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Background: Radical removal of the ureter is not routinary performed during nephrectomy/hemineprectomy, distal ureteral stump syndrome may follow. Case summary: A 17-year-old male with urinary malformation history came to the emergency department for abdominal pain and tenesmus. Imaging revealed a huge abdominal mass, compatible with a massively dilated residual ureteral stump resulting from heminephrectomy operation performed 7 years before for a complete right duplex system with hypoplasia of the upper right system. A robotic procedure was planned and the stump, which was ectopic and drained into the seminal vesicles, was successfully removed. The patient was discharged after recovery; he was followed up for one year after surgery without any complications. Conclusion: Ureteral stumps rarely require reoperation, but our case suggests a need for long-term follow-up. Robotic-assisted excision showed to be a safe and effective technique for surgical management of a massively dilated ectopic stump in the pediatric population.

In the context of the ESA Climate Change Initiative project, we are engaged in a regional reprocessing of high-resolution (20 Hz) altimetry data of the classical missions in a number of the world's coastal zones. It is done using the ALES (Adaptive Leading Edge Subwaveform) retracker combined with the X-TRACK system dedicated to improve geophysical corrections at the coast. Using the Jason-1 and Jason-2 satellite data, high-resolution, along-track sea level time series have been generated, and coastal sea level trends have been computed over a 14-year time span (from July 2002 to June 2016). In this paper, we focus on a particular coastal site where the Jason track crosses land, Senetosa, located south of Corsica in the Mediterranean Sea, for two reasons: (1) the rate of sea level rise estimated in this project increases significantly in the last 4–5 km to the coast compared to what is observed further offshore, and (2) Senetosa is the calibration site for the TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason altimetry missions, which are equipped for that purpose with in situ instrumentation, in particular tide gauges and a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) antenna. A careful examination of all the potential errors that could explain the increased rate of sea level rise close to the coast (e.g., spurious trends in the geophysical corrections, imperfect inter-mission bias estimate, decrease of valid data close to the coast and errors in waveform retracking) has been carried out, but none of these effects appear able to explain the trend increase. We further explored the possibility that it results from real physical processes. Change in wave conditions was investigated, but wave setup was excluded as a potential contributor because the magnitude was too low and too localized in the immediate vicinity of the shoreline. A preliminary model-based investigation about the contribution of coastal currents indicates that it could be a plausible explanation of the observed change in sea level trend close to the coast.

Echinococcosis is a parasitic zoonosis in which humans are involved as an intermediate host. It is a very common pathology in the areas of Eastern Europe and Asia, where the main activity is represented by pastoralism and animal breeding. In humans, the most frequently affected sites are the liver (60–70%) and lungs (20–30%), manifesting themselves with symptoms such as abdominal pain, coughing, dyspnea, hemoptysis, up to cases of anaphylactic shock. In Italy it is not a common disease with an incidence of 2:100.000 inhabitants, and it's extremely rare in pediatric population. In this work we presented a case of a 11-years male patient came for a persistent cough, to whom was found a giant cystic mass in the thorax. Serological tests confirmed the diagnosis of echinococcosis. Patient underwent to thoracotomy to remove the cyst and he begun the antiparasitic therapy. Post-operative outcome was good and the patient is, until now, free of problems. Echinococcosis is a challenging problem for a pediatric surgeon, especially in non-endemic area, not only because it is not a common disease in pediatric population, but also for the surgical management that can presents some difficulties and complications in the post-operative course.

Technological advances in the recent satellite altimeter missions of Jason-2, SARAL/AltiKa and CryoSat-2 have improved their signal-to-noise ratio, allowing us to observe finer-scale ocean processes with along-track data. Here, we analyse the noise levels and observable ocean scales in the northwestern Mediterranean Sea, using spectral analyses of along-track sea surface height from the three missions. Jason-2 has a higher mean noise level with strong seasonal variations, with higher noise in winter due to the rougher sea state. SARAL/AltiKa has the lowest noise, again with strong seasonal variations. CryoSat-2 is in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mode in the Mediterranean Sea but with lower-resolution ocean corrections; its statistical noise level is moderate with little seasonal variation. These noise levels impact on the ocean scales we can observe. In winter, when the mixed layers are deepest and the submesoscale is energetic, all of the altimeter missions can observe wavelengths down to 40–50 km (individual feature diameters of 20–25 km). In summer when the submesoscales are weaker, SARAL can detect ocean scales down to 35 km wavelength, whereas the higher noise from Jason-2 and CryoSat-2 blocks the observation of scales less than 50–55 km wavelength. This statistical analysis is completed by individual case studies, where filtered along-track altimeter data are compared with co-located glider and high-frequency (HF) radar data. The glider comparisons work well for larger ocean structures, but observations of the smaller, rapidly moving dynamics are difficult to co-locate in space and time (gliders cover 200 km in a few days, altimetry in 30 s). HF radar surface currents at Toulon measure the meandering Northern Current, and their good temporal sampling shows promising results in comparison to co-located SARAL altimetric currents. Techniques to separate the geostrophic component from the wind-driven ageostrophic flow need further development in this coastal band.

