Beat to Beat: Implementing a Tailored Literature Review e-Newsletter for a Multidisciplinary Subspecialty Group

Objective: To increase availability and exposure to recent, relevant, reliable literature from a range of sources, for a multidisciplinary cardiac center, by creating an e-newsletter summarizing articles of interest.https://jdc.jefferson.edu/patientsafetyposters/1043/thumbnail.jp

Detecting the Attenuation of Blazar Gamma-ray Emission by Extragalactic Background Light with GLAST

Gamma rays with energy above 10 GeV interact with optical-UV photons resulting in pair production. Therefore, a large sample of high redshift sources of these gamma rays can be used to probe the extragalactic background starlight (EBL) by examining the redshift dependence of the attenuation of the flux above 10 GeV. GLAST, the next generation high-energy gamma-ray telescope, will have the unique capability to detect thousands of gamma-ray blazars to redshifts of at least z=4, with sufficient angular resolution to allow identification of a large fraction of their optical counterparts. By combining established models of the gamma-ray blazar luminosity function, two different calculations of the high energy gamma-ray opacity due to EBL absorption, and the expected GLAST instrument performance to produce simulated fluxes and redshifts for the blazars that GLAST would detect, we demonstrate that these gamma-ray blazars have the potential to be a highly effective probe of the optical-UV EBL.Comment: 15 pages, AASTeX, 3 eps figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology: Cosmic Laboratories for New Physics (Summary of the Snowmass 2001 P4 Working Group)

The past few years have seen dramatic breakthroughs and spectacular and puzzling discoveries in astrophysics and cosmology. In many cases, the new observations can only be explained with the introduction of new fundamental physics. Here we summarize some of these recent advances. We then describe several problem in astrophysics and cosmology, ripe for major advances, whose resolution will likely require new physics.Comment: 27 pages, 14 figure

Topological and nontopological degeneracies in generalized string-net models

Generalized string-net models have been recently proposed in order to enlarge the set of possible topological quantum phases emerging from the original string-net construction. In the present work, we do not consider vertex excitations and restrict to plaquette excitations, or fluxons, that satisfy important identities. We explain how to compute the energy-level degeneracies of the generalized string-net Hamiltonian associated to an arbitrary unitary fusion category. In contrast to the degeneracy of the ground state, which is purely topological, that of excited energy levels depends not only on the Drinfeld center of the category, but also on internal multiplicities obtained from the tube algebra defined from the category. For a noncommutative category, these internal multiplicities result in extra nontopological degeneracies. Our results are valid for any trivalent graph and any orientable surface. We illustrate our findings with nontrivial examples.Comment: 27 page

Acute Haemodynamic Changes During Haemodialysis Do Not Exacerbate Gut Hyperpermeability

© 2019 The Author(s)Introduction: The gastrointestinal tract is a potential source of inflammation in dialysis patients. In-vitro studies suggest breakdown of the gut barrier in uraemia leading to increased intestinal permeability and it is hypothesised that haemodialysis exacerbates this problem due to mesenteric ischemia induced by blood volume changes during treatment. Method: The effect of haemodialysis on intestinal permeability was studied in ten haemodialysis patients and compared with five controls. Intestinal permeability was assessed by measuring the differential absorption of four orally administered sugar probes which provides an index of small and whole bowel permeability. A multi-sugar solution (containing lactulose, rhamnose, sucralose and erythritol) was orally administered after an overnight fast. Plasma levels of all sugar probes were measured hourly for 10hrs post-administration. In haemodialysis patients, the procedure was carried out twice – once on a non-dialysis day and once immediately after haemodialysis. Results: Area under curve (AUC) for lactulose: rhamnose (L:R) ratio and sucralose: erythritol (S:E) ratio was similar post-dialysis and on non-dialysis days. AUC for L:R was higher in haemodialysis patients compared to controls (0.071 vs. 0.034,p=0.001), AUC for S:E ratio was not significantly different. Levels of lactulose, sucralose and erythritol were elevated and retained for longer in haemodialysis patients compared to controls due to dependence of sugars on kidney function for clearance. Conclusion: We found no significant acute changes in intestinal permeability in relation to the haemodialysis procedure. Valid comparison of intestinal permeability between controls and haemodialysis patients was not possible due to the strong influence of kidney function on sugar levels.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

The Biology of Chronic Graft-versus-Host Disease: A Task Force Report from the National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Project on Criteria for Clinical Trials in Chronic Graft-versus-Host Disease

Chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) is the leading cause of late, nonrelapse mortality and disability in allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation recipients and a major obstacle to improving outcomes. The biology of chronic GVHD remains enigmatic, but understanding the underpinnings of the immunologic mechanisms responsible for the initiation and progression of disease is fundamental to developing effective prevention and treatment strategies. The goals of this task force review are as follows: • Summarize the current state of the science regarding pathogenic mechanisms of chronic GVHD and critical knowledge gaps. • Develop working hypotheses/overriding concepts for chronic GVHD development. • Define the usefulness of current preclinical models to test working hypotheses and ultimately discover and develop new therapeutic strategies. • Identify shortcomings of preclinical models, and define criteria for the creation of additional models to address these limitations. This document is intended as a review of our understanding of chronic GVHD biology and therapies resulting from preclinical studies, and as a platform for developing innovative clinical strategies to prevent and treat chronic GVHD

Data Assimilation Enhancements to Air Force Weathers Land Information System

The United States Air Force (USAF) has a proud and storied tradition of enabling significant advancements in the area of characterizing and modeling land state information. 557th Weather Wing (557 WW; DoDs Executive Agent for Land Information) provides routine geospatial intelligence information to warfighters, planners, and decision makers at all echelons and services of the U.S. military, government and intelligence community. 557 WW and its predecessors have been home to the DoDs only operational regional and global land data analysis systems since January 1958. As a trusted partner since 2005, Air Force Weather (AFW) has relied on the Hydrological Sciences Laboratory at NASA/GSFC to lead the interagency scientific collaboration known as the Land Information System (LIS). LIS is an advanced software framework for high performance land surface modeling and data assimilation of geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) information