Risk profiles and one-year outcomes of patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation in India: Insights from the GARFIELD-AF Registry.

BACKGROUND: The Global Anticoagulant Registry in the FIELD-Atrial Fibrillation (GARFIELD-AF) is an ongoing prospective noninterventional registry, which is providing important information on the baseline characteristics, treatment patterns, and 1-year outcomes in patients with newly diagnosed non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF). This report describes data from Indian patients recruited in this registry. METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 52,014 patients with newly diagnosed AF were enrolled globally; of these, 1388 patients were recruited from 26 sites within India (2012-2016). In India, the mean age was 65.8 years at diagnosis of NVAF. Hypertension was the most prevalent risk factor for AF, present in 68.5% of patients from India and in 76.3% of patients globally (P < 0.001). Diabetes and coronary artery disease (CAD) were prevalent in 36.2% and 28.1% of patients as compared with global prevalence of 22.2% and 21.6%, respectively (P < 0.001 for both). Antiplatelet therapy was the most common antithrombotic treatment in India. With increasing stroke risk, however, patients were more likely to receive oral anticoagulant therapy [mainly vitamin K antagonist (VKA)], but average international normalized ratio (INR) was lower among Indian patients [median INR value 1.6 (interquartile range {IQR}: 1.3-2.3) versus 2.3 (IQR 1.8-2.8) (P < 0.001)]. Compared with other countries, patients from India had markedly higher rates of all-cause mortality [7.68 per 100 person-years (95% confidence interval 6.32-9.35) vs 4.34 (4.16-4.53), P < 0.0001], while rates of stroke/systemic embolism and major bleeding were lower after 1 year of follow-up. CONCLUSION: Compared to previously published registries from India, the GARFIELD-AF registry describes clinical profiles and outcomes in Indian patients with AF of a different etiology. The registry data show that compared to the rest of the world, Indian AF patients are younger in age and have more diabetes and CAD. Patients with a higher stroke risk are more likely to receive anticoagulation therapy with VKA but are underdosed compared with the global average in the GARFIELD-AF. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION-URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT01090362

STRESS CORROSION OF TYPE 304 STAINLESS STEEL IN SIMULATED SUPERHEAT REACTOR ENVIRONMENTS. I. Informal AEC Research and Develoment Report 568-TIO-2

A fuel jacket failure that occurred in May 1961 in the Type 304 stainless steel clad fuel element exposed in the Vallecitos Boiling Water Reactor superheated steam loop (SADE) was attributed to chloride stress corrosion cracking. In order to better understand the failure, a test program was carried out to try to reproduce the rapid stress corrosion attack in the simulated superheat reactor environment of the CL-1 superheat facility. The methods of corrosion testing under heat transfer conditions reported previously were modified: to apply a longitudinal stress on the test sheaths to produce a 0.1 per cent elongation in 1000 hours; to increase the chloride content of the moisture carryover with the steam by increasing the chloride in the recirculating water to 1.5 ppm; and to expose the solids deposits to various metal temperatures. After 1000 hours of exposure, no significant attack was noted on the test sheaths. The test procedures were further altered to simulate the significant amount of SADE fuel element exposure to saturated steam at varying temperatures with little to no superheat being generated. A 776-hour total exposure was carried out with the test conditions cycled several times. The entrance heater (calculated metal temperature during normal operation 800 to 900 deg F) was covered with numerous fine cracks that did not penetrate completely through the 0.030-inch sheath. The cracks were predominantly transgranular. Discontinuities were located by ultrasonic techniques in the middle (metal temperature ~ 1000 deg F) and exit (metal temperature ~ 1200 deg F) sheaths. The discontinuities were confirmed as intergranular penetrations of 0.006 to 0.010-inch depth respectively by metallography. Both types of attack were found on the SADE fuel element cladding failure. Chloride salts of chromium, copper, iron, and nickel were found by x- ray diffraction in the deposit taken from the test sheaths. Some laboratory tests with unsensitized and sensitized Type 304 stainless indicated that water solutions of copper or iron chloride salts chemically attacked the sensitized material intergranularly independent of stress. The test results indicated that chemical and chloride stress corrosion attack can act either singularly or in combination to produce the type failures experienced in the SADE and CL-1 tests. The presence of stress had little apparent effect on the uniform corrosion rate of the test sheaths, except when the stresses were high enough to cause creep. The creep resuited in scale spalling with some accelerated corrosion in the areas of scale cracking. (auth

Vine Copulas as a Way to Describe and Analyze Multi-Variate Dependence in Econometrics: Computational Motivation and Comparison with Bayesian Networks and Fuzzy Approaches

Abstract. In the last decade, vine copulas emerged as a new efficient techniques for describing and analyzing multi-variate dependence in econometrics; see, e.g., [1–3, 7, 9–11, 13, 14, 21]. Our experience has shown, however, that while these techniques have been successfully applied to many practical problems of econometrics, there is still a lot of confusion and misunderstanding related to vine copulas. In this paper, we provide a motivation for this new technique from the computational viewpoint. We show that other techniques used to described dependence – Bayesian networks and fuzzy techniques – can be viewed as a particular case of vine copulas. 1 Copulas – A Useful Tool in Econometrics: Motivations and Descriptions Need for studying dependence in econometrics. Many researchers have observed that economics is more complex than physics. In physics, many parameters, many phenomena are independent. As a result, we can observe (and thoroughl