Chronic Hyperkaliemia in Chronic Kidney Disease: An Old Concern with New Answers

Increasing potassium intake ameliorates blood pressure (BP) and cardiovascular (CV) prognoses in the general population; therefore the World Health Organization recommends a high-potassium diet (90–120 mEq/day). Hyperkalaemia is a rare condition in healthy individuals due to the ability of the kidneys to effectively excrete dietary potassium load in urine, while an increase in serum K⁺ is prevalent in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Hyperkalaemia prevalence increases in more advanced CKD stages, and is associated with a poor prognosis. This scenario generates controversy on the correct nutritional approach to hyperkalaemia in CKD patients, considering the unproven link between potassium intake and serum K⁺ levels. Another concern is that drug-induced hyperkalaemia leads to the down-titration or withdrawal of renin-angiotensin system inhibitors (RASI) and mineralocorticoids receptors antagonists (MRA) in patients with CKD, depriving these patients of central therapeutic interventions aimed at delaying CKD progression and decreasing CV mortality. The new K⁺-binder drugs (Patiromer and Sodium-Zirconium Cyclosilicate) have proven to be adequate and safe therapeutic options to control serum K⁺ in CKD patients, enabling RASI and MRA therapy, and possibly, a more liberal intake of fruit and vegetables.     

新型可控电抗器的工作原理与选型分析

介绍了八种可控电抗器的结构和原理，给出了可控电抗器在电力系统中的功用及选型方法。     

工艺参数对Fe3Al/Al2O3复合材料力学性能的影响研究

以自制的亚微米Fe3Al为增强相、Al2O3为基体相,通过常压烧结制备出Fe3Al/Al2O3复合材料,研究了Fe3Al含量、烧结温度及保温时间对复合材料力学性能的影响.结果表明:增加Fe3Al含量、提高烧结温度及延长保温时间都可以不同程度的提高复合材料力学性能.最佳工艺参数为:Fe3Al含量(质量分数)为15%,成形压力为2488MPa,烧结温度为1380℃.此条件下制备的复合材料的各项力学性能较好:相对密度为93%,维氏硬度为9.3GPa,断裂韧度为7.51MPa·m1/2.烧结温度对提高复合材料力学性能的影响较大.     

Minimal models of adapted neuronal response to in vivo-like input currents

Rate models are often used to study the behavior of large networks of spiking neurons. Here we propose a procedure to derive rate models that take into account the fluctuations of the input current and firing-rate adaptation, two ubiquitous features in the central nervous system that have been previously overlooked in constructing rate models. The procedure is general and applies to any model of firing unit. As examples, we apply it to the leaky integrate-and-fire (IF) neuron, the leaky IF neuron with reversal potentials, and to the quadratic IF neuron. Two mechanisms of adaptation are considered, one due to an afterhyperpolarization current and the other to an adapting threshold for spike emission. The parameters of these simple models can be tuned to match experimental data obtained from neocortical pyramidal neurons. Finally, we show how the stationary model can be used to predict the time-varying activity of a large population of adapting neurons.     

Questionnaire-based variability modeling for system configuration

Variability management is a recurrent issue in systems engineering. It arises for example in enterprise systems, where modules are configured and composed to meet the requirements of individual customers based on modifications to a reference model. It also manifests itself in the context of software product families, where variants of a system are built from a common code base. This paper proposes an approach to capture system variability based on questionnaire models that include order dependencies and domain constraints. The paper presents analysis techniques to detect circular dependencies and contradictory constraints in questionnaire models, as well as techniques to incrementally prevent invalid configurations by restricting the space of allowed answers to a question based on previous answers. The approach has been implemented as a toolset and has been used in practice to capture configurable process models for film post-production.

