Re-Presenting Rossetti: The Art of Frank Cadogan Cowper

The art of Frank Cadogan Cowper is virtually unknown, yet his paintings attest to a post-modern presence in British art during the rise of High-Modernism. Cowper maintained a 19th-century style during the development of formalism and was not alone. The artist belongs to a wider, loosely formed group of marginal, British painters who drew inspiration from the art of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Like Rossetti, Cowper was particularly fascinated with the cultural phenomenon of the femme fatale, whose iconography forms a pervasive motif in the artist\u27s oeuvre. Against the wider cultural context, one of the more salient transformations in social stratification during 1890-1914 is the emergence of the New Woman. Encoded in the artistic representations of Cowper is fear, yet fascination with female sexuality; his imagery throws into relief a set of interrelated preoccupations and anxieties, which are part of a larger ideological and artistic structure. This thesis offers the first analysis of Cowper\u27s paintings within England\u27s fin-de-siecle discourses on sexuality and art. Using Royal Academy archival letters written from Cowper to his mother during the early years of his career and through the study of his patrons, I position Cowper\u27s paintings within an interpretive framework. What emerges is an imaginative collision of ironic, irrational, yet traditional and highly decorative imagery, which engages with culture in a distinctive way. Yet, beyond the obvious cultural and artistic implications of Cowper\u27s many paintings, the artist\u27s imagery ultimately opposes the separation of art from life, a central theme of Post-modernity

Joint infection after knee arthroscopy: Medicolegal aspects

SummaryIntroductionSeptic knee arthritis following arthroscopy is a rare but dreaded complication: it might compromise patients’ functional prognosis and engage surgeon's liability. This study analyzes the context of such infection occurrences, their management as well as their medicolegal consequences.Patients and methodsTwenty-two cases of knee septic arthritis following arthroscopy were examined during the medicolegal litigation process and collected for assessment from a medical liability specialised insurer. Half of the patients were manual workers who worked on their knees, and seven knees had a previous surgical history. The procedures performed at arthroscopy included seven ligamentoplasties, nine meniscotomies, three arthroscopic lavages, one arthrolysis, one chondroma removal and one plica resection. Seven patients, to some point, received corticosteroids: three preoperative joint injections, three intraoperative injections, and one oral corticotherapy.ResultsClinical signs of septic arthritis appeared after a median interval of 8 days (0–37), twice after a hemarthrosis and once after an articular burn. The median delay before treatment initiation was 4.2 days, and in 10 cases this therapeutic delay exceeded 3 days. On average, 3.5 additional procedures (1–9) were required to treat the infection and its residual sequels. Two total knee prostheses were implanted. Only two patients were free of disabling sequellae, and in five patients these sequels affected their livelihood. The medicolegal consequences were a partially permanent disability averaging 5% (0–20), a total temporary work incapacity of 120 days (40–790), a suffering burden averaging 3 out of 7 (0–4,5) points on the scale conventionally used in France. Twelve of these legal claims led to court ordered patient compensation.DiscussionSome risk factors of articular infection are known and well-identified. They can be linked to the patient's condition (addiction to smoking, surgical history, professional activity) or to medical management (intra-articular corticoid injections, interventions under oral anticoagulants, inadvertently overheated irrigation fluid). When infection is suspected, it is often the needle-aspirated fluid's inappropriate handling (such as absence of bacteriological testing or defective waiting time for the results), which delays the diagnostic or therapeutic management of this complication. All failures of infection diagnosis or treatment heavily contribute to malpractice claims against the surgeon. Early and appropriate management of postoperative infections helps limiting the risk of functional sequellae for the patient and reduces the risk of malpractice litigation for the practitioner.Level of evidenceLevel IV; economic and decision analysis, retrospective study

Transitive and Gallai colorings

A Gallai coloring of the complete graph is an edge-coloring with no rainbow triangle. This concept first appeared in the study of comparability graphs and anti-Ramsey theory. We introduce a transitive analogue for acyclic directed graphs, and generalize both notions to Coxeter systems, matroids and commutative algebras. It is shown that for any finite matroid (or oriented matroid), the maximal number of colors is equal to the matroid rank. This generalizes a result of Erd\H{o}s-Simonovits-S\'os for complete graphs. The number of Gallai (or transitive) colorings of the matroid that use at most $k$ colors is a polynomial in $k$. Also, for any acyclic oriented matroid, represented over the real numbers, the number of transitive colorings using at most 2 colors is equal to the number of chambers in the dual hyperplane arrangement. We count Gallai and transitive colorings of the root system of type A using the maximal number of colors, and show that, when equipped with a natural descent set map, the resulting quasisymmetric function is symmetric and Schur-positive.Comment: 31 pages, 5 figure

Brain abscess and stroke in children and adults with hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia: Analysis of a large national claims database

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT) is an inherited disease associated with pathogenic variants in transforming growth factor-β signaling pathway-related genes, resulting in abnormal vascular development in various organs. Brain arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) may lead to intracranial hemorrhage, and brain abscess or ischemic stroke may result from right to left shunting via pulmonary AVMs. We aimed to investigate the risk for these severe complications in both adults and children with HHT. METHODS: We conducted a case-control study among participants aged 1-64 years in the MarketScan Commercial (2006-2019) and Multistate Medicaid Databases (2011-2019). We identified cases with HHT using RESULTS: A total of 5,796 patients with HHT, of whom 588 were children (age younger than 16 years), were matched with 57,960 controls. There was an increased incidence of brain abscesses in HHT cases compared with controls, with an RR of 35.6 (95% CI 15.4-82.5). No brain abscesses were recorded in children aged 15 years or younger. Hemorrhagic strokes/subarachnoid hemorrhages were more common in HHT cases, with an RR of 4.01 (95% CI 2.8-5.7) in adults and 60.2 (95% CI 7.2-500.4) in children. Ischemic strokes were also more common in cases, with an RR of 3.7 (95% CI, 3.0-4.5) in adults and 70.4 (95% CI 8.7-572.3) in children. DISCUSSION: We observed a much higher incidence of severe CNS vascular complications in patients with HHT, particularly in children. Although a higher incidence of brain abscesses was noted in adult patients with HHT, no brain abscesses were recorded in children, a result that may be considered when surveillance recommendations for this population are revisited

Clinical disorders affecting mesopic vision

Vision in the mesopic range is affected by a number of inherited and acquired clinical disorders. We review these conditions and summarize the historical background, describing the clinical characteristics alongside the genetic basis and molecular biological mechanisms giving rise to rod and cone dysfunction relevant to twilight vision. The current diagnostic gold standards for each disease are discussed and curative and symptomatic treatment strategies are summarized