Enhanced non-classical electrostriction in strained tetragonal ceria.

Electrostriction is the upsurge of strain under an electric field in any dielectric material. Oxygen-defective metal oxides, such as acceptor-doped ceria, exhibit high electrostriction 10 mV values, which can be further enhanced via interface engineering at the nanoscale. This effect in ceria is "non-classical" as it arises from an intricate relation between defect-induced polarisation and local elastic distortion in the lattice.

Comprehensive Risk Assessment of LAD Disease Progression in CCTA: The CLAP Score Study.

Background: a wider left main bifurcation angle (LMBA) has been linked to severe plaque development in the proximal left anterior descending artery (LAD). This study aimed to identify predictors of severe proximal LAD stenosis and major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) using coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA).

Methods: from an initial cohort of 650 consecutive patients, we analyzed 499 patients who met the inclusion criteria after exclusions.

SARS-CoV-2 and Dysphagia: A Retrospective Analysis of COVID-19 Patients with Swallowing Disorders.

Background: COVID-19 can lead to impairment of neural networks involved in swallowing, since the act of swallowing is coordinated and performed by a diffuse brain network involving peripheral nerves and muscles. Dysphagia has been identified as a risk and predictive factor for the severest form of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Objectives: To investigate the association between swallowing disorders and COVID-19 in patients hospitalized for COVID-19.

Treatment of patients with BRAF-mutated metastatic colorectal cancer after progression to encorafenib and cetuximab: data from a real-world nationwide dataset.

Background: Targeted therapy (TT) with encorafenib and cetuximab is the current standard for patients with BRAF-mutated metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) who received one or more prior systemic treatments. However, the median progression-free survival (mPFS) is ∼4 months, and little is known about the possibility of administering subsequent therapies, their efficacy, and clinicopathological determinants of outcome.

Methods: A real-world dataset including patients with BRAF-mutated mCRC treated with TT at 21 Italian centers was retrospectively interrogated.

Capillary washboarding during slow drainage of a frictional fluid.

Numerous natural and industrial processes involve the mixed displacement of liquids, gases and granular materials through confining structures. However, understanding such three-phase flows remains a formidable challenge, despite their tremendous economic and environmental impact. To unveil the complex interplay of capillary and granular stresses in such flows, we consider here a model configuration where a frictional fluid (an immersed sedimented granular layer) is slowly drained out of a horizontal capillary.

Three-dimensional liquid foam flow through a hopper resolved by fast X-ray microtomography.

We probe the complex rheological behaviour of liquid foams flowing through a conical constriction. With fast X-ray tomographic microscopy we measure the displacement and deformation of up to fifty thousand bubbles at any single time instance while varying systematically the foam liquid fraction, the bubble size and the flow direction - convergent divergent. The large statistics and high spatio-temporal resolution allows to observe and quantify the deviations from a purely viscous flow.

Changes in clinical characteristics and outcomes of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 during two years of the pandemic: experience in a venezuelan hospital.

Objectives.: To determine changes in the clinical characteristics and in-hospital outcomes of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 in a private hospital in Caracas during two years of the pandemic.

Materials And Methods.

Atomically engineered interfaces yield extraordinary electrostriction.

Electrostriction is a property of dielectric materials whereby an applied electric field induces a mechanical deformation proportional to the square of that field. The magnitude of the effect is usually minuscule (<10 m V for simple oxides). However, symmetry-breaking phenomena at the interfaces can offer an efficient strategy for the design of new properties.

Thermally activated intermittent dynamics of creeping crack fronts along disordered interfaces.

We present a subcritical fracture growth model, coupled with the elastic redistribution of the acting mechanical stress along rugous rupture fronts. We show the ability of this model to quantitatively reproduce the intermittent dynamics of cracks propagating along weak disordered interfaces. To this end, we assume that the fracture energy of such interfaces (in the sense of a critical energy release rate) follows a spatially correlated normal distribution.

Deep brain stimulation in Alzheimer's disease.

Benefits from symptomatic and etiologic treatments in Alzheimer's Disease (AD), the most frequent dementia, are still insufficient. During the last decade, several studies showed that electrical stimulation of memory circuits could enhance memory in humans without memory impairment. First, improvement of verbal recollection was reported after deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the fornix in the hypothalamus in a patient treated for morbid obesity.

Electromechanically active pair dynamics in a Gd-doped ceria single crystal.

Oxygen-defective ceria, e.g. Gd-doped ceria, shows giant electromechanical properties related to a complex local rearrangement of its lattice.

Magnetic Janssen effect.

A pile of grains, even when at rest in a silo, can display fascinating properties. One of the most celebrated is the Janssen effect, named after the pioneering engineer who explained the pressure saturation at the bottom of a container filled with corn. This surprising behavior arises because of frictional interactions between the grains through a disordered network of contacts, and the vessel lateral walls, which partially support the weight of the column, decreasing its apparent mass.

Medical Student Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Initial Experiences Implementing a Virtual Interventional Radiology Elective Course.

Rationale And Objectives: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic reducing medical student presence on clinical services and in classrooms, academic institutions are utilizing a virtual format to continue medical student education. We describe a successful initial experience implementing a virtual elective in interventional radiology (IR) and provide the course framework, student feedback, and potential improvements.

