Spermatic cord metastasis presenting as strangulated inguinal hernia – first manifestation of a multifocal colon adenocarcinoma: a case report

Spermatic cord is a rare metastatic site of colorectal cancer. We herein report a case of spermatic cord metastasis of a previous undiagnosed multifocal colon adenocarcinoma, which was clinically presented as a strangulated groin hernia

Uncomplicated intraoperative evaluation of an aberrant bile duct: a case report and review of the literature

The presence of aberrant bile ducts is a significant risk factor for bile duct injuries during cholecystectomy. Identification of such anatomic anomalies of the biliary tree is crucial to prevent iatrogenic biliary injuries. For that purpose many methods, both preoperative and intraoperative, have been described with controversial results. We present a case of an aberrant right hepatic duct that was found during laparoscopic cholecystectomy with the use of intraoperative cholangiography and review the literature

PEER Testbed Study on a Laboratory Building: Exercising Seismic Performance Assessment

From 2002 to 2004 (years five and six of a ten-year funding cycle), the PEER Center organized the majority of its research around six testbeds. Two buildings and two bridges, a campus, and a transportation network were selected as case studies to “exercise” the PEER performance-based earthquake engineering methodology. All projects involved interdisciplinary teams of researchers, each producing data to be used by other colleagues in their research. The testbeds demonstrated that it is possible to create the data necessary to populate the PEER performancebased framing equation, linking the hazard analysis, the structural analysis, the development of damage measures, loss analysis, and decision variables. This report describes one of the building testbeds—the UC Science Building. The project was chosen to focus attention on the consequences of losses of laboratory contents, particularly downtime. The UC Science testbed evaluated the earthquake hazard and the structural performance of a well-designed recently built reinforced concrete laboratory building using the OpenSees platform. Researchers conducted shake table tests on samples of critical laboratory contents in order to develop fragility curves used to analyze the probability of losses based on equipment failure. The UC Science testbed undertook an extreme case in performance assessment—linking performance of contents to operational failure. The research shows the interdependence of building structure, systems, and contents in performance assessment, and highlights where further research is needed. The Executive Summary provides a short description of the overall testbed research program, while the main body of the report includes summary chapters from individual researchers. More extensive research reports are cited in the reference section of each chapter

Integral Kinetic Model for Studying Quercetin Degradation and Oxidation as Affected by Cholesterol During Heating

The degradation and oxidation of quercetin, as affected by cholesterol during heating at 150 °C, was kinetically studied using non-linear regression models. Both TLC and HPLC were used to monitor the changes of quercetin, cholesterol and cholesterol oxidation products (COPs) during heating. The formation of COPs, including triol, 7-keto, 7α-OH and 7β-OH, was completely inhibited during the initial 30 minute heating period in the presence of 0.02% quercetin, accompanied by reduction in cholesterol peroxidation and degradation. However, the quercetin degradation or oxidation proceeded fast, with the rate constants (h−1) in the presence of nitrogen, oxygen and the combination of oxygen and cholesterol being 0.253, 0.868 and 7.17, respectively. When cholesterol and quercetin were heated together, the rate constants (h−1) of cholesterol peroxidation, epoxidation and degradation were 1.8 × 10−4, 0.016 and 0.19, respectively. The correlation coefficients (r2) for all the oxidative and degradation reactions ranged from 0.82–0.99. The kinetic models developed in this study may be used to predict the degradation and oxidation of quercetin as affected by cholesterol during heating

Handling Discontinuous Effects in Modeling Spatial Correlation of Wafer-level Analog/RF Tests

Abstract-In an effort to reduce the cost of specification testing in analog/RF circuits, spatial correlation modeling of wafer-level measurements has recently attracted increased attention. Existing approaches for capturing and leveraging such correlation, however, rely on the assumption that spatial variation is smooth and continuous. This, in turn, limits the effectiveness of these methods on actual production data, which often exhibits localized spatial discontinuous effects. In this work, we propose a novel approach which enables spatial correlation modeling of waferlevel analog/RF tests to handle such effects and, thereby, to drastically reduce prediction error for measurements exhibiting discontinuous spatial patterns. The core of the proposed approach is a k-means algorithm which partitions a wafer into k clusters, as caused by discontinuous effects. Individual correlation models are then constructed within each cluster, revoking the assumption that spatial patterns should be smooth and continuous across the entire wafer. Effectiveness of the proposed approach is evaluated on industrial probe test data from more than 3,400 wafers, revealing significant error reduction over existing approaches

The activity status of cofilin is directly related to invasion, intravasation, and metastasis of mammary tumors

Understanding the mechanisms controlling cancer cell invasion and metastasis constitutes a fundamental step in setting new strategies for diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy of metastatic cancers. LIM kinase1 (LIMK1) is a member of a novel class of serine–threonine protein kinases. Cofilin, a LIMK1 substrate, is essential for the regulation of actin polymerization and depolymerization during cell migration. Previous studies have made opposite conclusions as to the role of LIMK1 in tumor cell motility and metastasis, claiming either an increase or decrease in cell motility and metastasis as a result of LIMK1 over expression (Zebda, N., O. Bernard, M. Bailly, S. Welti, D.S. Lawrence, and J.S. Condeelis. 2000. J. Cell Biol. 151:1119–1128; Davila, M., A.R. Frost, W.E. Grizzle, and R. Chakrabarti. 2003. J. Biol. Chem. 278:36868–36875; Yoshioka, K., V. Foletta, O. Bernard, and K. Itoh. 2003. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 100:7247–7252; Nishita, M., C. Tomizawa, M. Yamamoto, Y. Horita, K. Ohashi, and K. Mizuno. 2005. J. Cell Biol. 171:349–359). We resolve this paradox by showing that the effects of LIMK1 expression on migration, intravasation, and metastasis of cancer cells can be most simply explained by its regulation of the output of the cofilin pathway. LIMK1-mediated decreases or increases in the activity of the cofilin pathway are shown to cause proportional decreases or increases in motility, intravasation, and metastasis of tumor cells

A multicenter study to evaluate harmonization of assays for N-terminal propeptide of type I procollagen (PINP): a report from the IFCC-IOF Joint Committee for Bone Metabolism

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