Strategy and Long-term Outcomes of Endovascular Treatment for Budd–Chiari Syndrome Complicated by Inferior Vena Caval Thrombosis

ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to evaluate the strategy and long-term outcomes of endovascular treatment of Budd–Chiari syndrome (BCS) complicated by inferior vena cava (IVC) thrombosis.MethodsThe treatment strategy and outcomes of BCS complicated by IVC thrombosis were retrospectively evaluated in a single-center study. The treatment was aimed at the IVC thrombus, not hepatic vein occlusion. All 133 patients with BCS complicated by IVC thrombosis from February 2003 to March 2013 underwent endovascular treatment. For the fresh thrombus group (n = 75) recanalization was performed after transcatheter thrombolysis with urokinase. For the mixed thrombus group (n = 19) a small balloon pre-dilation of the IVC was performed first, followed by transcatheter thrombolysis using urokinase and a large balloon dilation of the IVC. For the old thrombus group (n = 39) a large balloon dilation or/and stent placement was performed directly. Pre- and post-treatment follow-ups were recorded.ResultsThe endovascular treatment was successful in 131 out of 133 patients (98.5%). Thirty seven patients had synchronous hepatic vein occlusion. The incidence of serious complications was 4.5% (6/133). Symptomatic pulmonary embolism occurred in three cases, cerebral hemorrhage in two, and cardiac tamponade in one. The cumulative 1-, 5-, and 10-year primary patency rate was 96.3%, 84.0%, and 64.6%, respectively. The cumulative 1-, 5-, and 10-year secondary patency rate was 99.0%, 96.1% and 91.3%, respectively. Segmental occlusion of the IVC and duration of anticoagulant therapy less than 6 months were independent risk factors for reocclusion.ConclusionsFor patients with BCS complicated by IVC thrombosis, an individualized treatment strategy based on the property of the thrombus can result in excellent long-term patency

Cultivation of cotton in China and Iran with considering biological activities and its health benefits

Cotton (Gossypium L.) is one of the most important commercial crops and it is famous as white gold. Cotton has a diversity of applications, principally medicinal and many other usages, such as pigments, derivatives for cattle feed, different uses of the oil extracts and etc. Cottonseed oil has a ration of 2:1 of polyunsaturated to saturated fatty acids and generally consists of 65-70% unsaturated fatty acids, including 18-24% monounsaturated (oleic) and 42-52% polyunsaturated (linoleic), and 26-35% saturated (palmitic and stearic). The most important health benefits of cotton is treat respiratory diseases, treat skin problems, treat wounds, beneficial for breastfeeding mothers, a good cure for rat bite, an appropriate cure for scorpion bite, for joint and eye pains, for swollen legs, for removing bacteria in teeth, and alternative medicine for various diseases such as cancer, HIV and etc. Cotton seed oil mostly extracted from Gossypium hirsutum and Gossypium herbaceum, that are also grown for cotton fiber and animal feed. Gossypol is one of the most effective ingredients, both in traditional pharmaceutical practices and alternative modern medicinal preparations. It is a toxic polyphenolic bisesquiterpene, which may have antifertility and antiviral properties. The obtained findings suggest potential of cotton as a natural resource in pharmaceutical industries

The mixed problem in L^p for some two-dimensional Lipschitz domains

We consider the mixed problem for the Laplace operator in a class of Lipschitz graph domains in two dimensions with Lipschitz constant at most 1. The boundary of the domain is decomposed into two disjoint sets D and N. We suppose the Dirichlet data, f_D has one derivative in L^p(D) of the boundary and the Neumann data is in L^p(N). We find conditions on the domain and the sets D and N so that there is a p_0>1 so that for p in the interval (1,p_0), we may find a unique solution to the mixed problem and the gradient of the solution lies in L^p

