Efficacy and Safety Comparative of Sacubitril/Valsartan vs. Olmesartan in the Treatment of hypertension: A Meta-analysis of RCTs.

BACKGROUND: Sacubitril/valsartan (LCZ696) is a widely used drug for hypertension in Asia, popular for its efficacy and safety. However, there has been no comprehensive literature review comparing it with olmesartan. This meta-analysis compared the antihypertensive and adverse effects of sacubitril/valsartan and olmesartan. METHODS: We conducted a comprehensive search of Pubmed, Web of Science, Embase, Cochrane Library, and ClinicalTrials.gov databases to identify eligible randomized controlled trials (RCTs). The data were then analyzed and processed using Revman 5.4 and Stata SE14 software. RESULTS: Six RCTs with 4,127 patients were identified, showing that LCZ696 had better blood pressure control than olmesartan; mean sitting systolic and diastolic blood pressure, sitting pulse pressure, 24-hour ambulatory systolic blood pressure, and 24-hour ambulatory diastolic blood pressure were significantly decreased with LCZ696 compared with olmesartan. No significant difference between LCZ696 and olmesartan was observed in the occurrence of the majority of adverse events, with a decreased probability of headache in patients with sacubitril/valsartan compared with olmesartan. The subgroup analysis showed treatment with 400 mg/d LCZ696 was better than olmesartan in reducing serious adverse events. CONCLUSIONS: Sacubitril/valsartan was better than olmesartan in controlling blood pressure in patients with hypertension, with relatively higher safety.

Tracing the sources of nutrients fueling dinoflagellate red tides occurring along the coast of Korea using radium isotopes.

It is a well held concept that the magnitude of red-tide occurrence is dependent on the amount of nutrient supply if the conditions are same for temperature, salinity, light, interspecific competition, etc. However, nutrient sources fueling dinoflagellate red-tides are difficult to identify since red tides usually occur under very low inorganic-nutrient conditions. In this study, we used short-lived Ra isotopes (223Ra and 224Ra) to trace the nutrient sources fueling initiation and spread of Cochlodinium polykrikoides blooms along the coast of Korea during the summers of 2014, 2016, and 2017. Horizontal and vertical distributions of nutrient concentrations correlated well with 224Ra activities in nutrient-source waters. The offshore red-tide areas showed high 224Ra activities and low-inorganic and high-organic nutrient concentrations, which are favorable for blooming C. polykrikoides in competition with diatoms. Based on Ra isotopes, the nutrients fueling red-tide initiation (southern coast of Korea) are found to be transported horizontally from inner-shore waters. However, the nutrients in the spread region (eastern coast of Korea), approximately 200 km from the initiation region, are supplied continuously from the subsurface layer by vertical mixing or upwelling. Our study highlights that short-lived Ra isotopes are excellent tracers of nutrients fueling harmful algal blooms in coastal waters.

A Natural Language Interface Concordant with a Knowledge Base.

The discordance between expressions interpretable by a natural language interface (NLI) system and those answerable by a knowledge base is a critical problem in the field of NLIs. In order to solve this discordance problem, this paper proposes a method to translate natural language questions into formal queries that can be generated from a graph-based knowledge base. The proposed method considers a subgraph of a knowledge base as a formal query. Thus, all formal queries corresponding to a concept or a predicate in the knowledge base can be generated prior to query time and all possible natural language expressions corresponding to each formal query can also be collected in advance. A natural language expression has a one-to-one mapping with a formal query. Hence, a natural language question is translated into a formal query by matching the question with the most appropriate natural language expression. If the confidence of this matching is not sufficiently high the proposed method rejects the question and does not answer it. Multipredicate queries are processed by regarding them as a set of collected expressions. The experimental results show that the proposed method thoroughly handles answerable questions from the knowledge base and rejects unanswerable ones effectively.

Imaging Escherichia coli using functionalized core/shell CdSe/CdS quantum dots.

The internalization of a series of water-soluble CdSe/CdS quantum dots (QDs) stabilized by citrate, isocitrate, succinate, and malate by Escherichia coli is established by epifluorescence and confocal fluorescence scanning microscopy, fluorimetry, and UV-vis spectroscopy on whole and lysed bacterial cells. The organic-acid-stabilized QDs span a range in size from 3.8+/-1.1 to 6.0+/-2.4 nm with emission wavelengths from 540 to 630 nm. QDs of different sizes (i.e., 3.8-6 nm) can enter the bacterium and be detected on different fluorescence channels with little interference from other QDs as a result of the distinct emission profiles (i.e., 540-630 nm, respectively). Costaining QD-labeled E. coli with 4',6-diamidino-2-phenylindole dihydrochloride (DAPI) demonstrates that the QDs and DAPI are colocalized within E. coli, whereas costaining QD-labeled E. coli with membrane dye FM4-64 shows that the FM4-64 is localized in the outer bacterial membrane and that the QDs are inside.

Patterned growth of large oriented organic semiconductor single crystals on self-assembled monolayer templates.

This work demonstrates a method for inducing site-specific nucleation and subsequent growth of large oriented organic semiconductor single crystals using micropatterned self-assembled monolayers (SAMs). We demonstrate growth of oriented, patterned, and large organic semiconductor single crystals for potential use in organic electronic devices. The control over multiple parameters in a single system has not yet been reported. The ability to control various aspects of crystal growth in one system provides a powerful technique for the bottom-up fabrication of organic single-crystal semiconductor devices.

Effect of magnesium ions on oriented growth of calcite on carboxylic acid functionalized self-assembled monolayer.

The combined effect of templating and solution additives on calcite crystallization was studied. Self-assembled monolayers of mercaptoundecanoic acid supported on silver, as templates, induced the uniform, oriented nucleation of calcite from the (012) plane. The presence of Mg2+ in the crystallizing solution affected the crystal growth dramatically, due to the selective Mg binding to the calcite planes roughly parallel to the c-axis. Highly homogeneous arrays of oriented crystals with characteristic sizes, shapes, and morphology, depending on the relative concentration of Mg and Ca ions, were synthesized.