological exploration and development of reservoirs and well boring process. The mathematical formulation is based on the theory of repeated superposition of large deformations. A numerical discretization of the posed boundary problems of interacting solids is performed using a discontinuous spectral element method and multi-point constraints at non-matching mesh interfaces between interacting solid rock structures. Several industrial applications of the developed approach are considered. Seismic wave propagation in the heterogeneous media with initial geomechanical stresses is considered. A modelling of an induced anisotropy is performed by the superposition of dynamic deformations onto initial generally finite strains. Use of variable order spectral elements at non-conformal meshes allows one to simplify the process of unstructured mesh generation for the discretization of complex geological models and to set the local spatial order of the SEM discretization depending on the speed of seismic waves in geological structures, which significantly reduces the computational costs when conducting numerical modeling and lowers the requirements to the model preprocessing and mesh quality. The considered approach allows predicting in more detail the behavior of the rock during reservoir development, taking into account different stages of the field deformations. In particular, the redistribution of accumulated deformations during multistep loading and / or changes in the structure (topology) of the loaded body, as well as contact conditions of adhesion / sliding at the interlayer boundaries and bonded contacts are taken into account. These problems were solved using CAE Fidesys software, which allows solving static and dynamic problems of geomechanics and geophysics using finite (FEM) and spectral (SEM) element methods of a variable approximation order in space at non-conformal unstructured meshes

Fractional Quantum Hall Phase Transitions and Four-Flux States in Graphene

Graphene and its multilayers have attracted considerable interest because their fourfold spin and valley degeneracy enables a rich variety of broken-symmetry states arising from electron-electron interactions, and raises the prospect of controlled phase transitions among them. Here we report local electronic compressibility measurements of ultraclean suspended graphene that reveal a multitude of fractional quantum Hall states surrounding filling factors $\nu =−1/2$ and $−1/4$. Several of these states exhibit phase transitions that indicate abrupt changes in the underlying order, and we observe many additional oscillations in compressibility as $\nu$ approaches $−1/2$, suggesting further changes in spin and/or valley polarization. We use a simple model based on crossing Landau levels of composite fermions with different internal degrees of freedom to explain many qualitative features of the experimental data. Our results add to the diverse array of many-body states observed in graphene and demonstrate substantial control over their order parameters.Engineering and Applied SciencesPhysic

The complex behavior of the satellite footprints at Jupiter: the result of universal processes?

At Jupiter, some auroral emissions are directly related to the electromagnetic interaction between the moons Io, Europa and Ganymede on one hand and the rapidly rotating magnetospheric plasma on the other hand. Out of the three, the Io footprint is the brightest and the most studied. Present in each hemisphere, it is made of at least three different spots and an extended trailing tail. The variability of the brightness of the spots as well as their relative location has been tentatively explained with a combination of Alfvén waves’ partial reflections on density gradients and bi-directional electron acceleration at high latitude. Should this scenario be correct, then the other footprints should also show the same behavior. Here we show that all footprints are, at least occasionally, made of several spots and they all display a tail. We also show that these spots share many characteristics with those of the Io footprint (i.e. some significant variability on timescales of 2-3 minutes). Additionally, we present some Monte-Carlo simulations indicating that the tails are also due to Alfvén waves electron acceleration rather than quasi-static electron acceleration. Even if some details still need clarification, these observations strengthen the scenario proposed for the Io footprint and thus indicate that these processes are universal. In addition, we will present some early results from Juno-UVS concerning the location and morphology of the footprints during the first low-altitude observations of the polar aurorae. These observations, carried out in previously unexplored longitude ranges, should either confirm or contradict our understanding of the footprints

Computing CMB Anisotropy in Compact Hyperbolic Spaces

The measurements of CMB anisotropy have opened up a window for probing the global topology of the universe on length scales comparable to and beyond the Hubble radius. For compact topologies, the two main effects on the CMB are: (1) the breaking of statistical isotropy in characteristic patterns determined by the photon geodesic structure of the manifold and (2) an infrared cutoff in the power spectrum of perturbations imposed by the finite spatial extent. We present a completely general scheme using the regularized method of images for calculating CMB anisotropy in models with nontrivial topology, and apply it to the computationally challenging compact hyperbolic topologies. This new technique eliminates the need for the difficult task of spatial eigenmode decomposition on these spaces. We estimate a Bayesian probability for a selection of models by confronting the theoretical pixel-pixel temperature correlation function with the COBE-DMR data. Our results demonstrate that strong constraints on compactness arise: if the universe is small compared to the `horizon' size, correlations appear in the maps that are irreconcilable with the observations. If the universe is of comparable size, the likelihood function is very dependent upon orientation of the manifold wrt the sky. While most orientations may be strongly ruled out, it sometimes happens that for a specific orientation the predicted correlation patterns are preferred over the conventional infinite models.Comment: 15 pages, LaTeX (IOP style included), 3 color figures (GIF) in separate files. Minor revision to match the version accepted in Class. Quantum Grav.: Proc. of Topology and Cosmology, Cleveland, 1997. The paper can be also downloaded from http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~pogosyan/cwru_proc.ps.g

Evaluation of intrinsic velocity-pressure trends from low-pressure P-wave velocity measurements in rocks containing microcracks

Dependent on the ‘intrinsic’ effects on the crystal lattice of the rock constituents and the diminishing ‘extrinsic’ effects of pores and microcracks, elastic wave velocity versus pressure trends in cracked rocks are characterized by non-linear velocity increase at low pressure. At high pressure the ‘extrinsic’ influence vanishes and the velocity increase becomes approximately linear. Usually, the transition between non-linear and linear behaviour, the ‘crack closure pressure’, is not accessible in an experiment, because actual equipment is limited to lower pressure. For this reason, several model functions for describing velocity—pressure trends were proposed in the literature to extrapolate low-pressure P-wave velocity measurements to high pressures and, in part, to evaluate the ‘intrinsic’ velocity—pressure trend from low-pressure data. Knowing the ‘intrinsic’ velocity trend is of particular importance for the quantification of the crack influence at low pressure, at high pressure, the ‘intrinsic’ trend describes the velocity trend as a whole sufficiently well. Checking frequently used model functions for suitability led to the conclusion that all relations are unsuitable for the extrapolation and, if applicable, the estimation of the ‘intrinsic’ velocity trend. However, it can be shown that the ‘intrinsic’ parameters determined by means of a suitable model function, the zero pressure velocity and the pressure gradient depend on maximum experimental pressure in a non-linear way. Our approach intends to obtain better estimates of particular parameters from observed non-linear behaviour. A converging exponential function is used to approximate particular trends, assuming that the point of convergence of the function represents a better estimate of the zero pressure velocity and the pressure gradient, respectively. Whether the refined ‘intrinsic’ velocity trend meets the ‘true intrinsic’ velocity trend within acceptable errors cannot be proven directly due to missing experimental data at very high pressure. We, therefore, conclude that our approach cannot ensure absolutely certain ‘intrinsic’ velocity trends, however, it can be shown that the optimized trends approximate the ‘true intrinsic’ velocity trend better as all the other relations do

ARIA-EAACI statement on asthma and COVID-19 (June 2, 2020)

Non peer reviewe