Effect of ApoB/ApoA1 ratio on the all-cause mortality of patients with pulmonary embolism

Objective To investigate the effect of ApoB/ApoA1 ratio on the all-cause mortality of patients with pulmonary embolism at admission. Methods One hundred and seventy-seven patients with hemodynamically stable pulmonary embolism were retrospectively collected. The time of admission was the start of follow up， June 30， 2022 was the end of follow up， and all-cause death was the outcome. The best cut-off value of ApoB/ApoA1 to predict all-cause death was calculated according to the receiver operating characteristic （ROC） curve. All patients were assigned into high ratio group （ApoB/ApoA1 ≥0.8） and low ratio group （ApoB/ApoA1 <0.8）. The effect of ApoB/ApoA1 ratio on the prognosis of pulmonary embolism patients was analyzed by univariate and multifactorial Cox regression models， and Kaplan-Meier analysis and Log-rank test was used to compare the survival. Results During the follow-up period， 43 patients died with a mortality of 24.3%. The best cut-off of ApoB/ApoA1 was 0.8 according to ROC and the area under the curve （AUC） was 0.805 （95% CI=0.738-0.872）. There were 39 deaths and 4 deaths in high ratio group and low ratio group， respectively， with a mortality of 52.0% and 3.9%， respectively. Univariate Cox proportional hazards regression model analysis showed that age， hazards stratification， D-Dimer， MPV/D-Dimer， blood urea nitrogen （BUN） and ApoB/ApoA1 were significant for the prognosis of pulmonary embolism patients （P < 0.05）. Multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression model analysis showed that age （P = 0.005）， ApoB/ApoA1 ratio （P < 0.001） and BUN （P < 0.001） were independent factors of the prognosis of pulmonary embolism patients. Log-rank test indicated that survival rate in high ratio group was significantly lower than that in low ratio group （χ2=58.166， P <0.001）. Conclusion A higher ApoB/ApoA1 ratio at admission is related to the higher risk of death in pulmonary embolism patients， and is an effective factor to predict all-cause mortality in pulmonary embolism patients

Artificial Intelligence for High-Throughput Discovery of Topological Insulators: the Example of Alloyed Tetradymites

Significant advances have been made in predicting new topological materials using high-throughput empirical descriptors or symmetry-based indicators. To date, these approaches have been applied to materials in existing databases, and are severely limited to systems with well-defined symmetries, leaving a much larger materials space unexplored. Using tetradymites as a prototypical class of examples, we uncover a novel two-dimensional descriptor by applying an artificial intelligence (AI) based approach for fast and reliable identification of the topological characters of a drastically expanded range of materials, without prior determination of their specific symmetries and detailed band structures. By leveraging this descriptor that contains only the atomic number and electronegativity of the constituent species, we have readily scanned a huge number of alloys in the tetradymite family. Strikingly, nearly half of which are identified to be topological insulators, revealing a much larger territory of the topological materials world. The present work also attests the increasingly important role of such AI-based approaches in modern materials discovery

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements