Association of circulating levels of nicotinamide phosphoribosyltransferase (NAMPT/Visfatin) and of a frequent polymorphism in the promoter of the NAMPT gene with coronary artery disease in diabetic and non-diabetic subjects

Background: Nicotinamide phosphoribosyltransferase (NAMPT) is the limiting enzyme in one of pathways of synthesis of Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide, a redox coenzyme. NAMPT is considered as an insulin-mimetic factor and a potential regulatory factor in inflammatory and immune processes. Associations of circulating NAMPT levels with cardiovascular disease (CVD) and insulin resistance have been reported. We investigated association of circulating NAMPT levels and the rs9770242 NAMPT gene polymorphism with coronary artery disease (CAD).Methods: We studied 594 Brazilian subjects undergoing a coronary angiography (49% of whom had type 2 diabetes). CAD, defined as stenosis greater than 50% in one major coronary vessel or branch, was observed in 68% of subjects. Genetic studies were also performed in 858 North-American Non-Hispanic White subjects with type 2 diabetes (49% with CAD).Results: We observed an interaction between glycemic and CAD status on the comparison of NAMPT levels by CAD status. NAMPT levels were higher in type 2 diabetic patients with CAD as compared to those without CAD: 5.27 +/- 2.93 ng/ml vs. 4.43 +/- 2.94 ng/ml, p = 0.006 (mean +/- SD). NAMPT levels were not significantly different in non-diabetic subjects with or without CAD. the T-allele of rs9770242 was associated with CAD in the Brazilian cohort (OR 1.46, 95% CI 1.06 - 2.01, p = 0.02) while no association was observed in the North-American cohort.Conclusions: Our data suggest that circulating NAMPT levels are associated with CAD in type 2 diabetic patients. NAMPT rs9770242 polymorphism may be associated with CAD in some populations.Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)Fed Univ São Paulo UNIFESP, Ctr Diabet, BR-04039002 São Paulo, BrazilCEDEBA, BR-41820000 Salvador, BA, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Cardiol Unit, BR-04039002 São Paulo, BrazilJoslin Diabet Ctr, Div Res, Boston, MA 02215 USAUniv Paris 07, INSERM, Res Unit 695, F-75018 Paris, FranceFed Univ São Paulo UNIFESP, Ctr Diabet, BR-04039002 São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Cardiol Unit, BR-04039002 São Paulo, BrazilFAPESP: 2008/10209-6Web of Scienc

The impact of the 2009–10 El Nino Modoki on U.S. West Coast beaches

High-resolution beach morphology data collected along much of the U.S. West Coast are synthesized to evaluate the coastal impacts of the 2009–10 El Niño. Coastal change observations were collected as part of five beach monitoring programs that span between 5 and 13 years in duration. In California, regional wave and water level data show that the environmental forcing during the 2009–10 winter was similar to the last significant El Niño of 1997–98, producing the largest seasonal shoreline retreat and/or most landward shoreline position since monitoring began. In contrast, the 2009–10 El Niño did not produce anomalously high mean winter-wave energy in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon and Washington), although the highest 5% of the winter wave-energy measurements were comparable to 1997–98 and two significant non-El Niño winters. The increase in extreme waves in the 2009–10 winter was coupled with elevated water levels and a more southerly wave approach than the long-term mean, resulting in greater shoreline retreat than during 1997–98, including anomalously high shoreline retreat immediately north of jetties, tidal inlets, and rocky headlands. The morphodynamic response observed throughout the U.S. West Coast during the 2009–10 El Niño is principally linked to the El Niño Modoki phenomena, where the warm sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly is focused in the central equatorial Pacific (as opposed to the eastern Pacific during a classic El Niño), featuring a more temporally persistent SST anomaly that results in longer periods of elevated wave energy but lower coastal water levels

Quantum computing implementations with neutral particles

We review quantum information processing with cold neutral particles, that is, atoms or polar molecules. First, we analyze the best suited degrees of freedom of these particles for storing quantum information, and then we discuss both single- and two-qubit gate implementations. We focus our discussion mainly on collisional quantum gates, which are best suited for atom-chip-like devices, as well as on gate proposals conceived for optical lattices. Additionally, we analyze schemes both for cold atoms confined in optical cavities and hybrid approaches to entanglement generation, and we show how optimal control theory might be a powerful tool to enhance the speed up of the gate operations as well as to achieve high fidelities required for fault tolerant quantum computation.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figures; From the issue entitled "Special Issue on Neutral Particles

Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

The National Early Warning Score and its subcomponents recorded within ±24 hours of emergency medical admission are poor predictors of hospital-acquired acute kidney injury

YesBackground: Hospital-acquired Acute Kidney Injury (H-AKI) is a common cause of avoidable morbidity and mortality. Aim: To determine if the patients’ vital signs data as defined by a National Early Warning Score (NEWS), can predict H-AKI following emergency admission to hospital. Methods: Analyses of emergency admissions to York hospital over 24-months with NEWS data. We report the area under the curve (AUC) for logistic regression models that used the index NEWS (model A0), plus age and sex (A1), plus subcomponents of NEWS (A2) and two-way interactions (A3). Likewise for maximum NEWS (models B0,B1,B2,B3). Results: 4.05% (1361/33608) of emergency admissions had H-AKI. Models using the index NEWS had the lower AUCs (0.59 to 0.68) than models using the maximum NEWS AUCs (0.75 to 0.77). The maximum NEWS model (B3) was more sensitivity than the index NEWS model (A0) (67.60% vs 19.84%) but identified twice as many cases as being at risk of H-AKI (9581 vs 4099) at a NEWS of 5. Conclusions: The index NEWS is a poor predictor of H-AKI. The maximum NEWS is a better predictor but seems unfeasible because it is only knowable in retrospect and is associated with a substantial increase in workload albeit with improved sensitivity.The Health Foundatio