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Background Kawasaki disease (KD) or mucocutaneous lymph node syndrome is a vasculitis that mostly occurs in young children. Adult-onset KD (AKD) is rare and often misdiagnosed. Here we report a rare case of KD with cholestasis as principal symptom. Case presentation A 43-year-old caucasian man was admitted to our hospital for high fever, lack of appetite related to nausea and vomiting, headache and significant malaise. Physical examination highlighted fever, increasing jaundice, bilateral laterocervical lymph nodes, erythema of the palms, and strikingly red lips and conjunctiva. The clinical course was complicated by arterial hypotension, tachycardia, decreasing haemoglobin, increasing acute phase reactants tests, and multiorgan failure. Due to cardiovascular instability the patient was admitted to the local Intensive Care Unit. Chest X-ray, abdominal ultrasound, chest and abdominal CT and Colangio Magnetic Resonance were normal. Jaundice was investigated and infections, autoimmune diseases or drugs adverse reactions, were excluded. Also coronary artery computed tomography was carried out excluding coronary artery aneurysms. Broad-spectrum antibiotics were not effective. After exclusion other possible conditions, diagnosis of KD was set. He was treated with high doses of corticosteroids and acetylsalicylic acid and clinical conditions as well as laboratory exams improved. Conclusions This report dealing with an adult onset of atypical KD may be of benefit to physicians of various specialties, including primary care doctors, hospital internists, intensivists and gastroenterologists due to its peculiarities. It demonstrates that a case of prolonged fever unresponsive to antibiotics and related to cholestatic jaundice, oedema or erythema of the extremity associated with desquamation of feet and hands, and red eyes, may suggest atypical form of KD.

A counter-intuitive behavior analogous to the Braess paradox is encountered in a two-terminal mesoscopic network patterned in a two-dimensional electron system (2DES). Decreasing locally the electron density of one channel of the network paradoxically leads to an increased network electrical conductance. Our low temperature scanning gate microscopy experiments reveal different occurrences of such puzzling conductance variations, thanks to tip-induced localized modifications of electron flow throughout the network’s channels in the ballistic and coherent regime of transport. The robustness of the puzzling behavior is inspected by varying the global 2DES density, magnetic field and the tip-surface distance. Depending on the overall 2DES density, we show that either Coulomb Blockade resonances due to disorder-induced localized states or Fabry-Perot interferences tuned by the tip-induced electrostatic perturbation are at the origin of transport inefficiencies in the network, which are lifted when gradually closing one channel of the network with the tip.

In atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenide semiconductors, there is a crossover from indirect to direct band gap as the thickness drops to one monolayer, which comes with a fast increase of the photoluminescence signal. Here, we show that for different alloy compositions of WS 2(1− x ) Se 2 x this trend may be significantly affected by the alloy content and we demonstrate that the sample with the highest Se ratio presents a strongly reduced effect. The highest micro-PL intensity is found for bilayer WS 2(1− x ) Se 2 x ( x  = 0.8) with a decrease of its maximum value by only a factor of 2 when passing from mono-layer to bi-layer. To better understand this factor and explore the layer-dependent band structure evolution of WS 2(1− x ) Se 2 x , we performed a nano-angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy study coupled with first-principles calculations. We find that the high micro-PL value for bilayer WS 2(1− x ) Se 2 x ( x  = 0.8) is due to the overlay of direct and indirect optical transitions. This peculiar high PL intensity in WS 2(1− x ) Se 2 x opens the way for spectrally tunable light-emitting devices.

We study the impact of electron–phonon interaction on the subthreshold operation region of Tunnel-FETs by means of full-quantum simulations. Our approach is based on the nonequilibrium Green’s function method, where acoustic and optical phonon scatterings are taken into account through the self-consistent Born approximation. Two device architectures are analyzed: InAs nanowire longitudinal Tunnel-FETs, and 2D vertical Tunnel-FETs based on either an GaSb/AlSb/InAs heterostructure or a MoS 2 /WTe 2 van der Waals heterojunction. In InAs nanowire Tunnel-FETs with interface traps, electron–phonon interaction deteriorates the subthreshold swing by allowing trap-assisted tunneling at energies higher than the valence-band edge in the source. In vertical heterojunction Tunnel-FETs, optical phonon scattering increases the OFF current by inducing inelastic transition in the overlap region even in the absence of traps.

