The anatomy of the muscle wall of the human colon : the inter-taenial continuity of the longitudinal muscle coat

This report is, in modified form, part of the thesis presented by Dr. Pace for his Ph.D. The work reported was done whilst he was a Commonwealth Scholar in the Department of Anatomy at the Middlesex Medical School, London. Contradictions exist in the literature as to whether the outer muscle coat of the human colon is complete or not. There are conflicting points of view as to the presence and extent of the longitudinal muscle in between the taeniae. The material used consisted of 112 human colons, mainly postmortem, from subjects ranging in age from early fetal to 88 years. Portions from the named regions of the colon fixed in various states of distension were examined. The methods of microdissection were combined with those of histology. Sections, transverse of the whole circumference and longitudinal of the intertaenial wall, were studied. It was found that in the human colon the outer longitudinal coat, though thin in between the toenia, forms a complete and continuous layer. This is so at all ages, in all regions of the colon and in all states of distension except maximal when the muscle fascicles become separated by gaps filled in with connective tissue. Under no circumstances was the outer coat found to consist only of a few scattered longitudinal fibres and isolated bits of muscle, or to be entirely absent.peer-reviewe

Pseudoainhum : a dermatological oddity

An eight week old baby presented with a deep constriction round the base of the third right toe, of one day’s duration. A strand of filamentous material was found and uncoiled from the depths of the cleft which subsequently healed within a week. Recurrence in the same digit four weeks later raised the question of factitious disease. Pseudoainhum refers to a constricting band around a digit or limb, congenital or acquired. It must be distinguished from true ainhum, where a painful, idiopathic constriction of the fifth toe in dark-skinned adults results in spontaneous amputation of the digit.peer-reviewe

Looking for melanoma

Melanoma is increasing worldwide and UK death rates from melanoma have more than doubled from 1.2 per 100,000 in 1971 to 2.6 per 100,000 in 2007. Cancer Research UK predicts that by 2024, rates of malignant melanoma in people aged 60 to 79 will rise by a third.peer-reviewe

The paramastoid process : a survey of 890 Maltese skulls

The paramastoid process is a bony projection on the lateral part of the undersurface of the jugular process of the occipital bone. It is constant in the skull of certain animals but occurs only as an occasional anomaly in man. A study has been made of the paramastoid process. Its etiology, incidence, morphological characteristics, its functional significance in animals, and the clinical manifestations it can give rise to are described. A survey of 890 Maltese skulls revealed the presence of paramastoid process in 18 of them - an incidence of 2.02%. Four of the cases were of the articular type and there were 2 rare cases of atlanto-paramastoid synostosis - one unilateral, and the other bilateral and accompanied by synostosis of both atlanto-occipital joints. The survey was carried out by medical students C. Gauci and R. Farrugia Randon and by the writer. In addition, two tables indicate the incidence of paramatoid process in the human skull and the details of the paramastoid processes found in Maltese skulls.peer-reviewe

The effect of primordial non-Gaussianity on the skeleton of cosmic shear maps

(abridged) We explore the imprints of deviations from Gaussian primordial density fluctuations on the skeleton of the large-scale matter distribution as mapped through cosmological weak lensing. We computed the skeleton length of simulated effective convergence maps covering $\sim 35$ sq. deg each, extracted from a suite of cosmological $n-$body runs with different levels of local primordial non-Gaussianity. The latter is expected to alter the structure formation process with respect to the fiducial Gaussian scenario, and thus to leave a signature on the cosmic web. We found that alterations of the initial conditions consistently modify both the cumulative and the differential skeleton length, although the effect is generically smaller than the cosmic variance and depends on the smoothing of the map prior to the skeleton computation. Nevertheless, the qualitative shape of these deviations is rather similar to their primordial counterparts, implying that skeleton statistics retain good memory of the initial conditions. We performed a statistical analysis in order to find out at what Confidence Level primordial non-Gaussianity could be constrained by the skeleton test on cosmic shear maps of the size we adopted. At 68.3% Confidence Level we found an error on the measured level of primordial non-Gaussianity of $\Delta f_\mathrm{NL}\sim 300$, while at 90% Confidence Level it is of $\Delta f_\mathrm{NL}\sim 500$. While these values by themselves are not competitive with the current constraints, weak lensing maps larger than those used here would have a smaller field-to-field variance, and thus would likely lead to tighter constraints. A rough estimate indicates $\Delta f_\mathrm{NL} \sim$ a few tens at 68.3% Confidence Level for an all-sky weak lensing survey.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures. Accepted for publication on MNRA

