Swan neck deformity in patients with cerebral palsy can result from hand intrinsic muscle spasticity or overpull of the digital extensors. After accurate identification of the etiology of the deformity, surgical treatment is directed at correcting the underlying muscle imbalance. Intrinsic lengthening can be used to treat intrinsic muscle spasticity, whereas central slip tenotomy is employed wh...

We show how the SWAN system has been implemented using a multi-agent system. SWAN is peer-to-peer look-up system that functions by letting the participating nodes self-organise in a virtual Small World Network. The multi-agent system we are using is DIET, a lightweight ecologically inspired agent platform. We describe how the test application can be implemented, and present experiments in which...

Immortalization of primary cells with telomerase is thought to maintain normal phenotypic properties and avoid chromosomal abnormalities and other cancer-associated changes that occur following simian virus 40 tumor antigen (SV40 Tag) induced immortalization. However, we report that the human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT)-immortalized SWAN-71 trophoblast cell line has a near pentaplo...

The Black Swan, a metaphor for highly improbable, high impact events, warns us to understand the limits of our predictions and expect the “unknown unknowns” everywhere, from war to science and industry. From the earliest stages of discovery to post-marketing events, we argue that fundamentally the structure of pharmaceutical industry is driven by and impacted by both positive and negative Black...

Pulmonary artery (PA) rupture caused by a PA Swan-Ganz catheter is a rare complication but remains fatal in almost 50% of cases. False aneurysm of the PA is a rare presentation of PA rupture and should be considered as a possible diagnosis in a patient with a new lung mass after PA catheterization. We present a case of sudden-onset pulmonary alveolar hemorrhage during cardiovascular surgery due...

We examined whooper swans naturally infected with avian influenza virus (H5N1) to evaluate the possible zoonotic risk of swan feathers. Viruses were isolated from feather calami. Immunohistochemical testing revealed that virus antigens were present in the feather epidermis and feather follicle wall epidermis of some feathers. RT-PCR and genetic sequencing using paraffin sections of swan feather...

Newcastle disease virus (NDV) neuraminidase (NA) inhibition with elution-inhibition (EI) antibodies was estimated with the EI reaction using strain 575 isolated from a mute swan (Cygnus olor). The NA inhibition was assessed by persistent red blood cell (RBC) agglutination patterns, rather than by the standard test involving the reduction in the cleavage of added artificial substrates. The more ...

It has been found that after pulmonary valvotomy for pulmonary valvular stenosis with an intact interventricular septum a satisfactory fall in right ventricular pressure is not always achieved immediately. In order to explain this, Kirklin, Connolly, Ellis, Burchell, Edwards, and Wood (1953) concluded that before the development of open heart surgery there were two main reasons: (1) failure to ...