Evaluation of the influence of kyphosis and scoliosis on intervertebral disc extrusion in French bulldogs

Although thoracic vertebral malformations with kyphosis and scoliosis are often considered incidental findings on diagnostic imaging studies of screw-tailed brachycephalic breeds, they have been suggested to interfere with spinal biomechanics and intervertebral disc degeneration. It is however unknown if an abnormal spinal curvature also predisposes dogs to develop clinically relevant intervertebral disc herniations. The aim of this study was to evaluate if the occurrence of thoracic vertebral malformations, kyphosis or scoliosis would be associated with a higher prevalence of cervical or thoracolumbar intervertebral disc extrusion in French bulldogs

Borderline ovarian tumor frozen section diagnoses with features suspicious of invasive cancer:a retrospective study

Abstract Background A frozen section diagnosis of a borderline ovarian tumor with suspicious features of invasive carcinoma (“at least borderline” or synonymous descriptions) presents us with the dilemma of whether or not to perform a full ovarian cancer staging procedure. Quantification of this dilemma may help us with the issue of this clinical decision. The present study assessed and compared both the prevalence of straightforward borderline and “at least borderline” frozen section diagnoses and the proportion of these women with a final histopathological diagnosis of invasive carcinoma, with a special interest in histologic subtypes. Methods A retrospective cohort study was performed in three hospitals in The Netherlands. All women that underwent ovarian surgery with perioperative frozen section evaluation in one of these hospitals between January 2007 and July 2018 were identified and included in case of a borderline or “at least borderline” frozen section diagnosis and a borderline ovarian tumor or invasive carcinoma as a final diagnosis. Results A total of 223 women were included, of which 41 women (18.4%) were diagnosed with “at least borderline” at frozen section. Thirteen of forty-one women (31.7%) following “at least borderline” frozen section diagnosis and 14 of 182 women (7.7%) following a straightforward borderline frozen section diagnosis were diagnosed with invasive carcinoma at paraffin section evaluation (p < 0.001). When compared to straightforward borderline frozen section diagnoses, the proportion of women diagnosed with invasive carcinoma increased from 3.1 to 35.7% for serous tumors (p = 0.001), 10.0 to 21.7% for mucinous tumors (p = 0.129) and 50.0 to 75.0% (p = 0.452) in case of other histologic subtypes following an “at least borderline” frozen section diagnosis. Conclusions Overall, when compared to women with a decisive borderline frozen section diagnosis, women diagnosed with “at least borderline” frozen section diagnoses were found to have a higher chance of carcinoma upon final diagnosis (7.7% vs 31.7%). Especially in the serous subtype, full staging during initial surgery might be considered after preoperative consent to prevent a second surgical procedure or chemotherapy in unstaged women. Further studies are needed to evaluate whether additional sampling in case of an “at least borderline” diagnosis may decrease the risk of surgical over-treatment

Frozen section diagnosis of borderline ovarian tumors with suspicious features of invasive cancer is a devil's dilemma for the surgeon:A systematic review and meta-analysis

Introduction Frozen section diagnoses of borderline ovarian tumors are not always straightforward and a borderline frozen section diagnosis with suspicious features of invasive carcinoma (reported as "at least borderline" or synonymous descriptions) presents us with the dilemma of whether or not to perform a full surgical staging procedure. By performing a systematic review and meta-analysis, the prevalence of straightforward borderline and "at least borderline" frozen section diagnoses, as well as proportion of patients with a final diagnosis of invasive carcinoma in these cases, were assessed and compared, as quantification of this dilemma may help us with the issue of this clinical decision. Material and methods PubMed, EMBASE and Cochrane library databases were searched and studies discussing "at least borderline" frozen section diagnoses were included in the review. Numbers of specific frozen section diagnoses and subsequent final histological diagnoses were extracted and pooled analysis was performed to compare the proportion of patients diagnosed with invasive carcinoma following borderline and "at least borderline" frozen section diagnoses, presented as risk ratio and risk difference with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). Results Of 4940 screened records, eight studies were considered eligible for quantitative analysis. A total of 921 women was identified and 230 (25.0%) of these women were diagnosed with "at least borderline" ovarian tumor at the time of frozen section. Final histological diagnoses were reported in five studies, including 61 women with an "at least borderline" diagnosis and 290 women with a straightforward borderline frozen section diagnosis. Twenty-five of 61 women (41.0%) of the "at least borderline" group had invasive cancer at final diagnosis, compared with 28 of 290 women (9.7%) of the straightforward borderline frozen section group (risk difference -0.34, 95% CI -0.53 to -0.15; relative risk 0.25, 95% CI 0.13-0.50). Conclusions Women diagnosed with "at least borderline" frozen section diagnoses were found to have a higher chance of carcinoma upon final diagnosis when compared with women with a straightforward borderline frozen section diagnosis (41.0% vs 9.7%). Especially in the serous subtype, and after preoperative consent, full staging during initial surgery might be considered in these cases to prevent a second surgical procedure

