Is exponential gravity a viable description for the whole cosmological history?

Here we analysed a particular type of $F(R)$ gravity, the so-called exponential gravity which includes an exponential function of the Ricci scalar in the action. Such term represents a correction to the usual Hilbert-Einstein action. By using Supernovae Ia, Barionic Acoustic Oscillations, Cosmic Microwave Background and $H(z)$ data, the free parameters of the model are well constrained. The results show that such corrections to General Relativity become important at cosmological scales and at late-times, providing an alternative to the dark energy problem. In addition, the fits do not determine any significant difference statistically with respect to the $\Lambda$CDM model. Finally, such model is extended to include the inflationary epoch in the same gravitational Lagrangian. As shown in the paper, the additional terms can reproduce the inflationary epoch and satisfy the constraints from Planck data.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, analysis extended, version published in EPJ

Evaluation of liver function in patients with liver cirrhosis and chronic liver disease using functional liver imaging scores at different acquisition time points

Purpose: This paper aims to explore whether functional liver imaging score (FLIS) based on Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images at 5, 10, and 15 min can predict liver function in patients with liver cirrhosis or chronic liver disease and its association with indocyanine green 15-min retention rate (ICG-R15), Child-Pugh (CP) score, albumin-bilirubin (ALBI) score, and model for end-stage liver disease (MELD) score. In addition, it also examines the inter- and intra-observer consistency of FLIS and three FLIS parameters at three different time points.Methods: This study included 110 patients with chronic liver disease (CLD) or liver cirrhosis (LC) (93 men, 17 women; mean ± standard deviation = 56.96 ± 10.16) between July 2019 and May 2022. FLIS was assigned in accordance with the sum of the three hepatobiliary phase characteristics, all of which were scored on the 0–2 ordinal scale, including the biliary excretion, hepatic enhancement and portal vein signal intensity. FLIS was calculated independently by two radiologists using transitional and hepatobiliary phase images at 5, 10, and 15 min after enhancement. The relationship between FLIS and three FLIS quality scores and the degree of liver function were evaluated using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient. The ability of FLIS to predict hepatic function was investigated using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves.Results: Intra- and inter-observer intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) (ICC = 0.937–0.978, 95% CI = 0.909–0.985) for FLIS at each time point indicated excellent agreement. At each time point, FLIS had a moderate negative association with liver function classification (r = [−0.641]-[−0.428], p < 0.001), and weak to moderate correlation with some other clinical parameters except for creatinine (p > 0.05). FLIS showed moderate discriminatory ability between different liver function levels. The area under the ROC curves (AUCs) of FLIS at 5, 10, and 15 min after enhancement to predict ICG-R15 of 10% or less were 0.838, 0.802, and 0.723, respectively; those for predicting ICG-R15 greater than 20% were 0.793, 0.824, and 0.756, respectively; those for predicting ICG-R15 greater than 40% were 0.728, 0.755, and 0.741, respectively; those for predicting ALBI grade 1 were 0.734, 0.761, and 0.691, respectively; those for predicting CP class A cirrhosis were 0.806, 0.821, and 0.829, respectively; those for predicting MELD score of 10 or less were 0.837, 0.877, and 0.837, respectively. No significant difference was found in the AUC of FLIS at 5, 10 and 15 min (p > 0.05).Conclusion: FLIS presented a moderate negative correlation with the classification system of hepatic function at a delay of 5, 10, and 15 min, and patients with LC or CLD were appropriately stratified based on ICG-R15, ALBI grade, MELD score, and CP classification. In addition, the use of FLIS to evaluate liver function can reduce the observation time of the hepatobiliary period

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Correction to: Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Activation of TGR5 Increases Urine Concentration by Inducing AQP2 and AQP3 Expression in Renal Medullary Collecting Ducts

Introduction: G protein-coupled bile acid receptor (TGR5), the first G protein-coupled receptor for bile acids identified, is capable of activating a variety of intracellular signaling pathways after interacting with bile acids. TGR5 plays an important role in multiple physiological processes and is considered to be a potential target for the treatment of various metabolic diseases, including type 2 diabetes. Evidence has emerged that genetic deletion of TGR5 results in an increase in basal urine output, suggesting that it may play a critical role in renal water and salt reabsorption. The present study aims to elucidate the effect and mechanism of TGR5 activation on urine concentration. Methods: Mice were treated with TGR5 agonists (LCA and INT-777) for 3 days. The 24-h urine of mice was collected and analyzed for urine biochemical parameters. The mRNA expressions were detected by real-time PCR, and the protein expressions were detected by western blot. Immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence were performed to examine the cellular location of proteins. The cultured primary medullary collecting duct cells were pretreated with H89 (a PKA inhibitor) for 1 h, followed by 12-h treatment of LCA and INT-777. Luciferase reporter assays were used to detect the effect of CREB on the gene transcription of AQPs. Gel electrophoretic mobility shift assays were used to analyze DNA–protein interactions. Results: Treatment of mice with the TGR5 agonist LCA and INT-777 markedly reduced urine output and increased urine osmolality, accompanied by a marked increase in AQP2 and AQP3 protein expression and membrane translocation. In cultured primary medullary collecting duct cells, LCA and INT-777 dose-dependently upregulated AQP2 and AQP3 expression in a cAMP/PKA-dependent manner. Mechanistically, both AQP2 and AQP3 gene promoter contains a putative CREB-binding site, which can be bound and activated by CREB as assessed by both gene promoter-driven luciferase and gel shift assays. Conclusion: Collectively, our findings demonstrate that activation of TGR5 can promote urine concentration by upregulation of AQP2 and AQP3 expression in renal collecting ducts. TGR5 may represent an attractive target for the treatment of patients with urine concentration defect

