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Background Little population-based data exist about adults with primary nephrotic syndrome. Methods To evaluate kidney, cardiovascular, and mortality outcomes in adults with primary nephrotic syndrome, we identified adults within an integrated health care delivery system (Kaiser Permanente Northern California) with nephrotic-range proteinuria or diagnosed nephrotic syndrome between 1996 and 2012. Nephrologists reviewed medical records for clinical presentation, laboratory findings, and biopsy results to confirm primary nephrotic syndrome and assigned etiology. We identified a 1:100 time-matched cohort of adults without diabetes, diagnosed nephrotic syndrome, or proteinuria as controls to compare rates of ESKD, cardiovascular outcomes, and death through 2014, using multivariable Cox regression. Results We confirmed 907 patients with primary nephrotic syndrome (655 definite and 252 presumed patients with FSGS [40%], membranous nephropathy [40%], and minimal change disease [20%]). Mean age was 49 years; 43% were women. Adults with primary nephrotic syndrome had higher adjusted rates of ESKD (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 19.63; 95% confidence interval [95% CI], 12.76 to 30.20), acute coronary syndrome (aHR, 2.58; 95% CI, 1.89 to 3.52), heart failure (aHR, 3.01; 95% CI, 2.16 to 4.19), ischemic stroke (aHR, 1.80; 95% CI, 1.06 to 3.05), venous thromboembolism (aHR, 2.56; 95% CI, 1.35 to 4.85), and death (aHR, 1.34; 95% CI, 1.09 to 1.64) versus controls. Excess ESKD risk was significantly higher for FSGS and membranous nephropathy than for presumed minimal change disease. The three etiologies of primary nephrotic syndrome did not differ significantly in terms of cardiovascular outcomes and death. Conclusions Adults with primary nephrotic syndrome experience higher adjusted rates of ESKD, cardiovascular outcomes, and death, with significant variation by underlying etiology in the risk for developing ESKD.

IgM secreting myelomas or lymphomas, including Waldenström macroglobulinemia, are associated with a varied spectrum of renal pathology, including intracapillary hyaline deposits, cryoglobulin, membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis, amyloid, monoclonal immunoglobulin deposition disease, cast nephropathy, and lymphoma infiltration. We report our single institution experience, and describe five cases with distinctive glomerular pathology: intracapillary IgM pseudothrombi and thrombotic microangiopathic change, with glomerular intracellular crystals in two biopsies. Two patients were hypocomplementemic at presentation. This series adds to the recent literature on paraprotein associated thrombotic microangiopathy.

Replicated state machine is a fundamental concept used for obtaining fault tolerant distributed computation. Legacy distributed computational architectures (such as Hadoop or Zookeeper) are designed to tolerate crashes of individual machines. Later, Byzantine fault-tolerant Paxos as well as self-stabilizing Paxos were introduced. Here we present for the first time the self-stabilizing Byzantine fault-tolerant version of a distributed replicated machine. It can cope with any adversarial takeover on less than one third of the participating replicas. It also ensures automatic recovery following any transient violation of the system state, in particular after periods in which more than one third of the participants are Byzantine. A prototype of self-stabilizing Byzantine-tolerant replicated Hadoop master node has been implemented. Experiments show that fully distributed recovery of cloud infrastructures against Byzantine faults can be made practical when relying on self-stabilization in local nodes. Thus automated cloud protection against a wide variety of faults and attacks is possible.

Carbon contamination is a significant issue with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) masks because it lowers throughput and has potential effects on imaging performance. Current carbon contamination research is primarily focused on the lifetime of the multilayer surfaces, determined by reflectivity loss and reduced throughput in EUV exposure tools. However, contamination on patterned EUV masks can cause additional effects on absorbing features and can affect the printed images. In this work, various carbon contamination experiments were performed to study the impact between contamination topography and observed imaging performance. Lithographic simulation using calculated aerial images and experimentally determined resist parameters was performed and compared to the printing results to estimate the allowed carbon thickness with critical dimension compensation applied to the mask.

