Abdominal wall endometriosis: a challenge for surgeon

Clinica de Chirurgie Generală, Institutul Clinic Fundeni, Bucureşti, România, Al XII-lea Congres al Asociației Chirurgilor „Nicolae Anestiadi” din Republica Moldova cu participare internațională 23-25 septembrie 2015Introducere: Endometrioza de perete abdominal (EPA) este o patologie rară, de obicei asociată cu intervenții chirurgicale și ginecologice, cum ar fi operația cezariană, histerotomia, histerectomia și amniocenteza. Examenul obiectiv în EPA este nespecific; cuprinde dureri catameniale sau formațiune tumorala palpabilă la nivelul locului de incizie. Examenul clinic sărac în simptome poate duce la dificultăți în elucidarea diagnosticului, EPA fiind confundată cu granulomul de fir, hematomul, hernia, eventrația și cancerul. Material şi metode: Am analizat 9 paciente cu EPA care au efectuat tratament în Clinica de Chirurgie a Institutului Clinic Fundeni in perioada 01.01.2007-31.05.2015. S-a pus accentul pe vîrsta, simptomele, intervențiile în antecedente, patologiile asociate, localizarea endometriozei, descoperirile imagistice și evoluția postoperatorie a pacientelor. Rezultate: Vîrsta medie a pacientelor era de 35,6 de ani. Simptomul principal acuzat era durerea. Trei dintre cazuri au fost inițial diagnosticate greșit ca fiind granulom de fir, hernie inghinală și, respectiv, hematom. Șapte din nouă paciente au avut istoric de operații ginecologice în antecedente (cezariana, epiziotomie). Examenul histologic a evidențiat endometrioza asociind țesut muscular (în 5 cazuri), țesut conjunctiv (în 2 cazuri), țesut celulo-adipos subcutanat (în 2 cazuri); o pacienta a prezentat și invazia peretelui uterin anterior asociată cu EPA. Mărimea tumorilor a variat de la 1 la 14 cm. L-a cinci pacienți s-a practicat refacerea peretelui abdominal cu plasă de întărire. Concluzii: Studiul nostru confirmă EPA că fiind o localizare rar întîlnita și sugerează necesitatea obținerii unui istoric detaliat și a unei examinări fizice minuțioase în vederea punerii diagnosticului corect.Introduction: Abdominal wall endometriosis (AWE) is a rare pathology, usually associated with surgical and gynecological procedures such as cesarean delivery, hysterotomy and hysterectomy. Its clinical features are nonspecific, typically involving abdominal wall pain at the incision site at the time of menstruation, mass lump and can cause difficulties in diagnosis. AWE may be confused with suture granuloma, hematoma, hernia and even cancer. Material and methods: Between 01 January 2007 and 31 May 2015 a total of 9 patients with AWE were identified in the hospital’s medical records. Patients age, symptoms, previous operations, associated pathology, location of the disease, imagistic findings and postoperative course were registered. The diagnosis was confirmed on the pathological examination. Results: The mean age of the patients was 35.6 years. Of all the patients included, the primary symptom was abdominal pain. Three cases were misdiagnosed as inguinal hernia, suture granuloma and hematoma. Seven patients had a history of gynecological procedure (cesarean section, episiotomy). Histological examination reported the lesion involving muscle tissue (5 cases), conjunctive tissue (2 cases), subcutaneous tissue (2 cases), one specimen associated anterior uterine wall invasion. The size varied from 1 cm to 14 cm. Five patients required mesh for fascial closure following the resection of the AWE. Conclusions: Our study confirms AWE to be a rare condition and indicates the necessity of thorough history and physical examination in making correct diagnosis

Few-mode metal-free perovskite optical fiber with second-order optical nonlinearity

Semiconductor core optical fibers are highly desirable for fiber-based photonic and optoelectronic applications as they can combine strong optical nonlinearities, tight light confinement, wide transmission bands, and electronic functionality within a single platform. Perovskites have emerged as particularly exciting materials for semiconductor photonics as they have strong optical nonlinearities and tunable optoelectronic bandgaps. However, lead-based perovskites contain toxic elements and are, therefore, not environmentally friendly. Furthermore, in fiber form, their core-size is prohibitively large, making them unsuitable for nonlinear optics and applications that require single-mode guidance, such as telecommunications. Here, we report a metal-free perovskite core optical fiber where lead has been substituted for an ammonium cation in the perovskite structure. The core material has a wide bandgap greater than 5 eV, a high laser damage threshold, and a core diameter that can be produced as small as 5 \ub5m. At this core size, the fiber supports just six modes, and the fundamental mode can readily be excited and isolated. Moreover, the metal-free perovskite has a second-order susceptibility that is absent in the archetypal lead-based perovskites and many other semiconductor core materials, such as silicon and germanium. The second-order susceptibility is important for many nonlinear optics applications, such as second-harmonic generation and quantum optics

