The large time behavior is considered for the solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations for one-dimensional viscous polytropic ideal gas in unbounded domains. Using the local anti-derivatives functions technique, we obtain the power type decay estimates for the generalized solutions as time goes to infinity

Integrated Kerr micro-combs, a powerful source of many wavelengths for photonic RF and microwave signal processing, are particularly useful for transversal filter systems. They have many advantages including a compact footprint, high versatility, large numbers of wavelengths, and wide bandwidths. We review recent progress on photonic RF and microwave high bandwidth temporal signal processing based on Kerr micro-combs with spacings from 49-200GHz. We cover integral and fractional Hilbert transforms, differentiators as well as integrators. The potential of optical micro-combs for RF photonic applications in functionality and ability to realize integrated solutions is also discussed.

DESIGNING THE PEN BOX (50 minutes)05.06.2021

June 04, 2021Suggested time: 50 minutes

The process of training of Artificial Neural Networks essentially is optimization of the values of the weights $ w_{pq} $ associated with the arcs, connecting the nodes of the layers. This is a process of minimization of the Loss function (maximization of Accuracy function). During the training, the training data set recursively is utilized at subsequent stages, called \textit{Epochs}. The training continues until a satisfactory values of the Loss, Accuracy etc. parameters are reached. The matrices $ W^{UV} $ comprising the weights of the arcs connecting the layers $ U $ and $ V $, can be regarded as gray-scale images of a surface. Starting as random matrices, processed by recursive procedures, they gradually become fractal structures, characterized with respective fractal dimension $ D_f $. In the presented article we have made an attempt to utilize the correspondence of $ D_f $ with the Loss/Accuracy values, in order to forecast the optimal ending point of the NN training process. Similar conclusions were made for the correspondence between the number of layer’s nodes and $ D_f $. An attempt to apply statistically more rigorous approach in the determination of the slope of the regression line in Richardson-Mandelbrot plot, was made.

Background Consultation of specialty palliative care remains uncommon in pediatric stem cell transplant (SCT) despite growing evidence that early integration of palliative care improves outcomes in patients with advanced cancers or undergoing SCT. Little is known about how multidisciplinary pediatric SCT teams perceive palliative care and its role in SCT. Procedure We conducted semi-structured interviews of members of a multi-disciplinary SCT team to understand their perceptions of palliative care, how specialty palliative care is integrated into SCT, and to identify barriers to increased integration. Eligible participants included physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, social workers, and child life specialists. Data was analyzed using thematic analysis. Results Four major themes were identified. First, SCT team members held a favorable perception of the palliative care team. Second, participants desired increased palliative care integration in SCT. Third, participants believed that the palliative care team had insufficient resources to care for the large number of SCT patients which led to the SCT team limiting palliative care consultation. And, finally, the lack of a standardized palliative care consultation process prevented greater integration of palliative care in SCT. Conclusions SCT team members held a favorable perception of palliative care and saw a role for greater palliative care integration throughout the SCT course. We identified modifiable barriers to greater palliative care integration. SCT teams who desire greater palliative care integration may adapt and implement an existing model of palliative care integration in order to improve standardization and increase integration of specialty palliative care in SCT.

Periodic glaciation during the Quaternary period shaped the contemporary riverscape and distribution of freshwater fishes in the Mississippi River drainage of central North America. The rainbow darter (Etheostoma caeruleum) is a member of this ichthyofauna and has a disjunct distribution in glaciated and unglaciated environments west of the Mississippi River. The aim of this study was to utilize genome-wide SNP data to compare the population genomic structure of the rainbow darter in river networks with disparate glacial histories; the Volga River in the glaciated upper Mississippi River basin and the Meramec River in the unglaciated Ozark Plateau. Individuals were sampled from localities within each river system at distances dictated by the organismal life history and habitat preferences. Riverscape analyses were performed on three datasets: total combined localities of both rivers and one for each river independently. The results revealed a lasting influence of historic glaciation on the population genomic structure of rainbow darter populations. There was evidence of population expansion into the glaciated northern region following glacial retreat. The population genetic signature within the Volga River did not fit expectations of the stream hierarchy model, but revealed a pattern of repeated colonization and extirpation due to cyclic glaciation. The population within the unglaciated Meramec River adhered to the stream hierarchy model, with a directional order of genetic diversity based on the life history and habitat preferences of the species. These results demonstrate the necessity to consider the geologic and climatic history of a region as well as the life history of an organism when interpreting spatial genetic patterns.

