1,338 research outputs found
Agenesis of the Gallbladder: A Phantom Menace
Objective: Gallbladder agenesis (GBA) is a rare congenital disorder with an estimated incidence of about 0.06%. Despite the absence of a gallbladder, these patients may present with symptoms mimicking biliary colic or cholecystitis. Ultrasound findings and liver function tests are often misleading. Some of these patients undergo laparoscopy without successful identification of gallbladder and paradoxically report symptom relief.
Case: We present a case of GBA in a 54 year-old female, who presented with right-sided abdominal pain. The clinical history and examination were consistent with biliary colic. Initial investigations, including liver function tests, upper endoscopy and ultrasound did not demonstrate upper gastrointestinal pathology and did not clearly identify a gallbladder. Subsequent HIDA scan and CT of the abdomen did not visualize a gallbladder. An MRCP confirmed gallbladder agenesis. The patient was managed conservatively and was symptom free on discharge and follow-up.
Discussion: We wish to highlight four learning points: 1. Patients with gallbladder agenesis often present with biliary symptoms. 2. Ultrasound and CT of the liver may not always identify this anomaly. 3. MRCP is the gold standard for making a diagnosis of gall- bladder agenesis. 4. Surgeons must have a high index of suspicion of GBA when the gallbladder is poorly visualized or not identified on ultrasound.
Computational Controversy
Climate change, vaccination, abortion, Trump: Many topics are surrounded by
fierce controversies. The nature of such heated debates and their elements have
been studied extensively in the social science literature. More recently,
various computational approaches to controversy analysis have appeared, using
new data sources such as Wikipedia, which help us now better understand these
phenomena. However, compared to what social sciences have discovered about such
debates, the existing computational approaches mostly focus on just a few of
the many important aspects around the concept of controversies. In order to
link the two strands, we provide and evaluate here a controversy model that is
both, rooted in the findings of the social science literature and at the same
time strongly linked to computational methods. We show how this model can lead
to computational controversy analytics that have full coverage over all the
crucial aspects that make up a controversy.Comment: In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Social
Informatics (SocInfo) 201
The (pseudo)issue of the conformal frame revisited
The issue of the equivalence between Jordan and Einstein conformal frames in
scalar-tensor gravity is revisited, with emphasis on implementing running units
in the latter. The lack of affine parametrization for timelike worldlines and
the cosmological constant problem in the Einstein frame are clarified, and a
paradox in the literature about cosmological singularities appearing only in
one frame is solved. While, classically, the two conformal frames are
physically equivalent, they seem to be inequivalent at the quantum level.Comment: 29 pages, latex, to appear in Phys. Rev.
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Making Sense of Family Deaths in Urban Senegal: Diversities, Contexts, and Comparisons
Despite calls for cross-cultural research, Minority world perspectives still dominate death and bereavement studies, emphasizing individualized emotions and neglecting contextual diversities. In research concerned with contemporary African societies, on the other hand, death and loss are generally subsumed within concerns about AIDS or poverty, with little attention paid to the emotional and personal significance of a death. Here, we draw on interactionist sociology to present major themes from a qualitative study of family deaths in urban Senegal, theoretically framed through the duality of meanings-in-context. Such themes included family and community as support and motivation; religious beliefs and practices as frameworks for solace and (regulatory) meaning; and material circumstances as these are intrinsically bound up with emotions. Although we identify the experience of (embodied, emotional) pain as a common response across Minority and Majority worlds, we also explore significant divergencies, varying according to localized contexts and broader power dynamics
Resolved structure in the nuclear region of the ultraluminous infrared galaxy Mrk 273
We have studied the core morphology of the ultraluminous infrared galaxy Mrk
273 by combining a high-resolution adaptive optics near-infrared image with an
optical image from the Hubble Space Telescope and interferometric radio
continuum data, all at spatial resolutions of 150 mas or better. The
near-infrared image reveals that the nucleus has two main components, both of
which have radio counterparts. The strongest component (N) shows very similar
extended structure in the radio and near-infrared. It has a flat radio spectrum
and is resolved into a double-lobed structure (Ne; Nw), with a separation of
90\pm5 mas (70 parsec). A similar structure is detected in the near-infrared.
We identify this component as the location of the active nucleus. The second
component (SW), strong in the near-infrared but relatively weak in the radio,
is located arcsecond to the southwest. We interpret this as an obscured
starburst region associated with the merger. The radio continuum images show a
third, strong, component (SE) which has previously been interpreted as a second
nucleus. However, it shows no associated optical or near-infrared emission,
suggesting that it is in fact a background source.Comment: 8 pages, Latex. 4 postscript files. Better quality version of figure
1 available from ftp://star.herts.ac.uk/pub/Knapen/mrk273 . Accepted, ApJ
Letter
Relation between similar aftershocks and ruptured asperity of a large inland earthquake: Example of the 2007 Noto Hanto earthquake
Limited Lifespan of Fragile Regions in Mammalian Evolution
An important question in genome evolution is whether there exist fragile
regions (rearrangement hotspots) where chromosomal rearrangements are happening
over and over again. Although nearly all recent studies supported the existence
of fragile regions in mammalian genomes, the most comprehensive phylogenomic
study of mammals (Ma et al. (2006) Genome Research 16, 1557-1565) raised some
doubts about their existence. We demonstrate that fragile regions are subject
to a "birth and death" process, implying that fragility has limited
evolutionary lifespan. This finding implies that fragile regions migrate to
different locations in different mammals, explaining why there exist only a few
chromosomal breakpoints shared between different lineages. The birth and death
of fragile regions phenomenon reinforces the hypothesis that rearrangements are
promoted by matching segmental duplications and suggests putative locations of
the currently active fragile regions in the human genome
Coupling coefficient, hierarchical structure, and earthquake cycle for the source area of the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku earthquake inferred from small repeating earthquake data
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