Clinical management controversy caused by a rare case of silver clip detachment and displacement after tubal silver clip sterilization.

Introduction and importance: The treatment of rare long-term complications such as ectopic silver clips after tubal silver clip sterilization, still follows the principle of removing metal foreign body (MFB) in the abdominal cavity: first choice removal, which seems to be a habitual treatment method by clinical gynecologists. However, this measure has recently been greatly questioned. Case presentation: A 54-year-old postmenopausal woman who had undergone tubal sterilization with a silver clip 32 years ago, presented to the emergency department (ED) with severe left upper abdominal colic, paroxysmal, accompanied by vomiting and radiating pain. Her vital signs were stable, and an emergency routine urine test showed microscopic hematuria. Preliminary consideration was given to ureteral stones, and abdominal pain was relieved after treatment. Abdominal computed tomography confirmed the previous consideration, but unexpectedly found that the left tubal sterilization metal clip disappeared and was ectopic in the perihepatic space. Clinical discussion: This traditional conception of removing MFB in the abdominal cavity is often accepted by many surgeons. Based on the management measures of this case and the systematic review of the literature, we found that the detached ectopic silver clip did not cause serious long-term complications, possibly due to its good tissue receptivity and other characteristics. Conclusion: Although an ectopic silver clip is an MFB in the abdominal cavity, it has been increasingly shown that removing the silver clip is not necessary because of the good receptivity of silver to human tissue and the uncertainty of long-term side effects on the human body.

Dynamic nano-imaging via a microsphere compound lens integrated microfluidic device with a 10× objective lens.

Optical microscopic imaging techniques are essential in biology and chemistry fields to observe and extract dynamic information of micro/nano-scale samples in microfluidic devices. However, the current microfluidic optical imaging schemes encounter dilemmas in simultaneously possessing high spatial and temporal resolutions. Recently, microsphere nanoscope has emerged as a competitive nano-imaging tool due to its merits like high spatial resolution, real-time imaging abilities, and cost-effectiveness, which make it a potential solution to address the aforementioned challenges. Here, a microsphere compound lens (MCL) integrated microfluidic imaging device is proposed for real-time super-resolution imaging. The MCL consists of two vertically stacked microspheres, which can resolve nano-objects with size beyond the optical diffraction limit and generate an image of the object with a magnification up to 10×. Exploiting the extraordinary nano-imaging and magnification ability of the MCL, optically transparent 100 nm polystyrene particles in flowing fluid can be discerned in real time by the microfluidic device under a 10× objective lens. Contrary to this, the single microsphere and the conventional optical microscope are incompetent in this case regardless of the magnification of objective lenses used, which demonstrates the superiority of the MCL imaging scheme. Besides, applications of the microfluidic device in nanoparticle tracing and live-cell monitoring are also experimentally demonstrated. The MCL integrated microfluidic imaging device can thus be a competent technique for diverse biology and chemistry applications.

Sub-50 nm optical imaging in ambient air with 10× objective lens enabled by hyper-hemi-microsphere.

Optical microsphere nanoscope has great potential in the inspection of integrated circuit chips for semiconductor industry and morphological characterization in biology due to its superior resolving power and label-free characteristics. However, its resolution in ambient air is restricted by the magnification and numerical aperture (NA) of microsphere. High magnification objective lens is required to be coupled with microsphere for nano-imaging beyond the diffraction limit. To overcome these challenges, in this work, high refractive index hyper-hemi-microspheres with tunable magnification up to 10× are proposed and realized by accurately tailoring their thickness with focused ion beam (FIB) milling. The effective refractive index is put forward to guide the design of hyper-hemi-microspheres. Experiments demonstrate that the imaging resolution and contrast of a hyper-hemi-microsphere with a higher magnification and larger NA excel those of a microsphere in air. Besides, the hyper-hemi-microsphere could resolve ~50 nm feature with higher image fidelity and contrast compared with liquid immersed high refractive index microspheres. With a hyper-hemi-microsphere composed microscale compound lens configuration, sub-50 nm optical imaging in ambient air is realized by only coupling with a 10× objective lens (NA = 0.3), which enhances a conventional microscope imaging power about an order of magnitude.

Evaluations on supervised learning methods in the calibration of seven-hole pressure probes.

Machine learning method has become a popular, convenient and efficient computing tool applied to many industries at present. Multi-hole pressure probe is an important technique widely used in flow vector measurement. It is a new attempt to integrate machine learning method into multi-hole probe measurement. In this work, six typical supervised learning methods in scikit-learn library are selected for parameter adjustment at first. Based on the optimal parameters, a comprehensive evaluation is conducted from four aspects: prediction accuracy, prediction efficiency, feature sensitivity and robustness on the failure of some hole port. As results, random forests and K-nearest neighbors' algorithms have the better comprehensive prediction performance. Compared with the in-house traditional algorithm, the machine learning algorithms have the great advantages in the computational efficiency and the convenience of writing code. Multi-layer perceptron and support vector machines are the most time-consuming algorithms among the six algorithms. The prediction accuracy of all the algorithms is very sensitive to the features. Using the features based on the physical knowledge can obtain a high accuracy predicted results. Finally, KNN algorithm is successfully applied to field measurements on the angle of attack of a wind turbine blades. These findings provided a new reference for the application of machine learning method in multi-hole probe calibration and measurement.

