74 research outputs found

    Correlates of Coronavirus Disease 2019 Inpatient Mortality at a Southern California Community Hospital With a Predominantly Hispanic/Latino Adult Population

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    © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Infectious Diseases Society of America. Financial support. None.BACKGROUND: Studies of inpatient coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) mortality risk factors have mainly used data from academic medical centers or large multihospital databases and have not examined populations with large proportions of Hispanic/Latino patients. In a retrospective cohort study of 4881 consecutive adult COVID-19 hospitalizations at a single community hospital in Los Angeles County with a majority Hispanic/Latino population, we evaluated factors associated with mortality. METHODS: Data on demographic characteristics, comorbidities, laboratory and clinical results, and COVID-19 therapeutics were abstracted from the electronic medical record. Cox proportional hazards regression modeled statistically significant, independently associated predictors of hospital mortality. RESULTS: Age ≥65 years (hazard ratio [HR] = 2.66; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.90-3.72), male sex (HR = 1.31; 95% CI = 1.07-1.60), renal disease (HR = 1.52; 95% CI = 1.18-1.95), cardiovascular disease (HR = 1.45; 95% CI = 1.18-1.78), neurological disease (HR = 1.84; 95% CI = 1.41-2.39), D-dimer ≥500 ng/mL (HR = 2.07; 95% CI = 1.43-3.0), and pulse oxygen level <88% (HR = 1.39; 95% CI = 1.13-1.71) were independently associated with increased mortality. Patient household with (1) multiple COVID-19 cases and (2) Asian, Black, or Hispanic compared with White non-Hispanic race/ethnicity were associated with reduced mortality. In hypoxic COVID-19 inpatients, remdesivir, tocilizumab, and convalescent plasma were associated with reduced mortality, and corticosteroid use was associated with increased mortality. CONCLUSIONS: We corroborate several previously identified mortality risk factors and find evidence that the combination of factors associated with mortality differ between populations.Peer reviewe

    RiboAbacus: a model trained on polyribosome images predicts ribosome density and translational efficiency from mammalian transcriptomes

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    Fluctuations in mRNA levels only partially contribute to determine variations in mRNA availability for translation, producing the well-known poor correlation between transcriptome and proteome data. Recent advances in microscopy now enable researchers to obtain high resolution images of ribosomes on transcripts, providing precious snapshots of translation in vivo. Here we propose RiboAbacus, a mathematical model that for the first time incorporates imaging data in a predictive model of transcript-specific ribosome densities and translational efficiencies. RiboAbacus uses a mechanistic model of ribosome dynamics, enabling the quantification of the relative importance of different features (such as codon usage and the 5′ ramp effect) in determining the accuracy of predictions. The model has been optimized in the human Hek-293 cell line to fit thousands of images of human polysomes obtained by atomic force microscopy, from which we could get a reference distribution of the number of ribosomes per mRNA with unmatched resolution. After validation, we applied RiboAbacus to three case studies of known transcriptome-proteome datasets for estimating the translational efficiencies, resulting in an increased correlation with corresponding proteomes. RiboAbacus is an intuitive tool that allows an immediate estimation of crucial translation properties for entire transcriptomes, based on easily obtainable transcript expression levels

