Transcatheter thrombin embolization of a giant visceral artery aneurysm

A 9.5-cm visceral artery aneurysm was found during a computed tomography (CT) scan performed for abdominal pain. Subsequent selective angiography showed the aneurysm arising from the second branch of the superior mesenteric artery (SMA). The celiac trunk was occluded at its origin and blood supply to the splenic artery was provided through the pancreatic-duodenal arcade. Two injections of 5.000 U of thrombin were delivered transcatheter to produce complete thrombosis. No major complications occurred. After 32 months the aneurysm decreased to 3.7 cm in diameter. Transcatheter thrombin injection seems to be a safe and durable option in the treatment of visceral aneurysms

Advances in the application of high TcT_{\rm c} superconductors to microwave devices for analog signal processing

During the last five years, the surface resistance $R_{\rm s}$ (10 GHs, 77 K) of YBCO thin films has decreased from a value of about 10 to 20 milliohms — i.e. the same as cooled pure copper or as bulk YBCO — down to values lower than 200 micro-ohms, close to the theoretical value of 100 micro-ohms obtained by a straightforward calculation from BCS theory. This improvement of $R_{\rm s}$ is due to a better quality of the material from random grain ceramics to quasi epitaxial films. These highly textured films can be obtained by many deposition methods : sputtering, laser ablation, co-evaporation, molecular beam epitaxy, MOCVD, using heating sample holders in order to obtain in situ crystal oriented layers. The value of the surface resistance is about one hundred times lower than that of usual metallizations, which can be used either to improve the specifications of some components by two order of magnitude such as high $Q$ 3D resonators ($Q > 10^6$ for low phase noise oscillators) and high $Q$ inductances ($Q > 10^4$ for circuit matching of antennae in the MHz range) or to reduce the size of voluminous devices such as filter banks for multiplexing or spectral analysis