The value of flexible sigmoidoscopy for patients with bright red rectal bleeding

Objective. To review the diagnostic yield of flexible sigmoidoscopy in patients presenting with bright red rectal bleeding. Design. Retrospective study. Setting. University teaching hospital, Hong Kong. Subjects and methods. Patients who underwent flexible sigmoidoscopy between January 1995 and April 1996 for investigation of bright red rectal bleeding were recruited. The extent of the endoscopic examination, complications, and endoscopic findings were recorded. Results. A total of 1052 patients were included in the study. The mean length of endoscopic examination was 55 cm. There were no complications attributed to the procedure. Thirteen (1.2%) patients aged from 41 to 87 years were found to have malignant tumours that were not palpable on digital examination. All the tumours were moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma. Two patients had synchronous liver metastasis at presentation. Adenomatous polyps were detected in 81 (7.7%) patients, of whom 76 were older than 40 years. The majority of polyps were tubular adenomas associated with mild or moderate dysplasia. Other endoscopic findings included hyperplastic and juvenile polyps, proctocolitis, diverticulosis, irradiation colitis, ischaemic colitis, rectal ulcers, and infective colitis. The overall diagnostic yield was 21.1%. No mucosal lesion was detected by flexible sigmoidoscopy in 78.9% of patients in whom the rectal bleeding was due to either haemorrhoids or anal fissure. Conclusions. Cancer was detected in 1.2% and adenomatous polyps in 7.7% of patients with bright red rectal bleeding using flexible sigmoidoscopy. All cancers and 94% of adenomatous polyps were detected in patients older than 40 years. Flexible sigmoidoscopy appears to be a valuable initial investigation for bright red rectal bleeding in patients older than 40 years.published_or_final_versio

Value of gastrografin in adhesive small bowel obstruction after unsuccessful conservative treatment: A prospective evaluation

Aim: Gastrografin is a hyperosmolar water-soluble contrast medium. Besides its predictive value for the need for operative treatment, a potential therapeutic role of this agent in adhesive small bowel obstruction has been suggested. This study aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of gastrografin in adhesive small bowel obstruction when conservative treatment failed. Methods: Patients with adhesive small bowel obstruction were given trial conservative treatment unless there was fear of bowel strangulation. Those responded in the initial 48 h had conservative treatment continued. Patients who showed no improvement in the initial 48 h were given 100 mL of gastrografin through nasogastric tube followed by serial abdominal radiographs. Patients with the contrast appeared in large bowel within 24 h were regarded as having partial obstruction and conservative treatment was continued. Patients in which the contrast failed to reach large bowel within 24 h were considered to have complete obstruction and laparotomy was performed. Results: Two hundred and twelve patients with 245 episodes of adhesive obstruction were included. Fifteen patients were operated on soon after admission due to fear of strangulation. One hundred and eighty-six episodes of obstruction showed improvement in the initial 48 h and conservative treatment was continued. Two patients had subsequent operations because of persistent obstruction. Forty-four episodes of obstruction showed no improvement within 48 h and gastrografin was administered. Seven patients underwent complete obstruction surgery. Partial obstruction was demonstrated in 37 other cases, obstruction resolved subsequently in all of them except one patient who required laparotomy because of persistent obstruction. The overall operative rate in this study was 10%. There was no complication that could be attributed to the use of gastrografin. Conclusion: The use of gastrografin in adhesive small bowel obstruction after unsuccessful conservative treatment is safe and reduces the need for surgical intervention. © 2005 The WJG Press and Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.published_or_final_versio

A Three Step Blind Approach for Improving HPC Systems' Energy Performance

International audienceNowadays, there is no doubt that energy consumption has become a limiting factor in the design and operation of high performance computing (HPC) systems. This is evidenced by the rise of efforts both from the academia and the industry to reduce the energy consumption of those systems. Unlike hardware solutions, software initiatives targeting HPC systems' energy consumption reduction despite their effectiveness are often limited for reasons including: (i) the program specific nature of the solution proposed; (ii) the need of deep understanding of applications at hand; (iii) proposed solutions are often difficult to use by novices and/or are designed for single task environments. This paper propose a three step blind system-wide, application independent, fine-grain, and easy to use (user friendly) methodology for improving energy performance of HPC systems. The methodology typically breaks into phase detection, phase characterization, and phase identification and system reconfiguration. And it is blind in the sense that it does not require any knowledge from users. It relies upon reconfigurable capabilities offered by the majority of HPC subsystems -- including the processor, storage, memory, and communication subsystems -- to reduce the overall energy consumption of the system (excluding network equipments) at runtime. We also present an implementation of our methodology through which we demonstrate its effectiveness via static analyses and experiments using benchmarks representative of HPC workloads

FIH-1, a novel interactor of mindbomb, functions as an essential anti-angiogenic factor during zebrafish vascular development

Objective: It has been shown that Mindbomb (Mib), an E3 Ubiquitin ligase, is an essential modulator of Notch signaling during development. However, its effects on vascular development remain largely unknown

In-Flight Transmission of SARS-CoV-2.

