University of Alcalá

About: University of Alcalá is a education organization based out in Alcalá de Henares, Spain. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 10795 authors who have published 20718 publications receiving 410089 citations. The organization is also known as: University of Alcala & University of Alcala de Henares.

Predictors of clinical outcomes in elderly patients with heart failure.

Abstract: Aims Heart failure (HF) in the elderly carries a poor prognosis. We used the SENIORS dataset of elderly HF patients aged ≥70 years in order to develop a risk model for this population. Methods and results The SENIORS trial evaluated the effects of nebivolol and enrolled 2128 patients ≥70 years with HF (ejection fraction ≤35%, or recent HF admission). We randomly selected 1400 patients from the full dataset to produce a derivation cohort and the remaining 728 patients were used as a validation cohort. Baseline variables were entered into a bootstrap model with 200 iterations to determine their association with two outcomes, the composite of all-cause mortality or cardiovascular hospitalization, or all-cause mortality alone. Variables retaining a significant association with these outcomes in a multivariate model were used to develop a risk prediction score tested in the validation cohort. Five factors were associated with increased risk of both outcomes in the multivariate model: higher New York Heart Association class, higher uric acid level, lower body mass index, prior myocardial infarction, and larger left atrial (LA) dimension. For the composite outcome, peripheral arterial disease, years with heart failure, right bundle branch block, diabetes mellitus, and orthopnoea were also retained. For all-cause mortality, creatinine, 6 min walk test distance, coronary artery disease, and age were retained. Conclusion In addition to conventional prognostic markers, uric acid and LA dimension appear to be important novel risk prediction markers in elderly patients with heart failure, and could be useful in guiding management.

Toward a cell-chemistry specific life cycle assessment of lithium-ion battery recycling processes

Abstract: On the basis of a review of existing life cycle assessment studies on lithium‐ion battery recycling, we parametrize process models of state‐of‐the‐art pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical recycling, enabling their application to different cell chemistries, including beyond‐lithium batteries such as sodium‐ion batteries These processes are used as benchmark for evaluating an advanced hydrometallurgical recycling process, which is modeled on the basis of primary data obtained from a recycling company, quantifying the potential reduction of environmental impacts that can be achieved by the recycling of different cell chemistries Depending on the cell chemistry, recycling can reduce significantly the potential environmental impacts of battery production The highest benefit is obtained via advanced hydrometallurgical treatment for lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide and lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide‐type batteries, mainly because of the recovery of cobalt and nickel Especially under resource depletion aspects, recycling of these cells can reduce their impact to an extent that even leads to a lower “net impact” than that of cells made from majorly abundant and cheap materials like lithium iron phosphate, which shows a more favorable performance when recycling is disregarded For these cells, recycling does not necessarily provide benefits but can rather cause additional environmental impacts This indicates that maximum material recovery might not always be favorable under environmental aspects and that, especially for the final hydrometallurgical treatment, the process would need to be adapted to the specific cell chemistry, if one wants to obtain maximum environmental benefit