Cosmological Implications of Unimodular Gravity

We consider a model of gravity and matter fields which is invariant only under unimodular general coordinate transformations (GCT). The determinant of the metric is treated as a separate field which transforms as a scalar under unimodular GCT. Furthermore we also demand that the theory is invariant under a new global symmetry which we call generalized conformal invariance. We study the cosmological implications of the resulting theory. We show that this theory gives a fit to the high-z supernova data which is identical to the standard Big Bang model. Hence we require some other cosmological observations to test the validity of this model. We also consider some models which do not obey the generalized conformal invariance. In these models we can fit the supernova data without introducing the standard cosmological constant term. Furthermore these models introduce only one dark component and hence solve the coincidence problem of dark matter and dark energy.Comment: 18 pages, no figures, major revisions, substantial changes in analysis, results and conclusion

The clinical relevance of oliguria in the critically ill patient : Analysis of a large observational database

Funding Information: Marc Leone reports receiving consulting fees from Amomed and Aguettant; lecture fees from MSD, Pfizer, Octapharma, 3 M, Aspen, Orion; travel support from LFB; and grant support from PHRC IR and his institution. JLV is the Editor-in-Chief of Critical Care. The other authors declare that they have no relevant financial interests. Publisher Copyright: © 2020 The Author(s). Copyright: Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.Background: Urine output is widely used as one of the criteria for the diagnosis and staging of acute renal failure, but few studies have specifically assessed the role of oliguria as a marker of acute renal failure or outcomes in general intensive care unit (ICU) patients. Using a large multinational database, we therefore evaluated the occurrence of oliguria (defined as a urine output 16 years) patients in the ICON audit who had a urine output measurement on the day of admission were included. To investigate the association between oliguria and mortality, we used a multilevel analysis. Results: Of the 8292 patients included, 2050 (24.7%) were oliguric during the first 24 h of admission. Patients with oliguria on admission who had at least one additional 24-h urine output recorded during their ICU stay (n = 1349) were divided into three groups: transient - oliguria resolved within 48 h after the admission day (n = 390 [28.9%]), prolonged - oliguria resolved > 48 h after the admission day (n = 141 [10.5%]), and permanent - oliguria persisting for the whole ICU stay or again present at the end of the ICU stay (n = 818 [60.6%]). ICU and hospital mortality rates were higher in patients with oliguria than in those without, except for patients with transient oliguria who had significantly lower mortality rates than non-oliguric patients. In multilevel analysis, the need for RRT was associated with a significantly higher risk of death (OR = 1.51 [95% CI 1.19-1.91], p = 0.001), but the presence of oliguria on admission was not (OR = 1.14 [95% CI 0.97-1.34], p = 0.103). Conclusions: Oliguria is common in ICU patients and may have a relatively benign nature if only transient. The duration of oliguria and need for RRT are associated with worse outcome.publishersversionPeer reviewe

Unimodular Theory of Gravity in Light of the Latest Cosmological Data

The unimodular theory of gravity is an alternative perspective to the traditional general relativity of Einstein and opens new possibilities for exploring its implications in cosmology. In this paper, we investigated Unimodular Gravity (UG) with the cosmological data from the Pantheon sample of Type Ia Supernovae (SNs) (2018), Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAOs), and the observational H(z) data from the Differential Age method (DA). We also used the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) distance priors from the Planck 2018 results. We considered a model consisting of a generalized cosmological constant, radiation, and a dark matter component along with normal matter. The considered theory respects only unimodular coordinate transformations. We first fit our model with low-redshift data from SNs and DA and determined the value of the model parameters (ξ,H0). We found the best-fit value of parameter ξ=6.03±0.40, which deviates slightly from 6, for which the theory becomes the standard general theory of relativity. We observed a small deviation in the value of the Hubble constant (H0=72.6±3.5 km s−1 Mpc−1) in the UG model compared with the standard ΛCDM model (H0=72.2±1.2 km s−1 Mpc−1). Using the BAO + CMB constraint in the UG model, we obtained H0=68.45±0.66kms−1Mpc−1, and ξ is ∼6.029. For the combined datasets (SN + DA + BAO + CMB), the estimated H0=69.01±0.60kms−1Mpc−1 with ξ∼6.037, and in standard gravity, H0=68.25±0.40kms−1Mpc−1