Evaporation residue cross sections and average neutron multiplicities in the 64Ni+92Zr and 12C+144Sm reactions leading to 156Er

Evaporation residue cross sections and neutron multiplicity distributions have been measured for the 12C + 144Sm and 64Ni + 92Zr reactions leading to the same compound nucleous 156Er. Statistical model calculations can account for the data in the 12C-induced reaction. In contrast, the inhibition of neutron emission with respect to statistical model predictions seen in 64Ni + 92Zr cannot be explained even with the inclusion of the broad angular momentum distributions required to describe the fusion cross section data

Lifetime measurements in 184Pt and the shape coexistence picture

Lifetimes for levels in the yrast band of 184Pt have been measured up to spin 16+ using the recoil distance technique. The B(E2) values exhibit a marked increase in going from spin 2 to 10, consistent with a proposal that two bands of different deformations are mixing at low spin. This provides further support for shape coexistence occuring at low excitation energies in this region

Overuse and misuse of antibiotics and the clinical consequence in necrotizing pancreatitis study: an observational multicenter

Objective: The use and impact of antibiotics and the impact of causative pathogens on clinical outcomes in a large real-world cohort covering the entire clinical spectrum of necrotizing pancreatitis remain unknown.Summary Background Data: International guidelines recommend broad-spectrum antibiotics in patients with suspected infected necrotizing pancreatitis. This recommendation is not based on high-level evidence and clinical effects are unknown.Materials and Methods: This study is a post-hoc analysis of a nationwide prospective cohort of 401 patients with necrotizing pancreatitis in 15 Dutch centers (2010-2019). Across the patient population from the time of admission to 6 months postadmission, multivariable regression analyses were used to analyze (1) microbiological cultures and (2) antibiotic use.Results: Antibiotics were started in 321/401 patients (80%) administered at a median of 5 days (P25-P75: 1-13) after admission. The median duration of antibiotics was 27 days (P25-P75: 15-48). In 221/321 patients (69%) infection was not proven by cultures at the time of initiation of antibiotics. Empirical antibiotics for infected necrosis provided insufficient coverage in 64/128 patients (50%) with a pancreatic culture. Prolonged antibiotic therapy was associated with Enterococcus infection (OR 1.08 [95% CI 1.03-1.16], P=0.01). Enterococcus infection was associated with new/persistent organ failure (OR 3.08 [95% CI 1.35-7.29], PP=0.03). Yeast was found in 30/147 cultures (20%).Discussion: In this nationwide study of patients with necrotizing pancreatitis, the vast majority received antibiotics, typically administered early in the disease course and without a proven infection. Empirical antibiotics were inappropriate based on pancreatic cultures in half the patients. Future clinical research and practice must consider antibiotic selective pressure due to prolonged therapy and coverage of Enterococcus and yeast. Improved guidelines on antimicrobial diagnostics and therapy could reduce inappropriate antibiotic use and improve clinical outcomes.Cellular mechanisms in basic and clinical gastroenterology and hepatolog

Associations between DNA methylation and BMI vary by metabolic health status: a potential link to disparate cardiovascular outcomes

Background: Body mass index (BMI), a well-known risk factor for poor cardiovascular outcomes, is associated with differential DNA methylation (DNAm). Similarly, metabolic health has also been associated with changes in DNAm. It is unclear how overall metabolic health outside of BMI may modify the relationship between BMI and methylation profiles, and what consequences this may have on downstream cardiovascular disease. The purpose of this study was to identify cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) sites at which the association between BMI and DNAm could be modified by overall metabolic health. Results: The discovery study population was derived from three Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) ancillary studies (n = 3977) and two Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) ancillary studies (n = 3520). Findings were validated in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) cohort (n = 1200). Generalized linear models regressed methylation β values on the interaction between BMI and metabolic health Z score (BMI × MHZ) adjusted for BMI, MHZ, cell composition, chip number and location, study characteristics, top three ancestry principal components, smoking, age, ethnicity (WHI), and sex (ARIC). Among the 429,566 sites examined, differential associations between BMI × MHZ and DNAm were identified at 22 CpG sites (FDR q < 0.05), with one site replicated in MESA (cg18989722, in the TRAPPC9 gene). Three of the 22 sites were associated with incident coronary heart disease (CHD) in WHI. For each 0.01 unit increase in DNAm β value, the risk of incident CHD increased by 9% in one site and decreased by 6–10% in two sites over 25 years. Conclusions: Differential associations between DNAm and BMI by MHZ were identified at 22 sites, one of which was validated (cg18989722) and three of which were predictive of incident CHD. These sites are located in several genes related to NF-kappa-B signaling, suggesting a potential role for inflammation between DNA methylation and BMI-associated metabolic health

