Associations of pre-hospital statin treatment with in-hospital outcomes and severity of coronary artery disease in patients with first acute coronary syndrome-findings from the CCC-ACS project

BackgroundThe current burden of dyslipidemia, the pre-hospital application of statins and the association of pre-hospital statins with the severity of coronary artery disease (CAD) and in-hospital outcomes in Chinese patients with first acute coronary syndrome (ACS) are very significant and remain unclear.MethodsA total of 41,183 patients who underwent coronary angiography and were diagnosed with ACS for the first time from a nationwide registry study (CCC-ACS) were enrolled. The severity of CAD was assessed using the CAD prognostic index (CADPI). The patients were classified into statin and non-statin groups according to their pre-hospital statin treatment status. Clinical characteristics, CADPI and in-hospital outcomes were compared, and a logistic regression analysis was performed to determine whether pre-hospital statin therapy is associated with in-hospital outcomes and CADPI. A sensitivity analysis was used to further explore the issues above.ResultsThe non-statin group had more in-hospital all-cause deaths (1.2 vs. 0.8%, P = 0.010). However, no association exists between statin pretreatment and in-hospital major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs) or all-cause deaths in the entire population and subgroups (all P > 0.05). Surprisingly, statin pretreatment was associated with an 8.9% higher risk of severely obstructive CAD (CADPI ≥ 37) (OR, 1.089; 95% CI, 1.010–1.175, P = 0.028), and similar results were observed in subgroups of females, those aged 50 to 75 years, and patients with hypertension.ConclusionStatin pretreatment was not related to MACEs or all-cause death during hospital stay, but it was associated with a higher risk of increased angiographic severity in patients with first ACS

Cardiac Sca-1+ cells are not intrinsic stem cells for myocardial development, renewal and repair

Background: For over a decade, Sca-1+ cells within the mouse heart have been widely recognized as a stem cell population with multipotency that can give rise to cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells and smooth muscle cells in vitro and after cardiac grafting. However, the developmental origin and authentic nature of these cells remain elusive. Methods: Here, we used a series of high-fidelity genetic mouse models to characterize the identity and regenerative potential of cardiac resident Sca-1+ cells. Results: With these novel genetic mouse models, we found that Sca-1 does not label cardiac precursor cells during early embryonic heart formation. Postnatal cardiac resident Sca-1+ cells are in fact a pure endothelial cell population. They retain endothelial properties and exhibit minimal cardiomyogenic potential during development, normal aging and upon ischemic injury. Conclusions: Our study provides definitive insights into the nature of cardiac resident Sca-1+ cells. The observations challenge the current dogma that cardiac resident Sca-1+ cells are intrinsic stem cells for myocardial development, renewal and repair and suggest that the mechanisms of transplanted Sca-1+ cells in heart repair need to be reassessed

A Micro-Machined Gyroscope for Rotating Aircraft

sensor

Nanoindentation investigation of Ti/Fe bimetallic plate welded by vanadium filler

This article presents a systematic investigation of microstructures and mechanical properties of Ti/Fe bimetallic plates butt welded using vanadium (V) filler. It is found that the Ti/V/Fe interface is featured by dendrite structures consisting of β-Ti, FeTi, Fe2Ti, and α-Ti phases, with a hardness ranging from 5.5 to 16.25 GPa. V weld metal (WM) mainly consists of V solid solution phase with some α-Ti precipitating along the grain boundaries. A series of intermetallics, e.g., σ-FeV and Fe2Ti, are formed at the V/Fe WM interface. V WM has relatively uniform hardness (2 to 5 GPa), but hardness fluctuation is observed at the V/Fe WM interface, from 2 to 16.3 GPa. Cracks tend to initiate and propagate along the regions rich in σ-FeV and Fe2Ti. The reheated zone (V/Fe WM) by subsequent welding passes may promote the formation of σ-FeV, responsible for the cracking. Based on the Fe-Ti-V ternary phase diagram, a schematic model is established to predict the phase transformation in these welds

Grammatically Derived Factual Relation Augmented Neural Machine Translation

Transformer-based neural machine translation (NMT) has achieved state-of-the-art performance in the NMT paradigm. This method assumes that the model can automatically learn linguistic knowledge (e.g., grammar and syntax) from the parallel corpus via an attention network. However, the attention network cannot capture the deep internal structure of a sentence. Therefore, it is natural to introduce some prior knowledge to guide the model. In this paper, factual relation information is introduced into NMT as prior knowledge, and a novel approach named Factual Relation Augmented (FRA) is proposed to guide the decoder in Transformer-based NMT. In the encoding procedure, a factual relation mask matrix is constructed to generate the factual relation representation for the source sentence, while in the decoding procedure an effective method is proposed to incorporate the factual relation representation and the original representation of the source sentence into the decoder. Positive results obtained in several different translation tasks indicate the effectiveness of the proposed approach

PZT-Based Detection of Compactness of Concrete in Concrete Filled Steel Tube Using Time Reversal Method

A smart aggregate-based approach is proposed for the concrete compactness detection of concrete filled steel tube (CFST) columns. The piezoceramic-based smart aggregates (SAs) were embedded in the predetermined locations prior to the casting of concrete columns to establish a wave-based smart sensing system for the concrete compactness detection purpose. To evaluate the efficiency of the developed approach, six specimens of the CFST columns with the rectangular cross-section were produced by placing some artificial defects during casting of concrete for simulating various uncompacted voids such as cavities, cracks, and debond. During the test, the time reversal technology was applied to rebuild the received signals and launch the reversed signals again by SAs, to overcome the issue of the lack of the prototype. Based on the proposed nonprototype, two indices of time reversibility (TR) and symmetry (SYM) were applied to relatively evaluate the level of concrete compactness in the range of the two SAs. The experimental results show that the developed method can effectively detect the compactness of concrete in CFST columns