Understanding the association between chromosomally integrated human herpesvirus 6 and HIV disease: a cross-sectional study [version 2; referees: 2 approved, 1 approved with reservations]

We conducted a cross-sectional investigation to identify evidence of a potential modifying effect of chromosomally integrated human herpes virus 6 (ciHHV-6) on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease progression and/or severity. ciHHV-6 was identified by detecting HHV-6 DNA in hair follicle specimens of 439 subjects. There was no statistically significant relationship between the presence of ciHHV-6 and HIV disease progression to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. However, after adjusting for use of antiretroviral therapy, all subjects with ciHHV-6 had low severity HIV disease; these findings were not statistically significant. A multi-center study with a larger sample size will be needed to more precisely determine if there is an association between ciHHV-6 and low HIV disease severity

Improving the thermal performance of vertical ground heat exchanger by modifying spiral tube geometry: A numerical study

Ground heat exchanger (GHE) is the most crucial element of a ground source heat pump (GSHP) system for building cooling and heating by the utilization of geothermal energy. Therefore, intending to enhance the performance of GHE, the present study conducts a computational investigation of the thermal performance of modified spiral tube vertical GHEs. Several modifications of uniform-pitched spiral GHE are made to increase its thermal performance. Some modifications are introduced as variable-pitched spiral tube GHE where spiral inlet pipes are densified in the lower part of GHEs by reducing pitch distance. Conversely, in some modifications, the position of the outlet straight pipe is changed. Water is considered as the working fluid and the inlet temperature of the water is maintained fixed at 300.15 K. After extensive analysis, it is evident that, when the outlet pipe is placed outside of the spiral coil, there is a 7.67 % enhancement in the thermal performance than a traditional uniform-pitched spiral tube GHE. However, modifications like variable-pitched spiral tube GHEs are not significant to improve the thermal performance due to the quick saturation of the ground soil temperature around the GHE pipes. To have a balance between heat transfer rate and pressure drop, thermal performance capability (TPC) and coefficient of performance improvement (COPimprvt) criterion were evaluated and it is found that the uniform-pitched spiral tube GHE along with the outlet pipe at the outside of the spiral provides maximum thermal performance with a maximum TPC value of 1.062 and provides the positive value of COPimprvt criterion. The positive values of COPimprvt indicate that the spiral tube GHEs are energy efficient based on heat transfer and pressure drop. Moreover, spiral GHE with high-density polyethylene (HDPE), concrete pile, and sandy clay outperform the other materials for pipe, backfill, and soil, respectively. Specifically, HDPE pipe, concrete backfill, and sandy clay as soil offer around 7 %, 5 %, and 7.8 % higher thermal performance compared to polyethylene, sand silica, and clay, respectively

Exhaust heat harvesting of automotive engine using thermoelectric generation technology

Exhaust heat recovery from internal combustion engines is growing interest to reduce fuel consumption, increase the efficiency and consequently, reduce the environmental pollution and global warming. Thermoelectric generator (TEG) is a promising technology to harvest engine exhaust heat by directly converting it into electrical power via the Seebeck effect. In this work, commercial Bi2Te3 (SP1848-27145 SA) thermoelectric modules (TEMs) were used for recovering exhaust heat from gasoline engines and convert it directly into electricity. Two types of setups were constructed using copper and steel materials, where both setups consist of triangular channels. The first setup was constructed entirely from copper material to work as a heat exchanger from exhaust heat to the TEMs’ hot surface. The second setup was constructed with a portion of copper at the installation area of TEMs and the rest of the portion was constructed with steel material to investigate the best performance from these two TEG systems. Six TEG modules which are electrically series connected were installed on the outer surfaces of each copper made and steel made setup. The maximum power output from copper made TEG was found to be 2.96 W for an exhaust temperature of 297 °C and at 126 °C temperature difference between the hot and cold sides. Whereas steel made TEG provided the maximum power output of 2.0 W for an exhaust temperature of 305 °C and at a 107 °C temperature difference between hot and cold sides. Therefore, the copper made TEG setup provided 48% higher power output than the steel made TEG setup. The higher power output of copper made TEG lowers the expelled exhaust temperature to the environment, which results in the decrease of entropy loss. Furthermore, since there is no effect of engine operating pressure on enthalpy loss, therefore, the engine can operate at higher operating pressure which means the contribution of the reduction of fuel cost, fuel consumption and environmental pollution parallelly. Between exhaust gas temperature ranges 297 °C to 300 °C, the highest conversion efficiency was found 4.65 % and 4.63% for steel made TEG setup and copper made TEG setup, respectively

