Intra-abdominal cysts and pseudocysts are rarely occurring lesions. Their incidence is reported to be 1 per 100 000-250 000 hospitalizations. The lesions' rarity and their mostly asymptomatic development causes troubles in early recognition and treatment. The patients' complaints are unspecific and mostly occur when the cysts are enlarged. Sometimes these entities may cause signs of peritoneal ...

The ability to distinguish allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplant (allo-HCT) recipients at risk for cytomegalovirus (CMV) reactivation from those who are not is central for optimal CMV management strategies. Interferon γ (IFN-γ) produced by CMV-challenged T cells may serve as an immune marker differentiating these 2 populations. We prospectively monitored 63 CMV-seropositive allo-HCT recipien...

The benefits of left ventricular assist device (LVAD) therapy in advanced heart failure are clear—device implantation can prolong patient survival, enhance functionality, and improve quality of life. Since US Food and Drug Administration approval of the first continuous-flow LVAD in 2008, utilization has grown rapidly, and now, >2500 devices are placed annually. Given the current epidemic of he...

We have discovered lines of highly ionized fluorine (F  and F ) in the far-UV spectra of extremely hot (Teff=85 000–150 000 K) post-AGB stars. Our sample comprises H-rich central stars of planetary nebulae as well as H-deficient PG1159 stars. We performed non-LTE calculations and find strong F overabundances (up to 10−4 by mass, i.e., 250 times solar) in a number of PG1159 stars, while F is ...

BACKGROUND Death or urgent readmission after hospital discharge is a common adverse event that can be used to compare outcomes of care between institutions. To accurately adjust for risk and to allow for interhospital comparisons of readmission rates, we used administrative data to derive and internally validate an extension of the LACE index, a previously validated index for 30-day death or ur...

The delivery of large DNA vectors (>100 000 bp) remains a limiting step in the engineering of mammalian cells and the development of human artificial chromosomes (HACs). Yeast is commonly used to assemble genetic constructs in the megabase size range, and has previously been used to transfer constructs directly into cultured cells. We improved this method to efficiently deliver large (1.1 Mb) s...

The fires on Ash Wednesday 1983 were some of the most destructive in Australia’s history, with 75 lives lost, more than 2000 houses and 335 000 ha of rural land burnt, and 250 000 stock lost. Bureau of Meteorology (1984) (hereafter BOM84) documents the meteorology of the situation, points to the extreme drought prevailing at the time that led to very dry fuels, and postulates that the mobile up...

The giant tortoises of the Galápagos have become greatly depleted since European discovery of the islands in the 16th Century, with populations declining from an estimated 250 000 to between 8000 and 14 000 in the 1970s. Successful tortoise conservation efforts have focused on species recovery, but ecosystem conservation and restoration requires a better understanding of the wider ecological co...

Perinatal mortality rates and the indications for contraction stress tests (CSTs) were studied in 46 patients with positive test results and who gave birth to infants weighing between 500 and 1 500 g. Severe pre-eclampsia and intra-uterine growth retardation were the indications for the CST in the large majority of patients. The perinatal mortality rate for infants weighing between 500 and 1 00...

A prototype cross-dispersed optical echelle spectrograph of very high resolution has been designed and built at Steward Observatory and tested at the Starfire Optical Range (SOR) 1.5 m telescope. It is the first spectrograph to take advantage of diffractionlimited images provided by adaptive optics in order to achieve a potential resolving power of R ∼ 600, 000. The wavelength coverage in a sin...