Mirror image artifact mimicking heterotopic pregnancy on transvaginal ultrasound: case series

Vaginal bleeding in early pregnancy is a common emergency department complaint. Point-of-care ultrasound is a useful tool to evaluate for intrauterine ectopic pregnancy. Emergency physicians performing these studies need to be cognizant of artifacts produced by ultrasound technology, as they can lead to misdiagnosis. We present two cases where mirror-image artifacts initially led to a concern for heterotopic pregnancies but were excluded on further imaging

Assessing suicide risk in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder: a dimensional approach

Objectives: Although an association has been found recently between obsessive-compulsive disorder and an increased risk of suicide, the prevalence of both suicidal ideation and attempts vary considerably and are generally assessed categorically. Our aims were to evaluate the prevalence of suicidal ideation and behaviors using a dimensional approach. Methods: The sample included 129 patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Suicidality was assessed by administering the Columbia-Suicide Severity Rating Scale. Logistic and linear regres-sions were used to examine predictors of suicidal ideation, severe suicidal ideation, and suicidal behavior. Results: The lifetime prevalence of suicidal ideation and behaviors were 64.3% and 16.3%, respectively. Lifetime suicidal ideation was associated with the number of stressful life events, duration of illness, Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression scores, and family history of mood disorders. A family history of obsessive-compulsive disorder was associated with a lower probability of lifetime suicidal ideation. Severe suicidal ideation was related to greater severity of the most stressful life event, Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression scores, and longer duration of untreated illness. The probability of lifetime suicidal behavior was related to Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety scores, symmetry obsessions, and washing and checking compulsions. The probability of lifetime non-suicidal self-injurious behaviors was related to Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety scores. Conclusions: Recognizing predictors of suicidal ideation/behavior is crucial to identifying patients at greater risk

Cyclic and Torsional Fatigue Resistance of Seven Rotary Systems

Introduction: This study aims to evaluate the cyclic and torsional fatigue resistance of seven rotary systems. Methods and Materials: A total of 140 instruments were tested, 20 of each system including Genius (GN) 25/0.04, TruShape (TS) 25/0.06, Logic (LOG) 25/0.06 taper, Vortex Blue (VB) 25/0.06, ProTaper Gold (PTG) 25/0.08, Hyflex CM (HCM) 25/0.06 and Hyflex EDM (EDM) 25/0.08 taper. Cyclic fatigue resistance testing was performed using an artificial stainless steel canal with a curvature (60° angle and 5-mm radius) located at 5 mm from the tip. The files (n=10) rotated until fracture, and time was recorded in seconds. The torsional test was evaluated according to ISO 3630-1. Data were analysed with one-way ANOVA and Tukey’s tests (α=5%). The fractured surface of the instruments were assessed using scanning electron microscopy to confirm the type of fracture. Results: The cyclic fatigue resistance value of EDM was significantly higher than those of all tested instruments (P<0.05). LOG showed a higher cyclic fatigue resistance than GN or TS (P<0.05). There was no difference among the other groups (P>0.05). The torsional test showed that PTG 25/0.08 had the highest torsional strength value of all instruments tested followed by VB and EDM (P<0.05). The LOG showed significant difference only with GN (P<0.05). No difference was found among the other groups (P>0.05). In relation to angular deflection, the GN; TS; HCM, and EDM showed significantly higher values until fracture than the other groups (P<0.05). No difference was found among PTG, LOG, and VB (P>0.05). Conclusion: Our in vitro study EDM group had the highest cyclic fatigue resistance among all the tested instruments. For the torsional test, the PTG showed highest torsional strength and lowest angular deflection values

Molecular Coancestry and Classical Genetic Distances Depict Different Patterns of Relationship Among Sheep Breeds from Southern Italy

Several molecular-based parameters, such as similarity indexes, can be adopted to optimize the management of genetic diversity in conservation programmes. From simulated data, Oliehoek et al. (2006) showed that molecular coancestry (Toro et al., 2002) is, among the possible relatedness estimators, the one that performs better in structured populations, such as populations in need of conservation usually are. Several studies have, therefore, proposed the use of molecular coancestry coefficients as a measure of genetic variability and as a useful tool for conservation of endangered breeds (Ciampolini et al., 2007; Glowatzki-Mullis et al., 2009). Here we report the results obtained evaluating within- and between-breed molecular coancestry (Toro et al., 2002), together with other classical genetic parameters, for two insular sheep breeds (Sarda from Sardinia and Comisana from Sicily), recently spread almost all over Italy, and for five local rare sheep breeds from Southern Italy

Increased typhoon activity in the Pacific deep tropics driven by Little Ice Age circulation changes

