Influenza virus infections can lead to a number of secondary complications, including sepsis. We applied linear regression models to mortality and hospital admission data coded for septicaemia from 1998 to 2019 in Hong Kong, and estimated that septicaemia was associated with an annual average excess mortality rate of 0.23 (95% CI 0.04–0.40) per 100 000 persons per year and an excess septicaemia hospitalisation rate of 1.73 (95% CI 0.94–2.50) per 100 000 persons per year. The highest excess morbidity and mortality was found in older adults and young children, and during influenza A(H3N2) epidemics.

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization stressed the importance of daily clinical assessments of infected patients, yet current approaches frequently consider cross-sectional timepoints, cumulative summary measures, or time-to-event analyses. Statistical methods are available that make use of the rich information content of longitudinal assessments. We demonstrate the use of a multistate transition model to assess the dynamic nature of COVID-19-associated critical illness using daily evaluations of COVID-19 patients from 9 academic hospitals. We describe the accessibility and utility of methods that consider the clinical trajectory of critically ill COVID-19 patients.

This study describes changes in dining practices and provider perspectives on meal-related challenges due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. An online survey was disseminated between July and September 2020 through stakeholder networks and social media with 1,036 respondents. Altered dining practices included residents eating in rooms (54.3%), spacing residents in common areas for meals (69.3%), and disposable dish use (44.9%). The most common mealtime challenges were reduced socializing opportunities at meals (29.3%), inadequate staffing (22.8%), reduced family/volunteer help (16.7%), and assisting residents to eat (10.5%). Many participants (72.2%) felt conflict balancing safety and relationship-centred care. Geographic region, home size, building age, respondent’s job title, pre-pandemic relationship-centred practices, and mealtime satisfaction, and some pandemic-initiated practices were associated with mealtime challenges and feeling conflicted in binary logistic regression analyses. Considering trade-offs between safety and relational aspects of mealtimes during the pandemic is crucial.

To investigate the influences of dietary riboflavin (RF) addition on nutrient digestion and rumen fermentation, eight rumen cannulated Holstein bulls were randomly allocated into four treatments in a repeated 4 × 4 Latin square design. Daily addition level of RF for each bull in control, low RF, medium RF and high RF was 0, 300, 600 and 900 mg, respectively. Increasing the addition level of RF, DM intake was not affected, average daily gain tended to be increased linearly and feed conversion ratio decreased linearly. Total tract digestibilities of DM, organic matter, crude protein (CP) and neutral-detergent fibre (NDF) increased linearly. Rumen pH decreased quadratically, and total volatile fatty acids (VFA) increased quadratically. Acetate molar percentage and acetate:propionate ratio increased linearly, but propionate molar percentage and ammonia-N content decreased linearly. Rumen effective degradability of DM increased linearly, NDF increased quadratically but CP was unaltered. Activity of cellulase and populations of total bacteria, protozoa, fungi, dominant cellulolytic bacteria, Prevotella ruminicola and Ruminobacter amylophilus increased linearly. Linear increase was observed for urinary total purine derivatives excretion. The data suggested that dietary RF addition was essential for rumen microbial growth, and no further increase in performance and rumen total VFA concentration was observed when increasing RF level from 600 to 900 mg/d in dairy bulls.

Three tapeworm species belonging to the genus Atractolytocestus Anthony, 1958 (Cestoda: Caryophyllidea) were reported from the common carp, Cyprinus carpio L., 1758 in the People's Republic of China so far: Atractolytocestus sagittatus; Atractolytocestus tenuicollis; and Atractolytocestus huronensis. In this study, we identified a putatively new tapeworm species in common carp from the Danjiangkou Reservoir in Central China (Hubei Province). The species is morphologically similar to A. sagittatus, but it differed conspicuously in sequences of three molecular markers. Ribosomal internal transcribed spacers 2 sequence identity of the new species was 94.7–95.5%, 91.8–92.7% and 80.0–83.9% with A. huronensis, A. tenuicollis and A. sagittatus, respectively. cytochrome c oxidase and NADH dehydrogenase subunit 3 sequence identity with these three species was lower than 92%. We conclude that this is a new tapeworm species, and we named it after the locality: Atractolytocestus danjiangkouensis n. sp.

