Assuring the safety of AI-based clinical decision support systems: a case study of the AI Clinician for sepsis treatment.

Objectives: Establishing confidence in the safety of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based clinical decision support systems is important prior to clinical deployment and regulatory approval for systems with increasing autonomy. Here, we undertook safety assurance of the AI Clinician, a previously published reinforcement learning-based treatment recommendation system for sepsis.

Methods: As part of the safety assurance, we defined four clinical hazards in sepsis resuscitation based on clinical expert opinion and the existing literature.

Structure-Property Relationship Based on the Amino Acid Composition of Recombinant Spider Silk Proteins for Potential Biomedical Applications.

Improving biomaterials by engineering application-specific and adjustable properties is of increasing interest. Most of the commonly available materials fulfill the mechanical and physical requirements of relevant biomedical applications, but they lack biological functionality, including biocompatibility and prevention of microbial infestation. Thus, research has focused on customizable, application-specific, and modifiable surface coatings to cope with the limitations of existing biomaterials.

Traps and transport resistance are the next frontiers for stable non-fullerene acceptor solar cells.

Stability is one of the most important challenges facing material research for organic solar cells (OSC) on their path to further commercialization. In the high-performance material system PM6:Y6 studied here, we investigate degradation mechanisms of inverted photovoltaic devices. We have identified two distinct degradation pathways: one requires the presence of both illumination and oxygen and features a short-circuit current reduction, the other one is induced thermally and marked by severe losses of open-circuit voltage and fill factor.

Novel Expandable Epoxy Beads and Epoxy Particle Foam.

Expanded polymeric beads offer the advantage of being able to produce parts with complex geometries through a consolidation process. However, established polymeric beads are made of thermoplastics, deform and melt beyond their temperature services. In this manuscript, a new technique is proposed to fabricate expandable epoxy beads (EEBs), then expand and fuse them to produce epoxy particle foams (EPFs).

Samples returned from the asteroid Ryugu are similar to Ivuna-type carbonaceous meteorites.

Carbonaceous meteorites are thought to be fragments of C-type (carbonaceous) asteroids. Samples of the C-type asteroid (162173) Ryugu were retrieved by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft. We measured the mineralogy and bulk chemical and isotopic compositions of Ryugu samples.

Verwey-Type Charge Ordering and Site-Selective Mott Transition in FeO under Pressure.

The metal-insulator transition driven by electronic correlations is one of the most fundamental concepts in condensed matter. In mixed-valence compounds, this transition is often accompanied by charge ordering (CO), resulting in the emergence of complex phases and unusual behaviors. The famous example is the archetypal mixed-valence mineral magnetite, FeO, exhibiting a complex charge-ordering below the Verwey transition, whose nature has been a subject of long-time debates.

Insights into the Mechanism of Human Deiodinase 1.

The three isoenzymes of iodothyronine deiodinases (DIO1-3) are membrane-anchored homo-dimeric selenoproteins which share the thioredoxin-fold structure. Several questions regarding their catalytic mechanisms still remain open. Here, we addressed the roles of several cysteines which are conserved among deiodinase isoenzymes and asked whether they may contribute to dimerization and reduction of the oxidized enzyme with physiological reductants.

A Relation between the Formation of a Hydrogen-Bond Network and a Time-Scale Separation of Translation and Rotation in Molecular Liquids.

We study the relation between the translational and rotational motions of liquids, which is anticipated in the framework of the Stokes-Einstein-Debye (SED) treatment. For this purpose, we exploit the fact that H field-cycling nuclear magnetic resonance relaxometry and molecular dynamics simulations provide access to both modes of motion. The experimental and computational findings are fully consistent and show that the time-scale separation between translation and rotation increases from the van der Waals liquid -terphenyl over ethylene glycol to the hydrogen-bonded liquid glycerol, indicating an increasing degree of breakdown of the SED relation.

NMR Relaxometry Accessing the Relaxation Spectrum in Molecular Glass Formers.

It is a longstanding question whether universality or specificity characterize the molecular dynamics underlying the glass transition of liquids. In particular, there is an ongoing debate to what degree the shape of dynamical susceptibilities is common to various molecular glass formers. Traditionally, results from dielectric spectroscopy and light scattering have dominated the discussion.

[Cognitive and Non-Cognitive, Doctor-Relevant Competencies for the Selection of Prospective Country Doctors in Bavaria: Corona-Compliant Selection Process Across Institutes].

Objective: The challenge is to counteract the undersupply of doctors in rural areas in Bavaria. As one possibility, the "Country Doctor Quota" measure provides for the allocation of dedicated medical study places for prospective specialists with general practice activities. A specific selection process for future medical students was established and safely implemented under the safety and hygiene conditions of the corona pandemic.

Signal transduction in light-oxygen-voltage receptors lacking the active-site glutamine.

In nature as in biotechnology, light-oxygen-voltage photoreceptors perceive blue light to elicit spatiotemporally defined cellular responses. Photon absorption drives thioadduct formation between a conserved cysteine and the flavin chromophore. An equally conserved, proximal glutamine processes the resultant flavin protonation into downstream hydrogen-bond rearrangements.