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2020. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Nature Research for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Bramante, J. F., Ford, M. R., Kench, P. S., Ashton, A. D., Toomey, M. R., Sullivan, R. M., Karnauskas, K. B., Ummenhofer, C. C., & Donnelly, J. P. (2020). Increased typhoon activity in the Pacific deep tropics driven by Little Ice Age circulation changes. Nature Geoscience, 13, 806–811. doi:10.1038/s41561-020-00656-2.The instrumental record reveals that tropical cyclone activity is sensitive to oceanic and atmospheric variability on inter-annual and decadal scales. However, our understanding of the influence of climate on tropical cyclone behaviour is restricted by the short historical record and the sparseness of prehistorical reconstructions, particularly in the western North Pacific, where coastal communities suffer loss of life and livelihood from typhoons annually. Here, to explore past regional typhoon dynamics, we reconstruct three millennia of deep tropical North Pacific cyclogenesis. Combined with existing records, our reconstruction demonstrates that low-baseline typhoon activity prior to 1350 ce was followed by an interval of frequent storms during the Little Ice Age. This pattern, concurrent with hydroclimate proxy variability, suggests a centennial-scale link between Pacific hydroclimate and tropical cyclone climatology. An ensemble of global climate models demonstrates a migration of the Pacific Walker circulation and variability in two Pacific climate modes during the Little Ice Age, which probably contributed to enhanced tropical cyclone activity in the tropical western North Pacific. In the next century, projected changes to the Pacific Walker circulation and expansion of the tropics will invert these Little Ice Age hydroclimate trends, potentially reducing typhoon activity in the deep tropical Pacific.This work was supported by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP RC-2336). C.C.U. acknowledges support from NSF under AGS-1602455. We thank student intern D. Carter for extensive labwork on core LTD3. We acknowledge the WCRP’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modelling groups for producing and making available their model output. CMIP5 model output was provided by the WHOI CMIP5 Community Storage Server via their website: http://cmip5.whoi.edu/. Any use of trade, firm or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the US Government.2021-05-1

THE BREED TRACEABILITY OF SHEEP MEAT BY USING MOLECULAR GENETICS METHODS: PRELIMINARY RESULTS

Safety and quality foods of animal origin are extremely important for consumers. The aim of this work was to evaluate the feasibility of a method to track the breed origin of sheep meat all along the production chain using molecular genetics tools. A total of 800 samples evenly distributed among seven Italian sheep breeds have been typed at 19 STR markers, together with 90 samples from both imported sheep animals and local crossbred animals withdrawn at slaughterhouses. A maximum likelihood assignment test was adopted to evaluate STR ability to allocate samples to their true breed of origin. Sarda animals were all correctly allocated, as well as more than 98% of samples from the other breeds. Only slightly worst allocation performances were observed for imported and crossbred animals. Preliminary results seem quite promising, though further analyses will be needed in order to better understand the statistical power of such an assignment test before implementation in the sheep meat production chain

The Universal One-Loop Effective Action

We present the universal one-loop effective action for all operators of dimension up to six obtained by integrating out massive, non-degenerate multiplets. Our general expression may be applied to loops of heavy fermions or bosons, and has been checked against partial results available in the literature. The broad applicability of this approach simplifies one-loop matching from an ultraviolet model to a lower-energy effective field theory (EFT), a procedure which is now reduced to the evaluation of a combination of matrices in our universal expression, without any loop integrals to evaluate. We illustrate the relationship of our results to the Standard Model (SM) EFT, using as an example the supersymmetric stop and sbottom squark Lagrangian and extracting from our universal expression the Wilson coefficients of dimension-six operators composed of SM fields.Comment: 30 pages, v2 contains additional comments and corrects typos, version accepted for publication in JHE

Signal yields, energy resolution, and recombination fluctuations in liquid xenon

This work presents an analysis of monoenergetic electronic recoil peaks in the dark-matter-search and calibration data from the first underground science run of the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) detector. Liquid xenon charge and light yields for electronic recoil energies between 5.2 and 661.7 keV are measured, as well as the energy resolution for the LUX detector at those same energies. Additionally, there is an interpretation of existing measurements and descriptions of electron-ion recombination fluctuations in liquid xenon as limiting cases of a more general liquid xenon re- combination fluctuation model. Measurements of the standard deviation of these fluctuations at monoenergetic electronic recoil peaks exhibit a linear dependence on the number of ions for energy deposits up to 661.7 keV, consistent with previous LUX measurements between 2-16 keV with $^3$H. We highlight similarities in liquid xenon recombination for electronic and nuclear recoils with a comparison of recombination fluctuations measured with low-energy calibration data.Comment: 11 pages, 12 figures, 3 table