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Background: The feasibility and the safety of the thoraco-laparoscopic esophagectomy (TLE) was proved by several prominent academic institutions. This technique is technically challenging and requires advanced laparoscopic and thora-coscopic skills. With experience gained from open esophagectomy as well as laparoscopic surgery, thoraco-laparoscopic esophagectomy was introduced in our hospital in 2016. We report our experience in performing TLE. Materials and Methods: We conducted a prospective, nonrandomized, observational study in Hue central hospital, which is one of the biggest hospitals in Vietnam, from January 2016 to January 2021. This study included the esophageal cancers that were diagnosed by endoscopy and confirmed by pathology. Esophageal cancer with cT1b-3N0M0 using chest CT, ultrasound-endoscopy, abdominal CT was indicated for resection initially, while esophageal cancer with cT4N0M0 or T3N(+)M0 was indicated for resection after neoadjuvant therapy. The patients had the ASA I-III. All the data were analyzed statistically using SPSS software (SPSS, Inc, Chicago, IL). Results: We used the TLE technique to operate for 52 consecutive patients. All patients were in a semi-prone position. The male/female ratio was 47/5. The mean age was 57.3±6.3 years, and the mean BMI was 20.5±3.3 kg/m2. The preoperative location of the esophageal cancer was the upper one-third in two (3.8%), the middle one-third in 24 (46.1%), and the lower one-third in 26 (50.0%). The majority of our patients had cTNM stage II (30, 57.7%). Only seven patients (13.7%) had cTNM stage I, whereas 15 patients (31.4%) had cTNM stage III. Of the 45 patients (stage II and III) who needed the neoadjuvant therapy, 30 (57.7%) received short-courses, 15 (28.8%) received long-course of chemotherapy. For 24 patients (46.1%), the histopathology was squamous cell carcinoma. The remaining 28 patients (53.8%) had adenocarcinomas. The operative time was 311.2±45.9 minutes. We did not record either conversion or intraoperative events. The mortality and morbidity rates were 1.9% and 23%, respectively. The hospital stay was 15.6±7.2 days. The median follow-up time was 22±1.5 months, and the overall survival rate at one year was 84.7%. Conclusion: Thoraco-laparoscopic esophagectomy for esophageal cancer with the patient in a semi-prone position is safe and effective, including the lower morbidity rate and the shorter operative time while preserving the long-term outcomes. © 2021, PJD Publications Ltd. All rights reserved.

Background Even though no age is free to be affected by appendicitis, it is extremely rare in newborn infants. Clinical presentations are usually nonspecific, abdominal imaging is not always diagnostic, and definitive diagnosis is difficult. We present a 15-day-old infant with acute perforated appendicitis that was diagnosed and treated in our pediatric center. Case report This case presented at Neonatal Intensive Care Unit with an 18-h-history of irritability, vomiting, and abdominal distension. With high white blood cell count and C-reactive protein level, the baby was initially diagnosed with neonatal sepsis. The ultrasound performed on day 3 after hospitalization found peritonitis but not seen appendicitis. Postoperative diagnosis confirmed acute perforated appendicitis with peritonitis. The baby was well covered without complication. Conclusion This case highlights that preoperative diagnosis of acute appendicitis in neonates is difficult due to nonspecific clinical presentation and the extreme rarity of the disease.

3D models of root growth, architecture and function are evolving as they become important tools that aid the design of agricultural management schemes and the selection of beneficial root traits. However, while benchmarking is common for water and solute transport models in soil, 3D root-soil interaction models have never been systematically analysed. Several interacting processes might induce disagreement between models: root growth, sink term definitions of root water and solute uptake and representation of the rhizosphere. The extent of discrepancies is currently unknown. Thus, a framework for quantitatively comparing such models is required. We propose, in a first step, to define benchmarking scenarios that test individual components of the complex models: root architecture, water flow in soil and roots, solute transport in soil and roots. While the latter will focus mainly on comparing numerical aspects, the root architectural models have to be compared at a conceptual level as they generally differ in process representation. Therefore defining common inputs that recreate reference root systems in all models will be a key challenge. In a second step, benchmarking scenarios for the coupled root-rhizosphere-soil models can be defined. We expect that the results of step 1 will enable us to better interpret differences found in step 2. We expect that this benchmarking will result in improved models, with which we can simulate various scenarios with greater confidence, avoiding that future work is based on accidental results caused by bugs, numerical errors or conceptual misunderstandings and will set a standard for future model development.

Although numerical modelling is state of the art and has been very helpful in River engineering for a long time, it should not be neglected, that uncertainties are unavoidable in numerical modelling. Uncertainties arise from deficient descriptions of the physical processes and from the imprecision of model parameters such as roughness coefficients or sediment grain sizes. Model input parameters are uncertain due to measurement errors, natural variability or unsatisfactory parametrization. The propagation of uncertainties in the input data through simulations might have serious influence on the simulation results. Therefore, it is necessary to quantify the contributions of input uncertainties to the model results in order to appraise their reliability. Uncertainty analysis can help finding the input parameters that cause the larges output uncertainty, and can identify the most uncertain locations and the most uncertain time periods in hydro-mophodynamic model predictions. The Monte Carlo method (MC), the traditional approach for uncertainty analysis, requires a huge computational effort with thousands of simulations. However, for high-resolution numerical hydro-morphodynamic models, each simulation may take hours or days. This implies that the MC method is obviously impossible in river engineering practice. Therefore, other advanced uncertainty quantification methods should be investigated and applied for complex hydro-morphodynamic models. In this study, five methods have been used and compared for uncertainty analysis of numerical simulations: (1) the Monte Carlo method (MC), (2) the First-Order Second Moment method based on numerical differentiation (FOSM/ND) and (3) based on algorithmic differentiation (FOSM/AD), and higher-order expansion methods such as (4) Taylor series expansion and (5) Polynomial Chaos Expansion (PCE). The latter two have been included in order to capture the effects of strong non-linearity in hydro-morphodynamic process during uncertainty analysis better than with FOSM-type methods. All methods have been applied to a laboratory experiment in steady state and in transient state to verify the performance of FOSM method. The uncertainty analysis is carried out on a hydro-morphodynamic model of river Rhine to define confidence intervals of river bed evolution during an artificial flood event and to detect the most sensitive parameters which contribute most to the change of the river bed. The study presents the benefit of uncertainty analysis with suitable methods to enhance the reliability of sediment transport models in river engineering practice.