Switchgrass storage effects on the recovery of carbohydrates after liquid hot water pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis

Perennial grasses that would be used for bioenergy and bioproducts production will need to be stored for various periods of time to ensure a continual feedstock supply to a bioprocessing facility. The effects of storage practices on grass composition and the response of grasses to subsequent bioprocesses such as pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis needs to be understood to develop the most efficient storage protocols. This study examined the effect of outdoor storage of round switchgrass bales on composition before and after liquid hot water pretreatment (LHW) and enzymatic hydrolysis. This study also examined the effect of washing LHW pretreated biomass prior to enzymatic hydrolysis. It was determined that switchgrass composition after baling was stable. As expected, glucan and lignin contents increased after LHW due to decreases in xylan and galactan. Washing biomass prior to enzymatic hydrolysis reduced saccharification, especially in samples from the interior of the bale, by at least 5%

Development and Validation of an Attitudinal-Profiling Tool for Patients With Asthma

This study was supported and funded by Mundipharma Pte Ltd. Online survey and statistical analysis were performed by Pei-Li Teh, Rachel Howard, Tsin-Li Chua and Jie Sun of Research Partnership Pte Ltd. Medical writing support was provided by Sen-Kwan Tay of Research2Trials Clinical Solutions Pte Ltd. The authors received honoraria from Mundipharma for their participation in the REALISE Asia Working Group meetings and discussions. Prof Price has Board membership with Mundipharma; and had received consultancy and speaker fees, grants and unrestricted funding support from Mundipharma; and payment for manuscript preparation and travel/accommodations/meeting expenses from Mundipharma. Profs Liam and David-Wang are members of the Asia-Pacific Advisory Board of Mundipharma. Profs Cho and David-Wang had received speaker fees from Mundipharma in the past. Dr Neira was an employee of Mundipharma Pte Ltd, Singapore. Ms Teh is an employee of Research Partnership Pte Ltd which conducted the REALISE Asia survey for Mundipharma. Prof Cho is a member of the Editorial Board of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Non-perturbative renormalization of overlap quark bilinears on 2+1-flavor domain wall fermion configurations

We present renormalization constants of overlap quark bilinear operators on 2+1-flavor domain wall fermion configurations. This setup is being used by the chiQCD collaboration in calculations of physical quantities such as strangeness in the nucleon and the strange and charm quark masses. The scale independent renormalization constant for the axial vector current is computed using the Ward Identity. The renormalization constants for scalar, pseudoscalar and vector current are calculated in the RI-MOM scheme. Results in the MS-bar scheme are also given. The step scaling function of quark masses in the RI-MOM scheme is computed as well. The analysis uses, in total, six different ensembles of three sea quarks each on two lattices with sizes 24^3x64 and 32^3x64 at spacings a=(1.73 GeV)^{-1} and (2.28 GeV)^{-1}, respectively.Comment: 26 pages, 17 figures. More discussions on O(4) breaking effects, and on the perturbative running and a^2p^2 extrapolation of Zs. A subsection for the calculation of the step scaling function of quark mass is added. References added. Version to appear in PR

A Lattice Study of (Dˉ1D∗)±(\bar{D}_1 D^{*})^\pm Near-threshold Scattering

In this exploratory lattice study, low-energy near threshold scattering of the $(\bar{D}_1 D^{*})^\pm$ meson system is analyzed using lattice QCD with $N_f=2$ twisted mass fermion configurations. Both s-wave ($J^P=0^-$) and p-wave ($J^P=1^+$) channels are investigated. It is found that the interaction between the two charmed mesons is attractive near the threshold in both channels. This calculation provides some hints in the searching of resonances or bound states around the threshold of $(\bar{D}_1 D^{*})^\pm$ system.Comment: 20 pages, 15 figures, matches the version on PR

A way to measure the water quality of the LHAASO-WCDA with cosmic muon signals

The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) is to be built at Daocheng, Sichuan Province, China. As one of the major components of the LHAASO project, a Water Cherenkov Detector Array (WCDA), with an area of 78,000~$\rm m^{2}$, contains 350,000~tons of purified water. The water transparency and its stability are critical for successful long-term operation of this project. To gain full knowledge of the water Cherenkov technique and investigate the engineering issues, a 9-cell detector array has been built at the Yangbajing site, Tibet, China. With the help of the distribution of single cosmic muon signals, the monitoring and measurement of water transparency are studied. The results show that a precision of several percent can be obtained for the attenuation length measurement, which satisfies the requirements of the experiment. In the near future, this method could be applied to the LHAASO-WCDA project

Supermassive Black Holes with High Accretion Rates in Active Galactic Nuclei. V. A New Size-Luminosity Scaling Relation for the Broad-Line Region

