Investigation of the reliability of sterile insertion techniques for spacecraft Final report

Gnotobiotic insertion technique reliability in spacecraft sterilization application

True bipolar or extended bipolar left ventricular pacing is associated with better survival in cardiac resynchronization therapy patients

BackgroundLimited studies are available on the clinical significance of left ventricular (LV) lead polarity in patients undergoing cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT), with a recent study suggesting better outcomes with LV true bipolar pacing.ObjectiveWe aimed to determine whether true bipolar LV pacing is associated with reduced mortality in a large, real‐life CRT cohort, followed by remote monitoring.MethodsWe analyzed de‐identified device data from CRT patients followed by the Boston Scientific LATITUDE remote monitoring database system. Patients with LV bipolar leads paced between the LV ring and LV tip were identified as true bipolar and those with LV bipolar leads paced between LV tip or LV ring and right ventricular (RV) coil were identified as extended bipolar. Patients with unipolar leads were identified as unipolar.ResultsOf the 59 046 patients included in the study, 2927 had unipolar pacing, 34 390 had extended bipolar pacing, and 21 729 had true bipolar pacing. LV true bipolar pacing was associated with a significant 30% lower risk of all‐cause mortality as compared to unipolar pacing (hazards ratio [HR] = 0.70, 95% CI: 0.62‐0.79, P < .001), after adjustment for age, gender, LV lead impedance, LV pacing threshold, and BIV pacing percentage <95%. Extended bipolar LV pacing was also associated with 24% lower risk of all‐cause mortality when compared to unipolar LV pacing (HR = 0.76, 95% CI: 0.68‐0.85; P < .001). However, there were no differences in outcomes between true bipolar and extended bipolar LV pacing (HR = 0.97, 95% CI: 0.93‐1.01; P = .198).ConclusionTrue bipolar or extended bipolar LV pacing is associated with a lower risk of mortality in CRT patients as compared to unipolar LV pacing.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154901/1/pace13889_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154901/2/pace13889.pd

A two weight local Tb theorem for the Hilbert transform

We obtain a two weight local Tb theorem for any elliptic and gradient elliptic fractional singular integral operator T on the real line, and any pair of locally finite positive Borel measures on the line. This includes the Hilbert transform and in a sense improves on the T1 theorem by the authors and M. Lacey.Comment: 121 pages, 3 figures, 50 pages of appendices. We correct three gaps in the treatment of the stopping form in v12: the proof of Lemma 9.3 there requires a larger size functional, a collection of pairs is missing from the decomposition at the bottom of page 149, and an error was made in the definition of restricted norm of a stopping form. Main results unchange

Cost‐effectiveness analysis of multiple imaging modalities in diagnosis and follow‐up of intermediate complex cystic renal lesions

Objectives: To compare health-economic aspects of multiple imaging modalities used to monitor renal cysts, the present study evaluates costs and outcomes of patients with Bosniak IIF and III renal cysts detected and followed-up by either contrast-enhanced computed tomography (ceCT), contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (ceMRI), or contrast-enhanced ultrasonography (CEUS). Patients and methods: A simulation using Markov models was implemented and performed with 10 cycles of 1 year each. Proportionate cohorts were allocated to Markov models by a decision tree processing specific incidences of malignancy and levels of diagnostic performance. Costs of imaging and surgical treatment were investigated using internal data of a European university hospital. Multivariate probabilistic sensitivity analysis was performed to confirm results considering input value uncertainties. Patient outcomes were measured in quality-adjusted life years (QALY), and costs as averages per patient including costs of imaging and surgical treatment. Results: Compared to the 'gold standard' of ceCT, ceMRI was more effective but also more expensive, with a resulting incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) >€70 000 (Euro) per QALY gained. CEUS was dominant compared to ceCT in both Bosniak IIF and III renal cysts in terms of QALYs and costs. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis confirmed these results in the majority of iterations. Conclusion: Both ceMRI and CEUS can be used as alternatives to ceCT in the diagnosis and follow-up of intermediately complex cystic renal lesions without compromising effectiveness, while CEUS is clearly cost-effective. The economic results apply to a large university hospital and must be adapted for smaller hospitals

A comparative study of Rayleigh-Taylor and Richtmyer-Meshkov instabilities in 2D and 3D in tantalum

Driving a shock wave through the interface between two materials with different densities can result in the Richtmyer-Meshkov or Rayleigh-Taylor instability and initial perturbations at the interface will grow. If the shock wave is sufficiently strong, the instability will lead to plastic flow at the interface. Material strength will reduce the amount of plastic flow and suppress growth. While such instabilities have been investigated in 2D, no studies of this phenomena have been performed in 3D on materials with strength. Initial perturbations to seed the hydrodynamic instability were coined into tantalum recovery targets. Two types of perturbations were used, two dimensional (2D) perturbations (hill and valley) and three-dimensional (3D) perturbations (egg crate pattern). The targets were subjected to dynamic loading using the Janus laser at the Jupiter Laser Facility. Shock pressures ranged from 50 GPa up to 150 GPa and were calibrated using VISAR drive targets

TASTY: Tool for Automating Secure Two-partY computations

Secure two-party computation allows two untrusting parties to jointly compute an arbitrary function on their respective private inputs while revealing no information beyond the outcome. Existing cryptographic compilers can automatically generate secure computation protocols from high-level specifications, but are often limited in their use and efficiency of generated protocols as they are based on either garbled circuits or (additively) homomorphic encryption only. In this paper we present TASTY, a novel tool for automating, i.e., describing, generating, executing, benchmarking, and comparing, efficient secure two-party computation protocols. TASTY is a new compiler that can generate protocols based on homomorphic encryption and efficient garbled circuits as well as combinations of both, which often yields the most efficient protocols available today. The user provides a high-level description of the computations to be performed on encrypted data in a domain-specific language. This is automatically transformed into a protocol. TASTY provides most recent techniques and optimizations for practical secure two-party computation with low online latency. Moreover, it allows to efficiently evaluate circuits generated by the well-known Fairplay compiler. We use TASTY to compare protocols for secure multiplication based on homomorphic encryption with those based on garbled circuits and highly efficient Karatsuba multiplication. Further, we show how TASTY improves the online latency for securely evaluating the AES functionality by an order of magnitude compared to previous software implementations. TASTY allows to automatically generate efficient secure protocols for many privacy-preserving applications where we consider the use cases for private set intersection and face recognition protocols

Variable range hopping conduction in semiconductor nanocrystal solids

The temperature and electrical field dependent conductivity of n-type CdSe nanocrystal thin films is investigated. In the low electrical field regime, the conductivity follows G ~ exp(-(T*/T)^0.5) in the temperature range 10K<T<120K. At high electrical field, the conductivity is strongly field dependent. At 4K, the conductance increases by eight orders of magnitude over one decade of bias. At very high field, conductivity is temperature-independent with G ~ exp(-(E*/E)^0.5). The complete behavior is very well described by variable range hopping with Coulomb gap.Comment: Submitted to Physical Review Letters on Dec. 22, 200