Absence of the spleen(s) in conjoined twins: a diagnostic clue of laterality defects? Radiological study of historical specimens

Laterality defects are quite common in thoracoileopagus and parapagus dicephalus but rare in other types of conjoined twins. To present the presumed laterality defects in cephalothoracoileopagus and prosopothoracoileopagus conjoined twins, based on the unilateral or bilateral absence or duplication of the spleen. Three human anatomical specimens of craniothoracoileopagus (CTIP) twins and one of prosopothoracoileopagus (PTIP) twins were investigated. The specimens were part of the Museum Vrolik collection of the Department of Anatomy and Embryology of the Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The specimens were taken out of their jars and scanned with multidetector CT and volumetric T2-weighted MRI at 1.5 T. The internal anatomy of the specimens was largely in accordance with previous reports. However, there was no recognisable spleen in the right twin in one CTIP specimen, in the left twin in one other CTIP specimen, and in both twins in the third CTIP specimen and in the PTIP specimen. Asplenia and polysplenia are considered reliable indicators of right and left isomerism, respectively. However, three of our four specimens had laterality patterns that did not correspond with those previously reported. Since no other parameters of laterality defects could be verified in these specimens, we concluded that asplenia was unlikely to be caused by laterality defect

Uppsala High Power Test Stand for ESS Spoke Cavities

The European Spallation Source (ESS) is one of the world’s most powerful neutron source. The ESS linac will accelerate 50mA pulse current of protons to 2.5GeV in 2.86 ms long pulses at a repetition rate of 14 Hz. It produces a beam with 5MW average power and 125MW peak power. ESS Spoke Linac consist of 28 superconducting spoke cavities, which will be developed by IPN Orsay, France. These Spoke Cavities will be tested at low power at IPN Orsay and high power testing will be performed in a high power test stand at Uppsala University. The test stand consists of tetrode based RF amplifier chain (352MHz, 350 kW) power and related RF distribution. Outputs of two tetrodes shall be combined with the hybrid coupler to produce 350 kW power. Preamplifier for a tetrode shall be solid state amplifier. As the spoke cavities are superconducting, the test stand also includes horizontal cryostat, Helium liquefier, test bunker etc. The paper describes features of the test stand in details