Sun direction detection system

One of the detectors is an illumination detector consisting of two spaced apart elongated strips with a strip of cadmium sulphide (Cds) deposited therebetween. Whenever the line image impinges the CdS strip, the resistance between the two other strips is relatively low, while being high when the line image is outside the field of view of the illumination detector. Also included is a sun angle detector which consists of a vapor deposited resistor strip connected at one end to plus 10v and at the other end to minus 10v. Spaced apart from the resistor strip is an elongated strip of low resistance material acting as an output strip, with a CdS strip between the two strips. When the line image is within the field of view of the sun angle detector, the output voltage at the output strip depends on the position of the line image across the sun angle detector

Endocardial fibroelastosis

This is an article delivered at a meeting of the British Medical Association (Malta Branch) on the 7th March 1967. During the eleven-year period 1955-66 eight cases of endocardial fibroelastosis were diagnosed or confirmed at autopsy. This represents an incidence of 1.9% in the 424 necropsies carried out on children less than two years of age. The frequency of congenital heart diseases was found in the same series to be 13.4%. In almost 1.2% of the cases endocardial fibroelastosis was associated with cardiac anomalies. The literature on the subject is reviewed, and the findings of the present study are compared with those of previous reports.peer-reviewe

A numerical study of the effects of primordial non-Gaussianities on weak lensing statistics

While usually cosmological initial conditions are assumed to be Gaussian, inflationary theories can predict a certain amount of primordial non-Gaussianity which can have an impact on the statistical properties of the lensing observables. In order to evaluate this effect, we build a large set of realistic maps of different lensing quantities starting from light-cones extracted from large dark-matter only N-body simulations with initial conditions corresponding to different levels of primordial local non-Gaussianity strength $f_{\rm NL}$. Considering various statistical quantities (PDF, power spectrum, shear in aperture, skewness and bispectrum) we find that the effect produced by the presence of primordial non-Gaussianity is relatively small, being of the order of few per cent for values of $|f_{\rm NL}|$ compatible with the present CMB constraints and reaching at most 10-15 per cent for the most extreme cases with $|f_{\rm NL}|=1000$. We also discuss the degeneracy of this effect with the uncertainties due to the power spectrum normalization $\sigma_8$ and matter density parameter $\Omega_{\rm m}$, finding that an error in the determination of $\sigma_8$ ($\Omega_{\rm m}$) of about 3 (10) per cent gives differences comparable with non-Gaussian models having $f_{\rm NL}=\pm 1000$. These results suggest that the possible presence of an amount of primordial non-Gaussianity corresponding to $|f_{\rm NL}|=100$ is not hampering a robust determination of the main cosmological parameters in present and future weak lensing surveys, while a positive detection of deviations from the Gaussian hypothesis is possible only breaking the degeneracy with other cosmological parameters and using data from deep surveys covering a large fraction of the sky.Comment: accepted by MNRA

The distribution of oxygen at the Ni81Fe19/Ta interface

The knowledge of how oxygen atoms are distributed at a magnetic-metal / oxide, or magnetic-metal / non-magnetic-metal interface, can be an useful tool to optimize device production. Multilayered Ni81Fe19 / Ta samples consisting of 15 bilayers of 2.5 nm each, grown onto glass substrates by magnetron sputtering from Ni81Fe19 and Ta targets, have been investigated. X-ray absorption near edge structure, extended X-Ray absorption fine structure, small angle X-ray diffraction, and simulations, were used to characterize the samples. Oxygen atoms incorporated onto Ni81Fe19 films during O2 exposition are mainly bonded to Fe atoms. This partial oxidation of the Ni81Fe19 surface works as a barrier to arriving Ta atoms, preventing intermixing at the Ni81Fe19 / Ta interface. The reduction of the Ni81Fe19 surface by the formation of TaO x is observed.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Advances in Materials Science and Engineerin