Four persons with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection had traveled on the same flight from Boston, Massachusetts, USA, to Hong Kong, China. Their virus genetic sequences are identical, unique, and belong to a clade not previously identified in Hong Kong, which strongly suggests that the virus can be transmitted during air travel

Identification of furfural resistant strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Saccharomyces paradoxus from a collection of environmental and industrial isolates

Background Fermentation of bioethanol using lignocellulosic biomass as a raw material provides a sustainable alternative to current biofuel production methods by utilising waste food streams as raw material. Before lignocellulose can be fermented it requires physical, chemical and enzymatic treatment in order to release monosaccharides, a process that causes the chemical transformation of glucose and xylose into the cyclic aldehydes furfural and hydroxyfurfural. These furan compounds are potent inhibitors of Saccharomyces fermentation, and consequently furfural tolerant strains of Saccharomyces are required for lignocellulosic fermentation. Results This study investigated yeast tolerance to furfural and hydroxyfurfural using a collection of 71 environmental and industrial isolates of the baker’s yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and its closest relative Saccharomyces paradoxus. The Saccharomyces strains were initially screened for growth on media containing 100 mM glucose and 1.5 mg ml-1 furfural. Five strains were identified that showed a significant tolerance to growth in the presence of furfural and these were then screened for growth and ethanol production in the presence of increasing amounts (0.1-4 mg ml-1) of furfural. Conclusions Of the five furfural tolerant strains S. cerevisiae NCYC 3451 displayed the greatest furfural resistance, and was able to grow in the presence of up to 3.0 mg ml-1 furfural. Furthermore, ethanol production in this strain did not appear to be inhibited by furfural, with the highest ethanol yield observed at 3.0 mg ml-1 furfural. Although furfural resistance was not found to be a trait specific to any one particular lineage or population, three of the strains were isolated from environments where they might be continually exposed to low levels of furfural through the on-going natural degradation of lignocelluloses, and would therefore develop elevated levels of resistance to these furan compounds. Thus these strains represent good candidates for future studies of genetic variation relevant to understanding and manipulating furfural resistance and in the development of tolerant ethanologenic yeast strains for use in bioethanol production from lignocellulose processing

Direct Evidence for Dominant Bond-directional Interactions in a Honeycomb Lattice Iridate Na2IrO3

Heisenberg interactions are ubiquitous in magnetic materials and have been prevailing in modeling and designing quantum magnets. Bond-directional interactions offer a novel alternative to Heisenberg exchange and provide the building blocks of the Kitaev model, which has a quantum spin liquid (QSL) as its exact ground state. Honeycomb iridates, A2IrO3 (A=Na,Li), offer potential realizations of the Kitaev model, and their reported magnetic behaviors may be interpreted within the Kitaev framework. However, the extent of their relevance to the Kitaev model remains unclear, as evidence for bond-directional interactions remains indirect or conjectural. Here, we present direct evidence for dominant bond-directional interactions in antiferromagnetic Na2IrO3 and show that they lead to strong magnetic frustration. Diffuse magnetic x-ray scattering reveals broken spin-rotational symmetry even above Neel temperature, with the three spin components exhibiting nano-scale correlations along distinct crystallographic directions. This spin-space and real-space entanglement directly manifests the bond-directional interactions, provides the missing link to Kitaev physics in honeycomb iridates, and establishes a new design strategy toward frustrated magnetism.Comment: Nature Physics, accepted (2015

Spectroscopic investigation of quantum confinement effects in ion implanted silicon-on-sapphire films

Crystalline Silicon-on-Sapphire (SOS) films were implanted with boron (B$^+$) and phosphorous (P$^+$) ions. Different samples, prepared by varying the ion dose in the range $10^{14}$ to 5 x $10^{15}$ and ion energy in the range 150-350 keV, were investigated by the Raman spectroscopy, photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy and glancing angle x-ray diffraction (GAXRD). The Raman results from dose dependent B$^+$ implanted samples show red-shifted and asymmetrically broadened Raman line-shape for B$^+$ dose greater than $10^{14}$ ions cm$^{-2}$. The asymmetry and red shift in the Raman line-shape is explained in terms of quantum confinement of phonons in silicon nanostructures formed as a result of ion implantation. PL spectra shows size dependent visible luminescence at $\sim$ 1.9 eV at room temperature, which confirms the presence of silicon nanostructures. Raman studies on P$^+$ implanted samples were also done as a function of ion energy. The Raman results show an amorphous top SOS surface for sample implanted with 150 keV P$^+$ ions of dose 5 x $10^{15}$ ions cm$^{-2}$. The nanostructures are formed when the P$^+$ energy is increased to 350 keV by keeping the ion dose fixed. The GAXRD results show consistency with the Raman results.Comment: 9 Pages, 6 Figures and 1 Table, \LaTex format To appear in SILICON(SPRINGER

Iron content in forage sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) measured on different slit widths with atomic absorption spectrometry

Our objective was to know the right slit width for iron (Fe) concentration of forage sorghum, sorghum hybrid (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench), and also to discern which water treatment sludge (WTS) were good for ruminant's health with the feeding sorghum on the present study. The present experiment was carried out on a randomized block design with four treatments; Control, alum sludge compost, alum sludge + NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium fertilizers), alum sludge compost + NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium fertilizers). Sorghum hybrid was harvested, and iron content of it was analyzed with an atomic absorption spectrophotometer on background correction (BGC) mode. In order to analyze the iron (Fe) content of the sorghum with the spectrophotometer, three different slit widths conditions were used; 0.15, 0.20 and 0.25 nm. Absorbance and background values were obtained during the Fe analyses with the apparatus. When the background value is small, it is preferred for some trace metals’ analyses. Both (AM/BS) ratio (mean of the absorbance values<AM> to the standard deviation of back ground values<BS>) and (AS<standard deviation of the absorbance values>/BS) ratio, were larger on 0.25 nm slit than those on 0.15 and 0.20 nm slit, and, from our experiment, the condition seemed better on the 0.25 nm slit for the iron analysis with the spectrophotometer. Therefore, the sorghum hybrid grown on (Alum+NPK) and on (Compost only) might be dangerous for ruminants because of their higher values than 200 mg Fe/kg DM (dry matter).Key words: Absorbance, alum sludge, atomic absorption spectrophotometer, background, forage sorghum hybrid, iron, slit