Direct Anastomosis of the Donor Hepatic Artery to the Supraceliac Aorta without Extension Graft during Adult Liver Transplant in the Era of Extended Criteria Donors: Report of a Case

Arguably, one of the most challenging aspects of liver transplant surgery is the hepatic artery reconstruction. When the donor and recipient arteries are normal, this anastomosis can still be difficult. However, when the recipient artery has been dissected or is small other alternative reconstructions must be considered. Routinely, the donor surgery includes removing the iliac artery and vein specifically to aid in alternative reconstruction techniques. With the increase use of extended criteria donors (i.e., specifically age >55) the iliac vessel may be unusable because of atherosclerotic disease. This paper describes revisiting an alternative technique for hepatic artery reconstruction during cadaveric liver transplant when the recipient artery has been dissected and the iliac vessels were unusable secondary to arterial plaque from a 75 yo donor. Herein, we describe the successful anastomosis of the celiac artery with aortic patch from the donor directly to the supraceliac aorta of the adult recipient

Genome Sequencing and Pan-Genome Analysis of 23 Corallococcus spp. Strains Reveal Unexpected Diversity, With Particular Plasticity of Predatory Gene Sets

Corallococcus is an abundant genus of predatory soil myxobacteria, containing two species, C. coralloides (for which a genome sequence is available) and C. exiguus. To investigate the genomic basis of predation, we genome-sequenced 23 Corallococcus strains. Genomic similarity metrics grouped the sequenced strains into at least nine distinct genomospecies, divided between two major sub-divisions of the genus, encompassing previously described diversity. The Corallococcus pan-genome was found to be open, with strains exhibiting highly individual gene sets. On average, only 30.5% of each strain’s gene set belonged to the core pan-genome, while more than 75% of the accessory pan-genome genes were present in less than four of the 24 genomes. The Corallococcus accessory pan-proteome was enriched for the COG functional category “Secondary metabolism,” with each genome containing on average 55 biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs), of which only 20 belonged to the core pan-genome. Predatory activity was assayed against ten prey microbes and found to be mostly incongruent with phylogeny or BGC complement. Thus, predation seems multifactorial, depending partially on BGC complement, but also on the accessory pan-genome – genes most likely acquired horizontally. These observations encourage further exploration of Corallococcus as a source for novel bioactive secondary metabolites and predatory proteins.</p

Categorical Combinatorics for Innocent Strategies

International audienceWe show how to construct the category of games and innocent strategies from a more primitive category of games. On that category we define a comonad and monad with the former distributing over the latter. Innocent strategies are the maps in the induced two-sided Kleisli category. Thus the problematic composition of innocent strategies reflects the use of the distributive law. The composition of simple strategies, and the combinatorics of pointers used to give the comonad and monad are themselves described in categorical terms. The notions of view and of legal play arise naturally in the explanation of the distributivity. The category-theoretic perspective provides a clear discipline for the necessary combinatorics

Test statistics for the comparison of means for two samples that include both paired and independent observations

©2017 JMASM, Inc. Standard approaches for analyzing the difference in two means, where partially overlapping samples are present, are less than desirable. Here are introduced two test statistics, making reference to the t-distribution. It is shown that these test statistics are Type I error robust, and more powerful than standard tests

Worlds before and beyond words

The advent of computer-generated environments for simulating experience of the real world invites a reappraisal of the role of classical and neo-classical theories of computation (e.g. views of computation based on linguistic and logical frameworks.) To make more effective use of computers in connection with Virtual Reality requires a shift in emphasis towards computers as state representers rather than calculators, towards the construction and analysis of environments rather than documents and towards empirical rather than theoretical approaches to knowledge representation. This paper discusses the prospects for gaining new insights into empirical activity through the systematic construction of models (typically - but not necessarily - computer based) in which real world state, as perceived by a particular agent, is imitated directly through the use of suitable metaphors. Such activity is exemplified in the construction of engineering models and the development and calibration of scientific instruments. A characteristic ingredient of the modelling processes involved in these applications is correlation of the results of experiments and observations that are performed in parallel in a real world environment and in the associated physical (e.g. computer) model. Conventional computer programming paradigms are not well-suited for constructing models by empirical methods. Amongst widely used software tools, only spreadsheets are well adapted to imitating real world state as it is captured through observation and experiment. The philosophical ideas to be introduced in the paper have been developed in connection with practical case-studies and software tools that contribute to a long-term Empirical Modelling Project being pursued at the Computer Science Department at the University of Warwick. A key concept in this research programme is the development of agent-oriented models in which the dependencies between observables that are used for communication are specified using generalised spreadsheet principles

