Management of Extracranial Carotid Artery Aneurysms:17 Years» Experience

AbstractObjectives:a retrospective review of seventeen-year (1980–1996) experience of the management of extracranial carotid artery aneurysms.Patients and methods:sixty-six aneurysms of extracranial carotid artery were seen in 63 patients. The diagnosis was confirmed by angiography in 51 patients and duplex ultrasonography in twelve. Twenty-eight (42%) patients had an atherosclerotic aneurysm, twenty-two (33%) had false aneurysms secondary to trauma, nine were congenital and seven were mycotic. All underwent aneurysm resection with saphenous-vein-graft interposition as the most common means of reconstruction.Results:one death occurred due to septicaemia in a diabetic patient with a mycotic aneurysm, giving an operative mortality of 1.5%. One patient had an immediate hemiparesis after carotid artery ligation, and three had a hemiparesis within 48 hours of operation (6.1%). After a change in technique to avoid a residual carotid stump, no further neurological problems were encountered in the following 28 patients.Conclusion:extracranial carotid aneurysms may be successfully managed with resection and reconstruction with autogenous saphenous vein. End-to-side anastomosis avoids a blind-ending stump which may be the source of emboli

U-DADA:Unsupervised Deep Action Domain Adaptation

The problem of domain adaptation has been extensively studied for object classification task. However, this problem has not been as well studied for recognizing actions. While, object recognition is well understood, the diverse variety of videos in action recognition make the task of addressing domain shift to be more challenging. We address this problem by proposing a new novel adaptation technique that we term as unsupervised deep action domain adaptation (U-DADA). The main concept that we propose is that of explicitly modeling density based adaptation and using them while adapting domains for recognizing actions. We show that these techniques work well both for domain adaptation through adversarial learning to obtain invariant features or explicitly reducing the domain shift between distributions. The method is shown to work well using existing benchmark datasets such as UCF50, UCF101, HMDB51 and Olympic Sports. As a pioneering effort in the area of deep action adaptation, we are presenting several benchmark results and techniques that could serve as baselines to guide future research in this area.</p

Long-distance quantum communication with atomic ensembles and linear optics

Quantum communication holds a promise for absolutely secure transmission of secret messages and faithful transfer of unknown quantum states. Photonic channels appear to be very attractive for physical implementation of quantum communication. However, due to losses and decoherence in the channel, the communication fidelity decreases exponentially with the channel length. We describe a scheme that allows to implement robust quantum communication over long lossy channels. The scheme involves laser manipulation of atomic ensembles, beam splitters, and single-photon detectors with moderate efficiencies, and therefore well fits the status of the current experimental technology. We show that the communication efficiency scale polynomially with the channel length thereby facilitating scalability to very long distances.Comment: 2 tex files (Main text + Supplement), 4 figure

An Elementary Quantum Network of Single Atoms in Optical Cavities

Quantum networks are distributed quantum many-body systems with tailored topology and controlled information exchange. They are the backbone of distributed quantum computing architectures and quantum communication. Here we present a prototype of such a quantum network based on single atoms embedded in optical cavities. We show that atom-cavity systems form universal nodes capable of sending, receiving, storing and releasing photonic quantum information. Quantum connectivity between nodes is achieved in the conceptually most fundamental way: by the coherent exchange of a single photon. We demonstrate the faithful transfer of an atomic quantum state and the creation of entanglement between two identical nodes in independent laboratories. The created nonlocal state is manipulated by local qubit rotation. This efficient cavity-based approach to quantum networking is particularly promising as it offers a clear perspective for scalability, thus paving the way towards large-scale quantum networks and their applications.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Unilateral Biportal Endoscopic Discectomy versus Percutaneous Endoscopic Interlaminar Discectomy for Lumbar Disc Herniation

Wen-Bo Wei,1– 3,&ast; Sha-Jie Dang,4,&ast; Hao-Zhe Liu,5 Da-Peng Duan,1,2 Ling Wei6 1Department of Orthopedics, Shaanxi Provincial People’s Hospital, Xi’an, Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China; 2Shaanxi Province Key Laboratory of Basic and Clinical Translation for Bone and Joint Diseases, Shaanxi Provincial People’s Hospital, Xi’an, Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China; 3State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Anesthesia, Shaanxi Provincial Cancer Hospital, Xi’an, Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China; 5Department of Surgery, Hancheng Maternal and Child Health Hospital, Hancheng, Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China; 6Department of Pain, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Medical University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China&ast;These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Ling Wei, Department of Pain, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Medical University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China, 710005, Email [email protected]: As the latest endoscopic spine surgery, percutaneous endoscopic interlaminar discectomy (PEID) and unilateral biportal endoscopic (UBE) discectomy have distinct technical characteristics. This study aimed to evaluate the clinical outcomes of PEID and UBE discectomy in the treatment of single-level lumbar disc herniation (LDH).Methods: Between February 2019 and April 2022, 115 patients with single-level LDH at L4-5 or L5-S1 received PEID or UBE discectomy. The patients were separated into two groups based on the surgical method used: Group 1 (the PEID group) (n = 60) and Group 2 (the UBE group) (n = 55). Various parameters, including operative time, hospitalization time, fluoroscopy frequency, total costs, complications, visual analogue scale (VAS), and Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), were evaluated and compared between the two groups.Results: There were no significant differences in the VAS and ODI scores in 12 months after the operation between two groups (P > 0.05). However, the VAS of lower back pain on the first day after the operation in Group 2 (2.53± 0.89) was higher than that in Group 1 (2.19± 0.74) (P 0.05). But total costs in Group 2 (43,121± 4280) were significantly higher than those in Group 1 (30,069± 3551) (P < 0.05).Conclusion: Both UBE and PEID procedures have similar efficacy in alleviating pain and improving functional ability in patients with LDH. However, UBE surgery results in higher costs than PEID surgery.Keywords: unilateral biportal endoscopic discectomy, percutaneous endoscopic interlaminar discectomy, lumbar disc herniatio

