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

Tuning the catalytic acidity in Al2O3 nanofibers with mordenite nanocrystals for dehydration reactions

Alumina (Al2O3) is one of the most used supports in the chemical industry due to its exceptional thermal stability, surface area, and acidic properties. Mesoscopic structured alumina with adequate acidic properties is important in catalysis to enhance the selectivity and conversion of certain reactions and processes. This study introduces a synthetic method based on electrospinning to produce Al2O3 nanofibers (ANFs) with zeolite mordenite (MOR) nanocrystals (hereafter, hybrid ANFs) to tune the textural and surface acidity properties. The hybrid ANFs with electrospinning form a non-woven network with macropores. ANF-HMOR, i.e., ANFs containing protonated mordenite (HMOR), shows the highest total acidity of ca. 276 μmol g−1 as determined with infrared spectroscopy using pyridine as a molecular probe (IR-Py). IR-Py results reveal that Lewis acid sites are prominently present in the hybrid ANFs. Brønsted acid sites are also observed in the hybrid ANFs and are associated with the HMOR presence. The functionality of hybrid ANFs is evaluated during methanol dehydration to dimethyl ether (DME). The proof of concept reaction reveals that ANF-HMOR is the more active and selective catalyst with 87% conversion and nearly 100% selectivity to DME at 573 K. The results demonstrate that the textural properties and the acid site type and content can be modulated in hybrid ANF structures, synergistically improving the selectivity and conversion during the methanol dehydration reaction. From a broader perspective, our results promote the utilization of hybrid structural materials as a means to tune chemical reactions selectively

Al2O3 nanofibers prepared from aluminum Di(sec-butoxide)acetoacetic ester chelate exhibits high surface area and acidity

Alumina (Al2O3) is a widely used material for catalysis in the chemical industry. Besides a high specific surface area, acid sites on Al2O3 play a crucial role in the chemical transformation of adsorbed molecules, which ultimately react and desorb from the catalyst. This study introduces a synthetic method based on electrospinning to produce Al2O3 nanofibers (ANFs) with acidity and porosity tuned using different aluminum precursor formulations. After electrospinning and heat treatment, the nanofibers form a non-woven network with macropores (∼4 μm). Nanofibers produced from aluminum di(sec-butoxide)acetoacetic ester chelate (ASB) show the highest total acidity of ca. 0.70 µmol/m2 determined with temperature-programmed desorption of ammonia (NH3-TPD) and BET. The nature of the acid site in ASB ANFs is studied in detail with infrared (IR) spectroscopy. Pyridine is used as a molecular probe for the identification of acid sites in ASB. Pyridine showed the presence of Lewis acid sites prominently. Density-functional theory (DFT) is conducted to understand the desorption kinetics of the adsorbed chemical species, such as ammonia (NH3) on crystalline γ-Al2O3. For our analysis, we focused on a mobile approach for chemisorbed and physisorbed NH3. The computational results are compared with NH3-TPD experiments, ultimately utilized to estimate the desorption energy and kinetic desorption parameters. The experiments are found to pair up with our simulation results. We predict that these non-woven structures will find application as a dispersion medium of metallic particles in catalysis.</p

Chlorine in NiO promotes electroreduction of CO2 to formate

We report the exceptional finding that NiO, a known electroactive catalyst for the reduction of CO2 to CO, can be tuned to become an active electrocatalyst for CO2 reduction to formate when chlorine is synthetically incorporated into NiO. The CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) is carried out on chlorine-containing NiO octahedral particles made by a solid-state synthesis method yielding a Faradaic efficiency (FE) of 70 % for formate production at -0.8 V vs. RHE with a partial current density of 14.7 mA/cm2. XPS confirms the presence of Ni3+ and Ni2+ species, indicating the existence of uncoordinated Ni. The Ni3+/Ni2+ ratio increases with the Cl concentrations on NiO. Cl concentrations are also confirmed with STEM-EDX. DFT modeling provides insights into the thermodynamic stability and CO2RR mechanism over the Cl-containing NiO surface. It is suggested that Cl can occupy the defective sites created by oxygen vacancies on the NiO model with Cl (O-alpha+Cl). The surface Pourbaix diagrams constructed from DFT indicate the preferred surface terminations favorable at the operating conditions for the CO2RR, which closely agrees with the experimental findings. The O-alpha+Cl has been found to promote CO2RR to formate. Our results create new possibilities in the development of earth-abundant electrocatalysts for selective CO2RR.</p

Trends in Antarctic ecological research in Latin America shown by publications in international journals

Antarctica is a highly interesting region for ecologists because of its extreme climatic conditions and the uniqueness of its species. In this article, we describe the trends in Antarctic ecological research participation by Latin American countries. In a survey of articles indexed by the ISI Web of Science, we searched under the categories &#x201C;Ecology,&#x201D; &#x201C;Biodiversity Conservation&#x201D; and &#x201C;Evolutionary Biology&#x201D; and found a total of 254 research articles published by Latin American countries. We classified these articles according to the country of affiliation, kingdom of the study species, level of biological organization and environment. Our main finding is that there is a steady increase in the relative contribution of Latin American countries to Antarctic ecological research. Within each category, we found that marine studies are more common than terrestrial studies. Between the different kingdoms, most studies focus on animals and most studies use a community approach. The leading countries in terms of productivity were Argentina, Chile and Brazil, with Argentina showing the highest rate of increase