scholarly journals First diagnosis of septic arthritis in a dinosaur

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (8) ◽  
pp. 160222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Anné ◽  
Brandon P. Hedrick ◽  
Jason P. Schein

Identification and interpretation of pathologies in the fossil record allows for unique insights into the life histories of extinct organisms. However, the rarity of such finds limits not only the sample size for palaeopathologic studies, but also the types of analyses that may be performed. In this study, we present the first occurrence of a palaeopathology in a vertebrate from the Mesozoic of the East Coast of North America (Appalachia), a pathologic ulna and radius of an indeterminate hadrosaur from the Navesink Formation (New Jersey). X-ray microtomography allowed for both detailed and more accurate diagnosis of the pathologic condition as well as virtual conservation of the specimen. Based on extant archosaurian comparisons, the hadrosaur was diagnosed with severe septic arthritis affecting the proximal ulna and radius. Diagnosis was based on erosion of the joint and highly reactive periosteal bone growth and fusion of the elements. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first recorded account of septic arthritis in dinosaurs. The severity of the pathology suggests the animal suffered with this condition for some time before death. Unfortunately, only the ulna and radius were found. Thus, the extent to which the condition spread to other parts of the body is unknown.

Paleobiology ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 405-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel. W. McShea

The degree of hierarchical structure of organisms—the number of levels of nesting of lower-level entities within higher-level individuals—has apparently increased a number of times in the history of life, notably in the origin of the eukaryotic cell from an association of prokaryotic cells, of multicellular organisms from clones of eukaryotic cells, and of integrated colonies from aggregates of multicellular individuals. Arranged in order of first occurrence, these three transitions suggest a trend, in particular a trend in the maximum, or an increase in the degree of hierarchical structure present in the hierarchically deepest organism on Earth. However, no rigorous documentation of such a trend—based on operational and consistent criteria for hierarchical levels—has been attempted. Also, the trajectory of increase has not been examined in any detail. One limitation is that no hierarchy scale has been developed with sufficient resolution to document more than these three major increases. Here, a higher-resolution scale is proposed in which hierarchical structure is decomposed into levels and sublevels, with levels reflecting number of layers of nestedness, and sublevels reflecting degree of individuation at the highest level. The scale is then used, together with the body-fossil record, to plot the trajectory of the maximum. Two alternative interpretations of the record are considered, and both reveal a long-term trend extending from the Archean through the early Phanerozoic. In one, the pattern of increase was incremental, with almost all sublevels arising precisely in order. The data also raise the possibility that waiting times for transitions between sublevels may have decreased with increasing hierarchical level (and with time). These last two findings—incremental increase in level and decreasing waiting times—are tentative, pending a study of possible biases in the fossil record.


Author(s):  
W. Brünger

Reconstructive tomography is a new technique in diagnostic radiology for imaging cross-sectional planes of the human body /1/. A collimated beam of X-rays is scanned through a thin slice of the body and the transmitted intensity is recorded by a detector giving a linear shadow graph or projection (see fig. 1). Many of these projections at different angles are used to reconstruct the body-layer, usually with the aid of a computer. The picture element size of present tomographic scanners is approximately 1.1 mm2.Micro tomography can be realized using the very fine X-ray source generated by the focused electron beam of a scanning electron microscope (see fig. 2). The translation of the X-ray source is done by a line scan of the electron beam on a polished target surface /2/. Projections at different angles are produced by rotating the object.During the registration of a single scan the electron beam is deflected in one direction only, while both deflections are operating in the display tube.


Author(s):  
P. J. Melnick ◽  
J. W. Cha ◽  
E. Samouhos

Spontaneous mammary tumors in females of a high tumor strain of C3H mice were cut into small fragments that were Implanted into the subcutaneous tissue of the back of males of the same strain, where they grew as transplantable tumors. When about Cm. In diameter daily fractional radiation was begun, applied to the tumors, the rest of the body being shielded by a lead shield. Two groups were treated with 150 and 200 r X-ray dally, of half value layer 0.6mm. copper; a third group was treated with 500 r cobalt radiation dally. The primary purpose was to examine the enzyme changes during radiation, with histochemlcal technics.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Greta

