Laparoscopic repair of a large interstitially incarcerated inguinal hernia.

A 68 year old female presented for elective repair of an abdominal wall hernia. Preoperative CT imaging revealed a right inguinal hernia defect with hernia contents coursing cephalad between the external and internal abdominal oblique muscles. This was consistent with an interstitial inguinal hernia, a rare entity outside of post- traumatic hernias. At operation the hernia contents were reduced laparoscopically. The hernia was then repaired by transitioning to the totally extraperitoneal (TEP) approach using a 15cm X 15cm piece of polyester mesh. The patient had an uneventful recovery. Interstitial hernias are rare, difficult to diagnose and potentially dangerous if left untreated. There is no consensus on the ideal repair of these unique hernias. This represents a minimally invasive repair of an unusual hernia, with a novel approach to diagnose and manage the hernia and its redundant sac

Theoretical studies of the phase transition in the anisotropic 2-D square spin lattice

The phase transition occurring in a square 2-D spin lattice governed by an anisotropic Heisenberg Hamiltonian has been studied according to two recently proposed methods. The first one, the Dressed Cluster Method, provides excellent evaluations of the cohesive energy, the discontinuity of its derivative around the critical (isotropic) value of the anisotropy parameter confirms the first-order character of the phase transition. Nevertheless the method introduces two distinct reference functions (either N\'eel or XY) which may in principle force the discontinuity. The Real Space Renormalization Group with Effective Interactions does not reach the same numerical accuracy but it does not introduce a reference function and the phase transition appears qualitatively as due to the existence of two domains, with specific fixed points. The method confirms the dependence of the spin gap on the anisotropy parameter occurring in the Heisenberg-Ising domain

MODIS Cloud Optical Property Retrieval Uncertainties Derived from Pixel-Level VNIR/SWIR Radiometric Uncertainties

Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) retrievals of optical thickness and effective particle radius for liquid water and ice phase clouds employ a well-known VNIR/ SWIR solar reflectance technique. For this type of algorithm, we evaluate the quantitative uncertainty in simultaneous retrievals of these two cloud parameters to pixel-level radiometric calibration estimates and other fundamental (and tractable) error sources