Prognostic accuracy of early warning scores for predicting serious illness and in-hospital mortality in patients with COVID-19.

A simple bedside triage tool is essential to stratify COVID-19 patients in the emergency department (ED). This study aimed to identify an early warning score (EWS) that could best predict the clinical outcomes in COVID-19 patients. Data were obtained from medical records of 219 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 positive patients. We calculated 13 EWSs based on the admission characteristics of the patients. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was used to assess the performance of the scores in predicting serious illness and in-hospital mortality. The median patient age was 51 (38, 60) years, and 25 (11.4%) patients died. Among patients admitted with mild to moderate illness (n = 175), 61 (34.9%) developed serious illness. Modified National Early Warning Score (m-NEWS) (AUROC 0.766; 95% CI: 0.693, 0.839) and Rapid Emergency Medicine Score (REMS) (AUROC 0.890; 95% CI: 0.818, 0.962) demonstrated the highest AUROC point estimates in predicting serious illness and in-hospital mortality, respectively. Both m-NEWS and REMS demonstrated good accuracy in predicting both the outcomes. However, no significant difference was found between m-NEWS (p = 0.983) and REMS (p = 0.428) as well as some other EWSs regarding the AUROCs in predicting serious illness and in-hospital mortality. We propose m-NEWS could be used as a triage score to identify COVID-19 patients at risk of disease progression and death especially in resource-poor settings because it has been explicitly developed for risk stratification of COVID-19 patients in some countries like China and Italy. However, this tool needs to be validated by further large-scale prospective studies

Data on the presence of chromosomally integrated human herpes virus 6 (ciHHV-6) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease progression and severity

<p>Data on ciHHV-6 presence and HIV disease progression in 439 patients at the Infectious Diseases Clinic at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, NY: PID: Subject identification<br>Studydob: Subject date of birth<br>Enrolldate: Subject date of enrollment<br>Gender: Subject gender<br>Med_provider: Subject’s HIV medical provider<br>Race: Subject self-identified race<br>Ethnicity: Subject self-identified ethnicity<br>HIV_Dx_Date: Subject’s date of HIV diagnosis<br>AIDS_Dx_Date: Patient’s date of AIDS diagnosis<br>Last_VL_Date: Subject’s date of most recent viral load<br>Last_VL: Subject’s most recent viral load<br>Last_CD4_Date: Subject’s date of most recent CD4+ T-cell count<br>Last_CD4: Subject’s most recent CD4+ T-cell count<br>ART Naïve: If subject is naïve to antiretroviral therapy – ‘yes’<br>CIHHV6Run2: Subject positive for qualitative PCR results – ‘1’<br>QuantPCR: Subject positive for quantitative PCR results – ‘1’</p> <p> </p> <p>Extraction tool used to collect data</p

Dataset 1: Data on ciHHV-6 presence and HIV disease progression in 439 patients at the Infectious Diseases Clinic at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, NY

PID: Subject identification; Last_VL: Subject’s most recent viral load; Last_CD4: Subject’s most recent CD4+ T-cell count;Last_CD4_%: Subject’s most recent CD4+ T-cell count percent; Time_to_progression: time (in years) between HIV diagnosis and AIDS diagnosis; Rapid Progressor: Less than two years to between HIV and AIDS diagnosis; ART Naïve: If subject is naïve to antiretroviral therapy – ‘yes’; CIHHV6Run2: Subject positive for qualitative PCR results – ‘1’; QuantPCR: Subject positive for quantitative PCR results – ‘1’