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Purpose: To determine whether covered or uncovered stent insertion achieved better clinical efficacy when used to treat malignant superior vena cava (SVC) obstruction (SVCO).Material and methods: A...

This 56Gb/s PAM-4 transceiver leverages the high logic density provided by the 7nm FinFET technology through rigorous application of digital design styles: An All-Digital PLL and SST transmitter are combined with a 28GS/s 8b ADC and DSP receiver, with the analog signal processing limited to a two stage front-end. The receiver achieves a raw 1e-7 BER with a-33dB insertion loss channel while consuming 500mW, including the 20-tap FFE and 1-tap DFE equipped DSP section.

The aim of this study was to validate the feasibility of a novel structural and computational fluid dynamics-based fractional flow reserve (FFR) algorithm for coronary computed tomography angiography (CTA), using alternative boundary conditions to detect lesion-specific ischemia.A new model of computed tomographic (CT) FFR relying on boundary conditions derived from structural deformation of the coronary lumen and aorta with transluminal attenuation gradient and assumptions regarding microvascular resistance has been developed, but its accuracy has not yet been validated.A total of 338 consecutive patients with 422 vessels from 9 Chinese medical centers undergoing CTA and invasive FFR were retrospectively analyzed. CT FFR values were obtained on a novel on-site computational fluid dynamics-based CT FFR (uCT-FFR [version 1.5, United-Imaging Healthcare, Shanghai, China]). Performance characteristics of uCT-FFR and CTA in detecting lesion-specific ischemia in all lesions, intermediate lesions (luminal stenosis 30% to 70%), and "gray zone" lesions (FFR 0.75 to 0.80) were calculated with invasive FFR as the reference standard. The effect of coronary calcification on uCT-FFR measurements was also assessed.Per vessel sensitivities, specificities, and accuracies of 0.89, 0.91, and 0.91 with uCT-FFR, 0.92, 0.34, and 0.55 with CTA, and 0.94, 0.37, and 0.58 with invasive coronary angiography, respectively, were found. There was higher specificity, accuracy, and AUC for uCT-FFR compared with CTA and qualitative invasive coronary angiography in all lesions, including intermediate lesions (p 0.001 for all). No significant difference in diagnostic accuracy was observed in the "gray zone" range versus the other 2 lesion groups (FFR ≤0.75 and0.80; p = 0.397) and in patients with "gray zone" versus FFR ≤0.75 (p = 0.633) and versus FFR0.80 (p = 0.364), respectively. No significant difference in the diagnostic performance of uCT-FFR was found between patients with calcium scores ≥400 and 400 (p = 0.393).This novel computational fluid dynamics-based CT FFR approach demonstrates good performance in detecting lesion-specific ischemia. Additionally, it outperforms CTA and qualitative invasive coronary angiography, most notably in intermediate lesions, and may potentially have diagnostic power in gray zone and highly calcified lesions.

This work investigated the effects of CoAl2O4 inoculants on the microstructure and mechanical properties of a superalloy – Inconel 718 (IN718), processed by selective laser melting (SLM). IN718 powder was blended with 0.2 wt. % of CoAl2O4 particles. After the SLM process, the CoAl2O4 particles reacted with IN718 and formed a dispersion of Al-rich nano-oxide particles in the matrix. These inoculants were observed to facilitate the formation of fine, equiaxed grains and reduce the degree of crystallographic texture in the as-built microstructure. The presence of the nano-oxide particles in the microstructure served to restrict the mobility of grain boundaries during heat-treatment and promoted the formation of a bimodal grain structure with comparatively finer average size. Due to the reduction of crystallographic texture, the elastic anisotropy present in as-built specimens was greatly minimized with the addition of CoAl2O4 inoculants. Specimens containing inoculants were also found to possess improved tensile properties following heat-treatment at both room temperature and 650 °C. Furthermore, creep testing at 650 °C/650 MPa revealed that the steady strain rate of IN718 was lowered from 8.8×10−9 s−1 to 4.9×10−9 s−1, and the creep rupture life was extended by 52 hours in samples that were fabricated with CoAl2O4. These results strongly suggest that the decomposition of CoAl2O4 into Al-rich oxides during SLM processing not only contributes to grain refinement and a reduction in the degree of crystallographic texture but also forms an oxide dispersion that restricts the mobility of dislocations and grain boundaries in IN718.

Small glycodendrimers with a-mannosyl ligands were synthesized by using copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne coupling chemistry and some of these molecules were used as multivalent li- gands to study the induction of conca- navalin A (Con A) precipitation. The results showed that the monovalent mannose ligand could induce the pre- cipitation of Con A. This unexpected finding initiated a series of studies to characterize the molecular basis of the ligand-lectin interaction. The atypical precipitation is found to be specific to the mannose, fluorescein moiety (FITC), and Con A. Apparently the mannose ligand binds to Con A through hydrogen-bonding interactions, whereas the binding of FITC is mediat- ed by hydrophobic forces.