Clonal hematopoiesis associated with epigenetic aging and clinical outcomes

Clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) is a common precursor state for blood cancers that most frequently occurs due to mutations in the DNA-methylation modifying enzymes DNMT3A or TET2. We used DNA-methylation array and whole-genome sequencing data from four cohorts together comprising 5522 persons to study the association between CHIP, epigenetic clocks, and health outcomes. CHIP was strongly associated with epigenetic age acceleration, defined as the residual after regressing epigenetic clock age on chronological age, in several clocks, ranging from 1.31 years (GrimAge, p &lt; 8.6 × 10−7) to 3.08 years (EEAA, p &lt; 3.7 × 10−18). Mutations in most CHIP genes except DNA-damage response genes were associated with increases in several measures of age acceleration. CHIP carriers with mutations in multiple genes had the largest increases in age acceleration and decrease in estimated telomere length. Finally, we found that ~40% of CHIP carriers had acceleration &gt;0 in both Hannum and GrimAge (referred to as AgeAccelHG+). This group was at high risk of all-cause mortality (hazard ratio 2.90, p &lt; 4.1 × 10−8) and coronary heart disease (CHD) (hazard ratio 3.24, p &lt; 9.3 × 10−6) compared to those who were CHIP−/AgeAccelHG−. In contrast, the other ~60% of CHIP carriers who were AgeAccelHG− were not at increased risk of these outcomes. In summary, CHIP is strongly linked to age acceleration in multiple clocks, and the combination of CHIP and epigenetic aging may be used to identify a population at high risk for adverse outcomes and who may be a target for clinical interventions

Unmasking saccadic uncrowding

Stimuli that are briefly presented around the time of saccades are often perceived with spatiotemporal distortions. These distortions do not always have deleterious effects on the visibility and identification of a stimulus. Recent studies reported that when a stimulus is the target of an intended saccade, it is released from both masking (De Pisapia, Kaunitz, & Melcher, 2010) and crowding (Harrison, Mattingley, & Remington, 2013). Here, we investigated pre-saccadic changes in single and crowded letter recognition performance in the absence (Experiment 1) and the presence (Experiment 2) of backward masks to determine the extent to which saccadic “uncrowding” and “unmasking” mechanisms are similar. Our results show that pre-saccadic improvements in letter recognition performance are mostly due to the presence of masks and/or stimulus transients which occur after the target is presented. More importantly, we did not find any decrease in crowding strength before impending saccades. A simplified version of a dual-channel neural model, originally proposed to explain masking phenomena, with several saccadic add-on mechanisms, could account for our results in Experiment 1. However, this model falls short in explaining how saccades drastically reduced the effect of backward masking (Experiment 2). The addition of a remapping mechanism that alters the relative spatial positions of stimuli was needed to fully account for the improvements observed when backward masks followed the letter stimuli. Taken together, our results (i) are inconsistent with saccadic uncrowding, (ii) strongly support saccadic unmasking, and (iii) suggest that pre-saccadic letter recognition is modulated by multiple perisaccadic mechanisms with different time courses

Reading tea leaves worldwide: decoupled drivers of initial litter decomposition mass-loss rate and stabilisation

The breakdown of plant material fuels soil functioning and biodiversity. Currently, process understanding of global decomposition patterns and the drivers of such patterns are hampered by the lack of coherent large-scale datasets. We buried 36,000 individual litterbags (tea bags) worldwide and found an overall negative correlation between initial mass-loss rates and stabilization factors of plant-derived carbon, using the Tea Bag Index (TBI). The stabilization factor quantifies the degree to which easy-to-degrade components accumulate during early-stage decomposition (e.g. by environmental limitations). However, agriculture and an interaction between moisture and temperature led to a decoupling between initial mass-loss rates and stabilization, notably in colder locations. Using TBI improved mass-loss estimates of natural litter compared to models that ignored stabilization. Ignoring the transformation of dead plant material to more recalcitrant substances during early-stage decomposition, and the environmental control of this transformation, could overestimate carbon losses during early decomposition in carbon cycle models