Exploring the relation between changes in NT-proBNP and renal function in patients with suspected heart failure using structural equation modelling

Background: The relation between changes in NT-proBNP and renal function has commonly been studied using multiple regressions, which may ignore the complexity of relations between related variables. Methods and results: Data were collected from patients referred with suspected heart failure (HF) to a community service. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to assess the association between changes in NT-proBNP at 1 year, and other pre-specified variables including age, sex, BMI, eGFR, loop diuretics and ACE inhibitor. Of 1006 patients with a follow-up NT-proBNP at 1 year, 882 (88%) had HF. The baseline median age was 72 (IQR: 63–78) years, 732 (73%) were men, 668 (66%) had left ventricular systolic dysfunction and 769 (76%) had NT-proBNP > 400 pg/ml. For all patients at 1 year, 243 (24%) patients had at least a 50% reduction in NT-proBNP, and 199 (20%) had at least a 50% increase, only 40 (3%) had < 3% change. Change in NT-proBNP was strongly associated with baseline NT-proBNP (the standardized coefficient (r) = 0.73, p < 0.001). The change in NT-proBNP was not associated with changes in eGFR, and was indirectly related with age, BMI, eGFR and loop diuretics (p < 0.01 for all). Conclusions: Baseline NT-proBNP was the main determinant of change in NT-proBNP at one year

Reality Hackers: The Next Wave of Media Revolutionaries

Just as the printing press gave rise to the nation-state, emerging technologies are reshaping collective identities and challenging our understanding of what it means to be human. Should citizens have the right to be truly anonymous on-line? Should we be concerned about the fact that so many people are choosing to migrate to virtual worlds? Are injectible microscopic radio-frequency ID chips a blessing or a curse? Is the use of cognitive enhancing nootropics a human right or an unforgivable transgression? Should genomic data about human beings be hidden away with commercial patents or open-sourced like software? Should hobbyists known as biohackers be allowed to experiment with genetic engineering in their home laboratories? The time-frame for acting on such questions is relatively short, and these decisions are too important to be left up to a small handful of scientists and policymakers. If democracy is to continue as a viable alternative to technocracy, the average citizen must become more involved in these debates. To borrow a line from the computer visionary Ted Nelson, all of us can -- and must -- understand technology now. Challenging the popular stereotype of hackers as ciminal sociopaths, reality hackers uphold the basic tenets of what Steven Levy (1984) terms the hacker ethic. These core principles include a commitment to: sharing, openness, decentralization, public access to information, and the use of new technologies to make the world a better place.https://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/mono/1000/thumbnail.jp

Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST): A Technology Roadmap for the Next Decade

The Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST) is a set of mission concepts for the next generation of UVOIR space observatory with a primary aperture diameter in the 8-m to 16-m range that will allow us to perform some of the most challenging observations to answer some of our most compelling questions, including "Is there life elsewhere in the Galaxy?" We have identified two different telescope architectures, but with similar optical designs, that span the range in viable technologies. The architectures are a telescope with a monolithic primary mirror and two variations of a telescope with a large segmented primary mirror. This approach provides us with several pathways to realizing the mission, which will be narrowed to one as our technology development progresses. The concepts invoke heritage from HST and JWST design, but also take significant departures from these designs to minimize complexity, mass, or both. Our report provides details on the mission concepts, shows the extraordinary scientific progress they would enable, and describes the most important technology development items. These are the mirrors, the detectors, and the high-contrast imaging technologies, whether internal to the observatory, or using an external occulter. Experience with JWST has shown that determined competitors, motivated by the development contracts and flight opportunities of the new observatory, are capable of achieving huge advances in technical and operational performance while keeping construction costs on the same scale as prior great observatories.Comment: 22 pages, RFI submitted to Astro2010 Decadal Committe

Implementation of Novel Biomarkers in the Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Management of Acute Kidney Injury: Executive Summary from the Tenth Consensus Conference of the Acute Dialysis Quality Initiative (ADQI)

Detection of acute kidney injury is undergoing a dynamic revolution ofbiomarker technology allowing greater, earlier, and more accuratedetermination of diagnosis, prognosis, and with powerful implication formanagement. Biomarkers can be broadly considered as any measurablebiologic entity or process that allows differentiation between normalfunction and injury or disease. The ADQI (Acute Dialysis QualityInitiative) had its Ninth Consensus Conference dedicated to synthesisand formulation of the existing literature on biomarkers for thedetection of acute kidney injury in a variety of settings. In the papersthat accompany this summary, ADQI workgroups fully develop key conceptsfrom a summary of the literature in the domains of early diagnosis,differential diagnosis, prognosis and management, and concurrentphysiologic and imaging measures