Dynamical Fermions with Fat Links

We present and test a new method for simulating dynamical fermions with fat links. Our construction is based on the introduction of auxiliary but dynamical gauge fields and works with any fermionic action and can be combined with any fermionic updating. In our simulation we use an over-relaxation step which makes it effective. For four flavors of staggered fermions first results indicate that flavor symmetry at a lattice spacing a~0.2 fm is restored to a few percent. With the standard action this amount of flavor symmetry restoration is achieved at a~0.07 fm. We estimate that the overall computational cost is reduced by at least a factor 10.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, detailed description of over-relaxation and references added, figures with more statistic

Planck Scale Boundary Conditions and the Higgs Mass

If the LHC does only find a Higgs boson in the low mass region and no other new physics, then one should reconsider scenarios where the Standard Model with three right-handed neutrinos is valid up to Planck scale. We assume in this spirit that the Standard Model couplings are remnants of quantum gravity which implies certain generic boundary conditions for the Higgs quartic coupling at Planck scale. This leads to Higgs mass predictions at the electroweak scale via renormalization group equations. We find that several physically well motivated conditions yield a range of Higgs masses from 127-142 GeV. We also argue that a random quartic Higgs coupling at the Planck scale favors M_H > 150 GeV, which is clearly excluded. We discuss also the prospects for differentiating different boundary conditions imposed for \lambda(M_{pl}) at the LHC. A striking example is M_H = 127\pm 5 GeV corresponding to \lambda(M_{pl})=0, which would imply that the quartic Higgs coupling at the electroweak scale is entirely radiatively generated.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures; references added and other minor improvements, matches version published in JHE

A FAIR based approach to data sharing in Europe

The European fusion research activities have, over recent decades, generated a vast and varied set of data. The volume and diversity of the data that need to be catalogued and annotated make the task of organising and making the data available within a broader environment very challenging. Nevertheless, there are strong scientific drivers as well as incentives and mandates from national research agencies suggesting that a more coherent approach to data referencing, dissemination and sharing would provide strong benefits to the fusion research community and beyond. Here, we discuss the technical requirements and developments needed to transition the current, and future, range of fusion research data to an open and Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable data sharing structure guided by the principle \u27as open as possible, as closed as necessary\u27. Here we propose a set of recommendations and technical implementations needed to form a European data sharing environment for the fusion research programmes. Consistency with the emerging IMAS (ITER Integrated Modelling and Analysis Suite) infrastructure is considered to facilitate future deployments

Lyapunov spectral analysis of a nonequilibrium Ising-like transition

By simulating a nonequilibrium coupled map lattice that undergoes an Ising-like phase transition, we show that the Lyapunov spectrum and related dynamical quantities such as the dimension correlation length~$\xi_\delta$ are insensitive to the onset of long-range ferromagnetic order. As a function of lattice coupling constant~$g$ and for certain lattice maps, the Lyapunov dimension density and other dynamical order parameters go through a minimum. The occurrence of this minimum as a function of~$g$ depends on the number of nearest neighbors of a lattice point but not on the lattice symmetry, on the lattice dimensionality or on the position of the Ising-like transition. In one-space dimension, the spatial correlation length associated with magnitude fluctuations and the length~$\xi_\delta$ are approximately equal, with both varying linearly with the radius of the lattice coupling.Comment: 29 pages of text plus 15 figures, uses REVTeX macros. Submitted to Phys. Rev. E

Infrared behavior of the gluon propagator in lattice Landau gauge: the three-dimensional case

We evaluate numerically the three-momentum-space gluon propagator in the lattice Landau gauge, for three-dimensional pure-SU(2) lattice gauge theory with periodic boundary conditions. Simulations are done for nine different values of the coupling $\beta$, from $\beta = 0$ (strong coupling) to $\beta = 6.0$ (in the scaling region), and for lattice sizes up to $V = 64^3$. In the limit of large lattice volume we observe, in all cases, a gluon propagator decreasing for momenta smaller than a constant value $p_{dec}$. From our data we estimate $p_{dec} \approx 350$ MeV. The result of a gluon propagator decreasing in the infrared limit has a straightforward interpretation as resulting from the proximity of the so-called first Gribov horizon in the infrared directions.Comment: 14 pages, BI-TP 99/03 preprint, correction in the Acknowledgments section. To appear in Phys.Rev.