Processes responsible for population structuring across spatial and temporal scales represent key components in understanding speciation and evolution. We use a hierarchical approach to investigate the degree and mechanisms of structuring in landlocked and diadromous populations of the facultatively amphidromous fish Galaxias brevipinnis across various temporal and spatial scales in southern New Zealand. To determine long-term structuring, multiple lakes and coastal sites were compared genetically. Short-term structuring was assessed using otolith microchemistry for a subset of sites, and behavioural mechanisms driving population structuring were assessed via larval distributions. Genetic data show that lakes foster divergence of lake-developing populations from each other and from coastal stream populations, whereas there is relatively little structuring within coast or lake populations. However, otolith analyses indicate that on a shorter time scale, most larvae do not disperse, i.e. recruitment is local. Thus, lake and coastal populations show a distinct meta-population structure based on catchment, in contrast to the prevailing assumption of widespread dispersal, with implications for management. Most larvae were distributed in river plumes, suggesting that a simple larval behavioural mechanism, e.g. positive rheotaxis, may result in larval retention within catchments and lakes. However, not all larvae were retained in plumes, creating opportunities for genetic exchange within-lake or among coastal sites. Genetic divergence of lake populations as a consequence of landscape and behaviour provides an insight into the potential of G. brevipinnis to diversify and speciate, when landscape and circumstances align, and also has implications for the management of this and other facultatively amphidromous species.

Clinical care in cystic fibrosis (CF) has continued to advance over the last several years, particularly with the widespread eligibility and use of highly effective modulator therapy. Awareness of the multisystem concerns that face persons with CF (PwCF) has also continued to be recognized as an important aspect of the burden of the disease. This review will cover a broad array of topics, from diagnosis to multisystem effects related to mental health, endocrine, palliative care, reproductive health, otolaryngology, and cardiac issues. Additionally, an understanding of worldwide care delivery will be reviewed, demonstrating variation in outcomes based on resources and populations served, ranging from the advances in care in the United States (US) to the challenges of disease recognition and diagnosis in low-and-middle-income countries (LMIC). This review is the third in a three-part CF Year in Review 2020 series, focusing on the multi-system effects of CF. Part one focused on the literature related to CFTR (cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator protein) modulators, while part two focused on pulmonary outcomes, radiographic and physiologic assessments, as well as infection and inflammation. Part three has been split into two individual parts, Part 3A presented here, and Part 3B related to CF specific nutrition and gastrointestinal publications will also be published this year. This review focuses on articles from Pediatric Pulmonology but also includes articles published in 2020 from other journals that are of particular interest to clinicians.

The multisystemic manifestations of cystic fibrosis (CF) involve all parts of the gastrointestinal (GI) system, including the pancreas, intestine and liver. As providers who care for people with CF (PwCF), knowledge of the manifestations, treatment and research related to nutrition and GI disease is important. This review is last installment of the CF Year in Review 2020 series, focusing on the multisystem effects of CF. Part one focused on the literature related to CFTR (cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator protein) modulators, while part two focused on pulmonary outcomes, radiographic and physiologic assessments, as well as infection and inflammation. Part three was split into Part 3A, focusing on the multisystem impact of CF, and this review, Part 3B, focusing on nutritional, gastrointestinal and hepatobiliary articles. Articles were chosen from Pediatric Pulmonology but also include articles published in 2020 from other journals that are of particular interest to clinicians.