The breakthrough listen search for intelligent life: a wideband data recorder system for the Robert C. Byrd green bank telescope

The Breakthrough Listen Initiative is undertaking a comprehensive search for radio and optical signatures from extraterrestrial civilizations. An integral component of the project is the design and implementation of wide-bandwidth data recorder and signal processing systems. The capabilities of these systems, particularly at radio frequencies, directly determine survey speed; further, given a fixed observing time and spectral coverage, they determine sensitivity as well. Here, we detail the Breakthrough Listen wide-bandwidth data recording system deployed at the 100-m aperture Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope. The system digitizes up to 6 GHz of bandwidth at 8 bits for both polarizations, storing the resultant 24 GB/s of data to disk. This system is among the highest data rate baseband recording systems in use in radio astronomy. A future system expansion will double recording capacity, to achieve a total Nyquist bandwidth of 12 GHz in two polarizations. In this paper, we present details of the system architecture, along with salient configuration and disk-write optimizations used to achieve high-throughput data capture on commodity compute servers and consumer-class hard disk drives

Heart failure in chronic kidney disease: conclusions from a Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) Controversies conference

The incidence and prevalence of heart failure (HF) and chronic kidney disease (CKD) are increasing, and as such a better understanding of the interface between both conditions is imperative for developing optimal strategies for their detection, prevention, diagnosis, and management. To this end, Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) convened an international, multidisciplinary Controversies Conference titled Heart Failure in CKD. Breakout group discussions included (i) HF with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) and nondialysis CKD, (ii) HF with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) and nondialysis CKD, (iii) HFpEF and dialysis-dependent CKD, (iv) HFrEF and dialysis-dependent CKD, and (v) HF in kidney transplant patients. The questions that formed the basis of discussions are available on the KDIGO website http://kdigo.org/conferences/heart-failure-in-ckd/, and the deliberations from the conference are summarized here

Recent Progress and Next Steps for the MATHUSLA LLP Detector

We report on recent progress and next steps in the design of the proposed MATHUSLA Long Lived Particle (LLP) detector for the HL-LHC as part of the Snowmass 2021 process. Our understanding of backgrounds has greatly improved, aided by detailed simulation studies, and significant R&D has been performed on designing the scintillator detectors and understanding their performance. The collaboration is on track to complete a Technical Design Report, and there are many opportunities for interested new members to contribute towards the goal of designing and constructing MATHUSLA in time for HL-LHC collisions, which would increase the sensitivity to a large variety of highly motivated LLP signals by orders of magnitude.Comment: Contribution to Snowmass 2021 (EF09, EF10, IF6, IF9), 18 pages, 12 figures. v2: included additional endorser

The Mass of KOI-94d and a Relation for Planet Radius, Mass, and Incident Flux

We measure the mass of a modestly irradiated giant planet, KOI-94d. We wish to determine whether this planet, which is in a 22 day orbit and receives 2700 times as much incident flux as Jupiter, is as dense as Jupiter or rarefied like inflated hot Jupiters. KOI-94 also hosts at least three smaller transiting planets, all of which were detected by the Kepler mission. With 26 radial velocities of KOI-94 from the W. M. Keck Observatory and a simultaneous fit to the Kepler light curve, we measure the mass of the giant planet and determine that it is not inflated. Support for the planetary interpretation of the other three candidates comes from gravitational interactions through transit timing variations, the statistical robustness of multi-planet systems against false positives, and several lines of evidence that no other star resides within the photometric aperture. We report the properties of KOI-94b (M_P = 10.5 ± 4.6 M_⊕, R_P = 1.71 ± 0.16 R_⊕, P = 3.74 days), KOI-94c (M_P = 15.6^(+5.7)_(-15.6) M_⊕, R_P = 4.32 ± 0.41 R_⊕, P = 10.4 days), KOI-94d (M_P = 106 ± 11 M_⊕, R_P = 11.27 ± 1.06 R_⊕, P = 22.3 days), and KOI-94e (M_P = 35^(+18)_(-28) M_⊕, R_P = 6.56 ± 0.62 R_⊕, P = 54.3 days). The radial velocity analyses of KOI-94b and KOI-94e offer marginal (>2σ) mass detections, whereas the observations of KOI-94c offer only an upper limit to its mass. Using the KOI-94 system and other planets with published values for both mass and radius (138 exoplanets total, including 35 with M_P 150 M_⊕. These equations can be used to predict the radius or mass of a planet