Materials And Methods: A 2-week virtual IR elective curriculum was created utilizing a combination of synchronous and asynchronous learning and the "flipped" classroom educational model.

How heat controls fracture: the thermodynamics of creeping and avalanching cracks.

While of paramount importance in material science, the dynamics of cracks still lacks a complete physical explanation. The transition from their slow creep behavior to a fast propagation regime is a notable key, as it leads to full material failure if the size of a fast avalanche reaches that of the system. We here show that a simple thermodynamics approach can actually account for such complex crack dynamics, and in particular for the non-monotonic force-velocity curves commonly observed in mechanical tests on various materials.

Atomic-scale insights into electro-steric substitutional chemistry of cerium oxide.

Cerium oxide (ceria, CeO2) is one of the most promising mixed ionic and electronic conducting materials. Previous atomistic analysis has widely covered the effects of substitution on oxygen vacancy migration. However, an in-depth analysis of the role of cation substitution beyond trivalent cations has rarely been explored.

Sensorized Assessment of Dynamic Locomotor Imagery in People with Stroke and Healthy Subjects.

Dynamic motor imagery (dMI) is a motor imagery task associated with movements partially mimicking those mentally represented. As well as conventional motor imagery, dMI has been typically assessed by mental chronometry tasks. In this paper, an instrumented approach was proposed for quantifying the correspondence between upper and lower limb oscillatory movements performed on the spot during the dMI of walking vs.

Very Low-Calorie Ketogenic Diet: A Safe and Effective Tool for Weight Loss in Patients With Obesity and Mild Kidney Failure.

Very low-calorie ketogenic diets (VLCKD) are an effective and increasingly used tool for weight loss. Traditionally considered high protein, ketogenic diets are often looked at with concern by clinicians due to the potential harm they pose to kidney function. We herein evaluated the efficacy and safety of a VLCKD in patients with obesity and mild kidney failure.

[SICI-GISE Position paper: Enhancing radiation safety in the catheterization laboratory].

The radiation dose received by interventional cardiologists during their activity in the catheterization laboratory is a matter of concern in terms of possible deterministic and stochastic risk. At the same time, very often, the knowledge of the effect and consequences of radiation exposure in the interventional cardiology community is limited. This document endorsed by the Italian Society of Interventional Cardiology (SICI-GISE) provides recommendations for cardiologists' radiation protection.

Beyond the Concentration Limitation in the Synthesis of Nanobipyramids and Other Pentatwinned Gold Nanostructures.

Gold nanoparticles offer unique optoelectronic properties relevant for a wide range of processes and products, in biology and medicine (therapeutic agents, diagnostic, drug delivery), as well as in electronics, photovoltaics, and catalysis. So far, various synthesis methods proposed have led to rather limited concentration and purity of the colloidal suspensions, severely hindering their use. Here, we present a simple and versatile procedure for the synthesis of gold pentatwinned nanostructures, including nanobipyramids based on a seed-mediated growth process that overcomes the concentration limitations of current methods by 2 orders of magnitude.

Bending to Kinetic Energy Transfer in Adhesive Peel Front Microinstability.

We report an extensive experimental study of a detachment front dynamics instability, appearing at microscopic scales during the peeling of adhesive tapes. The amplitude of this instability scales with its period as A_{mss}∝T_{mss}^{1/3}, with a prefactor evolving slightly with the peel angle θ, and increasing systematically with the bending modulus B of the tape backing. Establishing a local energy budget of the detachment process during one period of this microinstability, our theoretical model shows that the elastic bending energy stored in the portion of tape to be peeled is converted into kinetic energy, providing a quantitative description of the experimental scaling law.

Avalanches and extreme value statistics in interfacial crackling dynamics.

We study the avalanche and extreme statistics of the global velocity of a crack front, propagating slowly along a weak heterogeneous interface of a transparent polymethyl methacrylate block. The different loading conditions used (imposed constant velocity or creep relaxation) lead to a broad range of average crack front velocities. Our high-resolution and large dataset allows one to characterize in detail the observed intermittent crackling dynamics.

Spatiotemporal Organization of Correlated Local Activity within Global Avalanches in Slowly Driven Interfaces.

We study the jerky response of slowly driven fronts in disordered media, just above the depinning transition. We focus on how spatially disconnected clusters of internally correlated activity lead to large-scale velocity fluctuations in the form of global avalanches and identify three different ways in which local activity clusters may organize within a global avalanche, depending on the distance to criticality. Our analysis provides new scaling relations between the power-law exponents of the statistical distributions of sizes and durations of local bursts and global avalanches.

Interacting Cracks Obey a Multiscale Attractive to Repulsive Transition.

The observed repulsive behavior of two initially collinear cracks growing towards each other and leading to a hook-shaped path questioned recently the validity of the principle of local symmetry within linear elastic fracture mechanics theory. Our theoretical and numerical work solves this dilemma, providing the precise geometric conditions for the existence of this repulsive phase. We moreover reveal a multiscale behavior of the repulsive-attractive transition, explaining its ubiquitous occurrence, but also the difficulty to predict the final cracks' paths.