Development of novel bioassays to detect soluble and aggregated Huntingtin proteins on three technology platforms

Huntington’s disease is caused by a CAG / polyglutamine repeat expansion. Mutated CAG repeats undergo somatic instability, resulting in tracts of several hundred CAGs in the brain; and genetic modifiers of Huntington’s disease have indicated that somatic instability is a major driver of age of onset and disease progression. As the CAG repeat expands, the likelihood that exon 1 does not splice to exon 2 increases, resulting in two transcripts that encode full-length huntingtin protein, as well as the highly pathogenic and aggregation-prone exon 1 huntingtin protein. Strategies that target the huntingtin gene or transcripts are a major focus of therapeutic development. It is essential that the levels of all isoforms of huntingtin protein can be tracked, to better understand the molecular pathogenesis, and to assess the impact of huntingtin protein-lowering approaches in preclinical studies and clinical trials. Huntingtin protein bioassays for soluble and aggregated forms of huntingtin protein are in widespread use on the homogeneous time-resolved fluorescence and Meso Scale Discovery platforms, but these do not distinguish between exon 1 huntingtin protein and full-length huntingtin protein. In addition, they are frequently used to quantify huntingtin protein levels in the context of highly expanded polyglutamine tracts, for which appropriate protein standards do not currently exist. Here, we set out to develop novel huntingtin protein bioassays to ensure that all soluble huntingtin protein isoforms could be distinguished. We utilized the zQ175 Huntington’s disease mouse model that has ∼190 CAGs, a CAG repeat size for which protein standards are not available. Initially, 30 combinations of six antibodies were tested on three technology platforms: homogeneous time-resolved fluorescence, amplified luminescent proximity homogeneous assay and Meso Scale Discovery, and a triage strategy was employed to select the best assays. We found that, without a polyglutamine-length-matched standard, the vast majority of soluble mutant huntingtin protein assays cannot be used for quantitative purposes, as the highly expanded polyglutamine tract decreased assay performance. The combination of our novel assays, with those already in existence, provides a tool-kit to track: total soluble mutant huntingtin protein, soluble exon 1 huntingtin protein, soluble mutant huntingtin protein (excluding the exon 1 huntingtin protein) and total soluble full-length huntingtin protein (mutant and wild type). Several novel aggregation assays were also developed that track with disease progression. These selected assays can be used to compare the levels of huntingtin protein isoforms in a wide variety of mouse models of Huntington’s disease and to determine how these change in response to genetic or therapeutic manipulations

The Quantum Internet

Quantum networks offer a unifying set of opportunities and challenges across exciting intellectual and technical frontiers, including for quantum computation, communication, and metrology. The realization of quantum networks composed of many nodes and channels requires new scientific capabilities for the generation and characterization of quantum coherence and entanglement. Fundamental to this endeavor are quantum interconnects that convert quantum states from one physical system to those of another in a reversible fashion. Such quantum connectivity for networks can be achieved by optical interactions of single photons and atoms, thereby enabling entanglement distribution and quantum teleportation between nodes.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures Higher resolution versions of the figures can be downloaded from the following link: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~hjkimble/QNet-figures-high-resolutio

Understanding Variation in Sets of N-of-1 Trials.

A recent paper in this journal by Chen and Chen has used computer simulations to examine a number of approaches to analysing sets of n-of-1 trials. We have examined such designs using a more theoretical approach based on considering the purpose of analysis and the structure as regards randomisation that the design uses. We show that different purposes require different analyses and that these in turn may produce quite different results. Our approach to incorporating the randomisation employed when the purpose is to test a null hypothesis of strict equality of the treatment makes use of Nelder's theory of general balance. However, where the purpose is to make inferences about the effects for individual patients, we show that a mixed model is needed. There are strong parallels to the difference between fixed and random effects meta-analyses and these are discussed

Cavity QED with a Bose-Einstein condensate

Cavity quantum electrodynamics (cavity QED) describes the coherent interaction between matter and an electromagnetic field confined within a resonator structure, and is providing a useful platform for developing concepts in quantum information processing. By using high-quality resonators, a strong coupling regime can be reached experimentally in which atoms coherently exchange a photon with a single light-field mode many times before dissipation sets in. This has led to fundamental studies with both microwave and optical resonators. To meet the challenges posed by quantum state engineering and quantum information processing, recent experiments have focused on laser cooling and trapping of atoms inside an optical cavity. However, the tremendous degree of control over atomic gases achieved with Bose-Einstein condensation has so far not been used for cavity QED. Here we achieve the strong coupling of a Bose-Einstein condensate to the quantized field of an ultrahigh-finesse optical cavity and present a measurement of its eigenenergy spectrum. This is a conceptually new regime of cavity QED, in which all atoms occupy a single mode of a matter-wave field and couple identically to the light field, sharing a single excitation. This opens possibilities ranging from quantum communication to a wealth of new phenomena that can be expected in the many-body physics of quantum gases with cavity-mediated interactions.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures; version accepted for publication in Nature; updated Fig. 4; changed atom numbers due to new calibratio

Intermittent exposure to traces of green leaf volatiles triggers a plant response

Plants are known to mount a defensive response when exposed to volatile chemicals from other plants, but the critical concentration required for this response is not known. We showed that intermittent exposure over a period of 3 weeks to trace amounts (less than 140 pptV) of green leaf volatiles emitted by a freshly damaged Arabidopsis plant induced physiological (defensive) responses in undamaged neighbouring plants. These results demonstrated that plants can respond to long-term repeated exposures to subcritical amounts of chemical signals