OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to determine the characteristics of patients without Helicobacter pylori infection who were prescribed antacid medications (potassium-competitive acid blockers, proton pump inhibitors, and/or H2 receptor antagonist) and had no upper gastrointestinal lesions detected by endoscopy. METHODS This cross-sectional study included the patients who underwent upper gastrointestinal endoscopy in our institution between August 2017 and July 2018. They were aged from 55 to 89 years, had no upper gastrointestinal lesions detected by endoscopy, and no H. pylori infection. Exclusion criteria comprised low-dose aspirin and/or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. The subjects were allocated to middle-aged (55-69 years) and older age groups (70-89 years). The relationships between antacid medications and patient lifestyle and comorbidities were evaluated by multivariate analyses. RESULTS Of the 420 patients, 272 were in the middle-aged group and 148 patients in the older age group. Age was found to be a risk factor for antacid medications in both groups (p = 0.002, p = 0.007). No other lifestyle related factors were risk factors. As to comorbidities, hiatal hernia was positively associated with antacid medications in the middle-aged group (p = 0.002). Hypertension and Ca-blockers were positively associated with prescription of antacids in the older age group (p = 0.013); this association was not significant in the middle-aged group. CONCLUSIONS Three lifestyle-related and/or comorbidity-associated factors known to exacerbate gastroesophageal reflux, namely, age, hiatus hernia, and Ca-blockers, were associated with prescription of antacid medications, even in patients without endoscopic reflux esophagitis. © 2020 S. Karger AG, Basel.Hyponatremia is frequent in cancer patients and potentially deleterious. Cancer patients have specific requirements due to the nature and treatment of their disease, which can directly impact the occurrence and severity of hyponatremia, and limit treatment choices. Although essential for successful hyponatremia management, appropriate diagnostic testing is not routinely performed in the current practice. Despite clear evidence that hyponatremia is associated with poor outcome in oncology patients, most patients are still hyponatremic while under observation. Guidance on specific treatment of cancer patients with hyponatremia is needed to optimize patient care in the face of these challenges. © 2019 S. Karger AG, Basel.The electronic properties of β-PbO2, have been controversial for several decades. Experiments find metallic behavior, attributed to oxygen vacancies, to indirect semiconducting for stoichiometric samples with a gap of 0.61 eV. Theory leads to similar ambiguities, and predicts this phase to be metallic (PBE, HSE06) or to possess a small bandgap (HSE06). An area where this inconsistency is amplified, is when a material behavior depends on the electronic structure in the vicinity of the Fermi energy, such as topological states. In our work, we use a self-consistent DFT+U approach and find that stoichiometric β-PbO2to be an indirect semiconductor with a band gap of ~0.8 eV, similar to experiment. The larger bandgap requires at least ~4% strain, to drive β-PbO2into a nodal line semimetallic state, significantly larger strains than reported previously. Moreover, we find that the nodal line semimetallic state is not protected against spin-orbit-coupling. These conclusions are further corroborated by our surface computations, that do not show any evidence for topologically protected states near the Fermi energy. Therefore, our results strongly suggest that β-PbO2is a topologically trivial material, consistent with experiment, but in stark contrast to previous computations. Previously reported topologically protected states in β-PbO2are attributed to an inaccurate description of the (bulk) optical properties.  https://www.selleckchem.com/products/oicr-9429.html  © 2020 IOP Publishing Ltd.Deformable image registration (DIR) of 4D-CT images is important in multiple radiation therapy applications including motion tracking of soft tissue or fiducial markers, target definition, image fusion, dose accumulation and treatment response evaluations. It is very challenging to accurately and quickly register 4D-CT abdominal images due to its large appearance variances and bulky sizes. In this study, we proposed an accurate and fast multi-scale DIR network (MS-DIRNet) for abdominal 4D-CT registration. MS-DIRNet consists of a global network (GlobalNet) and local network (LocalNet). GlobalNet was trained using down-sampled whole image volumes while LocalNet was trained using sampled image patches. MS-DIRNet consists of a generator and a discriminator. The generator was trained to directly predict a deformation vector field (DVF) based on the moving and target images. The generator was implemented using convolutional neural networks with multiple attention gates. The discriminator was trained to differentiat alignment. © 2020 Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine.Multi-walled Carbon Nanotubes (MWCNTs) are a contemporary class of nanoparticles that have a prominent thermal, electrical and mechanical properties. There have been numerous studies on the enhancement of thermophysical properties of nanofluids. However, there is only limited research on thermal and stability analysis of MWCNT nanofluids with various kinds of solvents or base fluids, namely Propylene glycol, Ethanol, Ethylene glycol, Polyethylene glycol, Methanol and water. This paper reports the enhancement of thermophysical properties and stability of MWCNTs with six different base fluids in the presence of Sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (SDBS) surfactant with a mass concentration of 0.5 wt.%. Thermal and dispersion stabilities were determined using a Thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) and Zeta potential, along with a visual inspection method to evaluate the agglomeration or sedimentation of MWCNT nanoparticles over a period of one month. Ultraviolet-Visible Spectroscopy (UV-Vis) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) were utilized to identify the molecular components and light absorption of the formulated nanofluids at their maximum wavenumber (4500 cm-1) and wavelength (800 nm). In addition, thermophysical properties such as thermal conductivity, specific heat capacity, viscosity and density with a peak temperature of 200°C were also experimentally evaluated. The TGA results illustrated that MWCNT/Ethylene Glycol (EG) nanofluid achieved maximum thermal stability at 140°C and it revealed a maximum zeta potential value of -61.8 mV. Thus, ethylene glycol solution was found to be the best base liquid to homogenize with MWCNTs for acquiring an enhanced thermophysical property and a long-term stability. © 2020 IOP Publishing Ltd.