The Role of Endoscopic Ultrasound in M-Staging of Gastrointestinal and Pancreaticobiliary Cancer

AbstractEndoscopic ultrasound (EUS) is an inevitable tool for locoregional staging of upper gastrointestinal, rectal, and pancreaticobiliary cancer. Transabdominal ultrasound (TUS) and computed tomography (CT) are the most important methods used for the detection of liver metastases and other distant metastases. However, despite its limited operation range, EUS and EUS-guided fine-needle biopsy (EUS-FNB) may add value to TUS and CT by detecting and proving ‘occult’ liver metastases and malignant ascites as well as nonregional lymph node metastases, adrenal metastases, and pleural carcinosis in approximately 5–20% of cases of pancreaticobiliary and upper gastrointestinal tract cancer. This article is part of an expert video encyclopedia

The new BELUGA setup for collocated turbulence and radiation measurements using a tethered balloon: First applications in the cloudy Arctic boundary layer

The new BELUGA (Balloon-bornE moduLar Utility for profilinG the lower Atmosphere) tethered balloon system is introduced. It combines a set of instruments to measure turbulent and radiative parameters and energy fluxes. BELUGA enables collocated measurements either at a constant altitude or as vertical profiles up to 1.5km in height. In particular, the instrument payload of BELUGA comprises three modular instrument packages for high-resolution meteorological, wind vector and broadband radiation measurements. Collocated data acquisition allows for estimates of the driving parameters in the energy balance at various heights. Heating rates and net irradiances can be related to turbulent fluxes and local turbulence parameters such as dissipation rates. In this paper the technical setup, the instrument performance, and the measurement strategy of BELUGA are explained. Furthermore, the high vertical resolution due to the slow ascent speed is highlighted as a major advantage of tethered balloon-borne observations. Three illustrative case studies of the first application of BELUGA in the Arctic atmospheric boundary layer are presented. As a first example, measurements of a single-layer stratocumulus are discussed. They show a pronounced cloud top radiative cooling of up to 6K h-1. To put this into context, a second case elaborates respective measurements with BELUGA in a cloudless situation. In a third example, a multilayer stratocumulus was probed, revealing reduced turbulence and negligible cloud top radiative cooling for the lower cloud layer. In all three cases the net radiative fluxes are much higher than turbulent fluxes. Altogether, BELUGA has proven its robust performance in cloudy conditions of the Arctic atmospheric boundary layer

How will organic carbon stocks in mineral soils evolve under future climate? Global projections using RothC for a range of climate change scenarios

We use a soil carbon (C) model (RothC), driven by a range of climate models for a range of climate scenarios to examine the impacts of future climate on global soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks. The results suggest an overall global increase in SOC stocks by 2100 under all scenarios, but with a different extent of increase among the climate model and emissions scenarios. The impacts of projected land use changes are also simulated, but have relatively minor impacts at the global scale. Whether soils gain or lose SOC depends upon the balance between C inputs and decomposition. Changes in net primary production (NPP) change C inputs to the soil, whilst decomposition usually increases under warmer temperatures, but can also be slowed by decreased soil moisture. Underlying the global trend of increasing SOC under future climate is a complex pattern of regional SOC change. SOC losses are projected to occur in northern latitudes where higher SOC decomposition rates due to higher temperatures are not balanced by increased NPP, whereas in tropical regions, NPP increases override losses due to higher SOC decomposition. The spatial heterogeneity in the response of SOC to changing climate shows how delicately balanced the competing gain and loss processes are, with subtle changes in temperature, moisture, soil type and land use, interacting to determine whether SOC increases or decreases in the future. Our results suggest that we should stop looking for a single answer regarding whether SOC stocks will increase or decrease under future climate, since there is no single answer. Instead, we should focus on improving our prediction of the factors that determine the size and direction of change, and the land management practices that can be implemented to protect and enhance SOC stocks

Infinite ergodic theory and Non-extensive entropies

We bring into account a series of result in the infinite ergodic theory that we believe that they are relevant to the theory of non-extensive entropie

Heavy Quark Initiated Contributions to Deep Inelastic Structure Functions

We present O(alpha_s^1) corrections to deep inelastic scattering amplitudes on massive quarks obtained within the scheme of Aivazis, Collins, Olness and Tung (ACOT). After identifying the correct subtraction term the convergence of these contributions towards the analogous coefficient functions for massless quarks, obtained within the modified minimal subtraction scheme (MSbar), is demonstrated. Furthermore, the quantitative relevance of the contributions to neutral current (NC) and charged current (CC) structure functions is investigated for several choices of the factorization scale.Comment: 29 pages, 6 figures; uses epsfig.sty, amssymb.sty, axodraw.sty; minor changes for publication in Phys. Rev.

