Management of small bowel volvulus in a patient with simultaneous pancreas-kidney transplantation (SPKT): a case report

There are several surgical complications which can occur following simultaneous pancreas-kidney transplantation (SPKT). Although intestinal obstruction is known to be a common complication after any type of abdominal surgery, the occurrence of small bowel volvulus, which is one of the rare causes of intestinal obstruction, following SPKT has not been published before. A 24-year-old woman suffering from type I diabetes mellitus with complications of nephropathy resulting in end stage renal disease (ESRD), neuropathy and retinopathy underwent SPKT. On the postoperative month 5, she was brought to the emergency service due to abdominal distention with mild abdominal pain. After laboratory research and diagnostic radiological tests had been carried out, she underwent exploratory laparotomy to determine the pathology for acute abdominal symptoms. Intra-operative observation revealed the presence of an almost totally ischemic small bowel which had occurred due to clockwise rotation of the mesentery. Initially, simple derotation was performed to avoid intestinal resection because of her risky condition, particularly for short bowel syndrome, and subsequent intestinal response was favorable. Thus, surgical treatment was successfully employed to solve the problem without any resection procedure. The patient's postoperative follow-up was uneventful and she was discharged from hospital on postoperative day 7. According to our clinical viewpoint, this study emphasizes that if there is even just a suspicion of acute abdominal problem in a patient with SPKT, surgical intervention should be promptly performed to avoid any irreversible result and to achieve a positive outcome

A Tale of Two Current Sheets

I outline a new model of particle acceleration in the current sheet separating the closed from the open field lines in the force-free model of pulsar magnetospheres, based on reconnection at the light cylinder and "auroral" acceleration occurring in the return current channel that connects the light cylinder to the neutron star surface. I discuss recent studies of Pulsar Wind Nebulae, which find that pair outflow rates in excess of those predicted by existing theories of pair creation occur, and use those results to point out that dissipation of the magnetic field in a pulsar's wind upstream of the termination shock is restored to life as a viable model for the solution of the "$\sigma$" problem as a consequence of the lower wind 4-velocity implied by the larger mass loading.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures, Invited Review, Proceedings of the "ICREA Workshop on The High-Energy Emission from Pulsars and their Systems", Sant Cugat, Spain, April 12-16, 201

mspecLINE: bridging knowledge of human disease with the proteome

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Public proteomics databases such as PeptideAtlas contain peptides and proteins identified in mass spectrometry experiments. However, these databases lack information about human disease for researchers studying disease-related proteins. We have developed mspecLINE, a tool that combines knowledge about human disease in MEDLINE with empirical data about the detectable human proteome in PeptideAtlas. mspecLINE associates diseases with proteins by calculating the semantic distance between annotated terms from a controlled biomedical vocabulary. We used an established semantic distance measure that is based on the co-occurrence of disease and protein terms in the MEDLINE bibliographic database.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The mspecLINE web application allows researchers to explore relationships between human diseases and parts of the proteome that are detectable using a mass spectrometer. Given a disease, the tool will display proteins and peptides from PeptideAtlas that may be associated with the disease. It will also display relevant literature from MEDLINE. Furthermore, mspecLINE allows researchers to select proteotypic peptides for specific protein targets in a mass spectrometry assay.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Although mspecLINE applies an information retrieval technique to the MEDLINE database, it is distinct from previous MEDLINE query tools in that it combines the knowledge expressed in scientific literature with empirical proteomics data. The tool provides valuable information about candidate protein targets to researchers studying human disease and is freely available on a public web server.</p

“Lossless” compression of high resolution mass spectra of small molecules

Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FTICR) provides the highest resolving power of any commercially available mass spectrometer. This advantage is most significant for species of low mass-to-charge ratio (m/z), such as metabolites. Unfortunately, FTICR spectra contain a very large number of data points, most of which are noise. This is most pronounced at the low m/z end of spectra, where data point density is the highest but peak density low. We therefore developed a filter that offers lossless compression of FTICR mass spectra from singly charged metabolites. The filter relies on the high resolving power and mass measurement precision of FTICR and removes only those m/z channels that cannot contain signal from singly charged organic species. The resulting pseudospectra still contain the same signal as the original spectra but less uninformative background. The filter does not affect the outcome of standard downstream chemometric analysis methods, such as principal component analysis, but use of the filter significantly reduces memory requirements and CPU time for such analyses. We demonstrate the utility of the filter for urinary metabolite profiling using direct infusion electrospray ionization and a 15 tesla FTICR mass spectrometer

Lithofacies uncertainty modeling in a siliciclastic reservoir setting by incorporating geological contacts and seismic information

