Search

BackgroundIn emergency surgery, managing abdominal sepsis and critically ill patients with imminent abdominal compartment syndrome (ACS) using an open abdomen (OA) approach has become standard practice for damage control. To prevent significant complications associated with OA therapy, such as abdominal infections, entero-atmospheric fistula (EAF), and abdominal wall hernia formation, early definitive fascial closure (DFC) is crucial. This study aims to assess the feasibility of a novel device designed to facilitate early fascial closure in patients with an open abdomen.MethodsBetween 2019 and 2020, nine patients undergoing open abdomen management were enrolled in this study. All patients were treated using vertical mesh-mediated fascial traction combined with a novel vertical traction device (VTD). Data from these cases were collected and retrospectively analyzed.ResultsIn this study, all patients were treated with OA due to impending ACS. Three patients died before achieving DFC, while the remaining six patients successfully underwent DFC. The mean number of surgical procedures after OA was 3 ± 1, and the mean time to DFC was 9 ± 3 days. The use of the VTD in combination with negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) resulted in a 76% reduction in fascia-to-fascia distance until DFC was achieved. The application of the VTD did not affect ventilation parameters or the Simplified Acute Physiology Score II (SAPS II), but intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) was reduced from 31 ± 8 mmHg prior to OA to 8.5 ± 2 mmHg after applying the device. The primary complication associated with the device was skin irritation, with three patients developing skin blisters as the most severe manifestation.ConclusionOverall, the novel VTD appears to be a safe and feasible option for managing OA cases. It may reduce complications associated with OA by promoting early definitive fascial closure.

Cultured meat technologies leverage the proliferation and differentiation of animal-derived stem cells ex vivo to produce edible tissues for human consumption in a sustainable fashion. However, skeletal muscle is a dynamic and highly complex tissue, involving the interplay of numerous mono- and multinucleated cells, including muscle fibers, satellite cells (SCs) and fibro-adipogenic progenitors (FAPs), and recreation of the tissue in vitro thus requires the characterization and manipulation of a broad range of cell types. Here, we use a single-cell RNA sequencing approach to characterize cellular heterogeneity within bovine muscle and muscle-derived cell cultures over time. Using this data, we identify numerous distinct cell types, and develop robust protocols for the easy purification and proliferation of several of these populations. We note overgrowth of undesirable cell types within heterogeneous proliferative cultures as a barrier to efficient cultured meat production, and use transcriptomics to identify conditions that favor the growth of SCs in the context of serum-free medium. Combining RNA velocities computed in silico with time-resolved flow cytometric analysis, we characterize dynamic subpopulations and transitions between active, quiescent, and committed states of SCs, and demonstrate methods for modulation of these states during long-term proliferative cultures. This work provides an important reference for advancing our knowledge of bovine skeletal muscle biology, and its application in the development of cultured meat technologies.

Doel: De mogelijkheden te verkennen voor de toepassing van technologie bij dementie zodat gefundeerde afwegingen te maken zijn voor de inzet ervan in de zorg. Methode: Inventarisatie naar geïmplementeerde en geëvalueerde internationale en nationale projecten van technologietoepassingen bij mensen met dementie en hun verzorgers. Hierbij is gekeken naar drie categorieën technologie, (1) gericht op hulp gerelateerd aan symptomen van dementie, (2) sociaal contact en gezelschap voor de persoon met dementie en (3) gezondheidsmonitoring en veiligheid voor de persoon met dementie. Resultaten: Er zijn 18 internationale en 8 nationale studies geïncludeerd. De eerste resultaten van technologietoepassingen bij mensen met dementie lijken veelbelovend. Er zijn significante verbeteringen aangetoond op het gebied van de kwaliteit van leven en effecten op gedrag (zoals minder vallen). Mantelzorgers en mensen met dementie zijn tevreden over de bruikbaarheid van de verschillende technologieën. De aanschaf- en gebruikskosten zijn daarentegen nog vaak aan de hoge kant. De arbeidssatisfactie onder zorgpersoneel over het gebruik van technologie in de zorg is weinig onderzocht. Conclusie: Hoewel technologie de zelfredzaamheid kan bevorderen is weinig bekend over de effecten ervan voor de mensen met dementie, het zorgpersoneel en de zorgorganisatie. Technologie wordt vaak nog ongericht en ongefundeerd ingezet in de zorg. Daardoor ontbreekt zicht op de effecten ervan voor de kwaliteit van leven van mensen met dementie en de arbeidssatisfactie van personeel. Vervolgonderzoek zal zich richten op de vraag wat technologie kan betekenen voor mensen met dementie en hun verzorgers op het gebied van kwaliteit van leven, gevoel van veiligheid en arbeidssatisfactie.