A 79-year-old woman with a history of open heart surgery presented with severe aortic stenosis (AS). Computed tomography (CT) showed chronic type B aortic dissection (TBAD) between the distal aortic arch and the left common iliac artery. After careful consideration, we planned transfemoral (TF)-transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) using a 20-Fr long sheath to minimize contact with the false lumen of the aorta. TAVI was performed under general anesthesia, guided by transesophageal echocardiography (TEE). A transcatheter aortic valve was successfully implanted. TEE, immediately after valve implantation, showed no remarkable changes in the descending thoracic aorta. Repeated post-procedural CT examinations showed no obvious changes in the aorta. The patient was stable without sequelae at the 12-month follow-up. This case demonstrates that TF-TAVI using a long sheath under TEE guidance can be a treatment option for patients with severe AS and chronic TBAD.

Febrile neutropenia and lung infections are common and potential fatal complications of pediatric cancer patients during chemotherapy. Lung ultrasound (LUS) has a good accurancy in the diagnosis of pneumonia in childhood. To our knowledge there are no studies concerning its utilization in the diagnosis and follow-up of pulmonary infection in children with cancer. The goal of this pilot study is to determine the accuracy of lung ultrasonography for the diagnosis and follow up of pneumonia in children and adolescents with cancer during fever. This is a prospective observational case-control monocentric study conducted in the Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Department of University Hospital of Catania in patients aged<18 years with cancer, with or without fever. Attending Physician used ultrasonography to diagnose pneumonia in children with cancer during fever. Non infected cancer patients were also tested with LUS to evaluate its accuracy. When performed, the results of chest X-ray and chest CT scan were compared with LUS results. Thirty-eight patients were studied. All underwent LUS, 16 underwent CXR, 3 chest CT. Statistical analysis showed LUS specificity of 95%, and sensitivity of 100%; CXR, instead showed a specificity of 80% and a sensitivity of 50%. The positive predictive value of LUS was 90% while that of CXR was 50%. The negative predictive value of LUS was 100% while that of CXR was 80%.This study shows for the first time that LUS allows physicians to diagnose pneumonia in children and young adults with cancer, with high specificity and sensitivity.

Objective: Spinal muscular atrophy, lower limb-dominant (SMA-LED), and Charcot-Marie-Tooth type 2O (CMT2O) are two kinds of familial neuromuscular diseases. In this study, we reported two patients with CMT2O caused by DYNC1H1 mutations and further analyzed the genotype-phenotype correlations. Methods: Two CMT2O patients and their parents’ clinical data were collected and genetic analysis was applied. PubMed, Web of Science, CNKI and Wanfang Data were searched, and all publications that met the inclusion criteria were carefully screened. Results: Genetic testing of our two CMT2O patients revealed heterozygous mutations DYNC1H1 c.1792C>T/p.R598C and c.790C>G/p.R264G, respectively. Next, a total of 22 original published articles were included and analyzed. Compared to SMA-LED, CMT2O patients had no proximal-dominant wasting, more distal-dominant weakness of lower limbs and more sensory abnormalities. Genotype-phenotype analysis revealed that mutations in the DYN1 region of DYNC1H1 protein were associated with a more severe phenotype, more complicated symptoms and more involvement of the central nervous system than that in the DHC_N1 region. Conclusion: Our findings of the phenotypic differences between SMA-LED and CMT2O patients provide references for early diagnosis and differentiation of the two diseases. The genotype-phenotype correlation may reflect the pathogenesis underlying dyneinopathy caused by DYNC1H1 mutations.

