Pituitary–Adrenal Responses and Glucocorticoid Receptor Expression in Critically Ill Patients with COVID-19

The hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis was described as the principal component of the stress response 85 years ago, along with the acute-phase reaction, and the defense response at the tissue level. The orchestration of these processes is essential since systemic inflammation is a double-edged sword; whereas inflammation that is timely and of appropriate magnitude is beneficial, exuberant systemic inflammation incites tissue damage with potentially devastating consequences. Apart from its beneficial cardiovascular and metabolic effects, cortisol exerts a significant immunoregulatory role, a major attribute being that it restrains the excessive inflammatory reaction, thereby preventing unwanted tissue damage. In this review, we will discuss the role of the HPA axis in the normal stress response and in critical illness, especially in critically ill patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Finally, a chapter will be dedicated to the findings from clinical studies in critical illness and COVID-19 on the expression of the mediator of glucocorticoid actions, the glucocorticoid receptor (GCR).     

Elongational flow studies of set yogurt

Three series of prepared set yogurt samples were tested using squeezing flow viscometry. Samples were compressed using an Instron UTM at constant deformation rate. The first series containing added caseinates exhibited deformation behaviour of a gel. Firmness was dependent on caseinate concentration. The second series contained skimmed milk powder. Their behaviour was more that of a colloidal dispersion at low added powder content and of a gel at higher added amounts. The third series contained carrageenan salts. Their behaviour was that of a dispersion irrespective of the carrageenan concentration. The consistency of the samples examined was evaluated using plots of stress growth coefficients as function of biaxial strain rate. The results indicated that the technique could be used to distinguish changes in yogurt structure caused by the addition of various additives at various concentration levels, to milk to enhance yogurt consistency.     

Occupancy‐based decision support system for building management: From automation to end‐user persuasion

In this paper, an intelligent occupancy‐based, automated building control system is initially introduced, which has the capability of reducing energy consumption while respecting the occupants' comfort and actions inside building areas. Data stemming from a multisensorial network is combined with implicitly extracted information, since no direct feedback is expected by the users, towards unsupervised monitoring and control of building operation. However, due to significantly higher costs of actuating equipment and the reluctance that some end users show in accepting fully automated solutions, a new hybrid approach is conceptualized and presented; the automated decision support system is supplemented with a persuasion mechanism aimed at increasing energy savings, through raising user awareness. The persuasive methodology employs a continuous feedback mechanism in order to select the optimal incentive strategy by taking into account user success rates, in terms of requested actions, as well as available mechanisms, and daily harassment.     

The promoting effect of Fe on Ni/GDC for the Solid Oxide H2O electrolysis

The study deals with the modification of commercial Ni/GDC powder with iron and its use as fuel functional electrode for Solid Oxide H₂O electrolysis. The Fe-NiO/GDC samples were prepared with the Deposition-Precipitation method and characterized, in their oxidized and reduced form, by using BET, HR-TEM, SAED, XRD, XPS and TG analysis in the presence of H₂O. The electrochemical investigation deals with the comparison of single SOECs at 900°C, under various pH₂O/pH₂ ratios. In the oxidized powders iron was detected, both in the bulk and on the surface, in the form of crystallized Fe₂O₃ species, which during H₂-reduction interacted with NiO towards the formation of a Ni-Fe alloy. The latter promoted the electrochemical performance of the Fe-Ni/GDC electrodes, where there are indications of strong dependence on the Fe wt% content. Specifically, the performance of the cell with 0.5 wt% Fe-Ni/GDC was threefold higher than that with Ni/GDC. On the other hand, the cell with 2 wt% Fe-Ni/GDC was worse, implying that the promoting effect of Fe lies on quite low wt% content. Finally, the examined Fe-doped electrodes exhibited increase of polarization in high pH₂O. This is primarily ascribed to the fact that Fe-Ni/GDC electrodes seem more susceptible to H₂O oxidation. Overall, Fe is considered as a promising Ni/GDC dopant, capable to substitute noble metals like Au, but further investigation is required for the elucidation of key preparation and performance parameters.     

Human resource optimisation through semantically enriched data

The industrial domain is experiencing a so-called fourth industrial revolution in which the evergrowing complexity of manufacturing information, the increasing amount of knowledge and the use of web-oriented techniques, represent three crucial factors that are accelerating the growth of complexity of industrial systems. On the other hand, continuous-evolving requirements in industrial environments, due to technology outbreaks and a new global marketplace, have led to an on-going evolution of human resource management through the creation and adoption of alternative business models. In the past decade, semantic models such as ontologies have been proven to be effective for many knowledge-intensive applications, since they provide formal models of domain knowledge that can be exploited in different ways. For all these reasons, an innovative human resource optimisation (HRO) engine is introduced, which employs semantically enhanced information and conditional random field (CRFs) probabilistic models with knowledge derived from industrial shop floor level, and proposes the right person for the right job in real-time shop floor operations towards optimising decisions on how to implement and schedule either repeatedly or non-occurring tasks. Industrial information data flow and semantic enrichment were ensured through the combined use of a common interface data exchange model (CIDEM) and ontologies, after which a feasibility study at a chemical plant presented interesting preliminary results.     

