• Persistent sex disparities in clinical outcomes with percutaneous coronary intervention: Insights from 6.6 million PCI procedures in the United States.

  Potts, Jessica; Sirker, Alex; Martinez, Sara C; Gulati, Martha; Alasnag, Mirvat; Rashid, Muhammad; Kwok, Chun Shing; Ensor, Joie; Burke, Danielle L; Riley, Richard D; Holmvang, Lene; Mamas, Mamas A; Univ Arizona, Div Cardiol (PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE, 2018-09-04)

  Prior studies have reported inconsistencies in the baseline risk profile, comorbidity burden and their association with clinical outcomes in women compared to men. More importantly, there is limited data around the sex differences and how these have changed over time in contemporary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) practice. We used the Nationwide Inpatient Sample to identify all PCI procedures based on ICD-9 procedure codes in the United States between 2004-2014 in adult patients. Descriptive statistics were used to describe sex-based differences in baseline characteristics and comorbidity burden of patients. Multivariable logistic regressions were used to investigate the association between these differences and in-hospital mortality, complications, length of stay and total hospital charges. Among 6,601,526 patients, 66% were men and 33% were women. Women were more likely to be admitted with diagnosis of NSTEMI (non-ST elevation acute myocardial infarction), were on average 5 years older (median age 68 compared to 63) and had higher burden of comorbidity defined by Charlson score ≥3. Women also had higher in-hospital crude mortality (2.0% vs 1.4%) and any complications compared to men (11.1% vs 7.0%). These trends persisted in our adjusted analyses where women had a significant increase in the odds of in-hospital mortality men (OR 1.20 (95% CI 1.16,1.23) and major bleeding (OR 1.81 (95% CI 1.77,1.86). In this national unselected contemporary PCI cohort, there are significant sex-based differences in presentation, baseline characteristics and comorbidity burden. These differences do not fully account for the higher in-hospital mortality and procedural complications observed in women.
• Origin and residence time of groundwater based on stable and radioactive isotopes in the Heihe River Basin, northwestern China

  Zhao, L.J.; Eastoe, C.J.; Liu, X.H.; Wang, L.X.; Wang, N.L.; Xie, C.; Song, Y.X.; Univ Arizona, Dept Geosci (ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV, 2018-08)

  Study region: The Heihe River Basin (HRB) is one of several arid basins in which runoff from the Qilian Mountain recharges basin aquifers. Study focus: A basin-wide dataset (delta O-18, D, H-3 and C-14) is used to determine the present and past relationships between precipitation, surface runoff and recharge, to constrain groundwater residence times, and to infer Holocene climate change. New hydrological insights for the region: Groundwater in the upper region (UR) of HRB has (delta O-18, delta D) clustered near (-8.0, -46%), consistent with present-day Qilian Mountain precipitation. Tritium of groundwater > 26 TU indicates post-bomb recharge. Mountain runoff provides recharge to alluvial-fluvial aquifers in the Middle Region (MR) and Lower Region (LR) along the main river of the HRB. Between 1986 and 2001, anthropogenic tritium releases affected north-central China, affecting HRB precipitation. Irrigation reflux strongly affects isotopes in basin groundwater, generating anomalous samples with low tritium and post-bomb C-14, or high tritium and pre-bomb C-14. Stable isotopes in Qilian Mountain runoff have evolved in response to climate change. A 1% shift in delta O-18 since 1960 coincides with drying of the Aral Sea, possibly affecting moisture advected from the west. A 6-8% shift before 12 ka may indicate the former extent of the South Asian monsoon.
• Optical harmonic generation in monolayer group-VI transition metal dichalcogenides

  Autere, Anton; Jussila, Henri; Marini, Andrea; Saavedra, J. R. M.; Dai, Yunyun; Säynätjoki, Antti; Karvonen, Lasse; Yang, He; Amirsolaimani, Babak; Norwood, Robert A.; Peyghambarian, Nasser; Lipsanen, Harri; Kieu, Khanh; de Abajo, F. Javier García; Sun, Zhipei; Univ Arizona, Coll Opt Sci (AMER PHYSICAL SOC, 2018-09-17)

  Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) exhibit high nonlinear optical (NLO) susceptibilities. Experiments on MoS2 have indeed revealed very large second-order (chi((2))) and third-order (chi((3)))optical susceptibilities. However, third-harmonic generation results of other layered TMDs have not been reported. Furthermore, the reported chi((2)) and chi((3)) of MoS2 vary by several orders of magnitude, and a reliable quantitative comparison of optical nonlinearities across different TMDs has remained elusive. Here, we investigate second- and third-harmonic generation, and three-photon photoluminescence in TMDs. Specifically, we present an experimental study of chi((2)) and chi((3)) of four common TMD materials (MoS2, MoSe2, WS2, and WSe2) by placing different TMD flakes in close proximity to each other on a common substrate, allowing their NLO properties to be accurately obtained from a single measurement. chi((2)) and chi((3)) of the four monolayer TMDs have been compared, indicating that they exhibit distinct NLO responses. We further present theoretical simulations of these susceptibilities in qualitative agreement with the measurements. Our comparative studies of the NLO responses of different two-dimensional layered materials allow us to select the best candidates for atomic-scale nonlinear photonic applications, such as frequency conversion and all-optical signal processing.
• Novelty and Foreseeing Research Trends: The Case of Astrophysics and Astronomy

  Varga, Attila; Univ Arizona, Sch Sociol (IOP PUBLISHING LTD, 2018-05)

  Metrics based on reference lists of research articles or on keywords have been used to predict citation impact. The concept behind such metrics is that original ideas stem from the reconfiguration of the structure of past knowledge, and therefore atypical combinations in the reference lists, keywords, or classification codes indicate future high impact research. The current paper serves as an introduction to this line of research for astronomers and also addresses some of the methodological questions in this field of innovation studies. It is still not clear if the choice of particular indexes, such as references to journals, articles, or specific bibliometric classification codes affects the relationship between atypical combinations and citation impact. To understand more aspects of the innovation process, a new metric has been devised to measure to what extent researchers are able to anticipate the changing combinatorial trends of the future. Results show that the variant of the latter anticipation scores that is based on paper combinations is a good predictor of the future citation impact of scholarly works. The study also shows that the effects of tested indexes vary with the aggregation levels that were used to construct them. A detailed analysis of combinatorial novelty in the field reveals that certain sub-fields of astronomy and astrophysics have different roles in the reconfiguration of past knowledge.
• MMARGE: Motif Mutation Analysis for Regulatory Genomic Elements

  Link, Verena M; Romanoski, Casey E; Metzler, Dirk; Glass, Christopher K; Univ Arizona, Dept Cellular & Mol Med (OXFORD UNIV PRESS, 2018-08-21)

  Cell-specific patterns of gene expression are determined by combinatorial actions of sequence specific transcription factors at cis-regulatory elements. Studies indicate that relatively simple combinations of lineage-determining transcription factors (LDTFs) play dominant roles in the selection of enhancers that establish cell identities and functions. LDTFs require collaborative interactions with additional transcription factors to mediate enhancer function, but the identities of these factors are often unknown. We have shown that natural genetic variation between individuals has great utility for discovering collaborative transcription factors. Here, we introduce MMARGE (Motif Mutation Analysis of Regulatory Genomic Elements), the first publicly available suite of software tools that integrates genome-wide genetic variation with epigenetic data to identify collaborative transcription factor pairs. MMARGE is optimized to work with chromatin accessibility assays (such as ATAC-seq or DNase I hypersensitivity), as well as transcription factor binding data collected by ChIP-seq. Herein, we provide investigators with rationale for each step in the MMARGE pipeline and key differences for analysis of datasets with different experimental designs. We demonstrate the utility of MMARGE using mouse peritoneal macrophages, liver cells, and human lymphoblastoid cells. MMARGE provides a powerful tool to identify combinations of cell type-specific transcription factors while simultaneously interpreting functional effects of non-coding genetic variation.

View more