Extramural Coronary Artery Disease in Type I Diabetes Mellitus: A Quantative Autopsy Study

Author Institution: Departments of Pathology and Internal Medicine, College of Medicine, University of CincinnatiExtramural coronary arteries of 17 type I diabetics and 22 control patients were examined at necropsy following a detailed methodology plan. There was a greater extent of luminal narrowing in the extramural coronary arteries in the diabetic patients than in the controls. While it is known that in patients with the advanced stage of type I diabetes mellitus significant coronary atherosclerosis is likely to be present, it is new information that they have a propensity for obstructive atherosclerosis, not just in the 3 major coronary arteries but also in the branches. Young type I diabetics with atherosclerosis of proximal portions of the coronary vasculature are likely to have equally severe atherosclerosis in the distal portions and branches as well. Atherosclerosis was less severe in the diabetic patients who did receive hemodialysis and/or a renal transplant than those who did not

Fast computation by block permanents of cumulative distribution functions of order statistics from several populations

The joint cumulative distribution function for order statistics arising from several different populations is given in terms of the distribution function of the populations. The computational cost of the formula in the case of two populations is still exponential in the worst case, but it is a dramatic improvement compared to the general formula by Bapat and Beg. In the case when only the joint distribution function of a subset of the order statistics of fixed size is needed, the complexity is polynomial, for the case of two populations.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figure

Temporal change in maternal dietary intake during pregnancy and lactation between and within 2 pregnancy cohorts assembled in the United Kingdom

Background: The association between maternal and infant dietary exposures and risk of allergic disease development is an area of considerable scientific uncertainty. Objective: This study aims to compare dietary habits during pregnancy and lactation in two pre-birth cohorts from the same location approximately 10 years apart, a timeframe characterised by changes in government dietary advice. Methods: The FAIR cohort is an unselected birth cohort born between 2001-2002. The 3rd generation cohort was born between 2010-2018. Both cohorts were established on the Isle of Wight (UK) to investigate prevalence of allergic diseases. Nutrition and allergy data was collected prospectively from recruitment and throughout the infant’s early life. Here we present dietary data collected in the third trimester of pregnancy and at three months of age. Differences between cohorts were tested using t-tests, Wilcoxon rank sum tests, chi-squared and Fisher’s exact tests. Results: Data was available for 1331 participants (969 FAIR and 362 3rd generation). The proportion of mothers that reported excluding peanuts during pregnancy was significantly lower for the 3rd generation compared to the FAIR cohort (16.0% vs. 55.6%, p < 0.01). Cohort membership, primiparity, and maternal education were significantly associated with excluding peanuts during pregnancy (p < 0.01). The proportion of mothers who reported excluding any foods during breastfeeding was significantly lower for the 3rd generation compared to the FAIR cohort (22.8% vs. 43.4%, p < 0.01). Conclusion: Maternal exclusion of peanut during pregnancy was lower for mothers giving birth between 2012-2018, compared to mothers giving birth between 2001-2002

Alirocumab in high-risk patients: Observations from the open-label expanded use program

BACKGROUND: The alirocumab expanded use program provided open-label access to alirocumab before its commercial availability to patients with severe hypercholesterolemia not controlled with maximally tolerated doses of standard-of-care lipid-lowering therapy. OBJECTIVE: To describe the safety and lipid-lowering efficacy of alirocumab in high-risk patients who were likely to be early users of proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 inhibitors after approval. METHODS: Patients with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HeFH) and/or coronary heart disease (CHD) and baseline low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) of ≥160 mg/dL on maximally tolerated lipid-lowering therapy were enrolled and received alirocumab 150 mg every 2 weeks for 24 weeks. Patients were permitted use of all available statins; those not taking any dose of statin could also be enrolled. RESULTS: Of 100 enrolled patients, 93 were white, 62 were women, and overall mean age was 58 years; 61 had HeFH, 3 had unknown type of familial hypercholesterolemia, 66 had CHD, and 30 had both familial hypercholesterolemia and CHD. Sixty-four patients were identified by their providers to have some level of statin intolerance; of these, 47 were not on statin. Alirocumab reduced LDL-C on average from 221 mg/dL at baseline to 102 mg/dL by week 24 (-55%). Treatment-emergent adverse events were experienced in 61% of patients and treatment-emergent adverse events leading to permanent treatment discontinuation in 3% of patients; no deaths occurred. CONCLUSIONS: Safety and efficacy observations from the open-label alirocumab expanded use program of very high-risk patients with HeFH and/or CHD and baseline LDL-C of ≥160 mg/dL uncontrolled by maximally tolerated lipid-lowering therapy were consistent with those in the placebo/ezetimibe-controlled ODYSSEY trials