Noncontact optical imaging in mice with full angular coverage and automatic surface extraction

During the past decade, optical imaging combined with tomographic approaches has proved its potential in offering quantitative three-dimensional spatial maps of chromophore or fluorophore concentration in vivo. Due to its direct application in biology and biomedicine, diffuse optical tomography (DOT) and its fluorescence counterpart, fluorescence molecular tomography (FMT), have benefited from an increase in devoted research and new experimental and theoretical developments, giving rise to a new imaging modality. The most recent advances in FMT and DOT are based on the capability of collecting large data sets by using CCDs as detectors, and on the ability to include multiple projections through recently developed noncontact approaches. For these to be implemented, we have developed an imaging setup that enables three-dimensional imaging of arbitrary shapes in fluorescence or absorption mode that is appropriate for small animal imaging. This is achieved by implementing a noncontact approach both for sources and detectors and coregistering surface geometry measurements using the same CCD camera. A thresholded shadowgrammetry approach is applied to the geometry measurements to retrieve the surface mesh. We present the evaluation of the system and method in recovering three-dimensional surfaces from phantom data and live mice. The approach is used to map the measured in vivo fluorescence data onto the tissue surface by making use of the free-space propagation equations, as well as to reconstruct fluorescence concentrations inside highly scattering tissuelike phantom samples. Finally, the potential use of this setup for in vivo small animal imaging and its impact on biomedical research is discussed.     

A new threshold‐voltage compensation technique of poly‐Si TFTs for AMOLED display pixel circuits

Abstract— A new threshold‐voltage compensation technique for polycrystal line‐silicon thin‐film transistors (poly‐Si TFTs) used in active‐matrix organic light‐emitting‐diode (AMOLED) display pixel circuits is presented. The new technique was applied to a conventional 2‐transistor—1‐capacitor (2T1C) pixel circuit, and a new voltage‐programmed pixel circuit (VPPC) is proposed. Theoretically, the proposed pixel is the fastest pixel with threshold‐voltage compensation reported in the literature because of the new compression technique implemented with a static circuit block, which does not affect the response time of the conventional 2T1C pixel circuit. Furthermore, the new pixel exhibits all the other advantages of the 2T1C pixel, such as the simplicity of the peripheral drivers and improves other characteristics, such as its behavior in the temperature variations. The verification of the proposed pixel is made through simulations with HSpice. In order to obtain realistic simulations, device parameters were extracted from fabricated low‐temperature poly‐Si (LTPS) TFTs.     

Learning Moore machines from input–output traces

International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer - The problem of learning automata from example traces (but no equivalence or membership queries) is fundamental in automata learning...     

Metabolic Analysis of Vitreous/Lens and Retina in Wild Type and Retinal Degeneration Mice

Photoreceptors are the light-sensing cells of the retina and the major cell type affected in most inherited retinal degenerations. Different metabolic pathways sustain their high energetic demand in physiological conditions, particularly aerobic glycolysis. The principal metabolome of the mature retina has been studied, but only limited information is available on metabolic adaptations in response to key developmental events, such as eye opening. Moreover, dynamic metabolic changes due to retinal degeneration are not well understood. Here, we aimed to explore and map the ocular metabolic dynamics induced by eye opening in healthy (wild type) or Pde6b-mutant (retinal degeneration 1, Rd1) mice, in which photoreceptors degenerate shortly after eye opening. To unravel metabolic differences emerging before and after eye opening under physiological and pathophysiological conditions, we performed nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrosco-py-based metabolome analysis of wild type and Rd1 retina and vitreous/lens. We show that eye opening is accompanied by changes in the concentration of selected metabolites in the retina and by alterations in the vitreous/lens composition only in the retinal degeneration context. As such, we identify N-Acetylaspartate as a potential novel vitreous/lens marker reflecting progressive retinal degeneration. Thus, our data can help elucidating mechanisms underlying key events in retinal physiology and reveal changes occurring in pathology, while highlighting the importance of the vitreous/lens in the characterization of retinal diseases.     

Rarefied gas flow through channels of finite length at various pressure ratios

A rarefied gas flow through channels (i.e. flow through parallel plates) of finite length has been modeled based on the direct simulation Monte Carlo method. The reduced flow rate and the flow field have been calculated as function of the gas rarefaction, the length-to-height ratio and the pressure ratio upstream and downstream of the channel. The whole range of the gas rarefaction including the free-molecular, transitional and hydrodynamic regimes and a wide range of the length-to-height ratio representing both short and long channels have been considered. Several values of the pressure ratio between 0 and 0.5 have been used in the calculations. It is shown that the rarefaction parameter has the most significant effect on the flow field characteristics and patterns, followed by the pressure ratio, while the length-to-height ratio has a rather modest impact. The Mach belt phenomenon is discussed in detail.