Bilayer-film-decorated microsphere with suppressed interface reflection for enhanced nano-imaging.

Microspheres as special optical lenses have extensive applications due to their super-focusing ability and outstanding resolving power on imaging. The interface reflection between the microsphere and sample surface significantly affects nano-imaging as exhibited in the form of the Newton's rings pattern in virtual images. In this work, a new scheme of decorating the microsphere with a dielectric bilayer thin film is proposed to suppress the interface reflection and thus enhance the imaging performance. The particle swarm optimization algorithm is performed with a full-wave simulation to refine the bilayer thin film decorated microsphere design, which is successfully realized via a novel fabrication strategy. Experimental imaging results demonstrate that the Newton's rings pattern in virtual images is substantially diminished. Both the imaging contrast and effective field-of-view of the microsphere nano-imaging are improved via this effective light manipulation scheme, which is also applicable to promoting the performance of the microsphere in other optical applications.

Optical nano-imaging via microsphere compound lenses working in non-contact mode.

Microsphere lens for nano-imaging has been widely studied because of its superior resolving power, real-time imaging characteristic, and wide applicability on diverse samples. However, the further development of the microsphere microscope has been restricted by its limited magnification and small field-of-view. In this paper, the microsphere compound lenses (MCL) which allow enlarged magnification and field-of-view simultaneously in non-contact imaging mode have been demonstrated. A theoretical model involving wave-optics effects is established to guide the design of MCL for different magnifications and imaging configurations, which is more precise compared with common geometric optics theory. Experimentally, using MCL to image the specimen with a tunable magnification from 2.8× to 10.3× is realized. Due to the enlarged magnification, a high-resolution target with 137 nm line width can be resolved by a 10× objective. Besides, the field-of-view of MCL is larger than that of a single microsphere and can be further increased through scanning working manner, which has been demonstrated by imaging a sample with ∼76 nm minimum feature size in a large area. Prospectively, the well-designed MCL will become irreplaceable components to improve the imaging performances of microsphere microscope just like the compound lens in the conventional macroscopic imaging system.

Tunable and enhanced light emission in hybrid WS2-optical-fiber-nanowire structures.

In recent years, the two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) have attracted renewed interest owing to their remarkable physical and chemical properties. Similar to that of graphene, the atomic thickness of TMDCs significantly limits their optoelectronic applications. In this study, we report a hybrid WS2-optical-fiber-nanowire (WOFN) structure for broadband enhancement of the light-matter interactions, i.e., light absorption, photoluminescence (PL) and second-harmonic generation (SHG), through evanescent field coupling. The interactions between the anisotropic light field of an optical fiber nanowire (OFN) and the anisotropic second-order susceptibility tensor of WS2 are systematically studied theoretically and experimentally. In particular, an efficient SHG in the WOFN appears to be 20 times larger than that in the same OFN before the WS2 integration under the same conditions. Moreover, we show that strain can efficiently manipulate the PL and SHG in the WOFN owing to the large configurability of the silica OFN. Our results demonstrate the potential applications of waveguide-coupled TMDCs structures for tunable high-performance photonic devices.

[Treatment of malignant hematologic diseases by peripheral blood stem cell transplantation combined with halotype lymphocyte infusion].

In order to observe the curative and side effects in malignant hematologic diseases treated with autologous peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (auto-PBSCT) combined with halotype lymphocyte infusion, auto-PBSCs were mobilized, harvested and stored at -196 degrees C from patients in first CR or PR with intensive chemotherapy (Ara-C 1.0 g/m(2) x 5 days or cyclophosphamide 60 mg/kg x 2 days) and G-CSF. Unpurged auto-PBSCs were infused when patients received the conditioning regimen with busulfan, total irradiation or cyclophosphamide. Halotype lymphocytes [mean 5.0 x 10(7)/kg, (4.5 - 6.5) x 10(7)/kg] irradiated with 7.5 Gy were infused to patients when WBCs were more than 1 x 10(9)/L. Hematopoietic recovery and survival of patients were observed. The results showed that in 12 cases accepted this protocol, five patients with acute non-lymphocytic leukemia got to durable remission, of which 2 had durable remission of more than 50 months. One of three patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma IVb reached durable remission, and two relapsed and died on 4 and 6 months after treatment, respectively. Two CML patients were also achieved durable remission. One patient with multiple myeloma relapsed on 36 months later, but he still survived disease-free with treatment of thalidomide. In a follow-up survey of 25 months, the disease-free survival was 83%. No severe side effects were observed except platelet delayed recovery after halotype lymphocyte infusion. STR-PCR analysis showed that infused donor lymphocytes disappeared in 3 recipients at 72 hours after infusion. It is concluded that auto-PBSCT combined with halotype lymphocyte infusion could decrease the relapse of malignant hematologic diseases and improve the effect of auto-PBSCT. Recovery of platelet, however, could be delayed by halotype lymphocyte infusion.