2,268 research outputs found
Melaena with Peutz-Jeghers syndrome: a case report
Introduction: Peutz-Jeghers syndrome (PJS) is a rare familial disorder characterised by mucocutaneous pigmentation, gastrointestinal and extragastrointestinal hamartomatous polyps and an increased risk of malignancy. Peutz-Jeghers polyps in the bowel may result in intussusception. This complication usually manifests with abdominal pain and signs of intestinal obstruction.
Case Presentation: We report the case of a 24-year-old Caucasian male who presented with melaena. Pigmentation of the buccal mucosa was noted but he was pain-free and examination of the abdomen was unremarkable. Upper gastrointestinal endoscopy revealed multiple polyps. An urgent abdominal computed tomography (CT) scan revealed multiple small bowel intussusceptions. Laparotomy was undertaken on our patient, reducing the intussusceptions and removing the polyps by enterotomies. Bowel resection was not needed.
Conclusion: Melaena in PJS needs to be urgently investigated through a CT scan even in the absence of abdominal pain and when clinical examination of the abdomen shows normal findings. Although rare, the underlying cause could be intussusception, which if missed could result in grave consequences
Emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, extended spectrum beta lactamases, and multi-drug resistance is a problem similar to global warming
Small Hairy Black Holes in Global AdS Spacetime
We study small charged black holes in global AdS spacetime in the presence of
a charged massless minimally coupled scalar field. In a certain parameter range
these black holes suffer from well known superradiant instabilities. We
demonstrate that the end point of the resultant tachyon condensation process is
a hairy black hole which we construct analytically in a perturbative expansion
in the black hole radius. At leading order our solution is a small undeformed
RNAdS black hole immersed into a charged scalar condensate that fills the AdS
`box'. These hairy black hole solutions appear in a two parameter family
labelled by their mass and charge. Their mass is bounded from below by a
function of their charge; at the lower bound a hairy black hole reduces to a
regular horizon free soliton which can also be thought of as a nonlinear Bose
condensate. We compute the microcanonical phase diagram of our system at small
mass, and demonstrate that it exhibits a second order `phase transition'
between the RNAdS black hole and the hairy black hole phases.Comment: 68+1 pages, 18 figures, JHEP format. v2 : small typos corrected and a
reference adde
On thermodynamics of N=6 superconformal Chern-Simons theory
We study thermodynamics of N=6 superconformal Chern-Simons theory by
computing quantum corrections to the free energy. We find that in weakly
coupled ABJM theory on R(2) x S(1), the leading correction is non-analytic in
the 't Hooft coupling lambda, and is approximately of order lambda^2
log(lambda)^3. The free energy is expressed in terms of the scalar thermal mass
m, which is generated by screening effects. We show that this mass vanishes to
1-loop order. We then go on to 2-loop order where we find a finite and positive
mass squared m^2. We discuss differences in the calculation between Coulomb and
Lorentz gauge. Our results indicate that the free energy is a monotonic
function in lambda which interpolates smoothly to the N^(3/2) behaviour at
strong coupling.Comment: 29 pages. v2: references added. v3: minor changes, references added,
published versio
The Application and Feasibility of Using Routine Data Sources for Long-term Cancer Clinical Trial Follow-up.
Modelling avalanches in martensites
Solids subject to continuous changes of temperature or mechanical load often
exhibit discontinuous avalanche-like responses. For instance, avalanche
dynamics have been observed during plastic deformation, fracture, domain
switching in ferroic materials or martensitic transformations. The statistical
analysis of avalanches reveals a very complex scenario with a distinctive lack
of characteristic scales. Much effort has been devoted in the last decades to
understand the origin and ubiquity of scale-free behaviour in solids and many
other systems. This chapter reviews some efforts to understand the
characteristics of avalanches in martensites through mathematical modelling.Comment: Chapter in the book "Avalanches in Functional Materials and
Geophysics", edited by E. K. H. Salje, A. Saxena, and A. Planes. The final
publication is available at Springer via
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45612-6_
Entangled-State Cycles of Atomic Collective-Spin States
We study quantum trajectories of collective atomic spin states of
effective two-level atoms driven with laser and cavity fields. We show that
interesting ``entangled-state cycles'' arise probabilistically when the (Raman)
transition rates between the two atomic levels are set equal. For odd (even)
, there are () possible cycles. During each cycle the
-qubit state switches, with each cavity photon emission, between the states
, where is a Dicke state in a rotated
collective basis. The quantum number (), which distinguishes the
particular cycle, is determined by the photon counting record and varies
randomly from one trajectory to the next. For even it is also possible,
under the same conditions, to prepare probabilistically (but in steady state)
the Dicke state , i.e., an -qubit state with excitations,
which is of particular interest in the context of multipartite entanglement.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure
Quantum critical lines in holographic phases with (un)broken symmetry
All possible scaling IR asymptotics in homogeneous, translation invariant
holographic phases preserving or breaking a U(1) symmetry in the IR are
classified. Scale invariant geometries where the scalar extremizes its
effective potential are distinguished from hyperscaling violating geometries
where the scalar runs logarithmically. It is shown that the general critical
saddle-point solutions are characterized by three critical exponents (). Both exact solutions as well as leading behaviors are exhibited.