Optics contamination remains one of the challenges in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. Dependence of contamination rates on key EUV parameters was investigated. EUV tools have optics at different illumination angles. It was observed that at shallower angles, the carbon contamination rate and surface roughness was higher on the optics surface. This is a concern in EUV optics as higher roughness would increase the scattering of the EUV radiation. Secondary ion time of flight mass spectrometer (TOF-SIMS) data indicated that the carbon contamination film might be a polymer. Three chemical species were used to investigate the dependence of polymerization and reactivity on the contamination rate. Acrylic acid was found to have a measurable contamination rate above background compared to propionic acid and methyl methacrylate. Secondary electron dissociation is one of the mechanisms considered to be a cause for the growth of the carbon contamination film. Multiple experiments with two substrates having different secondary electron yields were performed. The substrate with the higher secondary electron yield was found to give a higher contamination rate.

The impact of carbon contamination on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) masks is significant due to throughput loss and potential effects on imaging performance. Current carbon contamination research primarily focuses on the lifetime of the multilayer surfaces, determined by reflectivity loss and reduced throughput in EUV exposure tools. However, contamination on patterned EUV masks can cause additional effects on absorbing features and the printed images, as well as impacting the efficiency of cleaning process. In this work, several different techniques were used to determine possible contamination topography. Lithographic simulations were also performed and the results compared with the experimental data.

Optics contamination remains one of the challenges in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. In addition to the desired wavelength near 13.5 nm (EUV), plasma sources used in EUV exposure tools emit a wide range of out-of-band (OOB) wavelengths extending as far as the visible region. We present experimental results of contamination rates of EUV and OOB light using a Xe plasma source and filters. Employing heated carbon tape as a source of hydrocarbons, we have measured the wavelength dependence of carbon contamination on a Ru-capped mirror. These results are compared to contamination rates on TiO 2 and ZrO 2 capping layers.

Typical extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photoresist is known to outgas carbon-containing molecules, which is of particular concern to the industry as these molecules tend to contaminate optics and diminish reflectivity. This prompted extensive work to measure these species and the quantities that they outgas in a vacuum environment. Experiments were performed to test whether the outgassing rate of these carbon-containing molecules is directly proportional to the rate at which the EUV photons arrive and whether a very high power exposure will cause the same amount of outgassing as a much lower power exposure with the dose unchanged.

Carbon contamination of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) masks and its effect on imaging is a significant issue due to lowered throughput and potential effects on imaging performance. In this work, a series of carbon contamination experiments were performed on a patterned EUV mask. Contaminated features were then inspected with a reticle scanning electron microscope (SEM) and printed with the SEMATECH Berkeley Microfield-Exposure tool (MET) [1]. In addition, the mask was analyzed using the SEMATECH Berkeley Actinic-Inspection tool (AIT) [2] to determine the effect of carbon contamination on the absorbing features and printing performance. To understand the contamination topography, simulations were performed based on calculated aerial images and resist parameters. With the knowledge of the topography, simulations were then used to predict the effect of other thicknesses of the contamination layer, as well as the imaging performance on printed features.

Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photoresists are known to outgas during exposure to EUV radiation in the vacuum environment. This is of particular concern since some of the outgassed species may contaminate the nearby EUV optics and cause a loss of reflectivity and therefore throughput of the EUV exposure tools. Due to this issue, work has been performed to measure the species and quantities that outgas from EUV resists. Additionally, since the goal of these measurements is to determine the relative safety of various resists near EUV optics, work has been performed to measure the deposition rate of the outgassed molecules on Mo/Si-coated witness plate samples. The results for various species and tests show little measurable effect from resist components on optics contamination with modest EUV exposure doses.

The Mo/Si multilayer mirrors used for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography can become contaminated during exposure in the presence of some hydrocarbons [1-3]. Because this leads to a loss in the reflectivity of the optics and throughput of the exposure tools, it needs to be avoided. Since photoresists are known to outgas during exposure to EUV radiation in a vacuum environment, the careful choice of materials is important to preserving the EUV optics. Work therefore has been performed to measure the species and quantities of molecules that outgas from EUV resists when exposed to EUV radiation [4-7].