Albumin Microspheres as “Trans-ferry-beads” for Easy Cell Passaging in Cell Culture Technology

Protein hydrogels represent ideal materials for advanced cell culture applications, including 3D-cultivation of even fastidious cells. Key properties of fully functional and, at the same time, economically successful cell culture materials are excellent biocompatibility and advanced fabrication processes allowing their easy production even on a large scale based on affordable compounds. Chemical crosslinking of bovine serum albumin (BSA) with N-(3-dimethylaminopropyl)-N’-ethylcarbodiimide hydrochloride (EDC) in a water-in-oil emulsion with isoparaffinic oil as the continuous phase and sorbitan monooleate as surfactant generates micro-meter-scale spherical particles. They allow a significant simplification of an indispensable and laborious step in traditional cell culture workflows. This cell passaging (or splitting) to fresh culture vessels/flasks conventionally requires harsh trypsinization, which can be omitted by using the “trans-ferry-beads” presented here. When added to different pre-cultivated adherent cell lines, the beads are efficiently boarded by cells as passengers and can be easily transferred afterward for the embarkment of novel flasks. After this procedure, cells are perfectly viable and show normal growth behavior. Thus, the trans-ferry-beads not only may become extremely affordable as a final product but also may generally replace trypsinization in conventional cell culture, thereby opening new routes for the establishment of optimized and resource-efficient workflows in biological and medical cell culture laboratories

The New IR FEL Facility at the Fritz-Haber-Institut in Berlin

A mid-infrared oscillator FEL has been commissioned at the Fritz-Haber-Institut. The accelerator consists of a thermionic gridded gun, a subharmonic buncher and two S-band standing-wave copper structures [1,2]. It provides a final electron energy adjustable from 15 to 50 MeV, low longitudinal (<50 keV-ps) and transverse emittance (<20 π mm-mrad), at more than 200 pC bunch charge with a micro-pulse repetition rate of 1 GHz and a macro-pulse length of up to 15 μs. Regular user operation started in Nov. 2013 with 6 user stations. Pulsed radiation with up to 100 mJ macro-pulse energy at about 0.5% FWHM bandwidth is routinely produced in the wavelength range from 4 to 48 μm. We will describe the FEL design and its performance as determined by IR power, bandwidth, and micro-pulse length measurements. Further, an overview of the new FHI FEL facility and first user results will be given. The latter include, for instance, spectroscopy of bio-molecules (peptides and small proteins) conformer selected or embedded in superfluid helium nano-droplets at 0.4 K, as well as vibrational spectroscopy of mass-selected metal-oxide clusters and protonated water clusters in the gas phase

Photoswitchable diacylglycerols enable optical control of protein kinase C.

Increased levels of the second messenger lipid diacylglycerol (DAG) induce downstream signaling events including the translocation of C1-domain-containing proteins toward the plasma membrane. Here, we introduce three light-sensitive DAGs, termed PhoDAGs, which feature a photoswitchable acyl chain. The PhoDAGs are inactive in the dark and promote the translocation of proteins that feature C1 domains toward the plasma membrane upon a flash of UV-A light. This effect is quickly reversed after the termination of photostimulation or by irradiation with blue light, permitting the generation of oscillation patterns. Both protein kinase C and Munc13 can thus be put under optical control. PhoDAGs control vesicle release in excitable cells, such as mouse pancreatic islets and hippocampal neurons, and modulate synaptic transmission in Caenorhabditis elegans. As such, the PhoDAGs afford an unprecedented degree of spatiotemporal control and are broadly applicable tools to study DAG signaling