How early can myocardial iron overload occur in Beta thalassemia major?

BACKGROUND: Myocardial siderosis is the most common cause of death in patients with beta thalassemia major(TM). This study aimed at investigating the occurrence, prevalence and severity of cardiac iron overload in a young Chinese population with beta TM. METHODS AND RESULTS: We analyzed T2* cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR), left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) and serum ferritin (SF) in 201 beta TM patients. The median age was 9 years old. Patients received an average of 13 units of blood per year. The median SF level was 4536 ng/ml and 165 patients (82.1%) had SF>2500 ng/ml. Myocardial iron overload was detected in 68 patients (33.8%) and severe myocardial iron overload was detected in 26 patients (12.6%). Twenty-two patients ≤10 years old had myocardial iron overload, three of whom were only 6 years old. No myocardial iron overload was detected under the age of 6 years. Median LVEF was 64% (measured by CMR in 175 patients). Five of 6 patients with a LVEF<56% and 8 of 10 patients with cardiac disease had myocardial iron overload. CONCLUSIONS: The TM patients under follow-up at this regional centre in China patients are younger than other reported cohorts, more poorly-chelated, and have a high burden of iron overload. Myocardial siderosis occurred in patients younger than previously reported, and was strongly associated with impaired LVEF and cardiac disease. For such poorly-chelated TM patients, our data shows that the first assessment of cardiac T2* should be performed as early as 6 years old

New Experimental Limits on Macroscopic Forces Below 100 Microns

Results of an experimental search for new macroscopic forces with Yukawa range between 5 and 500 microns are presented. The experiment uses 1 kHz mechanical oscillators as test masses with a stiff conducting shield between them to suppress backgrounds. No signal is observed above the instrumental thermal noise after 22 hours of integration time. These results provide the strongest limits to date between 10 and 100 microns, improve on previous limits by as much as three orders of magnitude, and rule out half of the remaining parameter space for predictions of string-inspired models with low-energy supersymmetry breaking. New forces of four times gravitational strength or greater are excluded at the 95% confidence level for interaction ranges between 200 and 500 microns.Comment: 25 Pages, 7 Figures: Minor Correction

A procedure for the change point problem in parametric models based on phi-divergence test-statistics

This paper studies the change point problem for a general parametric, univariate or multivariate family of distributions. An information theoretic procedure is developed which is based on general divergence measures for testing the hypothesis of the existence of a change. For comparing the accuracy of the new test-statistic a simulation study is performed for the special case of a univariate discrete model. Finally, the procedure proposed in this paper is illustrated through a classical change-point example

Facile Fabrication of Uniform Polyaniline Nanotubes with Tubular Aluminosilicates as Templates

The uniform polyaniline (PANI) nanotubes, with inner diameter, outer diameter, and tubular thickness of 40, 60, and 10 nm, respectively, were prepared successfully by using natural tubular aluminosilicates as templates. The halloysite nanotubes were coated with PANI via the in situ chemical oxidation polymerization. Then the templates were etched with HCl/HF solution. The PANI nanotubes were characterized using FTIR, X-ray diffraction, and transmission electron microscopy. The conductivity of the PANI nanotubes was found to be 1.752 × 10−5(Ω·cm)−1

Infant Botulism

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66984/2/10.1177_000992289303201105.pd

Soil Moisture to Runoff (SM2R): A Data-Driven Model for Runoff Estimation Across Poorly Gauged Asian Water Towers Based on Soil Moisture Dynamics