Abstract Cultured meat is an emergent technology with the potential for significant environmental and animal welfare benefits. Accurate mimicry of traditional meat requires fat tissue; a key contributor to both the flavour and texture of meat. Here, we show that fibro-adipogenic progenitor cells (FAPs) are present in bovine muscle, and are transcriptionally and immunophenotypically distinct from satellite cells. These two cell types can be purified from a single muscle sample using a simple fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) strategy. FAPs demonstrate high levels of adipogenic potential, as measured by gene expression changes and lipid accumulation, and can be proliferated for a large number of population doublings, demonstrating their suitability for a scalable cultured meat production process. Crucially, FAPs reach a mature level of adipogenic differentiation in three-dimensional, edible hydrogels. The resultant tissue accurately mimics traditional beef fat in terms of lipid profile and taste, and FAPs thus represent a promising candidate cell type for the production of cultured fat.

In partially molten regions inside the Earth, melt buoyancy may trigger upwelling of both solid and fluid phases, i.e., diapirism. If the melt is allowed to move separately with respect to the matrix, melt perturbations may evolve into solitary porosity waves. While diapirs may form on a wide range of scales, porosity waves are restricted to sizes of a few times the compaction length. Thus, the size of a partially molten perturbation in terms of compaction length controls whether material is dominantly transported by porosity waves or by diapirism. We study the transition from diapiric rise to solitary porosity waves by solving the two-phase flow equations of conservation of mass and momentum in 2D with porosity-dependent matrix viscosity. We systematically vary the initial size of a porosity perturbation from 1.8 to 120 times the compaction length. If the perturbation is of the order of a few compaction lengths, a single solitary wave will emerge, either with a positive or negative vertical matrix flux. If melt is not allowed to move separately to the matrix a diapir will emerge. In between these end members we observe a regime where the partially molten perturbation will split up into numerous solitary waves, whose phase velocity is so low compared to the Stokes velocity that the whole swarm of waves will ascend jointly as a diapir, just slowly elongating due to a higher amplitude main solitary wave. Only if the melt is not allowed to move separately to the matrix will no solitary waves build up, but as soon as two-phase flow is enabled solitary waves will eventually emerge. The required time to build them up increases nonlinearly with the perturbation radius in terms of compaction length and might be too long to allow for them in nature in many cases.

In source regions of magmatic systems the temperature is above solidus, and melt ascent is assumed to occur predominantly by two-phase flow, which includes a fluid phase (melt) and a porous deformable matrix. Since McKenzie (1984) introduced equations for two-phase flow, numerous solutions have been studied, one of which predicts the emergence of solitary porosity waves. By now most analytical and numerical solutions for these waves used strongly simplified models for the shear- and bulk viscosity of the matrix, significantly overestimating the viscosity or completely neglecting the porosity dependence of the bulk viscosity. Schmeling et al. (2012) suggested viscosity laws in which the viscosity decreases very rapidly for small melt fractions. They are incorporated into a 2-D finite difference mantle convection code with two-phase flow (FDCON) to study the ascent of solitary porosity waves. The models show that, starting with a Gaussian-shaped wave, they rapidly evolve into a solitary wave with similar shape and a certain amplitude. Despite the strongly weaker rheologies compared to previous viscosity laws, the effects on dispersion curves and wave shape are only moderate as long as the background porosity is fairly small. The models are still in good agreement with semi-analytic solutions which neglect the shear stress term in the melt segregation equation. However, for higher background porosities and wave amplitudes associated with a viscosity decrease of 50 % or more, the phase velocity and the width of the waves are significantly decreased. Our models show that melt ascent by solitary waves is still a viable mechanism even for more realistic matrix viscosities.

The interaction between the impeller and the diffuser is considered to have a strong influence on the unsteady flow in radial pumps. In this paper, the unsteady flow in a low specific speed radial diffuser pump has been simulated by the CFD code CFX-10. Both Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) and Laser Doppler Velocimetry (LDV) measurements have been conducted to validate the CFD results. Both the phase-averaged velocity fields and the turbulence fields obtained from different methods are presented and compared, in order to enhance the understanding of the unsteady flow caused by the relative motion between the rotating impeller and the stationary diffuser. The comparison of the results shows that PIV and LDV give nearly the same phase-averaged velocity fields, but LDV predicts the turbulence much clearer and better than PIV. CFD underestimates the turbulence level in the whole region compared with PIV and LDV but gives the same trend.