BACKGROUND Tuberculosis is a widespread and in many cases a fatal, infectious disease caused by many strains of mycobacterium complex usually mycobacterium tuberculosis. It can affect any part of the body but mainly the lungs hence called pulmonary tuberculosis. Tuberculosis in children has been less of a public health priority in the recent years despite the fact that TB has been a major cause of childhood morbidity and mortality worldwide with difficulties in diagnosis. Data on trends of childhood TB is rarely in published literature hence need for this research which will help in publishing OBJECTIVE To establish the trends in TB among children aged 1-12 years and its management over a period of five years from 2011- 2015 at Arthur Davison children’s hospital in Ndola and also to determine the proportion of TB in these children and to establish the age group most affected by TB over the period of five years and lastly to assess the proportion of TB and HIV as a co-morbidity METHODS The study reviewed all records that were registered in the MOH TB register at ADH from 2011 to 2015 coming up with a total number of 483 TB records and these records had satisfied the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The data capturing tool was used to collect the data. RESULTS : This study determined the trends of TB in children aged 1 to 12 over the five years period from a total of 483 reviewed paediatric TB cases , its proportion in these children, the age range most affected by TB and lastly assessed TB and HIV as a co-morbidity at Arthur Davison Children’s hospital. It revealed that the trends were decreasing and that out of 483 TB patient, the majority 157(32.5%) of the TB patients were seen in the year 2011, followed by 129(26.7%), 84(17.4%), 57(11.8%) and 56(11.6%) representing the year 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 respectively. Findings on the age range most affected are that the majority 282(58.4%) of the TB patients were aged (5-12) years old while 201(41.6%) were aged between (1-5) years old. Therefore, the age range most affected by TB was between (5-12) years. The TB proportion results showed that Out of 483, the majority 467(96.7%) of the TB patient type were newly diagnosed, followed by 13(2.7%), 2(.4%) and the rest 1(.2%) that were Relapse, Trans-in and Treatment resumed respectively. And that many 467(96.7%) of TB condition types were PTB while 16(3.3%) were EPTB. Furthermore, the majority of 463(95.9%) were diagnosed by X-ray while 20(4.1%) were diagnosed by smear microscopy. And lastly In terms of HIV as a co-morbidity, the majority 175(36.2%) of the TB patients were HIV positive, followed by 173(35.8%) that were HIV negative while the rest 135(28%) of the TB patients were not tested for HIV CONCLUSIONS This study reports that the trends of TB in children aged 1-12 years have been decreasing from 2015 to 2011 .And the age range most affected was found to have been 5-12 years and the proportion of TB cases were mostly newly diagnosed and the diagnosis was made by use x-ray and lastly the large proportion of TB patients had tested positive for HIV as a co-morbidity. Therefore efforts should be made to sustain this decreasing trend of childhood TB.


2008 ◽  
Vol 396-398 ◽  
pp. 569-572
Author(s):  
Fumio Watari ◽  
Shigeaki Abe ◽  
I.D. Rosca ◽  
Atsuro Yokoyama ◽  
Motohiro Uo ◽  
...  

Nanoparticles may invade directly into the internal body through the respiratory or digestive system and diffuse inside body. The behavior of nanoparticles in the internal body is also essential to comprehend for the realization of DDS. Thus it is necessary to reveal the internal dynamics for the proper treatments and biomedical applications of nanoparticles. In the present study the plural methods with different principles such as X-ray scanning analytical microscope (XSAM), MRI and Fluorescent microscopy were applied to enable the observation of the internal diffusion of micro/nanoparticles in the (1) whole body level, (2) inner organ level and (3) tissue and intracellular level. Chemical analysis was also done by ICP-AES for organs and compared with the results of XSAM mapping.


Diagnostics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 765
Author(s):  
Mohd Asyraf Zulkifley ◽  
Nur Ayuni Mohamed ◽  
Siti Raihanah Abdani ◽  
Nor Azwan Mohamed Kamari ◽  
Asraf Mohamed Moubark ◽  
...  

Skeletal bone age assessment using X-ray images is a standard clinical procedure to detect any anomaly in bone growth among kids and babies. The assessed bone age indicates the actual level of growth, whereby a large discrepancy between the assessed and chronological age might point to a growth disorder. Hence, skeletal bone age assessment is used to screen the possibility of growth abnormalities, genetic problems, and endocrine disorders. Usually, the manual screening is assessed through X-ray images of the non-dominant hand using the Greulich–Pyle (GP) or Tanner–Whitehouse (TW) approach. The GP uses a standard hand atlas, which will be the reference point to predict the bone age of a patient, while the TW uses a scoring mechanism to assess the bone age using several regions of interest information. However, both approaches are heavily dependent on individual domain knowledge and expertise, which is prone to high bias in inter and intra-observer results. Hence, an automated bone age assessment system, which is referred to as Attention-Xception Network (AXNet) is proposed to automatically predict the bone age accurately. The proposed AXNet consists of two parts, which are image normalization and bone age regression modules. The image normalization module will transform each X-ray image into a standardized form so that the regressor network can be trained using better input images. This module will first extract the hand region from the background, which is then rotated to an upright position using the angle calculated from the four key-points of interest. Then, the masked and rotated hand image will be aligned such that it will be positioned in the middle of the image. Both of the masked and rotated images will be obtained through existing state-of-the-art deep learning methods. The last module will then predict the bone age through the Attention-Xception network that incorporates multiple layers of spatial-attention mechanism to emphasize the important features for more accurate bone age prediction. From the experimental results, the proposed AXNet achieves the lowest mean absolute error and mean squared error of 7.699 months and 108.869 months2, respectively. Therefore, the proposed AXNet has demonstrated its potential for practical clinical use with an error of less than one year to assist the experts or radiologists in evaluating the bone age objectively.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 2723
Author(s):  
Fatih Uysal ◽  
Fırat Hardalaç ◽  
Ozan Peker ◽  
Tolga Tolunay ◽  
Nil Tokgöz