The construction of morphological character matrices is central to paleontological systematic study, which extracts paleontological information from fossils. Although the word information has been repeatedly mentioned in a wide array of paleontological systematic studies, its meaning has rarely been clarified and there has not been a standard to measure paleontological information due to the incompleteness of fossils, difficulty of recognizing homologous and homoplastic structures, etc. Here, based on information theory, we show the deep connections between paleontological systematic study and communication system engineering. It is information, the decrease of uncertainty, in morphological characters that distinguishes operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and reconstructs evolutionary history. We propose that concepts in communication system engineering such as source coding and channel coding correspond in paleontological studies to the construction of diagnostic features and the entire character matrices, which should be distinguished as how typical communication systems are engineered because these two steps serve dual purposes. With character matrices from six different vertebrate groups, we analyzed their information properties including source entropy, mutual information, and channel capacity. Estimation of channel capacity shows upper limits of all matrices in transmitting paleontological information, indicating that, due to the presence of noise, too many characters not only increase the burden in character scoring, but also may decrease quality of matrices. Information entropy, which measure how informative a variable is, of each character is tested as a weighting criterion in parsimony-based systematic studies, the results show high consistence with existing knowledge with both good resolution and interpretability.

Background: Cardiac fibromas are rare benign tumors of the heart composed of fibroblasts and collagen. They are common among children and adolescents but are rarely present in adults. Case presentation: We here report the case of a fifty-seven-year-old man who complaining of a 2-year history of chest tightness at rest. Transthoracic echocardiography detected a severe calcified mass protruding outside the right ventricular anterior wall near the apex. The patient was referred for tumor resection. The calcified mass was determined to be a cardiac fibroma with postoperative histopathological examination. The patient experienced an unremarkable post-operative recovery and was discharged 8 days later. Subsequent follow-up has shown complete freedom from his troublesome symptom. Conclusions: Preoperative diagnosis with various imaging modalities and early surgery are the keys to improve prognosis of patients with cardiac fibromas.

Soil water holding capacities (SWHCs) is important input factor in hydrological simulation models for sustainable water management. Forests that covered 63% of South Korea are the main source of clean water, and it is essential to estimate SWHCs on a nationwide scale for effective forest water resources management. However, there are a few studies estimating SWHCs on a nationwide scale in the temperate regions especially in South Korea. Fortunately, forest spatial big data have been collected on a national scale, and the nationwide prediction of the SWHC can be possible with this dataset. In this study, spatial prediction of forest SWHCs (saturated water content, water content at pF1.8 and 2.7) was conducted with 953 forest soil samples and forest spatial big dataset. 4 soil properties and 14 environmental covariates were used for predicting SWHCs. Simple linear regression and random forest model were compared for selecting the optimal predictive model. From the variable importance analysis, environmental covariates had as big importance as soil properties had. And prediction performance of the model with environmental covariates as the input data was higher than that of the model with soil properties. Comparing two models, the random forest model could accurately and stably predict SWHCs than the simple linear model. As a result of spatial prediction of SWHCs at the national scale through the random forest model and the forest spatial big dataset, it was confirmed that higher SWHCs were distributed along with the Baekdudaegan, the watershed-crest-line in South Korea.

This study characterizes the dynamics of exchange fluxes between Brazos River Alluvium Aquifer and the Brazos River, TX, USA. Seven alternative conceptual models for the connection between the river and the aquifer were simulated in HYDRUS 2D using small-scale, high-resolution transects across the river. These models assumed varying aquifer lithology and river incision depths and considered processes such as riverbed clogging and seepage face flows. The simulations were forced by observed river stage values and tested against observed hydraulic heads in two nearby monitoring wells. The nearly 1.5 years of sub-hourly measurements spanned both flood and drought periods. The best-fit conceptual model supported a hypothesized hydraulic disconnection between the subsurface near the river and the wider alluvial aquifer. In contrast to the assumptions of previous studies, these data were more consistent with the presence of an abandoned paleochannel rather than riverbed clogging or other low-permeability zones. The implications for groundwater-surface water exchanges, and their modelling, are profound. Across the range of models, the difference in average baseflow predicted was nearly 13 m3/d/m, equivalent to seven times the firm water rights allocated for river users.

Ever since I co-founded the International H63D Research Consortium, I have always considered it my duty to pass on the most important knowledge about H63D syndrome to my colleagues in academia, research and applied medicine. Before I leave the consortium for a new career step, there are still some data to be published, which my current colleagues will certainly work on in more detail at a later stage. After all, knowledge can save lives and prevent suffering. I will publish these data in the following, because they speak for themselves.

