Delayed hepatic rupture post ultrasound-guided percutaneous liver biopsy: A case report.

RATIONALE: Hemorrhage, one of complications after liver biopsy, is often identified immediately after the procedure while delayed liver rupture is relatively rare. PATIENT CONCERNS: A 45-year-old woman was diagnosed with undetermined liver cirrhosis and abnormal liver function. To determine the etiology and severity of liver cirrhosis, ultrasound-guided liver biopsy was arranged. The patients did not complain any pain during the procedure. Ultrasound examination on postoperative day1 (POD 1) and MRI on POD 3 showed no evidence of hematoma and ascites. On POD 7, however, the patient was taken to the hospital with a sudden onset of pain in the right upper quadrant of the abdomen. DIAGNOSES: Contrast-enhanced computed tomography revealed liver rupture of right inferior segment of the liver with subcapsular hematoma. INTERVENTIONS: Patient was treated with infusion of 2-unit red blood cell suspension, fluid and hemostatics. OUTCOMES: The vital signs of the patient were stabilized after the therapy. The follow-up ultrasound 1 month later showed a shrunken subcapsular hematoma measuring 4.2 × 2.1 cm at the right lobe. LESSONS: Whenever a liver biopsy procedure is performed, the care should be taken to avoid puncturing those areas that may have liver incisure. Moreover, the patient need to rest for several days and to avoid heavy activities, which is one of the major risk factors for post-procedure bleeding

Large Magnetoresistance in Compensated Semimetals TaAs2_2 and NbAs2_2

We report large magnetoresistance (MR) at low temperatures in single-crystalline nonmagnetic compounds TaAs$_2$ and NbAs$_2$. Both compounds exhibit parabolic-field-dependent MR larger than $5\times10^3$ in a magnetic field of 9 Tesla at 2 K. The MR starts to deviate from parabolic dependence above 10 T and intends to be saturated in 45 T for TaAs$_2$ at 4.2 K. The Hall resistance measurements and band structural calculations reveal their compensated semimetal characteristics. The large MR at low temperatures is ascribed to a resonance effect of the balanced electrons and holes with large mobilities. We also discuss the relation of the MR and samples' quality for TaAs$_2$ and other semimetals. We found that the magnitudes of MR are strongly dependent on the samples' quality for different compounds.Comment: 26 pages, 11 figures, 2 table

The Influence of Culture on Attitudes Towards Humorous Advertising

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The Internet, populism, and deliberative democracy: A panel study of 167 countries from 2000 to 2018

  The wide adoption of the Internet gave rise to populism, which is regarded as a critical threat to deliberative democracy. This paper was a cross-national panel study to explore the Internet’s populist impacts on deliberative democracy. It had two specific objectives. One was to examine whether or to what extent Internet penetration has populist impacts on deliberative dimensions, including reasoned justification, common good, respectful counterarguments, range of consultation, and engaged society. The other was to examine how Internet penetration moderates a country’s formal deliberative process, referring to the interaction among state institutions, the public sphere, and civil society. Using data from Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) and the United Nations, we run panel analyses with a sample of 3,173 units in 167 countries from 2000 to 2018. The results showed that Internet penetration increased calls for the common good, disrespected counterarguments, narrowed the range of consultation, and expanded engagement in public deliberation. In addition, Internet penetration strengthened the effects of public sphere on reasoned justification and range of consultation, but weakened the effects of civil society on reasoned justification, common good, respectful counterarguments, and range of consultation