Intestinal obstruction caused by a Meckel’s diverticulum adherent to an infected urachal cyst

Urachal remnant diseases are rare and frequently misdiagnosed, as the clinical presentation is similar to more common causes of intra-abdominal and pelvic disease. We report the rare case of a 1½-year-old boy with small-bowel obstruction caused by an adhesion band between a Meckel’s diverticulum and an infected urachal cyst. The condition was initially misdiagnosed and treated as a periappendiceal abscess on the basis of clinical examination and ultrasonography findings. In addition to the case report, we present an overview of urachal diseases

Linear-response Description of the Series Resistance of Large-area Silicon Solar Cells: Resolving the Difference between Dark and Illuminated Behavior

AbstractDirectly from luminescence images it can be shown that, for constant average injection (lumped dark current) and for not-too-large lateral voltage differences, besides the sign, the current flow direction doesn’t play any role for the voltages present, so the series resistances in the dark and under illumination are the same. This fits to the results of a linear-response based series resistance description, treating lateral voltage differences on large-area silicon solar cells in linear order in the series resistance as deviation from the case of zero resistance. In this approach it is found that for constant lumped dark current, emitter and grid of a large-area solar cell can be described as a passive network. Therefore, no difference occurs in the voltage distribution caused by inward and outward currents except for the sign. This contradicts several literature works reporting a smaller lumped series resistance of silicon solar cells in the dark than under illumination. However, we show that this contradiction is just a result of the series resistance definition applied in the respective works or that it can be the result of unsuitable measurement conditions. In a numerical modeling of a large-area silicon solar cell as a 1D distributed structure, using exactly the same parameters as Araújo et al. [IEEE-TED 33 (3), 391–401 (1986)] but calculating the lumped series resistance from the integrated Joule losses, we obtain completely different results than Araújo et al.: Under short-circuit condition, the series resistance stays constant, and there is no difference between the open-circuit and dark series resistance; the latter show the same dependence on the diode current density

Семантическая эволюция и национальная специфика имени концепта FAMILIE по лексикографическим данным

Статья посвящена исследованию одного из базовых концептов немецкой лингвокультуры, обозначенного словом "Familie". Актуальность этой темы обусловлена необходимостью выявления не только универсальных признаков концепта семьи, значимого для любого человеческого сообщества, но и идиоэтнических признаков данного концепта или его национальных аналогов. Предлагаемая работа выполнена на основе лексикографических сведений в синхронно-диахронном плане. В ней представлены результаты использования таких способов лингвоконцептологического исследования, как историко-этимологический анализ, дефиниционный анализ, сравнительный приём. Семантическое сопоставление ключевого немецкого слова "Familie" и ключевого русского «семья» проведено на материале этимологических и толковых словарей соответственно немецкого и русского языков. Путём установления семантической эволюции имени концепта FAMILIE определяется ядерная часть рассматриваемого ментально-культурного образования

Rhino Conjunctivitis and Asthma Among Seafood Processing Workers in Greenland. A Cross-Sectional Study

Introduction: The fishing- and the seafood processing industries are the largest industrial sectors in Greenland. Despite this, only a few cases of occupational diseases in this industry have been reported to the Danish Labor Market Insurance. Occupational asthma and allergy are well-known occupational diseases in the seafood processing industry worldwide and underreporting of occupational diseases in Greenland is suspected.Objective: The aim of the current study was to examine the associations between job exposures and occupational asthma and rhino conjunctivitis in workers in the Greenlandic seafood processing industry and to compare the prevalence of sensitization by type and degree of exposure to snow crab, shrimp, fish, and the fish parasite, Anisakis simplex.Methods: Data from 382 Greenlandic seafood processing workers were collected during 2016–2018. Data included questionnaire answers, lung function measurements, skin prick tests, and blood samples with ImmunoCAP. For all analyses, p < 0.05 was considered the level of significance.Results: 5.5% of the workers had occupational asthma and 4.6% had occupational rhino conjunctivitis. A large proportion of the workers were sensitized to allergens specific to the workplace; 18.1% to snow crab, 13.6% to shrimp, 1.4% to fish, and 32.6% to the fish parasite, A. simplex. We found a dose-response relationship between the risk of being sensitized to snow crab and A. simplex and years of exposure to the allergens in the seafood processing industry.Conclusion: This study showed that a considerable proportion of workers in the Greenlandic seafood processing industry had occupational asthma and rhino conjunctivitis. Additionally, the study showed high sensitization levels toward snow crab, shrimp, and the fish parasite, A. simplex. This supports the hypothesis of a considerable degree of underreporting of occupational allergic airway disease in the Greenlandic seafood processing industry. Prospectively, it is important to inform workers, leaders, and health care professionals of the health problems and the law on worker's compensation, and to initiate preventive actions at factory and trawler level