Global climate change poses major challenges for current biodiversity conservation efforts. Assessing species’ vulnerability to climate change is a prerequisite for developing effective strategies to reduce emerging climate-related threats. We used the maximum entropy algorithm (MaxEnt model) to assess potential changes in snow leopard (Panthera uncia) suitable habitat in Qinghai Province, China under a mild climate change scenario. Our results showed that the area of snow leopard suitable habitat in Qinghai Province was 302,821 km2 under current conditions and 228,997 km2 under 2050’s climatic scenario, and that its mean elevation would shift upward 90 m. At present, nature reserves protect 38.78% of the currently suitable habitat and will protect 42.56% of future suitable habitat. Current areas climate refugia amounted to 212,341 km2, mainly distributed in Sanjiangyuan, Qilian mountains and surrounding areas. Our results provide valuable information for formulating strategies to meet future conservation challenges brought on by climate stress. We suggest that conservation efforts in Qinghai Province should focus on protecting areas of climate refugia and on maintaining or building corridors when planning for future species management.

Supplemental MaterialTable S1. Range of sampling dates for intertidal biodiversity surveys in each year

Background and aim of the study Guidelines on myocardial revascularization indicate for type V myocardial infarction (MI) that postoperative troponin elevations need not be exclusively ischemic but may also be caused by direct epicardial injury. Additional complexity arises from the introduction of high-sensitive troponin markers. The present study attempts to contribute to the understanding of postoperative high-sensitive cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT) increase. Methods Type of surgery, potential factors affecting the postoperative hs-cTnT increase, and possible thresholds indicative of type V MI were analyzed. Results Among 400 included patients, 2.8% had intervention-related ischemia analogous to the type V MI definition. Receiver-operating characteristics confirmed good discriminatory power for hs-cTnT and creatine kinase myocardial band (CK-MB), with ischemia indicating thresholds for hs-cTnT (1705.5 ng/l) and for CK-MB (113 U/l). The median postoperative hs-cTnT/CK-MB increase differed significantly depending on the type of surgery, with the highest increase after mitral valve and the lowest after off-pump coronary surgery. Regression analysis confirmed Maze procedure (p<0.001), cardiopulmonary bypass time (p=0.03), emergency indications (p= 0.01) and blood transfusion (p=0.02) as significant factors associated with hs-cTnT increase. In contrast, CK-MB increase was also associated with mortality (p=0.002). Intra-pericardial defibrillation was the only ischemia-independent factor additionally associated with proposed thresholds (p<0.001). Conclusions The present results confirm the influence of the type of surgery and other intervention-related parameters on the postoperative hs-cTnT increase. Type V MI-indicating thresholds may require reassessment, especially using high-sensitive markers.

This supporting information includes supplemental figures, movies, additional results, and the pseudocode of breadth-first-search target generation algorithm.  Corresponding author Email:   yyang60@jhu.edu (Y.Y.)     libome@tsinghua.edu (B.L.)

Veillonella species rarely cause serious infections, but the incidence of infection has been increasing among immunocompromised individuals. This case of an epidural abscess and spondylitis caused by Veillonella parvula in a hemodialysis patient illustrates the importance of performing anaerobic blood culture in immunocompromised patients with signs of infection.

Variable creep load is one of the most important failure modes for hot-component of aero-engine. To accurately predict creep damage and remaining life, a novel nonlinear creep damage accumulation model is proposed based on the Wilshire function and isodamage line, which takes the influence of load history into account and uses ultimate tension strength to compensate the temperature effect. Experimental result of tests on four kinds of material were utilized to verify the accuracy of the proposed model and to compare it with existing models. It was determined that the novel model was better at predicting damage accumulation than all others model. Furthermore, the proposed model elucidates the evolutionary process of creep damage, and four cases of damage evolution process are discussed.