Using them, neutral or charged geometries realizing both fractionalized or
cohesive phases are found. The generic global IR picture emerging is that of
quantum critical lines, separated by quantum critical points which correspond
to the scale invariant solutions with a constant scalar.Comment: v3: 32+29 pages, 2 figures. Matches version published in JHEP.
Important addition of an exponent characterizing the IR scaling of the
electric potentia
Exogenous WNT5A and WNT11 proteins rescue CITED2 dysfunction in mouse embryonic stem cells and zebrafish morphants
Mutations and inadequate methylation profiles of CITED2 are associated with human congenital heart disease (CHD). In mouse, Cited2 is necessary for embryogenesis, particularly for heart development, and its depletion in embryonic stem cells (ESC) impairs cardiac differentiation. We have now determined that Cited2 depletion in ESC affects the expression of transcription factors and cardiopoietic genes involved in early mesoderm and cardiac specification. Interestingly, the supplementation of the secretome prepared from ESC overexpressing CITED2, during the onset of differentiation, rescued the cardiogenic defects of Cited2-depleted ESC. In addition, we demonstrate that the proteins WNT5A and WNT11 held the potential for rescue. We also validated the zebrafish as a model to investigate cited2 function during development. Indeed, the microinjection of morpholinos targeting cited2 transcripts caused developmental defects recapitulating those of mice knockout models, including the increased propensity for cardiac defects and severe death rate. Importantly, the co-injection of anti-cited2 morpholinos with either CITED2 or WNT5A and WNT11 recombinant proteins corrected the developmental defects of Cited2-morphants. This study argues that defects caused by the dysfunction of Cited2 at early stages of development, including heart anomalies, may be remediable by supplementation of exogenous molecules, offering the opportunity to develop novel therapeutic strategies aiming to prevent CHD.AgĂȘncia financiadora:
Fundação para a CiĂȘncia e a Tecnologia (FCT)
Comissão de Coordenação e Desenvolvimento Regional do Algarve (CCDR Algarve)
ALG-01-0145-FEDER-28044; DFG 568/17-2 Algarve Biomedical Center (ABC)
Municipio de Louléinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Radio pulsar populations
The goal of this article is to summarize the current state of play in the
field of radio pulsar statistics. Simply put, from the observed sample of
objects from a variety of surveys with different telescopes, we wish to infer
the properties of the underlying sample and to connect these with other
astrophysical populations (for example supernova remnants or X-ray binaries).
The main problem we need to tackle is the fact that, like many areas of
science, the observed populations are often heavily biased by a variety of
selection effects. After a review of the main effects relevant to radio
pulsars, I discuss techniques to correct for them and summarize some of the
most recent results. Perhaps the main point I would like to make in this
article is that current models to describe the population are far from complete
and often suffer from strong covariances between input parameters. That said,
there are a number of very interesting conclusions that can be made concerning
the evolution of neutron stars based on current data. While the focus of this
review will be on the population of isolated Galactic pulsars, I will also
briefly comment on millisecond and binary pulsars as well as the pulsar content
of globular clusters and the Magellanic Clouds.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Proceedings of ICREA Workshop on
The High-Energy Emission from Pulsars and their Systems, Sant Cugat, Spain,
2010 April 12-16 (Springer
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