Attitudes of surgeons to the use of postoperative markers of the systemic inflammatory response following elective surgery

Background: Cancer is responsible for 7.6 million deaths worldwide and surgery is the primary modality of a curative outcome. Postoperative care is of considerable importance and it is against this backdrop that a questionnaire based study assessing the attitudes of surgeons to monitoring postoperative systemic inflammation was carried out. Method: A Web based survey including 10 questions on the “attitudes of surgeons to the use of postoperative markers of the systemic inflammatory response following elective surgery” was distributed via email. Two cohorts were approached to participate in the survey. Cohort 1 consisted of 1092 surgeons on the “Association of Coloproctology of Great Britain and Ireland (ACPGBI)” membership list. Cohort 2 consisted of 270 surgeons who had published in this field in the past as identified by two recent reviews. A reminder email was sent out 21 days after the initial email in both cases and the survey was closed after 42 days in both cases. Result: In total 29 surgeons (2.7%) from cohort 1 and 40 surgeons (14.8%) from cohort 2 responded to the survey. The majority of responders were from Europe (77%), were colorectal specialists (64%) and were consultants (84%) and worked in teaching hospitals (54%) and used minimally invasive techniques (87%). The majority of responders measured CRP routinely in the post-operative period (85%) and used CRP to guide their decision making (91%) and believed that CRP monitoring should be incorporated into postoperative guidelines (81%). Conclusion: Although there was a limited response the majority of surgeons surveyed measure the systemic inflammatory response following elective surgery and use CRP measurements together with clinical findings to guide postoperative care. The present results provide a baseline against which future surveys can be compared

How and why systemic inflammation worsens quality of life in patients with advanced cancer

Introduction: The presence of an innate host systemic inflammatory response has been reported to be a negative prognostic factor in a wide group of solid tumour types in both the operable and advanced setting, both local and distant. In addition, this host systemic inflammatory response is associated with both clinician reported patient performance status and self-reported measures of quality of life in patients with cancer. Areas covered: A variety of mechanisms are thought to underlie this, including the influence of the host immune response on physical symptoms such as pain and fatigue, its effect on organ systems associated with physical ability and well being such as skeletal muscle, and bone marrow. Furthermore, this innate inflammatory response is thought to have a direct negative impact on mood through its action on the central nervous system. Expert commentary: It is clear that the host systemic inflammatory response represents a target for intervention in terms of both improving quality of life and prognosis in patients with advanced cancer. Based on this paradigm, future research should focus both on pathways which might be targeted by novel agents, but also on whether existing anti-inflammatory drugs might be of benefit

Thermal gravity, black holes and cosmological entropy

Taking seriously the interpretation of black hole entropy as the logarithm of the number of microstates, we argue that thermal gravitons may undergo a phase transition to a kind of black hole condensate. The phase transition proceeds via nucleation of black holes at a rate governed by a saddlepoint configuration whose free energy is of order the inverse temperature in Planck units. Whether the universe remains in a low entropy state as opposed to the high entropy black hole condensate depends sensitively on its thermal history. Our results may clarify an old observation of Penrose regarding the very low entropy state of the universe.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, RevTex. v4: to appear in Phys. Rev.

Incorrectly Aged, Identified and Classified: Revisiting Nebraska’s 1968 ‘Barnacle Goose’ Record

On 2 November 1968 in northeastern Otoe County, Nebraska, Milton Muncie harvested a bird (herein referred to as the 1968 specimen), subsequently identified as an immature Barnacle Goose (Branta leucopsis), from a flock of about 40 Cackling Geese (Branta hutchinsii; Cortelyou 1969). The occurrence was reported not only as the first record of a Barnacle Goose for Nebraska, but also the first record for the North American Interior and West (Cortelyou 1969). Cortelyou’s (1969) brief article also included a photograph of the mounted specimen. At the time and when subsequently reviewed by various authors, the identity of the 1968 specimen as a Barnacle Goose was not a matter of debate. Questions about its provenance, however, led authors (Bray et al. 1986, Sharpe et al. 2001) to consider the species’ occurrence as a wild bird in the state to be unproven, thus “hypothetical”. Bray et al. (1986) noted an immature in fall was a likely age class and period for a genuine wild vagrant, but considered the Otoe County specimen an escapee, citing Ryff (1984). Johnsgard (2018) also acknowledged the possibility the 1968 specimen could be a true vagrant, referring to it as “apparently wild”. Barnacle Goose has subsequently been reported four times in the state, but none of the reports are as welldocumented as the 1968 specimen. Thus, no records have been accepted and Barnacle Goose does not appear on the Official List of the Birds of Nebraska (Brogie 2009)

Novel species of Cercospora and Pseudocercospora (Capnodiales, Mycosphaerellaceae) from Australia

Novel species of Cercospora and Pseudocercospora are described from Australian native plant species. These taxa are Cercospora ischaemi sp. nov. on Ischaemum australe (Poaceae); Pseudocercospora airliensis sp. nov. on Polyalthia nitidissima (Annonaceae); Pseudocercospora proiphydis sp. nov. on Proiphys amboinensis (Amaryllidaceae); and Pseudocercospora jagerae sp. nov. on Jagera pseudorhus var. pseudorhus (Sapindaceae). These species were characterised by morphology and an analysis of partial nucleotide sequence data for the three gene loci, ITS, LSU and EF-1α. Recent divergence of closely related Australian species of Pseudocercospora on native plants is proposed

The nuclear pore complex has entered the atomic age

Nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) perforate the nuclear envelope and represent the exclusive passageway into and out of the nucleus of the eukaryotic cell. Apart from their essential transport function, components of the NPC have important, direct roles in nuclear organization and in gene regulation. Because of its central role in cell biology, it is of considerable interest to determine the NPC structure at atomic resolution. The complexity of these large, 40–60 MDa protein assemblies has for decades limited such structural studies. More recently, exploiting the intrinsic modularity of the NPC, structural biologists are making progress toward understanding this nanomachine in molecular detail. Structures of building blocks of the stable, architectural scaffold of the NPC have been solved, and distinct models for their assembly proposed. Here we review the status of the field and lay out the challenges and the next steps toward a full understanding of the NPC at atomic resolution.Pew Charitable Trusts (Scholars Program)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant GM077537

Novel species of Cercospora and Pseudocercospora (Capnodiales, Mycosphaerellaceae) from Australia

Novel species of Cercospora and Pseudocercospora are described from Australian native plant species. These taxa are Cercospora ischaemi sp. nov. on Ischaemum australe (Poaceae); Pseudocercospora airliensis sp. nov. on Polyalthia nitidissima (Annonaceae); Pseudocercospora proiphydis sp. nov. on Proiphys amboinensis (Amaryllidaceae); and Pseudocercospora jagerae sp. nov. on Jagera pseudorhus var. pseudorhus (Sapindaceae). These species were characterised by morphology and an analysis of partial nucleotide sequence data for the three gene loci, ITS, LSU and EF-1α. Recent divergence of closely related Australian species of Pseudocercospora on native plants is proposed