Fractures occur in the shoulder area, which has a wider range of motion than other joints in the body, for various reasons. To diagnose these fractures, data gathered from X-radiation (X-ray), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), or computed tomography (CT) are used. This study aims to help physicians by classifying shoulder images taken from X-ray devices as fracture/non-fracture with artificial intelligence. For this purpose, the performances of 26 deep learning-based pre-trained models in the detection of shoulder fractures were evaluated on the musculoskeletal radiographs (MURA) dataset, and two ensemble learning models (EL1 and EL2) were developed. The pre-trained models used are ResNet, ResNeXt, DenseNet, VGG, Inception, MobileNet, and their spinal fully connected (Spinal FC) versions. In the EL1 and EL2 models developed using pre-trained models with the best performance, test accuracy was 0.8455, 0.8472, Cohen’s kappa was 0.6907, 0.6942 and the area that was related with fracture class under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) was 0.8862, 0.8695. As a result of 28 different classifications in total, the highest test accuracy and Cohen’s kappa values were obtained in the EL2 model, and the highest AUC value was obtained in the EL1 model.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Viktória Mozgai ◽  
Bernadett Bajnóczi ◽  
Zoltán May ◽  
Zsolt Mráv

AbstractThis study details the non-destructive chemical analysis of composite silver objects (ewers, situlas, amphora and casket) from one of the most significant late Roman finds, the Seuso Treasure. The Seuso Treasure consists of fourteen large silver vessels that were made in the fourth–early fifth centuries AD and used for dining during festive banquets and for washing and beautification. The measurements were systematically performed along a pre-designed grid at several points using handheld X-ray fluorescence analysis. The results demonstrate that all the objects were made from high-quality silver (above 90 wt% Ag), with the exception of the base of the Geometric Ewer B. Copper was added intentionally to improve the mechanical properties of soft silver. The gold and lead content of the objects shows constant values (less than 1 wt% Au and Pb). The chemical composition as well as the Bi/Pb ratio suggests that the parts of the composite objects were manufactured from different silver ingots. The ewers were constructed in two ways: (i) the base and the body were made separately, or (ii) the ewer was raised from a single silver sheet. The composite objects were assembled using three methods: (i) mechanical attachment; (ii) low-temperature, lead-tin soft solders; or (iii) high-temperature, copper-silver hard solders. Additionally, two types of gilding were revealed by the XRF analysis, one with remnants of mercury, i.e. fire-gilding, and another type without remnants of mercury, presumably diffusion bonding.


Author(s):  
C. Newton ◽  
W. T. W. Potts

Magnesium/chlorine and sulphur/chlorine ratios have been measured in the body fluids of some planktonic organisms by x-ray emission analysis of frozen hydrated specimens in a scanning electron microscope. Homarus vulgaris (Anthropoda: Decapoda) larvae excluded Mg2+ and SO42-ions from the haemolymph, but to a lesser extent than does the adult lobster. Bipinnaria larvae of Asterias (Echinodermata) excluded Mg2+ and SO42-ions from the coelomic fluid. Obelia medusae excluded Mg2+ and SO42-ions from the mesogloea but concentrate them in the gastrovascular system. The high concentration of sulphate in the gastrovascular fluid of medusae has been confirmed by rhodizonate titration in Cyanea and Rhizostoma jellyfish. Some implications of magnesium and sulphate regulation are discussed.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-308
Author(s):  
Derek Harwood-Nash ◽  
Herman Grossman ◽  
Alvin Felman ◽  
John Kirkpatrick ◽  
Leonard Swischuk

Computerized tomography (CT), a technique conceptualized by Oldendorf in 19611 and developed by Hounsfield2 of EMI-Tronics Inc. (EMI) Central Research Laboratories, has proven to be a successful innovation in neuroradiology. Reviews by Ambrose3 in England and by Baker et al.4 and by New et al.5 in the United States have clearly demonstrated the value of this new modality in neuroradiological diagnosis. In 1975 Houser et al.6 and Harwood-Nash et al.7 provided the initial clinical and radiological data about CT in infants and children. More recently this technique has been extended to the study of tissues and organs in the body other than those in the head. This has been accomplished by modification of the original machine into a whole-body CT system. Early reviews by Ledley et al.8 and by Alfidi et al.9 suggest a significant potential for diagnosis of lesions in the abdomen, pelvis, and thorax. The advantages of CT are that it is less invasive than standard special diagnostic radiological procedures and that for the first time it provides in vivo information regarding the content and the characteristics of tissue composing organs and masses. DESCRIPTION OF EQUIPMENT In conventional radiography an image is made on radiographic film by an attenuated X-ray beam. In passing through a core of tissue, each ray of the beam is attenuated as it is absorbed and scattered by the tissue in its path. The intensity of the transmitted ray depends on the sum total of X-ray attenuation by all the different soft tissues in its path.


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