Speckle-tracking echocardiography in comparison with ejection fraction for prediction of cardiovascular mortality in patients with end-stage renal disease.

Background: Cardiovascular disease is the major cause of death in end-stage renal disease (ESRD). To develop better means to assess cardiovascular risk in these patients, we compared conventional echocardiography-derived left ventricular ejection fraction (EF) with the novel method of 2D speckle-tracking echocardiography to determine cardiac strain.

Methods: Predictive performances of conventional EF and speckle-tracking echocardiography-derived global longitudinal strain (GLS) were compared using receiver-operator curve (ROC) analyses and calibration by calibration plots.

Speckle tracking echocardiography detects uremic cardiomyopathy early and predicts cardiovascular mortality in ESRD.

Cardiovascular mortality is high in ESRD, partly driven by sudden cardiac death and recurrent heart failure due to uremic cardiomyopathy. We investigated whether speckle-tracking echocardiography is superior to routine echocardiography in early detection of uremic cardiomyopathy in animal models and whether it predicts cardiovascular mortality in patients undergoing dialysis. Using speckle-tracking echocardiography in two rat models of uremic cardiomyopathy soon (4-6 weeks) after induction of kidney disease, we observed that global radial and circumferential strain parameters decreased significantly in both models compared with controls, whereas standard echocardiographic readouts, including fractional shortening and cardiac output, remained unchanged.

Interaction potential for atomic simulations of conventional high explosives.

In an effort to develop a chemically reactive interaction potential suitable for application to the study of conventional, organic explosives, we have modified the diatomic AB potential of Brenner et al. [Phys. Rev.

Molecular dynamics ensemble, equation of state, and ergodicity.

The variant of the NVE ensemble known as the molecular dynamics ensemble was recently redefined by Ray and Zhang [Phys. Rev. E 59, 4781 (1999)] to include the specification of a time invariant G (a function of phase and, explicitly, the time) in addition to the total linear momentum M.