    Sub Programa Cedrella

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    El Subprograma Cedrela del PROMEF se inició en el año 2010, con el fin de consolidar y dar continuidad al proyecto nacional de Domesticación de especies nativas de alto valor de las Selvas Subtropicales que conducía el INTA desde el año 2006, dirigido a llevar a cultivo especies forestales de alto valor socioeconómico de las Selvas, para incrementar la producción de maderas nobles y recuperar áreas degradadas a fin de mantener la función productiva del bosque y de sus servicios ambientales. El objetivo general del Subprograma Cedrela fue el de proveer a las regiones NOA y NEA de materiales de propagación mejorados de especies nativas emblemáticas ,adaptados a diferentes condiciones ecológicas y finalidades. Las especies más estudiadas hasta el presente son Cedrela angustifolia, C. balansa e y C. fissilis. Sin embargo, la existencia de más de 40 especies maderables/ha promovió la realización de encuestas de opinión para que el sector foresto-industrial definiera las que ingresarían al proceso de domesticación, ya que se requiere de un lapso extendido de tiempo y de un presupuesto considerable para desarrollar los estudios necesarios. En consecuencia, se generaron alianzas estratégicas con Universidades, la Administración de Parques Nacionales (APN), organismos provinciales y empresas. Posteriormente, se fueron incluyendo actividades para Cordia trichotoma y Araucaria angustifolia. El punto de partida fue la caracterización del material genético desde un enfoque poblacional para definir las estrategias de mejora genética y de conservación, dado que se trata mayormente de especies amenazadas. A partir de esta información y con la asistencia de herramientas moleculares se conformaron las poblaciones de mejora, incluyendo materiales con potencial productivo, plasticidad ante el estrés hídrico y térmico y diversidad genética suficiente. Esto permitió la instalación de huertos semilleros clonales y la ubicación de rodales semilleros para afrontar la demanda actual de semillas para los planes de producción sustentable y conservación (ley nacional 26.432 y ley nacional 26.331), así como el establecimiento de ensayos de orígenes y progenies para dar continuidad al programa de mejora, realizar observaciones fenológicas y asegurar la conservación ex situ-in vivo de numerosos genotipos que ya no existen en la naturaleza. Por otro lado, se evaluaron diferentes alternativas de conducción de plantaciones y manejo de vivero para mejorar la sobrevivencia a campo, incluyendo el control de la plaga Hypsipyla grandella. Por último, se realizaron actividades de transferencia de los resultados por diferentes vías de comunicación, poniendo énfasis en el sector productivo ya que reúne a los beneficiarios directos de esta propuesta. Asimismo, se capacitaron recursos humanos para fortalecer los grupos relacionados al uso y conservación de especies forestales nativas.Fil: Fornes, Luis Fernando. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Tucuman-Santiago del Estero. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Famaillá; ArgentinaFil: Zelener, Noga. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación de Recursos Naturales. Instituto de Recursos Biológicos; ArgentinaFil: Gauchat, M. Elena. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Misiones. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Montecarlo; ArgentinaFil: Inza, M. Virginia. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación de Recursos Naturales. Instituto de Recursos Biológicos; ArgentinaFil: Soldati, María Cristina. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación de Recursos Naturales. Instituto de Recursos Biológicos; ArgentinaFil: Ruíz, Veronica. No especifíca;Fil: Meloni, Diego Ariel. Universidad Nacional de Santiago del Estero. Facultad de Ciencias Forestales; ArgentinaFil: Grignola, Josefina. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Tucuman-Santiago del Estero. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Famaillá; ArgentinaFil: Barth, Sara Regina. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Misiones. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Montecarlo; ArgentinaFil: Ledesma, Tilda. Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Salta-jujuy. Estacion Experimental Agropecuaria Yuto.; ArgentinaFil: Tapia, Silvia. Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Salta-jujuy. Estacion Experimental Agropecuaria Yuto.; ArgentinaFil: Tarnowski, Christian. Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Salta-jujuy. Estacion Experimental Agropecuaria Yuto.; ArgentinaFil: Eskiviski, Edgar Rafael. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Misiones. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Montecarlo; ArgentinaFil: Figueredo, Iris. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Misiones. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Montecarlo; ArgentinaFil: González, Paola. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Misiones. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Montecarlo; ArgentinaFil: Leiva, Nidia. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Tucuman-Santiago del Estero. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Famaillá; ArgentinaFil: Rodríguez, Gustavo. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Misiones. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Montecarlo; ArgentinaFil: Alarcon, Pamela. No especifíca;Fil: Cuello, Roberto. No especifíca;Fil: Gatto, Miguel. No especifíca;Fil: Rotundo, Cristian Andrés. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional Misiones. Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Montecarlo; ArgentinaFil: Giannoni, Florencia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Alonso, Fernando M.. No especifíca;Fil: Saravia, Pablo Federico. No especifíca;Fil: Trápani, Adrián Ignacio. No especifíca

    Glucose- but Not Rice-Based Oral Rehydration Therapy Enhances the Production of Virulence Determinants in the Human Pathogen Vibrio cholerae

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    Despite major attempts to prevent cholera transmission, millions of people worldwide still must address this devastating disease. Cholera research has so far mainly focused on the causative agent, the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, or on disease treatment, but rarely were results from both fields interconnected. Indeed, the treatment of this severe diarrheal disease is mostly accomplished by oral rehydration therapy (ORT), whereby water and electrolytes are replenished. Commonly distributed oral rehydration salts also contain glucose. Here, we analyzed the effects of glucose and alternative carbon sources on the production of virulence determinants in the causative agent of cholera, the bacterium Vibrio cholerae during in vitro experimentation. We demonstrate that virulence gene expression and the production of cholera toxin are enhanced in the presence of glucose or similarly transported sugars in a ToxR-, TcpP- and ToxT-dependent manner. The virulence genes were significantly less expressed if alternative non-PTS carbon sources, including rice-based starch, were utilized. Notably, even though glucose-based ORT is commonly used, field studies indicated that rice-based ORT performs better. We therefore used a spatially explicit epidemiological model to demonstrate that the better performing rice-based ORT could have a significant impact on epidemic progression based on the recent outbreak of cholera in Haiti. Our results strongly support a change of carbon source for the treatment of cholera, especially in epidemic settings

    The role of ETG modes in JET-ILW pedestals with varying levels of power and fuelling