MultiIoT: Towards Large-scale Multisensory Learning for the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT), the network integrating billions of smart physical devices embedded with sensors, software, and communication technologies for the purpose of connecting and exchanging data with other devices and systems, is a critical and rapidly expanding component of our modern world. The IoT ecosystem provides a rich source of real-world modalities such as motion, thermal, geolocation, imaging, depth, sensors, video, and audio for prediction tasks involving the pose, gaze, activities, and gestures of humans as well as the touch, contact, pose, 3D of physical objects. Machine learning presents a rich opportunity to automatically process IoT data at scale, enabling efficient inference for impact in understanding human wellbeing, controlling physical devices, and interconnecting smart cities. To develop machine learning technologies for IoT, this paper proposes MultiIoT, the most expansive IoT benchmark to date, encompassing over 1.15 million samples from 12 modalities and 8 tasks. MultiIoT introduces unique challenges involving (1) learning from many sensory modalities, (2) fine-grained interactions across long temporal ranges, and (3) extreme heterogeneity due to unique structure and noise topologies in real-world sensors. We also release a set of strong modeling baselines, spanning modality and task-specific methods to multisensory and multitask models to encourage future research in multisensory representation learning for IoT

From the AMLE editorial team:Disciplined provocation: Writing essays for AMLE

Our aim in this Editorial is to provide our readers, potential authors and reviewers with clarification on the essays section of the journal. We believe that essays make a significant contribution to the advancement of scholarship in management learning and education, but in a different way to empirical papers. We want to encourage the submission of essays by elaborating on what we think is distinctive, interesting and important about this form of writing

Fan artefacts and doing it themselves: The home-made graphics of punk devotees

Punk’s embrace of autonomous, do-it-yourself, artistic production has been widely documented as a key element of the punk ‘explosion’. At times, however, the rhetoric has exceeded the actual practice, and the boundary between DIY authorship and professional production has become blurred. Though much early punk visual material was indeed raw, rough and ready, and often appeared to run counter to any kind of formal aesthetic criteria in respect to design or taste, it was also widely the product of trained graphic designers and illustrators with a keen awareness of the appropriate visual language required to reflect a new, self-styled, anarchic and polemical subculture. Even many of the celebrated ‘do-it-yourself’ punk pioneers relied on access to professional services for reproduction, including printers, pre-press art workers and record sleeve manufacturers. However, much like the punks who chose to make their own outfits, rather than buy ‘official’ clothing from the burgeoning punk boutique (and mail order) market, some fans and enthusiasts attempted to create their own punk graphics, or decided to adopt a naïve model of détournement in order to adapt or personalise jackets, shirts, school bags, scrapbooks and even record sleeves within their own collections. These home made artefacts can be viewed as products of subcultural participation and belonging, as an individual’s response to punk’s call to arms and as markers of possession. They may also help us to better understand an underlying, distilled and unmediated interpretation of punk’s ‘natural’ visual language

Paleomagnetic Evidence of Vertical Axis Block Rotations from the Mesozoic of Northern Chile

We present paleomagnetic results for three Mesozoic formations from northern Chile: La Ternera Formation (Upper Triassic), Quebrada Monardes Formation (Upper Jurassic); Cerrillos Formation (Upper Cretaceous). Results from the Cerrillos are divided into eastern (Cuesta El Gao (CEG)) and western (Elisa De Bordo (EBD)) localities. Most specimens from La Ternera volcanic and sedimentary rocks are mag­netically stable, as shown by alternating field and thermal demagnetization. More complicated but still reliable results were obtained from Quebrada Monardes red beds. Normal and reverse polarities are present in both units; means of both populations are antiparallel at 95% confi­dence. The Quebrada Monardes Formation also yields positive conglomerate and fold tests. Paleomagnetic poles for La Ternera and Quebrada- Monardes are 60.9S, 218.3E (A95, 7.8°), and 66.9S, 191.6E (A95, 12.7°), respectively. Com­parison with appropriate reference poles shows that this region of Chile has undergone about 25° of clockwise rotation, with negligible lati­tudinal transport. Cerrillos CEG results are less reliable and possibly complicated by remag- netization during emplacement of early Tertiary intrusives. Most Cerrillos EDB specimens are stable, but marked increase in scatter upon un­folding suggests remagnetization. Results for the Cerrillos CEG locality, which is contiguous to the sampling area of the La Ternera and Que­brada Monardes formations, show only about half the rotation of those two units, suggesting that rotation commenced after deposition of the Que­brada Monardes rocks in the Late Jurassic and was approximately half complete by the time Cer­rillos CEG rocks acquired their magnetization. Cerrillos EDB results come from an area approxi­mately 40 km to the west; these show roughly 45° of clockwise rotation. Dispersion is very low between EDB sites, suggesting that secular vari­ation may not be completely averaged. Neverthe­less, the great difference in direct:ion between the two Cerrillos localities suggests that they lie in different structural blocks