Interaction of a TeV Scale Black Hole with the Quark-Gluon Plasma at LHC

If the fundamental Planck scale is near a TeV, then parton collisions with high enough center-of-mass energy should produce black holes. The production rate for such black holes has been extensively studied for the case of a proton-proton collision at \sqrt s = 14 TeV and for a lead-lead collision at \sqrt s = 5.5 TeV at LHC. As the parton energy density is much higher at lead-lead collisions than in pp collisions at LHC, one natural question is whether the produced black holes will be able to absorb the partons formed in the lead-lead collisions and eventually `eat' the quark-gluon plasma formed at LHC. In this paper, we make a quantitative analysis of this possibility and find that since the energy density of partons formed in lead-lead collisions at LHC is about 500 GeV/fm^3, the rate of absorption for one of these black holes is much smaller than the rate of evaporation. Hence, we argue that black holes formed in such collisions will decay very quickly, and will not absorb very many nearby partons. More precisely, we show that for the black hole mass to increase via parton absorption at the LHC the typical energy density of quarks and gluons should be of the order of 10^{10} GeV/fm^3. As LHC will not be able to produce such a high energy density partonic system, the black hole will not be able to absorb a sufficient number of nearby partons before it decays. The typical life time of the black hole formed at LHC is found to be a small fraction of a fm/c.Comment: 7 pages latex (double column), 3 eps figure

Studies of parton thermalization at RHIC

We consider the evolution of a parton system which is formed in the central region just after a relativistic heavy ion collision. The parton consist of mostly gluons, minijets, which are produced by elastic scattering between constituent partons of the colliding nuclei. We assume the system can be described by a semi-classical Boltzmann transport equation, which we solve by means of the test particle Monte-Carlo method including retardation. The partons proliferate via secondary radiative $gg \to ggg$ processes until the thermalization is reached for some assumptions. The extended system is thermalized at about $t=1.6$ fm/$c$ with $T = 570$ MeV and stays in equilibrium for about 2 fm/$c$ with breaking temperature $T = 360$ MeV in the rapidity central region.Comment: 14 page

Commissioning of the vacuum system of the KATRIN Main Spectrometer

The KATRIN experiment will probe the neutrino mass by measuring the beta-electron energy spectrum near the endpoint of tritium beta-decay. An integral energy analysis will be performed by an electro-static spectrometer (Main Spectrometer), an ultra-high vacuum vessel with a length of 23.2 m, a volume of 1240 m^3, and a complex inner electrode system with about 120000 individual parts. The strong magnetic field that guides the beta-electrons is provided by super-conducting solenoids at both ends of the spectrometer. Its influence on turbo-molecular pumps and vacuum gauges had to be considered. A system consisting of 6 turbo-molecular pumps and 3 km of non-evaporable getter strips has been deployed and was tested during the commissioning of the spectrometer. In this paper the configuration, the commissioning with bake-out at 300{\deg}C, and the performance of this system are presented in detail. The vacuum system has to maintain a pressure in the 10^{-11} mbar range. It is demonstrated that the performance of the system is already close to these stringent functional requirements for the KATRIN experiment, which will start at the end of 2016.Comment: submitted for publication in JINST, 39 pages, 15 figure