Investigation on the Potential of High Efficiency for Internal Combustion Engines

The current brake thermal efficiency of advanced internal combustion engines is limited to 50%, and how to further improve the efficiency is a challenge. In this study, a theoretical investigation on engine thermal efficiency was carried out using one-dimension simulations based on the first law of thermodynamics. The energy balance was evaluated by varying parameters such as compression ratio (CR); heat transfer coefficient; intake charge properties; and combustion phasing etc.—their influences on the efficiency limits were demonstrated. Results show that for a given heat transfer coefficient, an optimal CR exists to obtain the peak efficiency. The optimal CR decreases with the increase of heat transfer coefficient, and high CR with a low heat-transfer coefficient can achieve a significantly high efficiency. A higher density and specific heat ratio of intake charge, as well as a shorter combustion duration with a proper CA50 (crank angle at 50% of total heat release), can increase efficiency significantly. Methanol shows an excellent ability in decreasing the peak in-cylinder temperature; and the peak indicated efficiency is relatively higher than other tested fuels. The displacement has few effects on the indicated efficiency, while it shows a strong effect on the energy distribution between heat transfer and exhaust energy. All these strategies with high CR result in high in-cylinder pressure and temperature; which means a breakthrough of material is needed in the future

End-to-end programmable computing systems

Abstract Recent technological advances have contributed to the rapid increase in algorithmic complexity of applications, ranging from signal processing to autonomous systems. To control this complexity and endow heterogeneous computing systems with autonomous programming and optimization capabilities, we propose a unified, end-to-end, programmable graph representation learning (PGL) framework that mines the complexity of high-level programs down to low-level virtual machine intermediate representation, extracts specific computational patterns, and predicts which code segments run best on a core in heterogeneous hardware. PGL extracts multifractal features from code graphs and exploits graph representation learning strategies for automatic parallelization and correct assignment to heterogeneous processors. The comprehensive evaluation of PGL on existing and emerging complex software demonstrates a 6.42x and 2.02x speedup compared to thread-based execution and state-of-the-art techniques, respectively. Our PGL framework leads to higher processing efficiency, which is crucial for future AI and high-performance computing applications such as autonomous vehicles and machine vision

The effects of chronic unpredicted mild stress on maternal negative emotions and gut microbiota and metabolites in pregnant rats

Background Chronic long-term stress is associated with a range of disorders, including depression and a variety of other chronic illnesses. It is well known that maternal exposure to psychosocial stress during pregnancy significantly increases the likelihood of adverse pregnancy outcomes. The gut microbiota has been a popular topic, it is a key mediator of the gut-brain axis and plays an important role in human health; changes in the gut microbiota have been related to chronic stress-induced health impairment, however, the relationship between maternal negative emotions and abnormal gut microbiota and its metabolites during maternal exposure to chronic stress during pregnancy remains unclear. Methods Pregnant rats were subjected to chronic unpredicted mild stress (CUMS) to establish the rat model of chronic stress during pregnancy. The behavioral changes were recorded using sucrose preference test (SPT) and open-field test (OFT), plasma corticosterone levels were determined by radioimmunoassay, and a comprehensive method combining 16S rRNA gene sequencing and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) metabolomics was used to study the effects of stress during pregnancy on the function of intestinal microbiota and its metabolites. Results Chronic stress during pregnancy not only increased maternal plasma corticosterone (P < 0.05), but also caused maternal depression-like behaviors (P < 0.05). Chronic stress during pregnancy changed the species composition at the family level of maternal gut microbiota, the species abundance of Ruminococcaceae in the stress group (23.45%) was lower than the control group (32.67%) and the species abundance of Prevotellaceae in the stress group (10.45%) was higher than the control group (0.03%) (P < 0.05). Vertical locomotion and 1% sucrose preference percentage in pregnant rats were negatively correlated with Prevotellaceae (r =  − 0.90, P < 0.05). Principal component analysis with partial least squares discriminant analysis showed that the integration points of metabolic components in the stress and control groups were completely separated, indicating that there were significant differences in the metabolic patterns of the two groups, and there were seven endogenous metabolites that differed (P < 0.05). Conclusions The negative emotional behaviors that occur in pregnant rats as a result of prenatal chronic stress may be associated with alterations in the gut microbiota and its metabolites. These findings provide a basis for future targeted metabolomics and gut flora studies on the effects of chronic stress during pregnancy on gut flora