Deterministic modeling lonely provides a unique boundary layout, depending on the geological interpretation or interpolation from the hard available data. Changing the interpreter’s attitude or interpolation parameters leads to displacing the location of these borders. In contrary, probabilistic modeling of geological domains such as lithofacies is a critical aspect to providing information to take proper decision in the case of evaluation of oil reservoirs parameters, that is, applicable for quantification of uncertainty along the boundaries. These stochastic modeling manifests itself dramatically beyond this occasion. Conventional approaches of probabilistic modeling (object and pixel-based) mostly suffers from consideration of contact knowledge on the simulated domains. Plurigaussian simulation algorithm, in contrast, allows reproducing the complex transitions among the lithofacies domains and has found wide acceptance for modeling petroleum reservoirs. Stationary assumption for this framework has implications on the homogeneous characterization of the lithofacies. In this case, the proportion is assumed constant and the covariance function as a typical feature of spatial continuity depends only on the Euclidean distances between two points. But, whenever there exists a heterogeneity phenomenon in the region, this assumption does not urge model to generate the desired variability of the underlying proportion of facies over the domain. Geophysical attributes as a secondary variable in this place, plays an important role for generation of the realistic contact relationship between the simulated categories. In this paper, a hierarchical plurigaussian simulation approach is used to construct multiple realizations of lithofacies by incorporating the acoustic impedance as soft data through an oil reservoir in Iran.This research was funded by the National Elites Foundation of Iran in collaboration with research Institute Petroleum of Industry in Iran under the project number of 9265005

Acute hunger does not always undermine prosociality

This is the final version. Available on open access from Nature Research via the DOI in this recordData Availability: The data that support the findings of this paper are available on the OSF website (https://osf.io/zexd7/?view_only=480593713c904397a033e751a6da7a69).It has been argued that, when they are acutely hungry, people act in self-protective ways by keeping resources to themselves rather than sharing them. In four studies, using experimental, quasi-experimental, and correlational designs (total N = 795), we examine the effects of acute hunger on prosociality in a wide variety of non-interdependent tasks (e.g. dictator game) and interdependent tasks (e.g. public goods games). While our procedures successfully increase subjective hunger and decrease blood glucose, we do not find significant effects of hunger on prosociality. This is true for both decisions incentivized with money and with food. Metaanalysis across all tasks reveals a very small effect of hunger on prosociality in noninterdependent tasks (d = .108), and a non-significant effect in interdependent tasks (d = -0.076). In study five (N = 197), we show that, in stark contrast to our empirical findings, people hold strong lay theories that hunger undermines prosociality.Volkswagen Foundatio

Survey of Tyrosine Kinase Signaling Reveals ROS Kinase Fusions in Human Cholangiocarcinoma

Cholangiocarcinoma, also known as bile duct cancer, is the second most common primary hepatic carcinoma with a median survival of less than 2 years. The molecular mechanisms underlying the development of this disease are not clear. To survey activated tyrosine kinases signaling in cholangiocarcinoma, we employed immunoaffinity profiling coupled to mass spectrometry and identified DDR1, EPHA2, EGFR, and ROS tyrosine kinases, along with over 1,000 tyrosine phosphorylation sites from about 750 different proteins in primary cholangiocarcinoma patients. Furthermore, we confirmed the presence of ROS kinase fusions in 8.7% (2 out of 23) of cholangiocarcinoma patients. Expression of the ROS fusions in 3T3 cells confers transforming ability both in vitro and in vivo, and is responsive to its kinase inhibitor. Our data demonstrate that ROS kinase is a promising candidate for a therapeutic target and for a diagnostic molecular marker in cholangiocarcinoma. The identification of ROS tyrosine kinase fusions in cholangiocarcinoma, along with the presence of other ROS kinase fusions in lung cancer and glioblastoma, suggests that a more broadly based screen for activated ROS kinase in cancer is warranted

Evaluating Effects of Divided Hemispheric Processing on Word Recognition in Foveal and Extrafoveal Displays: The Evidence from Arabic

Background: Previous studies have claimed that a precise split at the vertical midline of each fovea causes all words to the left and right of fixation to project to the opposite, contralateral hemisphere, and this division in hemispheric processing has considerable consequences for foveal word recognition. However, research in this area is dominated by the use of stimuli from Latinate languages, which may induce specific effects on performance. Consequently, we report two experiments using stimuli from a fundamentally different, non-Latinate language (Arabic) that offers an alternative way of revealing effects of split-foveal processing, if they exist. Methods and Findings: Words (and pseudowords) were presented to the left or right of fixation, either close to fixation and entirely within foveal vision, or further from fixation and entirely within extrafoveal vision. Fixation location and stimulus presentations were carefully controlled using an eye-tracker linked to a fixation-contingent display. To assess word recognition, Experiment 1 used the Reicher-Wheeler task and Experiment 2 used the lexical decision task. Results: Performance in both experiments indicated a functional division in hemispheric processing for words in extrafoveal locations (in recognition accuracy in Experiment 1 and in reaction times and error rates in Experiment 2) but no such division for words in foveal locations. Conclusions: These findings from a non-Latinate language provide new evidence that although a functional division i

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of √ s = 8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT > 120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between Emiss T > 150 GeV and Emiss T > 700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with either large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, or production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presente