Gravitational waves from coalescing neutron stars encode information about nuclear matter at extreme densities, inaccessible by laboratory experiments. The late inspiral is influenced by the presence of tides, which depend on the neutron star equation of state. Neutron star mergers are expected to often produce rapidly rotating remnant neutron stars that emit gravitational waves. These will provide clues to the extremely hot post-merger environment. This signature of nuclear matter in gravitational waves contains most information in the 2–4 kHz frequency band, which is outside of the most sensitive band of current detectors. We present the design concept and science case for a Neutron Star Extreme Matter Observatory (NEMO): a gravitational-wave interferometer optimised to study nuclear physics with merging neutron stars. The concept uses high-circulating laser power, quantum squeezing, and a detector topology specifically designed to achieve the high-frequency sensitivity necessary to probe nuclear matter using gravitational waves. Above 1 kHz, the proposed strain sensitivity is comparable to full third-generation detectors at a fraction of the cost. Such sensitivity changes expected event rates for detection of post-merger remnants from approximately one per few decades with two A+ detectors to a few per year and potentially allow for the first gravitational-wave observations of supernovae, isolated neutron stars, and other exotica.

To evaluate the impacts of guanidinoacetic acid (GAA) and coated folic acid (CFA) on growth performance, nutrient digestion and hepatic gene expression, fifty-two Angus bulls were assigned to four groups in a 2 × 2 factor experimental design. The CFA of 0 or 6 mg/kg dietary DM folic acid was supplemented in diets with GAA of 0 (GAA−) or 0·6 g/kg DM (GAA+), respectively. Average daily gain (ADG), feed efficiency and hepatic creatine concentration increased with GAA or CFA addition, and the increased magnitude of these parameters was greater for addition of CFA in GAA− diets than in GAA+ diets. Blood creatine concentration increased with GAA or CFA addition, and greater increase was observed when CFA was supplemented in GAA+ diets than in GAA− diets. DM intake was unchanged, but rumen total SCFA concentration and digestibilities of DM, crude protein, neutral-detergent fibre and acid-detergent fibre increased with the addition of GAA or CFA. Acetate:propionate ratio was unaffected by GAA, but increased for CFA addition. Increase in blood concentrations of albumin, total protein and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) was observed for GAA or CFA addition. Blood folate concentration was decreased by GAA, but increased with CFA addition. Hepatic expressions of IGF-1, phosphoinositide 3-kinase, protein kinase B, mammalian target of rapamycin and ribosomal protein S6 kinase increased with GAA or CFA addition. Results indicated that the combined supplementation of GAA and CFA could not cause ADG increase more when compared with GAA or CFA addition alone.

The dendrite morphologies of the cast nickel-based superalloy CMSX-4® (CMSX-4® is registered trademarks of the Cannon-Muskegon Corporation) and the austenitic stainless steel HP microalloy have been obtained via an automated serial-sectioning process which allows three-dimensional (3D) microstructural characterization. The dendrite arm spacing, volume fraction of segregation, and fraction of porosity have been determined. This technique not only increases the depth, scope, and level of detailed microstructural characterization but also delivers microstructural data for modeling and simulation.

In this paper, the generation of relativistic electron mirrors (REM) and the reflection of an ultra-short laser off the mirrors are discussed, applying two-dimension particle-in-cell simulations. REMs with ultra-high acceleration and expanding velocity can be produced from a solid nanofoil illuminated normally by an ultra-intense femtosecond laser pulse with a sharp rising edge. Chirped attosecond pulse can be produced through the reflection of a counter-propagating probe laser off the accelerating REM. In the electron moving frame, the plasma frequency of the REM keeps decreasing due to its rapid expansion. The laser frequency, on the contrary, keeps increasing due to the acceleration of REM and the relativistic Doppler shift from the lab frame to the electron moving frame. Within an ultra-short time interval, the two frequencies will be equal in the electron moving frame, which leads to the resonance between laser and REM. The reflected radiation near this interval and corresponding spectra will be amplified due to the resonance. Through adjusting the arriving time of the probe laser, a certain part of the reflected field could be selectively amplified or depressed, leading to the selective adjustment of the corresponding spectra.