Data Availability Statement: RA5L reanalysis data (Muñoz Sabater, 2019) are available at https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/10.24381/cds.68d2bb30 . Data sets from the HWSD (Fischer et al., 2008) are accessed at https://www.fao.org/soils-portal/data-hub/soil-maps-and-databases/harmonized-world-soil-database-v12/en/ . Glacier elevation changes (Berthier et al., 2021) are provided at https://doi.org/10.6096/13 , and the RGI 6.0 glacier mask (RGI Consortium, 2017) can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.7265/4m1f-gd79 . Percentages of persistent snow cover in each water tower (Immerzeel et al., 2019) are provided at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3521933 . Soil moisture estimated from GLDAS NOAH [Beaudoing and Rodell, 2020; Rodell et al., 2004] and CLSM [B. Li et al., 2019; B. Li et al., 2020] land surface models can be accessed at https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets/GLDAS_NOAH025_M_2.1/summary and https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets/GLDAS_CLSM025_DA1_D_2.2/summary , respectively. Precipitation estimated from the IMERG product (Huffman et al., 2019) can be accessed at https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets/GPM_3IMERGDF_06/summary . Runoff estimation results of this study (Li & Long, 2023) are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7505876 .Supporting Information is available online at https://doi.org/10.1029/2022WR033597 .Copyright © 2022 The Author(s) and American Geophysical Union. Almost 2 billion people depend on freshwater provided by the Asian water towers, yet long-term runoff estimation is challenging in this high-mountain region with a harsh environment and scarce observations. Most hydrologic models rely on observed runoff for calibration, and have limited applicability in the poorly gauged Asian water towers. To overcome such limitations, here we propose a novel data-driven model, SM2R (Soil Moisture to Runoff), to simulate monthly runoff based on soil moisture dynamics using reanalysis forcing data. The SM2R model was applied and examined in 20 drainage basins across seven Asian water towers during the past four decades of 1981–2020. Without invoking any observations for calibration, the overall good performance of SM2R-derived runoff (correlation coefficient ≥0.74 and normalized root mean square error ≤0.22 compared to observed runoff at 20 gauges) suggests considerable potential for runoff simulation in poorly gauged basins. Even though the SM2R model is forced by ERA5-Land (ERA5L) reanalysis data, it largely outperforms the ERA5L-estimated runoff across the seven Asian water towers, particularly in basins with widely distributed glaciers and frozen soil. The SM2R approach is highly promising for constraining hydrologic variables from soil moisture information. Our results provide valuable insights for not only long-term runoff estimation over key Asian basins, but also understanding hydrologic processes across poorly gauged regions globally.Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research program. Grant Number: 2019QZKK0105 National Natural Science Foundation of China. Grant Number: 92047301,92047203 UK Research and Innovation. Grant Number: MR/V022008/

Echinoderms have bilateral tendencies

Echinoderms take many forms of symmetry. Pentameral symmetry is the major form and the other forms are derived from it. However, the ancestors of echinoderms, which originated from Cambrian period, were believed to be bilaterians. Echinoderm larvae are bilateral during their early development. During embryonic development of starfish and sea urchins, the position and the developmental sequence of each arm are fixed, implying an auxological anterior/posterior axis. Starfish also possess the Hox gene cluster, which controls symmetrical development. Overall, echinoderms are thought to have a bilateral developmental mechanism and process. In this article, we focused on adult starfish behaviors to corroborate its bilateral tendency. We weighed their central disk and each arm to measure the position of the center of gravity. We then studied their turning-over behavior, crawling behavior and fleeing behavior statistically to obtain the center of frequency of each behavior. By joining the center of gravity and each center of frequency, we obtained three behavioral symmetric planes. These behavioral bilateral tendencies might be related to the A/P axis during the embryonic development of the starfish. It is very likely that the adult starfish is, to some extent, bilaterian because it displays some bilateral propensity and has a definite behavioral symmetric plane. The remainder of bilateral symmetry may have benefited echinoderms during their evolution from the Cambrian period to the present

\u201cGive, but Give until It Hurts\u201d: The Modulatory Role of Trait Emotional Intelligence on the Motivation to Help

Two studies investigated the effect of trait Emotional Intelligence (trait EI) on people\u2019s moti- vation to help. In Study 1, we developed a new computer-based paradigm that tested partic- ipants\u2019 motivation to help by measuring their performance on a task in which they could gain a hypothetical amount of money to help children in need. Crucially, we manipulated partici- pants\u2019 perceived efficacy by informing them that they had been either able to save the chil- dren (positive feedback) or unable to save the children (negative feedback). We measured trait EI using the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire\u2013Short Form (TEIQue-SF) and assessed participants\u2019 affective reactions during the experiment using the PANAS-X. Results showed that high and low trait EI participants performed differently after the presen- tation of feedback on their ineffectiveness in helping others in need. Both groups showed increasing negative affective states during the experiment when the feedback was negative; however, high trait EI participants better managed their affective reactions, modulating the impact of their emotions on performance and maintaining a high level of motivation to help. In Study 2, we used a similar computerized task and tested a control situation to explore the effect of trait EI on participants\u2019 behavior when facing failure or success in a scenario unre- lated to helping others in need. No effect of feedback emerged on participants\u2019 emotional states in the second study. Taken together our results show that trait EI influences the impact of success and failure on behavior only in affect-rich situation like those in which people are asked to help others in need