This paper reports results of the third-year campaign of monitoring super-Eddington accreting massive black holes (SEAMBHs) in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) between 2014-2015. Ten new targets were selected from quasar sample of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), which are generally more luminous than the SEAMBH candidates in last two years. H$\beta$ lags ($\tau_{_{\rm H\beta}}$) in five of the 10 quasars have been successfully measured in this monitoring season. We find that the lags are generally shorter, by large factors, than those of objects with same optical luminosity, in light of the well-known $R_{_{\rm H\beta}}-L_{5100}$ relation. The five quasars have dimensionless accretion rates of $\dot{\mathscr{M}}=10-10^3$. Combining measurements of the previous SEAMBHs, we find that the reduction of H$\beta$ lags tightly depends on accretion rates, $\tau_{_{\rm H\beta}}/\tau_{_{R-L}}\propto\dot{\mathscr{M}}^{-0.42}$, where $\tau_{_{R-L}}$ is the H$\beta$ lag from the normal $R_{_{\rm H\beta}}-L_{5100}$ relation. Fitting 63 mapped AGNs, we present a new scaling relation for the broad-line region: $R_{_{\rm H\beta}}=\alpha_1\ell_{44}^{\beta_1}\,\min\left[1,\left(\dot{\mathscr{M}}/\dot{\mathscr{M}}_c\right)^{-\gamma_1}\right]$, where $\ell_{44}=L_{5100}/10^{44}\,\rm erg~s^{-1}$ is 5100 \AA\ continuum luminosity, and coefficients of $\alpha_1=(29.6_{-2.8}^{+2.7})$ lt-d, $\beta_1=0.56_{-0.03}^{+0.03}$, $\gamma_1=0.52_{-0.16}^{+0.33}$ and $\dot{\mathscr{M}}_c=11.19_{-6.22}^{+2.29}$. This relation is applicable to AGNs over a wide range of accretion rates, from $10^{-3}$ to $10^3$. Implications of this new relation are briefly discussed.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, 5 table, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa

Implementation of secondary stroke prevention protocol for ischaemic stroke patients in primary care

published_or_final_versio

Contemporary characteristics and outcomes in chagasic heart failure compared with other nonischemic and ischemic cardiomyopathy

Background: Chagas’ disease is an important cause of cardiomyopathy in Latin America. We aimed to compare clinical characteristics and outcomes in patients with heart failure (HF) with reduced ejection fraction caused by Chagas’ disease, with other etiologies, in the era of modern HF therapies. Methods and Results: This study included 2552 Latin American patients randomized in the PARADIGM-HF (Prospective Comparison of ARNI With ACEI to Determine Impact on Global Mortality and Morbidity in Heart Failure) and ATMOSPHERE (Aliskiren Trial to Minimize Outcomes in Patients With Heart Failure) trials. The investigator-reported etiology was categorized as Chagasic, other nonischemic, or ischemic cardiomyopathy. The outcomes of interest included the composite of cardiovascular death or HF hospitalization and its components and death from any cause. Unadjusted and adjusted Cox proportional hazards models were performed to compare outcomes by pathogenesis. There were 195 patients with Chagasic HF with reduced ejection fraction, 1300 with other nonischemic cardiomyopathy, and 1057 with ischemic cardiomyopathy. Compared with other etiologies, Chagasic patients were more often female, younger, and had lower prevalence of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and renal impairment (but had higher prevalence of stroke and pacemaker implantation) and had worse health-related quality of life. The rates of the composite outcome were 17.2, 12.5, and 11.4 per 100 person-years for Chagasic, other nonischemic, and ischemic patients, respectively—adjusted hazard ratio for Chagasic versus other nonischemic: 1.49 (95% confidence interval, 1.15–1.94; P=0.003) and Chagasic versus ischemic: 1.55 (1.18–2.04; P=0.002). The rates of all-cause mortality were also higher. Conclusions: Despite younger age, less comorbidity, and comprehensive use of conventional HF therapies, patients with Chagasic HF with reduced ejection fraction continue to have worse quality of life and higher hospitalization and mortality rates compared with other etiologies. Clinical Trial Registration: PARADIGM-HF: URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT01035255; ATMOSPHERE: URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT00853658

Coherency in Neutrino-Nucleus Elastic Scattering

Neutrino-nucleus elastic scattering provides a unique laboratory to study the quantum mechanical coherency effects in electroweak interactions, towards which several experimental programs are being actively pursued. We report results of our quantitative studies on the transitions towards decoherency. A parameter ($\alpha$) is identified to describe the degree of coherency, and its variations with incoming neutrino energy, detector threshold and target nucleus are studied. The ranges of $\alpha$ which can be probed with realistic neutrino experiments are derived, indicating complementarity between projects with different sources and targets. Uncertainties in nuclear physics and in $\alpha$ would constrain sensitivities in probing physics beyond the standard model. The maximum neutrino energies corresponding to $\alpha$>0.95 are derived.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables. V2 -- Published Versio

Traumatic Brain Injury and Age at Onset of Cognitive Impairment in Older Adults

There is a deficiency of knowledge regarding how traumatic brain injury (TBI) is associated with age at onset (AAO) of cognitive impairment in older adults. Participants with a TBI history were identified from the Alzheimer's disease neuroimaging initiative (ADNI 1/GO/2) medical history database. Using an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) model, the AAO was compared between those with and without TBI, and potential confounding factors were controlled. The AAO was also compared between those with mild TBI (mTBI) and moderate or severe TBI (sTBI). Lastly, the effects of mTBI were analyzed on the AAO of participants with clinical diagnoses of either mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or Alzheimer's disease (AD). The AAO for a TBI group was 68.2 ± 1.1 years [95 % confidence interval (CI) 66.2–70.3, n = 62], which was significantly earlier than the AAO for the non-TBI group of 70.9 ± 0.2 years (95 % CI 70.5–71.4, n = 1197) (p = 0.013). Participants with mTBI history showed an AAO of 68.5 ± 1.1 years (n = 56), which was significantly earlier than the AAO for the non-TBI group (p = 0.032). Participants with both MCI and mTBI showed an AAO of 66.5 ± 1.3 years (95 % CI 63.9–69.1, n = 45), compared to 70.6 ± 0.3 years for the non-TBI MCI group (95 % CI 70.1–71.1, n = 935) (p = 0.016). As a conclusion, a history of TBI may accelerate the AAO of cognitive impairment by two or more years. These results were consistent with reports of TBI as a significant risk factor for cognitive decline in older adults, and TBI is associated with an earlier AAO found in patients with MCI or AD