DNA Functionalized Spider Silk Nanohydrogels for Specific Cell Attachment and Patterning.

Nucleated protein self-assembly of an azido modified spider silk protein was employed in the preparation of nanofibrillar networks with hydrogel-like properties immobilized on coatings of the same protein. Formation of the networks in a mild aqueous environment resulted in thicknesses between 2 and 60 nm, which were controlled only by the protein concentration. Incorporated azido groups in the protein were used to "click" short nucleic acid sequences onto the nanofibrils, which were accessible to specific hybridization-based modifications, as proved by fluorescently labeled DNA complements.

Nonlinearities in shadowgraphy experiments on non-equilibrium fluctuations in polymer solutions.

Giant thermal and solutal non-equilibrium fluctuations are observed in shadowgraphy experiments on liquid mixtures subjected to a temperature gradient. For large temperature differences, both the temperature and the composition dependence of the relevant thermophysical parameters and the nonlinear terms in the diffusion equation need to be taken into account, leading to a nonlinear concentration profile. For temperature differences exceeding the inverse of the Soret coefficient, in our example approximately 10 K, the usual data evaluation yields increasingly wrong diffusion and Soret coefficients that are off by almost a factor of two for a temperature difference of 50 K.

sp-to-sp transitions in graphite during cold-compression.

Pressure-induced sp-to-sp transitions in graphite have been studied for decades by experiments and simulations. In general, pressures of 15-18 GPa are needed to initiate structural transitions in graphite at room temperature, and the high-pressure phases are usually unquenchable, as evidenced by resistivity and optical transmittance measurements, X-ray diffraction (XRD), and inelastic X-ray scattering (IXS). However, our Raman results show that the onset transition pressure can be as low as 9.

Diffusion-controlled on-surface synthesis of graphene nanoribbon heterojunctions.

We report a new diffusion-controlled on-surface synthesis approach for graphene nanoribbons (GNR) consisting of two types of precursor molecules, which exploits distinct differences in the surface mobilities of the precursors. This approach is a step towards a more controlled fabrication of complex GNR heterostructures and should be applicable to the on-surface synthesis of a variety of GNR heterojunctions.

Studying a Bottleneck of Multimodular Polyketide Synthase Processing: the Polyketide Structure-Dependent Performance of Ketoreductase Domains.

Ketoreductases (KRs) are canonical domains of type I polyketide synthases (PKSs). They stereoselectively reduce ACP-bound β-ketothioester intermediates and are responsible for a large part of the stereocenters in reduced polyketides. Albeit essential for the understanding and engineering of PKS, the specific effects of altering the polyketide part of KR precursors on their performance has rarely been studied.

Mechanochemical Synthesis of Fluorine-Containing Co-Doped Zeolitic Imidazolate Frameworks for Producing Electrocatalysts.

Catalysts derived from pyrolysis of metal organic frameworks (MOFs) are promising candidates to replace expensive and scarce platinum-based electrocatalysts commonly used in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells. MOFs contain ordered connections between metal centers and organic ligands. They can be pyrolyzed into metal- and nitrogen-doped carbons, which show electrocatalytic activity toward the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR).

Shear and Bulk Acceleration Viscosities in Simple Fluids.

Inhomogeneities in the velocity field of a moving fluid are dampened by the inherent viscous behavior of the system. Both bulk and shear effects, related to the divergence and the curl of the velocity field, are relevant. On molecular time scales, beyond the Navier-Stokes description, memory plays an important role.

of Miranda moduli spaces of elliptic surfaces.

We give finite presentations for the fundamental group of moduli spaces due to Miranda of smooth Weierstrass curves over which extend the classical result for elliptic curves to the relative situation over the projective line. We thus get natural generalisations of presented in terms of , on one hand and the first examples of fundamental groups of moduli stacks of elliptic surfaces on the other. Our approach exploits the natural -action on Weierstrass curves and the identification of -fixed loci with smooth hypersurfaces in an appropriate linear system on a projective line bundle over .

Half-life and initial Solar System abundance of Sm determined from the oldest andesitic meteorite.

The formation and differentiation of planetary bodies are dated using radioactive decay systems, including the short-lived 146Sm-142Nd (T½ = 103 or 68 Ma) and long-lived 147Sm-143Nd (T½ = 106 Ga) radiogenic pairs that provide relative and absolute ages, respectively. However, the initial abundance and half-life of the extinct radioactive isotope 146Sm are still debated, weakening the interpretation of 146Sm-142Nd systematics obtained for early planetary processes. Here, we apply the short-lived 26Al-26Mg, 146Sm-142Nd, and long-lived 147Sm-143Sm chronometers to the oldest known andesitic meteorite, Erg Chech 002 (EC 002), to constrain the Solar System initial abundance of 146Sm.

Why Noether's theorem applies to statistical mechanics.

Noether's theorem is familiar to most physicists due its fundamental role in linking the existence of conservation laws to the underlying symmetries of a physical system. Typically the systems are described in the particle-based context of classical mechanics or on the basis of field theory. We have recently shown (2021176) that Noether's reasoning also applies to thermal systems, where fluctuations are paramount and one aims for a statistical mechanical description.