USE OF LIQUID FERTILIZERS BASED ON HUMATES EXTRACTED FROM LIGNITE IN WASTE DUMPS RECULTIVATION

Four liquid fertilizers based on humates obtained from lignite were developed and tested. The fertilizers were applied on the waste dump resulted from lignite open cast covered with fertile soil, at maize and alfalfa crops. The application of liquid fertilizers based on humates led to very significant increase of maize grain and alfalfa yields. The production reached the level of yields obtained in the area on land that was not affected by mining activities. The alfalfa plants concentration of macro elements and micro elements belongs to the ”normal” domain. The maize leaves had scarce nitrogen, potassium, copper, iron, and manganese contents and normal phosphorus and zinc contents

Scaling Relation for Occulter Manufacturing Errors

For directly imaging exoplanets, NASA is considering space mission designs that use an external occulter as the principal starlight suppression system. These occulter designs range in diameter from 16 to 40 meters and separation distance from 8,000 to 60,000 kilometers for telescopes with primary diameters of 0.5 to 4 meters. Occulter shapes are solutions to an optimization problem which seeks to maximize suppression in the shadow subject to constraints such as size, separation, and wavelengths. These designs are based on scalar diffraction theory and must be verified experimentally to demonstrate predicted on-orbit performance. Due to the large sizes and separations involved the experiment must be scaled to lab size. We are currently expanding the existing experimental test-bed at Princeton to enable scaling of occulters operating at flight Fresnel sizes. Here we examine the effect on suppression performance of edge defects and their scaling to test-bed size

Effect of hirtisation on the roughness and fatigue performance of porous titanium lattice structures

Additive manufacturing (AM) has enabled the fabrication of extremely complex components such as porous metallic lattices, which have applications in aerospace, automotive, and in particular biomedical devices. The fatigue resistance of these materials is currently an important limitation however, due to manufacturing defects such as semi-fused particles and weld lines. Here Hirtisation$^\circledR$ is used for post-processing of Ti-6Al-4V lattices, reducing the strut surface roughness (Sa) from 12 to 6 $\mu$m, removing all visible semi-fused particles. The evenness of this treatment in lattices with $\rho /\rho_{s}$ up to 18.3% and treatment depth of 6.5 mm was assessed, finding no evidence of reduced effectiveness on internal surfaces. After normalising to quasi-static mechanical properties to account for material losses during hirtisation (34-37% reduction in strut diameter), the fatigue properties show a marked improvement due to the reduction in surface roughness. Normalised high cycle fatigue strength ($\sigma_{f,10^{6}}/\sigma_{y}$) increased from around 0.1 to 0.16-0.21 after hirtisation, an average increase of 80%. For orthopaedic implant devices where matching the stiffness of surrounding bone is crucial, the $\sigma_{f}/E$ ratio is a key metric. After hirtisation the $\sigma_{f}/E$ ratio increased by 90%, enabling design of stiffness matched implant materials with greater fatigue strength. This work demonstrates that hirtisation is an effective method for improving the surface roughness of porous lattice materials, thereby enhancing their fatigue performance.Comment: 10 figure

Quantitative spectroscopy of single molecule interaction times

Funding Information: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (421152132 (subproject C03)), EXC 2046 (MATH+Incubator project IN-B2).Single molecule fluorescence tracking provides information at nanometer-scale and millisecond-temporal resolution about the dynamics and interaction of individual molecules in a biological environment. While the dynamic behavior of isolated molecules can be characterized well, the quantitative insight is more limited when interactions between two indistinguishable molecules occur. We address this aspect by developing a theoretical foundation for a spectroscopy of interaction times, i.e., the inference of interaction from imaging data. A non-trivial crossover between a power law to an exponential behavior of the distribution of the interaction times is highlighted, together with the dependence of the exponential term upon the microscopic reaction affinity. Our approach is validated with simulated and experimental datasets.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Dynamical performance for science-mode stationkeeping with an external occulter

An external occulter flown in precise formation with a telescope is being considered for high-contrast direct imaging of exoplanets as a viable mission scenario. In this paper, the dynamics about the Sun-Earth L2 region for an occulter-telescope constellation are considered in conjunction with fourth-body and solar radiation pressure acting as disturbing forces. An optimal observation window is defined in terms of both thrust required and the Sun-constellation geometry. By simulation, the effects of the stellar latitude and distance, the spacecraft separation, the magnitude of the disturbing forces, an

EVOLUTION OF SOIL ATTRIBUTES IN CONSERVATIVE AGRICULTURE

Results are presented obtained in an experiment carried out in conservative agriculture system in which chemical fertilizers assortments were tested in N, NP, NPK, and NPK with potassium humates matrix. Doses of 0; 50; 100; 150; and 200 kg N/ha were applied. The experiment was placed on a Haplic Phaeozem[1] at SCDA Teleorman and the test plant was soya. The evolution of soil physical and chemical characteristics was aimed at. Soil samples were collected on the 0-20 cm depth. It was ascertained that soil works in conservative agriculture system didn’t lead to changes in the total cation exchange capacity, exchangeable bases sum, and base saturation degree. The latter had a decreasing tendency,  from 88.6-90.6% to 85.8-88.5%, but not statistically ensured. Mobile forms of phosphorus and potassium had very significant increases in the variants treated with NP, NPK matrix fertilizers. Total forms remained constant.