Pediatric thyroid disease: when is surgery necessary, and who should be operating on our children?

Surgical diseases of the thyroid in the pediatric population represent a diverse set of both benign and malignant conditions. Overall, incidence is rare. Benign conditions include Graves' disease, toxic adenomas, congenital hyperthyroidism, and goiter. Differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) and medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC), with its related familial cancer syndromes, are the most common malignancies. Near-total or total thyroidectomy is the appropriate surgery for thyroid cancer, with/out central lymph node dissection. Emerging practice guidelines from professional societies are helpful, although they generally have not addressed surgical management of the pediatric patient. Thyroidectomy in children is associated with a higher rate of complications, such as recurrent laryngeal nerve injury and hypoparathyroidism, as compared to the surgery in adults. Therefore, it is essential that pediatric thyroidectomy be performed by high-volume thyroid surgeons, regardless of specialty. Case volume to support surgical expertise usually must be borrowed from the adult experience, given the relative paucity of pediatric thyroidectomies at an institutional level. These surgeons should work as part of a multidisciplinary team that includes pediatric endocrinologists and anesthesiologists, pediatricians, nuclear medicine physicians, and pathologists to afford children the best clinical outcomes

Land Snail Extinctions at Kalaeloa, O'ahu

A decline over time in the proportion of native land snail taxa believed to be extinct today at Kalae10a has been interpreted and widely cited as an example of Polynesian influence on the Hawaiian environment. This interpretation is shown to be based on an inappropriate measure of decline and nonstandard calibrations of 14C dates. An analysis of change over time in the diversity of land snail taxa from Kalaeloa sinkholes and recalibration of 14C dates using Bayesian techniques reveals a different pattern, which is interpreted as having two components. There is a long-term, gradual decline in the diversity of native, extinct land snail taxa, explained as the result of desiccation of the sinkhole environment due to a drop in the water table when sea level fell from its mid-Holocene high stand. There is also an abrupt disruption of the land snail fauna late in the stratigraphic sequence. It is argued that this disruption dates to the historic period, when the environment of the 'Ewa plain was drastically altered for sugarcane production and when the vegetation that now dominates the region was introduced. Aside from the appearance of the snail Lamellaxis gracilis, which was introduced to the Islands by Polynesians, the land snail assemblages from the Kalaeloa sinkholes yield no evidence for Polynesian influence on the environment

Apparatus for assembling space structure

An apparatus for producing a structure in outer space from rolls of prepunched ribbon or sheet material that are transported from the earth to the apparatus located in outer space is described. The apparatus spins the space structure similar to a spider spinning a web utilizing the prepunched ribbon material. The prepunched ribbon material is fed through the apparatus and is shaped into a predetermined channel-shaped configuration. Trusses are punched out of the ribbon and are bent downwardly and attached to a track which normally is a previously laid sheet of material. The size of the overall space structure may be increased by merely attaching an additional roll of sheet material to the apparatus

Sensor Configuration Trade Study for Navigation in near Rectilinear Halo Orbits

Gateway is a NASA program planned to support a human space explorationand prove new technologies for deep space exploration. One of the Gatewayrequirements is to operate in the absence of communications with the Deep SpaceNetwork (DSN) for a period of at least 3 weeks. In this paper three types ofonboard sensors (a camera for optical navigation, a GPS receiver, and X-ray navigation),are considered to enhance its autonomy and reduce the reliance on DSN.A trade study is conducted to explore alternatives on how to achieve autonomy andhow to reduce DSN dependency while satisfying navigation performance requirements.Using linear covariance analysis, the performance of a navigation systemusing DSN and/or the other sensors is shown

Heat Stress during Pig Oocyte In Vitro Maturation Impacts Embryonic Development and Gene Expression

Gene expression of heat stressed oocytes matured in vitro was evaluated for potential markers which could be used to characterize the effects of heat stress on developing oocytes in the pig. Three heat stress scenarios were administered during in vitro oocyte maturation. Heat stressed oocytes had reduced maturation rates, decreased developmental competency, and altered expression of heat stress and developmental competency markers

Post-weaning blood transcriptomic differences between Yorkshire pigs divergently selected for residual feed intake

Meta data for RNA-seq and RT-qPCR assays. (XLSX 20 kb

The Evolution of FTK, a Real-Time Tracker for Hadron Collider Experiments

We describe the architecture evolution of the highly-parallel dedicated processor FTK, which is driven by the simulation of LHC events at high luminosity (1034 cm-2 s-1). FTK is able to provide precise on-line track reconstruction for future hadronic collider experiments. The processor, organized in a two-tiered pipelined architecture, execute very fast algorithms based on the use of a large bank of pre-stored patterns of trajectory points (first tier) in combination with full resolution track fitting to refine pattern recognition and to determine off-line quality track parameters. We describe here how the high luminosity simulation results have produced a new organization of the hardware inside the FTK processor core.Comment: 11th ICATPP conferenc

Synthetic properties of bright metal-poor variables. II. BL Her stars

We investigate the properties of the so-called BL Her stars, i.e., Population II Cepheids with periods shorter than 8 days, using updated pulsation models and evolutionary tracks computed adopting a metal abundance in the range of Z=0.0001 to Z=0.004. We derive the predicted Period-Magnitude (PM) and Period-Wesenheit (PW) relations at the various photometric bands and we show that the slopes of these relations are in good agreement with the slopes determined by observed variables in Galactic globular clusters, independently of the adopted M_V(RR)-[Fe/H] relation to get the cluster RR Lyrae-based distance. Moreover, we show that also the distances provided by the predicted PM and PW relations for BL Her stars agree within the errors with the RR Lyrae based values. The use of the predicted relations with W Vir stars, which are Population II Cepheids with periods longer than 8 days, provides no clear evidence for or against a change in the PM and PW slopes around P~10 days.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, 6 tables, accepted for publication in A&A on date 16/05/200