Recent advancement in abrasive waterjet for precision multimode machining

Abrasive waterjet (AWJ) has been demonstrated as a versatile tool that inherently possesses several technological and manufacturing merits unmatched by most machine tools. Among technological merits, AWJ is material independent and a cold cutting tool, capable of pre-serving the structural and chemical integrity of parent materials. The performance of water-jet has been elevated to the degree that it often competes on equal footing with conventional tools such as lasers, electronic discharge machining (EDM), and photochemical etching. For certain applications such as cutting heat-sensitive materials, AWJ is superior to thermal cutting tools such as lasers and electrode discharge machining. Furthermore in the absence of direct tool contact with the workpiece, AWJ mitigates several issues of heat and mechan-ical damage to composite materials and rapid wear of drill bits. AWJ produces no toxic byproduct and is more environmentally friendly than photo-chemical etching. The single-tool AWJ with accessories is qualified for multimode machining. Together with its cost effectiveness, fast turnaround, and user friendliness, AWJ is poised to be adopted broadly for stand-alone and near-net-shape machining. The versatility of AWJ is demonstrated through the presentation of a collection of AWJ-machined samples for various application

Search for Gravitational Waves from Primordial Black Hole Binary Coalescences in the Galactic Halo

We use data from the second science run of the LIGO gravitational-wave detectors to search for the gravitational waves from primordial black hole (PBH) binary coalescence with component masses in the range 0.2--$1.0 M_\odot$. The analysis requires a signal to be found in the data from both LIGO observatories, according to a set of coincidence criteria. No inspiral signals were found. Assuming a spherical halo with core radius 5 kpc extending to 50 kpc containing non-spinning black holes with masses in the range 0.2--$1.0 M_\odot$, we place an observational upper limit on the rate of PBH coalescence of 63 per year per Milky Way halo (MWH) with 90% confidence.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, to be submitted to Phys. Rev.

Systematic Review of Medicine-Related Problems in Adult Patients with Atrial Fibrillation on Direct Oral Anticoagulants

New oral anticoagulant agents continue to emerge on the market and their safety requires assessment to provide evidence of their suitability for clinical use. There-fore, we searched standard databases to summarize the English language literature on medicine-related problems (MRPs) of direct oral anticoagulants DOACs (dabigtran, rivaroxban, apixban, and edoxban) in the treatment of adults with atri-al fibrillation. Electronic databases including Medline, Embase, International Pharmaceutical Abstract (IPA), Scopus, CINAHL, the Web of Science and Cochrane were searched from 2008 through 2016 for original articles. Studies pub-lished in English reporting MRPs of DOACs in adult patients with AF were in-cluded. Seventeen studies were identified using standardized protocols, and two reviewers serially abstracted data from each article. Most articles were inconclusive on major safety end points including major bleeding. Data on major safety end points were combined with efficacy. Most studies inconsistently reported adverse drug reactions and not adverse events or medication error, and no definitions were consistent across studies. Some harmful drug effects were not assessed in studies and may have been overlooked. Little evidence is provided on MRPs of DOACs in patients with AF and, therefore, further studies are needed to establish the safety of DOACs in real-life clinical practice

Whole-genome sequencing reveals host factors underlying critical COVID-19

Critical COVID-19 is caused by immune-mediated inflammatory lung injury. Host genetic variation influences the development of illness requiring critical care1 or hospitalization2,3,4 after infection with SARS-CoV-2. The GenOMICC (Genetics of Mortality in Critical Care) study enables the comparison of genomes from individuals who are critically ill with those of population controls to find underlying disease mechanisms. Here we use whole-genome sequencing in 7,491 critically ill individuals compared with 48,400 controls to discover and replicate 23 independent variants that significantly predispose to critical COVID-19. We identify 16 new independent associations, including variants within genes that are involved in interferon signalling (IL10RB and PLSCR1), leucocyte differentiation (BCL11A) and blood-type antigen secretor status (FUT2). Using transcriptome-wide association and colocalization to infer the effect of gene expression on disease severity, we find evidence that implicates multiple genes—including reduced expression of a membrane flippase (ATP11A), and increased expression of a mucin (MUC1)—in critical disease. Mendelian randomization provides evidence in support of causal roles for myeloid cell adhesion molecules (SELE, ICAM5 and CD209) and the coagulation factor F8, all of which are potentially druggable targets. Our results are broadly consistent with a multi-component model of COVID-19 pathophysiology, in which at least two distinct mechanisms can predispose to life-threatening disease: failure to control viral replication; or an enhanced tendency towards pulmonary inflammation and intravascular coagulation. We show that comparison between cases of critical illness and population controls is highly efficient for the detection of therapeutically relevant mechanisms of disease

Surface Roughness and Photoemission

Analysis of experimental data for several metals is found consistent with the surface photoelectric theory of Mitchell and Makinson. Surface roughness is invoked to account for the observed angular dependence of photoelectric yields