ACE inhibitors in cardiac surgery: current studies and controversies

Major complications associated with cardiac surgery are still common and carry great prognostic significance. Current medical interventions to prevent these cardiovascular complications include antiplatelet therapy, statins, β-blockers and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors. Both experimental studies and clinical trials have shown that ACE inhibitors hold promise as cardiovascular protective agents for cardiac surgery patients. Several lines of evidence support this hypothesis. First, long-term use of ACE inhibitors has been well established to provide cardiovascular protection and reduce ischemic events and complications, independent of their effect on heart function and blood pressure. Second, early ACE inhibitor therapy has been demonstrated to produce remarkable survival and heart function benefits in patients with acute myocardial infarction. Third, ACE blockage can prevent or delay the development or progression of renal disease at all stages, from subclinical microalbuminuria to end-stage renal disease. Nevertheless, perioperative studies of the effects of ACE inhibitors remain few and inconclusive. Results from recent clinical trials and observational studies are conflicting and raise more questions than answers. Further studies, both retrospective and larger-scale prospective studies, are critically needed to examine whether ACE inhibitors reduce mortality and major complications in patients undergoing cardiac surgery

An Economic Analysis of Peer-Disclosure in Online Social Communities

We study a novel privacy concern, viz. peer disclosure of sensitive personal information in online social communities. We model peer disclosure as imposing a negative externality on other people. Our model encompasses the benefits from posting information, positive externalities such as recognition and entertainment benefits due to others' sharing of information, and heterogeneous privacy preferences. We find that regulation of peer disclosure is necessary. We consider two candidate regulations -- nudging and quota. Nudging reduces user participation and privacy harm and sometimes improve social welfare. By contrast, imposing a quota often improves user participation, privacy protection and social welfare. Adding a nudge on top of a quota does not bring additional benefits. We show that any regulation that uniformly controls the disclosure of sensitive and nonsensitive information will not serve the triple objectives of reducing privacy harm, increasing social welfare, and increasing information contribution. We derive a necessary condition for solutions that can fulfill these three objectives. We also compare the incentives of the platform owner and social planner and draw related managerial and policy implications

Optical loss compensation in a bulk left-handed metamaterial by the gain in quantum dots

A bulk left-handed metamaterial with fishnet structure is investigated to show the optical loss compensation via surface plasmon amplification, with the assistance of a Gaussian gain in PbS quantum dots. The optical resonance enhancement around 200 THz is confirmed by the retrieval method. By exploring the dependence of propagation loss on the gain coefficient and metamaterial thickness, we verify numerically that the left-handed response can endure a large propagation thickness with ultralow and stable loss under a certain gain coefficient.Comment: 6 pages with 4 figure

Regulation of Anti-Phosphatidylserine Antibodies

AbstractThe degree of heavy chain (H) editing, the types of Vκ editors, and the pattern of Jκ usage are correlated with a range of the affinity of anti-DNA. This range was determined by the number and location of arginine (R) residues in the VH. We, here, changed a key arginine residue in the VH of anti-DNA transgene to glycine, which sharply reduces the affinity for dsDNA. However, complete reversion of this anti-DNA to germline enhances the affinity for phosphatidylserine (PS). The B cells of this low-affinity anti-DNA and anti-PS transgenic mouse are tightly regulated by receptor editing. Thus, anti-PS B cells are another example of a constitutive self-antigen regulated in the bone marrow

Evidence for Majorana bound state in an iron-based superconductor

The search for Majorana bound state (MBS) has recently emerged as one of the most active research areas in condensed matter physics, fueled by the prospect of using its non-Abelian statistics for robust quantum computation. A highly sought-after platform for MBS is two-dimensional topological superconductors, where MBS is predicted to exist as a zero-energy mode in the core of a vortex. A clear observation of MBS, however, is often hindered by the presence of additional low-lying bound states inside the vortex core. By using scanning tunneling microscope on the newly discovered superconducting Dirac surface state of iron-based superconductor FeTe1-xSex (x = 0.45, superconducting transition temperature Tc = 14.5 K), we clearly observe a sharp and non-split zero-bias peak inside a vortex core. Systematic studies of its evolution under different magnetic fields, temperatures, and tunneling barriers strongly suggest that this is the case of tunneling to a nearly pure MBS, separated from non-topological bound states which is moved away from the zero energy due to the high ratio between the superconducting gap and the Fermi energy in this material. This observation offers a new, robust platform for realizing and manipulating MBSs at a relatively high temperature.Comment: 27 pages, 11 figures, supplementary information include

Allele Size Miscalling due to the Pull-Up Effect Influencing Size Standard Calibration in Capillary Electrophoresis: A Case Study Using HEX Fluorescent Dye in Microsatellites

