Probing oral anticoagulation in patients with atrial high rate episodes: Rationale and design of the Non-vitamin K antagonist Oral anticoagulants in patients with Atrial High rate episodes (NOAH-AFNET 6) trial.

Oral anticoagulation prevents ischemic strokes in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). Early detection of AF and subsequent initiation of oral anticoagulation help to prevent strokes in AF patients. Implanted cardiac pacemakers and defibrillators allow seamless detection of atrial high rate episodes (AHRE), but the best antithrombotic therapy in patients with AHRE is not known. RATIONALE: Stroke risk is higher in pacemaker patients with AHRE than in those without, but the available data also show that stroke risk in patients with AHRE is lower than in patients with AF. Furthermore, only a minority of patients with AHRE will develop AF, many strokes occur without a temporal relation to AHRE, and AHRE can reflect other arrhythmias than AF or artifacts. An adequately powered controlled trial of oral anticoagulation in patients with AHRE is needed. DESIGN: The Non-vitamin K antagonist Oral anticoagulants in patients with Atrial High rate episodes (NOAH-AFNET 6 ) trial tests whether oral anticoagulation with edoxaban is superior to prevent the primary efficacy outcome of stroke or cardiovascular death compared with aspirin or no antithrombotic therapy based on evidence-based indications. The primary safety outcome will be major bleeding. NOAH-AFNET 6 will randomize 3,400 patients with AHRE, but without documented AF, aged ≥65 years with at least 1 other stroke risk factor, to oral anticoagulation therapy (edoxaban) or no anticoagulation. All patients will be followed until the end of this investigator-driven, prospective, parallel-group, randomized, event-driven, double-blind, multicenter phase IIIb trial. Patients will be censored when they develop AF and offered open-label anticoagulation. The sponsor is the Atrial Fibrillation NETwork (AFNET). The trial is supported by the DZHK (German Centre for Cardiovascular Research), the BMBF (German Ministry of Education and Research), and Daiichi Sankyo Europe. CONCLUSION: NOAH-AFNET 6 will provide robust information on the effect of oral anticoagulation in patients with atrial high rate episodes detected by implanted devices

Structural Phase Transition in the 2D Spin Dimer Compound SrCu2(BO3)2

A displacive, 2nd order structural phase transition at Ts=395 K from space group I`4 2 m below Ts to I 4/m c m above Ts has been discovered in the two-dimensional spin dimer compound SrCu2(BO3)2. The temperature evolution of the structure in both phases has been studied by X-ray diffraction and Raman scattering, supplemented by differential scanning calorimetry and SQUID magnetometry. The implications of this transition and of the observed phonon anomalies in Raman scattering for spin-phonon and interlayer coupling in this quantum spin system will be discussed.Comment: 13pages, 13 figure

Pot, kettle: Nonliteral titles aren’t (natural) science

© 2020 The Author. Published by MIT Press. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00078Researchers may be tempted to attract attention through poetic titles for their publications, but would this be mistaken in some fields? Whilst poetic titles are known to be common in medicine, it is not clear whether the practice is widespread elsewhere. This article investigates the prevalence of poetic expressions in journal article titles 1996-2019 in 3.3 million articles from all 27 Scopus broad fields. Expressions were identified by manually checking all phrases with at least 5 words that occurred at least 25 times, finding 149 stock phrases, idioms, sayings, literary allusions, film names and song titles or lyrics. The expressions found are most common in the social sciences and the humanities. They are also relatively common in medicine, but almost absent from engineering and the natural and formal sciences. The differences may reflect the less hierarchical and more varied nature of the social sciences and humanities, where interesting titles may attract an audience. In engineering, natural science and formal science fields, authors should take extra care with poetic expressions, in case their choice is judged inappropriate. This includes interdisciplinary research overlapping these areas. Conversely, reviewers of interdisciplinary research involving the social sciences should be more tolerant of poetic licens

Selection of Cyanobacterial (Synechococcus sp. Strain PCC 6301) RubisCO Variants with Improved Functional Properties That Confer Enhanced CO2-Dependent Growth of Rhodobacter capsulatus, a Photosynthetic Bacterium

