Robotic Partial Nephrectomy for a Peripheral Renal Tumor

Partial nephrectomy (PN) is the preferred surgical treatment for T1 renal tumors whenever technically feasible. When properly performed, it allows preservation of nephron mass without compromising oncologic outcomes. This reduces the postoperative risk of renal insufficiency, which translates into better overall survival for the patients. PN can be technically challenging, because it requires the surgeon to complete the tasks of tumor excision, hemostasis and renorrhaphy, all within an ischemic time of preferably below 30 minutes. The surgeon needs to avoid violating the tumor margins while leaving behind the maximal parenchymal volume at the same time. Variations such as zero ischemia, early unclamping, and selective clamping have been developed in an attempt to reduce the negative impact of renal ischemia, but inevitably add to the steep learning curves for any surgeon. Being able to appreciate the fine details of each surgical step in PN is the fundamental basis to the success of this surgery. The use of the robotic assistance allows a good combination of the minimally invasive nature of laparoscopic surgery and the surgical exposure and dexterity of open surgery. It also allows the use of adjuncts such as concurrent ultrasound assessment of the renal mass and intraoperative fluorescence to aid the identification of tumor margins, all with a simple hand switch at the console. Robot-assisted laparoscopic PN is now the most commonly performed type of PN in the United States and is gaining acceptance on the global scale. In this video, we illustrate the steps of robot-assisted laparoscopic PN and highlight the technical key points for success

Detection of Methylated Circulating DNA as Noninvasive Biomarkers for Breast Cancer Diagnosis

Internationally, breast cancer is the most common female cancer, and is induced by a combination of environmental, genetic, and epigenetic risk factors. Despite the advancement of imaging techniques, invasive sampling of breast epithelial cells is the only definitive diagnostic procedure for patients with breast cancer. To date, molecular biomarkers with high sensitivity and specificity for the screening and early detection of breast cancer are lacking. Recent evidence suggests that the detection of methylated circulating cell-free DNA in the peripheral blood of patients with cancer may be a promising quantitative and noninvasive method for cancer diagnosis. Methylation detection based on a multi-gene panel, rather than on the methylation status of a single gene, may be used to increase the sensitivity and specificity of breast cancer screening. In this review, the results of 14 relevant studies, investigating the efficacy of cell-free DNA methylation screening for breast cancer diagnosis, have been summarized. The genetic risk factors for breast cancer, the methods used for breast cancer detection, and the techniques and limitations related to the detection of cell-free DNA methylation status, have also been reviewed and discussed. From this review, we conclude that the analysis of peripheral blood or other samples to detect differentially methylated cell-free DNA is a promising technique for use in clinical settings, and may improve the sensitivity of screening for both, early detection and disease relapse, and thus improve the future prognosis of patients with breast cancer.published_or_final_versio

Seizing new possibilities for expanding the scope of Cybersecurity Research in Information Systems

As Cybersecurity continues to have a significant impact on modern society, there is a pressing need for a more comprehensive research agenda in Information Systems (IS). In this study, we conducted a thorough literature review of prominent IS journals to identify gaps in Cybersecurity research practices. Our findings indicate that there is a significant gap between research and practice, particularly in terms of focus on Cybersecurity behavioural factors in the past decade. To address this gap, we recommend that future Cybersecurity research in IS should adopt a broader perspective that incorporates relevant sociotechnical knowledge areas and theories. We provide an example of Cybersecurity research topics that go beyond behavioural aspects and suggest mapping of Cybersecurity sociotechnical research knowledge areas in Information Systems to guide future research efforts. This study highlights the importance of broadening the scope of Cybersecurity research in IS to address the complex Cybersecurity challenges in contemporary practice

Quarkonia and Quark Drip Lines in Quark-Gluon Plasma

We extract the $Q$-$\bar Q$ potential by using the thermodynamic quantities obtained in lattice gauge calculations. The potential is tested and found to give dissociation temperatures that agree well with those from lattice gauge spectral function analysis. Using such a $Q$-$\bar Q$ potential, we examine the quarkonium states in a quark-gluon plasma and determine the `quark drip lines' which separate the region of bound color-singlet $Q\bar Q$ states from the unbound region. The characteristics of the quark drip lines severely limit the region of possible bound $Q\bar Q$ states with light quarks to temperatures close to the phase transition temperature. Bound quarkonia with light quarks may exist very near the phase transition temperature if their effective quark mass is of the order of 300-400 MeV and higher.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figures, in LaTe

Potential Models and Lattice Gauge Current-Current Correlators

We compare current-current correlators in lattice gauge calculations with correlators in different potential models, for a pseudoscalar charmonium in the quark-gluon plasma. An important ingredient in the evaluation of the current-current correlator in the potential model is the basic principle that out of the set of continuum states, only resonance states and Gamow states with lifetimes of sufficient magnitudes can propagate as composite objects and can contribute to the current-current correlator. When the contributions from the bound states and continuum states are properly treated, the potential model current-current correlators obtained with the potential proposed in Ref. [11] are consistent with the lattice gauge correlators. The proposed potential model thus gains support to be a useful tool to complement lattice gauge calculations for the study of $Q\bar Q$ states at high temperatures.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Physcial Review

Tests of Two-Body Dirac Equation Wave Functions in the Decays of Quarkonium and Positronium into Two Photons

Two-Body Dirac equations of constraint dynamics provide a covariant framework to investigate the problem of highly relativistic quarks in meson bound states. This formalism eliminates automatically the problems of relative time and energy, leading to a covariant three dimensional formalism with the same number of degrees of freedom as appears in the corresponding nonrelativistic problem. It provides bound state wave equations with the simplicity of the nonrelativistic Schroedinger equation. Here we begin important tests of the relativistic sixteen component wave function solutions obtained in a recent work on meson spectroscopy, extending a method developed previously for positronium decay into two photons. Preliminary to this we examine the positronium decay in the 3P_{0,2} states as well as the 1S_0. The two-gamma quarkonium decays that we investigate are for the \eta_{c}, \eta_{c}^{\prime}, \chi_{c0}, \chi_{c2}, \pi^{0}, \pi_{2}, a_{2}, and f_{2}^{\prime} mesons. Our results for the four charmonium states compare well with those from other quark models and show the particular importance of including all components of the wave function as well as strong and CM energy dependent potential effects on the norm and amplitude. The results for the \pi^{0}, although off the experimental rate by 15%, is much closer than the usual expectations from a potential model. We conclude that the Two-Body Dirac equations lead to wave functions which provide good descriptions of the two-gamma decay amplitude and can be used with some confidence for other purposes.Comment: 79 pages, included new sections on covariant scalar product and added pages on positronium decay for 3P0 and 3P_2 state