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    We present the results of GENE gyrokinetic calculations based on a series of JET-ITER-like-wall (ILW) type I ELMy H-mode discharges operating with similar experimental inputs but at different levels of power and gas fuelling. We show that turbulence due to electron-temperature-gradient (ETGs) modes produces a significant amount of heat flux in four JET-ILW discharges, and, when combined with neoclassical simulations, is able to reproduce the experimental heat flux for the two low gas pulses. The simulations plausibly reproduce the high-gas heat fluxes as well, although power balance analysis is complicated by short ELM cycles. By independently varying the normalised temperature gradients (omega(T)(e)) and normalised density gradients (omega(ne )) around their experimental values, we demonstrate that it is the ratio of these two quantities eta(e) = omega(Te)/omega(ne) that determines the location of the peak in the ETG growth rate and heat flux spectra. The heat flux increases rapidly as eta(e) increases above the experimental point, suggesting that ETGs limit the temperature gradient in these pulses. When quantities are normalised using the minor radius, only increases in omega(Te) produce appreciable increases in the ETG growth rates, as well as the largest increases in turbulent heat flux which follow scalings similar to that of critical balance theory. However, when the heat flux is normalised to the electron gyro-Bohm heat flux using the temperature gradient scale length L-Te, it follows a linear trend in correspondence with previous work by different authors

    Spectroscopic camera analysis of the roles of molecularly assisted reaction chains during detachment in JET L-mode plasmas

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    The roles of the molecularly assisted ionization (MAI), recombination (MAR) and dissociation (MAD) reaction chains with respect to the purely atomic ionization and recombination processes were studied experimentally during detachment in low-confinement mode (L-mode) plasmas in JET with the help of experimentally inferred divertor plasma and neutral conditions, extracted previously from filtered camera observations of deuterium Balmer emission, and the reaction coefficients provided by the ADAS, AMJUEL and H2VIBR atomic and molecular databases. The direct contribution of MAI and MAR in the outer divertor particle balance was found to be inferior to the electron-atom ionization (EAI) and electron-ion recombination (EIR). Near the outer strike point, a strong atom source due to the D+2-driven MAD was, however, observed to correlate with the onset of detachment at outer strike point temperatures of Te,osp = 0.9-2.0 eV via increased plasma-neutral interactions before the increasing dominance of EIR at Te,osp &lt; 0.9 eV, followed by increasing degree of detachment. The analysis was supported by predictions from EDGE2D-EIRENE simulations which were in qualitative agreement with the experimental observations

    A control oriented strategy of disruption prediction to avoid the configuration collapse of tokamak reactors

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    The objective of thermonuclear fusion consists of producing electricity from the coalescence of light nuclei in high temperature plasmas. The most promising route to fusion envisages the confinement of such plasmas with magnetic fields, whose most studied configuration is the tokamak. Disruptions are catastrophic collapses affecting all tokamak devices and one of the main potential showstoppers on the route to a commercial reactor. In this work we report how, deploying innovative analysis methods on thousands of JET experiments covering the isotopic compositions from hydrogen to full tritium and including the major D-T campaign, the nature of the various forms of collapse is investigated in all phases of the discharges. An original approach to proximity detection has been developed, which allows determining both the probability of and the time interval remaining before an incoming disruption, with adaptive, from scratch, real time compatible techniques. The results indicate that physics based prediction and control tools can be developed, to deploy realistic strategies of disruption avoidance and prevention, meeting the requirements of the next generation of devices.Confining plasma and managing disruptions in tokamak devices is a challenge. Here the authors demonstrate a method predicting and possibly preventing disruptions and macroscopic instabilities in tokamak plasma using data from JET

    Shattered pellet injection experiments at JET in support of the ITER disruption mitigation system design

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    A series of experiments have been executed at JET to assess the efficacy of the newly installed shattered pellet injection (SPI) system in mitigating the effects of disruptions. Issues, important for the ITER disruption mitigation system, such as thermal load mitigation, avoidance of runaway electron (RE) formation, radiation asymmetries during thermal quench mitigation, electromagnetic load control and RE energy dissipation have been addressed over a large parameter range. The efficiency of the mitigation has been examined for the various SPI injection strategies. The paper summarises the results from these JET SPI experiments and discusses their implications for the ITER disruption mitigation scheme

    New H-mode regimes with small ELMs and high thermal confinement in the Joint European Torus

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    New H-mode regimes with high confinement, low core impurity accumulation, and small edge-localized mode perturbations have been obtained in magnetically confined plasmas at the Joint European Torus tokamak. Such regimes are achieved by means of optimized particle fueling conditions at high input power, current, and magnetic field, which lead to a self-organized state with a strong increase in rotation and ion temperature and a decrease in the edge density. An interplay between core and edge plasma regions leads to reduced turbulence levels and outward impurity convection. These results pave the way to an attractive alternative to the standard plasmas considered for fusion energy generation in a tokamak with a metallic wall environment such as the ones expected in ITER.&amp; nbsp;Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing
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