RubisCO catalysis has a significant impact on mitigating greenhouse gas accumulation and CO2 conversion to food, fuel, and other organic compounds required to sustain life. Because RubisCO-dependent CO2 fixation is severely compromised by oxygen inhibition and other physiological constraints, improving RubisCO’s kinetic properties to enhance growth in the presence of atmospheric O2 levels has been a longstanding goal. In this study, RubisCO variants with superior structure-functional properties were selected which resulted in enhanced growth of an autotrophic host organism (R. capsulatus), indicating that RubisCO function was indeed growth limiting. It is evident from these results that genetically engineered RubisCO with kinetically enhanced properties can positively impact growth rates in primary producers.Ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RubisCO) is a ubiquitous enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of atmospheric CO2 into organic carbon in primary producers. All naturally occurring RubisCOs have low catalytic turnover rates and are inhibited by oxygen. Evolutionary adaptations of the enzyme and its host organisms to changing atmospheric oxygen concentrations provide an impetus to artificially evolve RubisCO variants under unnatural selective conditions. A RubisCO deletion strain of the nonsulfur purple photosynthetic bacterium Rhodobacter capsulatus was previously used as a heterologous host for directed evolution and suppressor selection studies that led to the identification of a conserved hydrophobic region near the active site where amino acid substitutions selectively impacted the enzyme’s sensitivity to O2. In this study, structural alignments, mutagenesis, suppressor selection, and growth complementation with R. capsulatus under anoxic or oxygenic conditions were used to analyze the importance of semiconserved residues in this region of Synechococcus RubisCO. RubisCO mutant substitutions were identified that provided superior CO2-dependent growth capabilities relative to the wild-type enzyme. Kinetic analyses of the mutant enzymes indicated that enhanced growth performance was traceable to differential interactions of the enzymes with CO2 and O2. Effective residue substitutions also appeared to be localized to two other conserved hydrophobic regions of the holoenzyme. Structural comparisons and similarities indicated that regions identified in this study may be targeted for improvement in RubisCOs from other sources, including crop plants

Experience with the Control of the Vector Sum at the TESLA Test Facility

In the rf system for the TESLA Test Facility each klystron will supply rf power to up to 32 cavities. The superconducting cavities are operated in pulsed mode and at high accelerating gradients. The control of significant Lorentz force detuning and precise calibration and measurement of the vector sum are the main issues to be solved. Presently installed are 8 cavities in the first cryomodule of the linac which have been in operation since June 97. Initial commissioning has been conducted in a very short time due to the extensive diagnostics available in the digital the rf control system. The paper describes commissioning of the rf system with emphasis on the calibration of the vector-sum, adaptive feedforward, and the various diagnostic tools available. RF control performance and plans for the control of 24 cavities are also presented

Test of two Nb superstructure prototypes

An alternative layout of the TESLA linear collider (Technical Design Report, DESY Report No. 2001-011, 2001), based on weakly coupled multicell superconducting structures (superstructures), significantly reduces the investment cost due to a simplification in the rf system of the main accelerator. In January 1999, preparation of the beam test of the superstructure began in order to prove the feasibility of this layout. Progress in the preparation was reported frequently in Proceedings of TESLA Collaboration Meetings. Last year, two superstructures were installed in the Tesla Test Facility linac at DESY to experimentally verify methods to balance the accelerating gradient in a weakly coupled system, the stability of the energy gain for the entire train of bunches in macropulses, and the damping of higher order modes.We present results of the first cold and beam test of these two Nb prototypes

Datasheet1_Infant regulatory problems and the quality of dyadic emotional connection—a proof-of-concept study in a multilingual sample.pdf

Background and aimsClose autonomic emotional connections with others help infants reach and maintain homoeostasis. In recent years, infant regulatory problems (RPs, i.e., crying, sleeping, and feeding or eating problems) have surged. This study has two aims: (1) Provide proof-of-concept that dyadic autonomic emotional connection between infants and parents can be reliably assessed with a brief screening, irrespective of language and culture. (2) Assess in a heterogeneous pilot sample whether the persistence of RPs during infancy is negatively associated with the quality of dyadic autonomic emotional connection.Methods30 children aged 3–68 months (47% female) and their parents (83% mothers) were assessed during regular neonatal follow-up visits in Germany. Seven (23%) dyads were immigrants whose primary language was not German. At each assessment, paediatricians asked parents about infant's crying, sleeping, and feeding or eating problems. Dyadic interactions were rated by a multilingual team with the standardised universal Welch Emotional Connection Screen (uWECS) on four dimensions (attraction, vocalisation, facial communication, sensitivity/reciprocity).ResultsAim 1: An international team of raters was trained remotely to rate the uWECS. Reliability of α > .90 with standard raters was achieved irrespective of language mismatches (i.e., all raters scored several videos with languages they did not understand). Intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs) among five main raters for the four uWECS dimensions ranged from .98–.99. Aim 2: Infants (n = 15 assessed longitudinally) had mean RP scores of 1.20 (SD = 1.26). Dyads had mean uWECS scores of 7.06 (SD = 2.09). Linear regression analysis showed that more persistent RPs in infancy were associated with lower uWECS scores [β = -.53, 95% CI = (-1.47, -.18), p = .017], after controlling for child sex and gestational age.ConclusionThis study provides proof-of-concept that the quality of mutual autonomic emotional connection among socio-culturally and linguistically heterogeneous samples can be reliably assessed with the uWECS, a brief screening that can be easily implemented in clinical practice. Pilot data suggests that persistent RPs during infancy are negatively associated with the quality of dyadic autonomic emotional connection. Replication of these findings in larger samples is warranted. Future studies need to address how to facilitate successful emotion regulation for today's children and future generations.</p