Deep object tracking with shrinkage loss

Date of publication 30 Nov. 2020; date of current version 1 Apr. 2022.In this paper, we address the issue of data imbalance in learning deep models for visual object tracking. Although it is well known that data distribution plays a crucial role in learning and inference models, considerably less attention has been paid to data imbalance in visual tracking. For the deep regression trackers that directly learn a dense mapping from input images of target objects to soft response maps, we identify their performance is limited by the extremely imbalanced pixel-to-pixel differences when computing regression loss. This prevents existing end-to-end learnable deep regression trackers from performing as well as discriminative correlation filters (DCFs) trackers. For the deep classification trackers that draw positive and negative samples to learn discriminative classifiers, there exists heavy class imbalance due to a limited number of positive samples when compared to the number of negative samples. To balance training data, we propose a novel shrinkage loss to penalize the importance of easy training data mostly coming from the background, which facilitates both deep regression and classification trackers to better distinguish target objects from the background. We extensively validate the proposed shrinkage loss function on six benchmark datasets, including the OTB-2013, OTB-2015, UAV-123, VOT-2016, VOT-2018 and LaSOT. Equipped with our shrinkage loss, the proposed one-stage deep regression tracker achieves favorable results against state-of-the-art methods, especially in comparison with DCFs trackers. Meanwhile, our shrinkage loss generalizes well to deep classification trackers. When replacing the original binary cross entropy loss with our shrinkage loss, three representative baseline trackers achieve large performance gains, even setting new state-of-the-art results.Xiankai Lu, Chao Ma, Jianbing Shen, Xiaokang Yang, Ian Reid, Ming-Hsuan Yan

Quantum Efficiency of Charge Qubit Measurements Using a Single Electron Transistor

The quantum efficiency, which characterizes the quality of information gain against information loss, is an important figure of merit for any realistic quantum detectors in the gradual process of collapsing the state being measured. In this work we consider the problem of solid-state charge qubit measurements with a single-electron-transistor (SET). We analyze two models: one corresponds to a strong response SET, and the other is a tunable one in response strength. We find that the response strength would essentially bound the quantum efficiency, making the detector non-quantum-limited. Quantum limited measurements, however, can be achieved in the limits of strong response and asymmetric tunneling. The present study is also associated with appropriate justifications for the measurement and backaction-dephasing rates, which were usually evaluated in controversial methods.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

A minimum single-band model for low-energy excitations in superconducting Kx_xFe2_2Se2_2

We propose a minimum single-band model for the newly discovered iron-based superconducting K$_x$Fe$_2$Se$_2$. Our model is found to be numerically consistent with the five-orbital model at low energies. Based on our model and the random phase approximation, we study the spin fluctuation and the pairing symmetry of superconducting gap function. The $(\pi/2,\pi/2)$ spin excitation and the $d_{x^2-y^2}$ pairing symmetry are revealed. All of the results can well be understood in terms of the interplay between the Fermi surface topology and the local spin interaction, providing a sound picture to explain why the superconducting transition temperature is as high as to be comparable to those in pnictides and some cuprates. A common origin of superconductivity is elucidated for this compound and other high-T$_c$ materials.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Nonequilibrium Transport through a Kondo Dot in a Magnetic Field: Perturbation Theory

Using nonequilibrium perturbation theory, we investigate the nonlinear transport through a quantum dot in the Kondo regime in the presence of a magnetic field. We calculate the leading logarithmic corrections to the local magnetization and the differential conductance, which are characteristic of the Kondo effect out of equilibrium. By solving a quantum Boltzmann equation, we determine the nonequilibrium magnetization on the dot and show that the application of both a finite bias voltage and a magnetic field induces a novel structure of logarithmic corrections not present in equilibrium. These corrections lead to more pronounced features in the conductance, and their form calls for a modification of the perturbative renormalization group.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure

Geometrothermodynamics of five dimensional black holes in Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet-theory

We investigate the thermodynamic properties of 5D static and spherically symmetric black holes in (i) Einstein-Maxwell-Gauss-Bonnet theory, (ii) Einstein-Maxwell-Gauss-Bonnet theory with negative cosmological constant, and in (iii) Einstein-Yang-Mills-Gauss-Bonnet theory. To formulate the thermodynamics of these black holes we use the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy relation and, alternatively, a modified entropy formula which follows from the first law of thermodynamics of black holes. The results of both approaches are not equivalent. Using the formalism of geometrothermodynamics, we introduce in the manifold of equilibrium states a Legendre invariant metric for each black hole and for each thermodynamic approach, and show that the thermodynamic curvature diverges at those points where the temperature vanishes and the heat capacity diverges.Comment: New sections added, references adde