Cardiorenal Systems Modeling: Left Ventricular Hypertrophy and Differential Effects of Antihypertensive Therapies on Hypertrophy Regression.

Cardiac and renal function are inextricably connected through both hemodynamic and neurohormonal mechanisms, and the interaction between these organ systems plays an important role in adaptive and pathophysiologic remodeling of the heart, as well as in the response to renally acting therapies. Insufficient understanding of the integrative function or dysfunction of these physiological systems has led to many examples of unexpected or incompletely understood clinical trial results. Mathematical models of heart and kidney physiology have long been used to better understand the function of these organs, but an integrated model of renal function and cardiac function and cardiac remodeling has not yet been published. Here we describe an integrated cardiorenal model that couples existing cardiac and renal models, and expands them to simulate cardiac remodeling in response to pressure and volume overload, as well as hypertrophy regression in response to angiotensin receptor blockers and beta-blockers. The model is able to reproduce different patterns of hypertrophy in response to pressure and volume overload. We show that increases in myocyte diameter are adaptive in pressure overload not only because it normalizes wall shear stress, as others have shown before, but also because it limits excess volume accumulation and further elevation of cardiac stresses by maintaining cardiac output and renal sodium and water balance. The model also reproduces the clinically observed larger LV mass reduction with angiotensin receptor blockers than with beta blockers. We further provide a mechanistic explanation for this difference by showing that heart rate lowering with beta blockers limits the reduction in peak systolic wall stress (a key signal for myocyte hypertrophy) relative to ARBs.

Highly Efficient Pure-Blue Light-Emitting Diodes Based on Rubidium and Chlorine Alloyed Metal Halide Perovskite.

Perovskite light-emitting diodes (PeLEDs) are promising candidates for display and solid-state lighting, due to their tunable colors, high conversion efficiencies, and low cost. However, the performance of blue PeLEDs is far inferior to that of the near-infrared, red, and green counterparts. Here, the fabrication of pure-blue PeLEDs with an emission peak at 475 nm, a peak external quantum efficiency of 10.1%, and a maximum luminance of 14 000 cd m-2 is demonstrated by tailoring the compositions of perovskites. The pure-blue electroluminescence is achieved by simultaneous addition of rubidium and chlorine ions into CsPbBr3 and incorporation of phenylethylammonium chloride forms quasi-2D hybrid perovskites. The combination of these composition engineering results in blueshifted emissions without reducing the quantum yield. The judicious alloying is shown to be critical to result in the better morphology with suppressed current leakage and enhanced light outcoupling.

Tailoring solvent coordination for high-speed, room-temperature blading of perovskite photovoltaic films.

The efficiencies of small-pixel perovskite photovoltaics have increased to above 24%, while most reported fabrication methods cannot be transferred to scalable manufacturing process. Here, we report a method of fast blading large-area perovskite films at an unprecedented speed of 99 mm/s under ambient conditions by tailoring solvent coordination capability. Combing volatile noncoordinating solvents to Pb2+ and low-volatile, coordinating solvents achieves both fast drying and large perovskite grains at room temperature. The reproducible fabrication yields a certified module efficiency of 16.4%, with an aperture area of 63.7 cm2. This method can be applied for various perovskite compositions. The perovskite modules also show a small temperature coefficient of -0.13%/°C and nearly fully recoverable efficiency after 58 cycles of shading, much better than commercial silicon and thin-film solar modules.

Exposure-response modeling of flow-mediated dilation provides an unbiased and informative measure of endothelial function.

The brachial artery flow-mediated dilation (FMD) test is the most widely utilized method to evaluate endothelial function noninvasively in humans by calculating the percent change in diameter (FMD%). However, the underutilized velocity and diameter time course data, coupled with confounding influences in shear exposure, noise, and upward bias, make the FMD test less desirable. In this study, we developed an exposure-response, model-based approach that not only quantifies FMD based on the rich velocity and diameter data, it overcomes previously acknowledged challenges. FMD data were obtained from 15 apparently healthy participants, each exposed to four different cuff occlusion durations. The velocity response following cuff release was described by an exponential model with two parameters defining peak velocity and rate of decay. Shear exposure derived from velocity was used to drive the diameter response model, which consists of additive constriction and dilation terms. Three parameters describing distinct aspects of the vascular response to shear (magnitude of the initial constriction response, and magnitude and time constant of the dilation response) were estimated for both the individuals and population. These parameters are independent of shear exposure. Thus this approach produces identifiable and physiologically meaningful parameters that may provide additional information for comparing differences between experimental groups or over time, and provides a means to completely account for shear exposure.NEW & NOTEWORTHY While flow-mediated dilation (FMD) is a valuable tool for evaluating endothelial function, analytical challenges include confounding influences of shear exposure, upward bias, and underutilization of rich time course data collected during FMD testing. We have developed an exposure-response, model-based approach that quantifies endothelial function based on the velocity and diameter data and fully accounts for shear exposure. It produces physiologically meaningful parameters that may provide useful information for comparing differences between experimental groups or over time.