Information diffusion in distributed OSN: The impact of trusted relationships

Distributed Online Social Networks (DOSN) are a valid alternative to OSN based on peer-to-peer communications. Without centralised data management, DOSN must provide the users with higher level of control over their personal information and privacy. Thus, users may wish to restrict their personal network to a limited set of peers, depending on the level of trust with them. This means that the effective social network (used for information exchange) may be a subset of the complete social network, and may present different structural patterns, which could limit information diffusion. In this paper, we estimate the capability of DOSN to diffuse content based on trust between social peers. To have a realistic representation of a OSN friendship graph, we consider a large-scale Facebook network, from which we estimate the trust level between friends. Then, we consider only social links above a certain threshold of trust, and we analyse the potential capability of the resulting graph to spread information through several structural indices. We test four possible thresholds, coinciding with the definition of personal social circles derived from sociology and anthropology. The results show that limiting the network to “active social contacts” leads to a graph with high network connectivity, where the nodes are still well-connected to each other, thus information can potentially cover a large number of nodes with respect to the original graph. On the other hand, the coverage drops for more restrictive assumptions. Nevertheless the re-insertion of a single excluded friend for each user is sufficient to obtain good coverage (i.e., always higher than 40 %) even in the most restricted graphs. We also analyse the potential capability of the network to spread information (i.e., network spreadability), studying the properties of the social paths between any pairs of users in the graph, which represent the effective channels traversed by information. The value of contact frequency between pairs of users determines a decay of trust along the path (the higher the contact frequency the lower the decay), and a consequent decay in the level of trustworthiness of information traversing the path. We show that selecting the link to re-insert in the network with probability proportional to its level of trust is the best re-insertion strategy, as it leads to the best connectivity/spreadability combination.     

Low prevalence of Listeria monocytogenes in foods from Italy

Listeria monocytogenes is an important foodborne pathogen that causes gastrointestinal disorders, and, especially in immunocompromised people, serious extraintestinal diseases, such as septicemia and meningitis, as well as abortion in pregnant women. Many foods, from both plant and animal origin, have been involved in listeriosis outbreaks. This article reports the results of a 12-year survey (1993 through 2004) on the presence of L. monocytogenes in several kinds of food marketed in Italy. Of 5,788 analyzed samples, 121 (2.1%) were contaminated with L. monocytogenes. The highest prevalence was found in smoked salmon (10.6%) and in poultry meat samples (8.5%) and the lowest in red meat (0.3%). L. monocytogenes was not found in 154 samples of fresh seafood products. Fifty-two isolates were also serotyped by the agglutination method. The most common serotypes detected in the 52 strains tested were 1/2a (36.5%), followed by 1/2c (32.8%), 1/2b (13.5%), 4b (11.5%), 3a (3.8%), and 3b (1.9%). The results of the present study showed low levels of L. monocytogenes in the analyzed samples. A total of 61.5% of the 52 L. monocytogenes strains analyzed belonged to serotypes 1/2a, 1/2b, and 4b, namely the serovars that are most commonly involved in extraintestinal human listeriosis outbreaks. In the ready-to-eat samples, these three serotypes were 40.0% (1/2a), 17.1% (1/2b), and 14.3% (4b). This finding highlights the need to implement strict hygienic measures during the production, distribution, and sale of foods to reduce the risk of foodborne listeriosis in humans to an acceptable level.     

Influence of grape variety and their phenolic composition on vasorelaxing activity of young red wines

Red wine has been reported to exert beneficial effects in preventing cardiovascular diseases probably due to their polyphenols constituents. The vasorelaxant capacity and phenolic composition of four monovarietal young red wines Merlot, Tempranillo, Garnacha and Cabernet-Sauvignon obtained from grapes from 2004 vintage, cultivated under the same climatic and agricultural conditions, wine-making technology and storage conditions, were determined using vascular reactivity assay in rat aortic and high-performance liquid chromatography, respectively. Primary cultures of vascular smooth muscle cells from Wistar rats were also used to evaluate their survival prevention activity as well. Every studied wine present vasorelaxation effect, but the higher value corresponds to the analyzed Merlot wine, especially rich in phenolic compounds, mainly catechins and oligomeric proanthocyanidins and anthocyanin glycosides. This study further demonstrated previous investigations about the phenolic composition of wines relation with their vasorelaxation activity.