This paper investigates links between rainfall variability in the Ogooué River Basin (ORB) and El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the Pacific Ocean. Recent hydroclimatology studies of the ORB and surrounding areas resulting in contrasting conclusions about links between rainfall variability and ENSO. Thus, to make the issue clearer, this study investigates the links between ENSO and rainfall in the ORB over the period 1940–1999. The principal component analysis of monthly rainfall in the ORB was done. The temporal mode of the first component corresponds to the interannual variations of rainfall on the ORB. Also, the pattern of the spatial mode of the first component shows that the ORB is a homogeneous hydroclimatic zone. However, no leading mode is significantly correlated to the ENSO index. A cross-wavelet analysis of the time series of basin-scale rainfall and the ENSO index was therefore carried out. The result is a set of periodogram structures corresponding to some ENSO episodes recorded over the study period. And wavelet coherence analysis of both time series confirms that there are significant links between ENSO and rainfall in the ORB.

The 2015–2016 El-Niño and related ocean warming has generated significant coral bleaching and mortality worldwide. In Indonesia, the first signs of bleaching were reported in April 2016. However, this El Niño has impacted Indonesian coral reefs since 2015 through a different process than temperature-induced bleaching. In September 2015, altimetry data show that sea level was at its lowest in the past 12 years, affecting corals living in the bathymetric range exposed to unusual emersion. In March 2016, Bunaken Island (North Sulawesi) displayed up to 85 % mortality on reef flats dominated by Porites, Heliopora and Goniastrea corals with differential mortality rates by coral genus. Almost all reef flats showed evidence of mortality, representing 30 % of Bunaken reefs. For reef flat communities which were living at a depth close to the pre-El Niño mean low sea level, the fall induced substantial mortality likely by higher daily aerial exposure, at least during low tide periods. Altimetry data were used to map sea level fall throughout Indonesia, suggesting that similar mortality could be widespread for shallow reef flat communities, which accounts for a vast percent of the total extent of coral reefs in Indonesia. The altimetry historical records also suggest that such an event was not unique in the past two decades, therefore rapid sea level fall could be more important in the dynamics and resilience of Indonesian reef flat communities than previously thought. The clear link between mortality and sea level fall also calls for a refinement of the hierarchy of El Niño impacts and their consequences on coral reefs.

Argo observations from 2005 to 2013 are used to characterize spatial scales of temperature and salinity variations from the surface down to 1300 m. Simulations are first performed to analyze the sensitivity of results to Argo sampling; they show that several years of Argo observations are required to estimate spatial scales of ocean variability over 20° × 20° boxes. Spatial scales are then computed over several large-scale areas. Zonal and meridional spatial scales (Lx and Ly which are zero crossing of covariance functions) vary as expected with latitudes. Scales are of about 100 km at high latitudes and more of 700 km in the Indian and Pacific equatorial–tropical regions. Zonal and meridional scales are similar except in tropical–equatorial regions where zonal scales are much larger (by a factor of 2 to 3) than meridional scales. Spatial scales are the largest close to the surface and have a general tendency for temperature to increase in deeper layers. There are significant differences between temperature and salinity scales, in particular, in the deep ocean. Results are consistent with previous studies based on sparse in situ observations or satellite altimetry. They provide, however, for the first time a global description of temperature and salinity scales of variability and a characterization of their variations according to depths.

Single-molecule localization microscopy (SMLM) is a powerful tool for studying intracellular structure and macromolecular organization at the nanoscale. The increasingly massive pointillistic data sets generated by SMLM require the development of new and highly efficient quantification tools. Here we present FOCAL3D, an accurate, flexible and exceedingly fast (scaling linearly with the number of localizations) density-based algorithm for quantifying spatial clustering in large 3D SMLM data sets. Unlike DBSCAN, which is perhaps the most commonly employed density-based clustering algorithm, an optimum set of parameters for FOCAL3D may be objectively determined. We initially validate the performance of FOCAL3D on simulated datasets at varying noise levels and for a range of cluster sizes. These simulated datasets are used to illustrate the parametric insensitivity of the algorithm, in contrast to DBSCAN, and clustering metrics such as the F1 and Silhouette score indicate that FOCAL3D is highly accurate, even in the presence of significant background noise and mixed populations of variable sized clusters, once optimized. We then apply FOCAL3D to 3D astigmatic dSTORM images of the nuclear pore complex (NPC) in human osteosaracoma cells, illustrating both the validity of the parameter optimization and the ability of the algorithm to accurately cluster complex, heterogeneous 3D clusters in a biological dataset. FOCAL3D is provided as an open source software package written in Python.

Human–robot interaction requires the robot to recognize and convey emotions. Emotions also enhance adaptation by influencing deliberative actions. However, scientists traditionally relegate the emulation of emotions to high levels in multi-level architectures, where those emulated emotions collaborate with reasoning to come up with the best action. In contrast, in this research, we propose the use of emulated emotions at the lowest level of a cognitive architecture, for instance, robot motion control. Thus, the traditional definition of error used by a controller changes in order to include anticipation. The discrepancy between an anticipated ideal state and an anticipated robot state elicits an emotion. This simple emotion-inspired definition of the error improves the controller by more than 11% according to the definition of performance in this article, which argues that robot control architectures should use emulated emotions from their lowest levels.