Microsatellites are important genetic markers and have been broadly employed in many genetic studies. Currently, polymorphisms in microsatellites are often detected by an automated system of capillary electrophoresis with fluorescent dyes. In this situation, different dye combinations may cause pull-up/bleed-through problems, which introduce noise signals from one dye channel into another, causing genotyping errors. Here, we report the detection of such a problem at two microsatellite loci that used the HEX dye. Using three datasets, we tested for noise effects in four allele-scoring programmes: Genemapper, Genemarker, Gelquest and Fragman. We found that, because some allele sizes were identical or close to the size of one of the internal size standards, all four programmes gave allele size calling errors due to wrongly identifying pull-up signals as the internal size standard. In addition, because allele miscalling in this study was caused by the fluorescent dye that the microsatellites used introducing noise of the same colour as the internal size standard used, the pull-up correction function in Genemapper, Genemarker and Fragman failed to deal with this. Considering that pull-up peak scoring errors can occur with any dye colour, the phenomenon is not limited to the current HEX dye. Using different software and visual scoring of each result will allow accurate sizing of microsatellite alleles

Magnetic field induced discontinuous spin reorientation in ErFeO3 single crystal

The spin reorientation of ErFeO3 that spontaneously occurs at low temperature has been previously determined to be a process involving the continuous rotation of Fe3þ spins. In this work, the dynamic process of spin reorientation in ErFeO3 single crystal has been investigated by AC susceptibility measurements at various frequencies and static magnetic fields. Interestingly, two completely discontinuous steps are induced by a relatively large static magnetic field due to the variation in the magnetic anisotropy during this process. It provides deeper insights into the intriguing magnetic exchange interactions which dominate the sophisticated magnetic phase transitions in the orthoferrite systems

Dichlorido(2,9-dimeth­oxy-1,10-phenanthroline-κ2 N,N′)zinc(II)

In the crystal structure of the title compound, [ZnCl2(C14H12N2O2)], the ZnII center is four-coordinated by two N atoms from one 2,9-dimeth­oxy-1,10-phenanthroline ligand and two Cl atoms. The coordination geometry is distorted tetra­hedral, as the Zn—N bond distances are shorter than the Zn—Cl distances, and the Cl—Zn—N and Cl—Zn—Cl bond angles are much larger than the N—Zn—N angle. For the ligand, the O and C atoms of the meth­oxy groups are almost in the plane defined by the phenanthroline ring. The two O atoms deviate from the phenanthroline mean plane by 0.076 (2) and 0.084 (2) Å, and the two methyl C atoms deviate from the phenanthroline mean plane by 0.035 (3) and 0.361 (3) Å. There are medium π–π stacking interactions between two parallel phenanthroline rings with a centroid–centroid distance of 3.7860 (2) Å and a dihedral angle between the plane defined by the two parallel phenanthroline rings of 1.13 (5)°

miR-638 is a new biomarker for outcome prediction of non-small cell lung cancer patients receiving chemotherapy.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs), a class of small non-coding RNAs, mediate gene expression by either cleaving target mRNAs or inhibiting their translation. They have key roles in the tumorigenesis of several cancers, including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical significance of miR-638 in the evaluation of NSCLC patient prognosis in response to chemotherapy. First, we detected miR-638 expression levels in vitro in the culture supernatants of the NSCLC cell line SPC-A1 treated with cisplatin, as well as the apoptosis rates of SPC-A1. Second, serum miR-638 expression levels were detected in vivo by using nude mice xenograft models bearing SPC-A1 with and without cisplatin treatment. In the clinic, the serum miR-638 levels of 200 cases of NSCLC patients before and after chemotherapy were determined by quantitative real-time PCR, and the associations of clinicopathological features with miR-638 expression patterns after chemotherapy were analyzed. Our data helped in demonstrating that cisplatin induced apoptosis of the SPC-A1 cells in a dose- and time-dependent manner accompanied by increased miR-638 expression levels in the culture supernatants. In vivo data further revealed that cisplatin induced miR-638 upregulation in the serum derived from mice xenograft models, and in NSCLC patient sera, miR-638 expression patterns after chemotherapy significantly correlated with lymph node metastasis. Moreover, survival analyses revealed that patients who had increased miR-638 levels after chemotherapy showed significantly longer survival time than those who had decreased miR-638 levels. Our findings suggest that serum miR-638 levels are associated with the survival of NSCLC patients and may be considered a potential independent predictor for NSCLC prognosis

Data Processing Pipeline for Pointing Observations of Lunar-based Ultraviolet Telescope

We describe the data processing pipeline developed to reduce the pointing observation data of Lunar-based Ultraviolet Telescope (LUT), which belongs to the Chang'e-3 mission of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program. The pointing observation program of LUT is dedicated to monitor variable objects in a near-ultraviolet (245-345 nm) band. LUT works in lunar daytime for sufficient power supply, so some special data processing strategies have been developed for the pipeline. The procedures of the pipeline include stray light removing, astrometry, flat fielding employing superflat technique, source extraction and cosmic rays rejection, aperture and PSF photometry, aperture correction, and catalogues archiving, etc. It has been intensively tested and works smoothly with observation data. The photometric accuracy is typically ~0.02 mag for LUT 10 mag stars (30 s exposure), with errors come from background noises, residuals of stray light removing, and flat fielding related errors. The accuracy degrades to be ~0.2 mag for stars of 13.5 mag which is the 5{\sigma} detection limit of LUT.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, 4 tables. Minor changes and some expounding words added. Version accepted for publication in Astrophysics and Space Science (Ap&SS