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is an open access telescope dedicated to studying the low-frequency (80–300 MHz) southern sky. Since beginning operations in mid-2013, the MWA has opened a new observational window in the southern hemisphere enabling many science areas. The driving science objectives of the original design were to observe 21 cm radiation from the Epoch of Reionisation (EoR), explore the radio time domain, perform Galactic and extragalactic surveys, and monitor solar, heliospheric, and ionospheric phenomena. All together $60+$ programs recorded 20 000 h producing 146 papers to date. In 2016, the telescope underwent a major upgrade resulting in alternating compact and extended configurations. Other upgrades, including digital back-ends and a rapid-response triggering system, have been developed since the original array was commissioned. In this paper, we review the major results from the prior operation of the MWA and then discuss the new science paths enabled by the improved capabilities. We group these science opportunities by the four original science themes but also include ideas for directions outside these categories.

There is an overabundance of microswimmers in nature, including bacteria, algae, mammalian cells and so on. They use flagellum, cilia or global shape changes (amoeboid motion) to move forward. In the presence of confining channels, these swimmers exhibit often non-trivial behaviours, such as accumulation at the wall, navigation and so on, and their swimming speed may be strongly influenced by the geometric confinement. Several numerical studies have reported that the presence of walls either enhances or reduces the swimming speed depending on the nature of the swimmer, and also on the confinement. The purpose of this paper is to provide an analytical explanation of several previously obtained numerical results. We treat the case of amoeboid swimmers and the case of squirmers having either a tangential (the classical situation) or normal velocity prescribed at the swimmer surface (pumper). For amoeboid motion we consider a quasi-circular swimmer which allows us to tackle the problem analytically and to extract the equations of the motion of the swimmer, with several explicit analytical or semi-analytical solutions. It is found that the deformation of the amoeboid swimmer as well as a high enough order effect due to confinement are necessary in order to account for previous numerical results. The analytical theory accounts for several features obtained numerically also for non-deformable swimmers.

This study proposed the application of a novel immersed boundary method (IBM) for the treatment of irregular geometries using Cartesian computational grids for high speed compressible gas flows modelled using the unsteady Euler equations. Furthermore, the method is accelerated through the use of multiple Graphics Processing Units – specifically using Nvidia’s CUDA together with MPI - due to the computationally intensive nature associated with the numerical solution to multi-dimensional continuity equations. Due to the high degree of locality required for efficient multiple GPU computation, the Split Harten-Lax-van-Leer (SHLL) scheme is employed for vector splitting of fluxes across cell interfaces. NVIDIA visual profiler shows that our proposed method having a computational speed of 98.6 GFLOPS and 61% efficiency based on the Roofline analysis that provides the theoretical computing speed of reaching 160 GLOPS with an average 2.225 operations/byte. To demonstrate the validity of the method, results from several benchmark problems covering both subsonic and supersonic flow regimes are presented. Performance testing using 96 GPU devices demonstrates a speed up of 89 times that of a single GPU (i.e. 92% efficiency) for a benchmark problem employing 48 million cells. Discussions regarding communication overhead and parallel efficiency for varying problem sizes are also presented.

This paper presents a comprehensive analytical approach to the modelling of wall-pressure fluctuations under a turbulent boundary layer, unifying and expanding the analytical models that have been proposed over many decades. The Poisson equation governing pressure fluctuations is Fourier transformed in the wavenumber domain to obtain a modified Helmholtz equation, which is solved with a Green’s function technique. The source term of the differential equations is composed of turbulence–mean shear and turbulence–turbulence interaction terms, which are modelled separately within the hypothesis of a joint normal probability distribution of the turbulent field. The functional expression of the turbulence statistics is shown to be the most critical point for a correct representation of the wall-pressure spectrum. The effect of various assumptions on the shape of the longitudinal correlation function of turbulence is assessed in the first place with purely analytical considerations using an idealised flow model. Then, the effect of the hypothesis on the spectral distribution of boundary-layer turbulence on the resulting wall-pressure spectrum is compared with the results of direct numerical simulation computations and pressure measurements on a controlled-diffusion aerofoil. The boundary layer developing over the suction side of this aerofoil in test conditions is characterised by an adverse pressure gradient. The final part of the paper discusses the numerical aspect of wall-pressure spectrum computation. A Monte Carlo technique is used for a fast evaluation of the multi-dimensional integral formulation developed in the theoretical part.