Two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors are promising channel materials for next-generation field-effect transistors (FETs) thanks to their unique mechanical properties and enhanced electrostatic control. However, the performance of these devices can be strongly limited by the scattering processes between carriers and phonons, usually occurring at high rates in 2D materials. Here, we use quantum transport simulations calibrated on first-principle computations to report on dissipative transport in antimonene and arsenene n -type FETs at the scaling limit. We show that the widely-used approximations of either ballistic transport or simple acoustic deformation potential scattering result in large overestimation of the ON current, due to neglecting the dominant intervalley and optical phonon scattering processes. We additionally investigate a recently proposed valley engineering strategy to improve the device performance by removing the valley degeneracy and suppressing most of the intervalley scattering channels via an uniaxial strain along the zigzag direction. The method is applicable to other similar 2D semiconductors characterized by multivalley transport.

The strain in hybrid van der Waals heterostructures, made of two distinct two-dimensional van der Waals materials, offers an interesting handle on their corresponding electronic band structure. Such strain can be engineered by changing the relative crystallographic orientation between the constitutive monolayers, notably, the angular misorientation, also known as the “twist angle”. By combining angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy with density functional theory calculations, we investigate here the band structure of the WS2/graphene heterobilayer for various twist angles. Despite the relatively weak coupling between WS2 and graphene, we demonstrate that the resulting strain quantitatively affects many electronic features of the WS2 monolayers, including the spin-orbit coupling strength. In particular, we show that the WS2 spin-orbit splitting of the valence band maximum at K can be tuned from 430 to 460 meV. Our findings open perspectives in controlling the band dispersion of van der Waals materials.

Dyslipidemia is a well-known risk factor for cardiovascular disease in the general population, and the cardioprotective role of statins is well established. However, although cardiovascular disease is the major cause of morbidity and mortality in chronic kidney disease (CKD), the role of statin therapy is still under investigation. In CKD the atherosclerotic burden is high and pathophysiology of dyslipidemia is complex; however, the majority of large-scale statin trials excluded patients with CKD. Statins could have different effects in the different stages of CKD. Two large trials involving haemodialysis patients showed unfavourable results, whereas in renal transplant subjects as well as in early CKD subjects, statins reduced cardiovascular risk. The studies involving early CKD patients are post-hoc analyses of large trials and they showed that statins are more effective in secondary than in primary prevention. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of statins for prevention of cardiovascular events by calculating the number of patients needed to be treated in different interventional trials. We conclude that dyslipidemia is a modifiable cardiovascular risk and statins appear to be an effective treatment especially in the early stages of CKD. Patients on renal replacement therapy could obtain an advantage from this treatment; however, the patient’s clinical prognosis should be taken into account when evaluating treatment.

For comparison analysis of survivor and deceased groups, [chi]2 test, Student t test, or Mann-Whitney U test were used. [...]logistic regression considered IHM as the dependent variable, and age, sex, PE, and CCI (corrected for diagnosis of dementia) as independent ones. Higher comorbidity, previous acute hospitalization, older age, male sex, and shorter duration of dementia symptoms have been shown to be risk factors for hospitalization in AD patients [11]. [...]causes of death may vary by level of cognitive impairment, because this may make patients less able to recognize and report potentially harmful symptoms, thereby delaying efficacious therapy [12].

Thyroid hormones increase peripheral oxygen consumption, heart contractility, and heart rate but decrease systemic vascular resistance [71]. [...]high serum levels of thyroid hormones promote an exaggerated contractile and chronotropic response to catecholamines [72]. Patients presenting with suspected TTC are mostly evaluated by emergency department physicians, often staffing specific chest pain units [83]. [...]it seems reasonable that they are sufficiently trained also in the diagnosis and treatment of endocrine diseases because therapeutical approach is based on supportive therapy associated with specific hormonal deficiency treatment.

Low-cost robots are characterized by low computational resources and limited energy supply. Path planning algorithms aim to find the optimal path between two points so the robot consumes as little energy as possible. However, these algorithms were not developed considering computational limitations (i.e., processing and memory capacity). This paper presents the HCTNav path-planning algorithm (HCTLab research group’s navigation algorithm). This algorithm was designed to be run in low-cost robots for indoor navigation. The results of the comparison between HCTNav and the Dijkstra’s algorithms show that HCTNav’s memory peak is nine times lower than Dijkstra’s in maps with more than 150,000 cells.