Genomic structural variations lead to dysregulation of important coding and non-coding RNA species in dilated cardiomyopathy

The transcriptome needs to be tightly regulated by mechanisms that include transcription factors, enhancers, and repressors as well as non-coding RNAs. Besides this dynamic regulation, a large part of phenotypic variability of eukaryotes is expressed through changes in gene transcription caused by genetic variation. In this study, we evaluate genome-wide structural genomic variants (SVs) and their association with gene expression in the human heart. We detected 3,898 individual SVs affecting all classes of gene transcripts (e.g., mRNA, miRNA, lncRNA) and regulatory genomic regions (e.g., enhancer or TFBS). In a cohort of patients (n = 50) with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), 80,635 non-protein-coding elements of the genome are deleted or duplicated by SVs, containing 3,758 long non-coding RNAs and 1,756 protein-coding transcripts. 65.3% of the SV-eQTLs do not harbor a significant SNV-eQTL, and for the regions with both classes of association, we find similar effect sizes. In case of deleted protein-coding exons, we find downregulation of the associated transcripts, duplication events, however, do not show significant changes over all events. In summary, we are first to describe the genomic variability associated with SVs in heart failure due to DCM and dissect their impact on the transcriptome. Overall, SVs explain up to 7.5% of the variation of cardiac gene expression, underlining the importance to study human myocardial gene expression in the context of the individual genome. This has immediate implications for studies on basic mechanisms of cardiac maladaptation, biomarkers, and (gene) therapeutic studies alike

Biogeochemical functioning of the Baltic Sea

Location, specific topography, and hydrographic setting together with climate change and strong anthropogenic pressure are the main factors shaping the biogeochemical functioning and thus also the ecological status of the Baltic Sea. The recent decades have brought significant changes in the Baltic Sea. First, the rising nutrient loads from land in the second half of the 20th century led to eutrophication and spreading of hypoxic and anoxic areas, for which permanent stratification of the water column and limited ventilation of deep-water layers made favourable conditions. Since the 1980s the nutrient loads to the Baltic Sea have been continuously decreasing. This, however, has so far not resulted in significant improvements in oxygen availability in the deep regions, which has revealed a slow response time of the system to the reduction of the land-derived nutrient loads. Responsible for that is the low burial efficiency of phosphorus at anoxic conditions and its remobilization from sediments when conditions change from oxic to anoxic. This results in a stoichiometric excess of phosphorus available for organic-matter production, which promotes the growth of N2-fixing cyanobacteria and in turn supports eutrophication. This assessment reviews the available and published knowledge on the biogeochemical functioning of the Baltic Sea. In its content, the paper covers the aspects related to changes in carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus (C, N, and P) external loads, their transformations in the coastal zone, changes in organic-matter production (eutrophication) and remineralization (oxygen availability), and the role of sediments in burial and turnover of C, N, and P. In addition to that, this paper focuses also on changes in the marine CO2 system, the structure and functioning of the microbial community, and the role of contaminants for biogeochemical processes. This comprehensive assessment allowed also for identifying knowledge gaps and future research needs in the field of marine biogeochemistry in the Baltic Sea.Peer reviewe