bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The performance of routine computed tomography for the detection of colorectal cancer
Authors: Colvin H , Lukram A , Sohail I , Chung KT , Jehangir E , Berry J , Babu H , Hinson F 
Published: October 2013

Introduction Although colonoscopy and computed tomography (CT) colonography in expert hands are the most sensitive investigations for colorectal cancer, some patients may not tolerate the necessary bowel preparation and insufflation of gas into the colon. We assessed the performance of unprepared contrast CT for the detection of colorectal cancer. Methods A retrospective review was undertaken of all patients who had contrast CT of the abdomen and pelvis and then went on to have colonoscopy at our institutions between 2007 and 2010. Results Overall, 96 patients were identified as having had CT prior to colonoscopy. The sensitivity of CT in detecting colorectal cancer was 100% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 19.8–100%) and the specificity was 95.7% (95% CI: 88.8–98.6%). The positive predictive value was 33.3% (95% CI: 6.0–75.9%) and the negative predictive value was 100% (95% CI: 94.8–100%). Conclusions Non-targeted CT that is negative for colorectal malignancy is usually reassuring but the decision for further investigations should be made on a case-by-case basis, taking into account of the likelihood of underlying colorectal malignancy and the underlying co-morbidities of the patient. However, video colonoscopy is usually necessary to assess positive CT findings.
Effect of novel vitamin D receptor activator paricalcitol on renal ischaemia/reperfusion injury in rats
Authors: Azak A , Huddam B , Haberal N , Koçak G , Ortabozkoyun L , Şenes M , Akdoğan MF , Denizli N , Duranay M 
Published: October 2013

Introduction Despite the developments in modern medicine, acute renal injury is still a challenging and common health problem. It is well known that ischaemia and reperfusion takes place in pathological mechanisms. Efforts to clarify the pathophysiology and interventions to improve outcomes are essential. Our study aimed to investigate whether the prophylactic use of paricalcitol is beneficial in renal ischaemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. Methods Twenty-four Wistar albino rats were assigned randomly to four groups. Right nephrectomies were performed at the time of renal arterial clamping. Sham surgery was performed on the rats in group 1. For the rats in group 2, the left renal artery was clamped for 45 minutes. The rats in group 3 received paricalcitol for seven days (0.2µg/kg/day); following this, a right nephrectomy and left renal arterial clamping were not performed. The rats in group 4 received paricalcitol for seven days (0.2µg/ kg/day); following this, a right nephrectomy and left renal arterial clamping for 45 minutes were performed. Tissue thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS), superoxide dismutase, sulfhydryl groups as well as nitric oxide metabolites, serum urea and creatinine levels were measured for all four groups. Results In group 4, there were some improvements in terms of TBARS, nitrite, nitrate, superoxide dismutase and creatinine levels. In the histopathological evaluation, paricalcitol therapy improved tubular necrosis and medullar congestion but there was no significant difference in terms of tubular cell swelling, cellular vacuolisation or general damage. Immunohistopathological examination revealed lower scores for vascular endothelial growth factor in the group 4 rats than in group 2. Conclusions Paricalcitol therapy improved renal I/R injury in terms of serum and histopathological parameters. These potential beneficial effects need to be further investigated.
Comparison of clinical outcomes of open, laparoscopic and single port appendicectomies
Authors: Jiang X , Meng HB , Zhou DL , Ding WX , Lu LS 
Published: October 2013

Introduction Appendicectomy is the most common surgical procedure performed in general surgery. This study aimed to compare the outcomes of open appendicectomy (OA), laparoscopic appendicectomy (LA) and single port laparoscopic appendicectomy (SPLA). Methods Fifty consecutive patients with suspected acute appendicitis were studied (OA: n=20, LA: n=20, SPLA: n=10). Clinical outcomes were compared between the three groups in terms of operative time, blood loss, postoperative complications, length of hospital stay and cost. Results Patient demographics were similar among groups (p>0.05). SPLA was characterised by longer operative time (88.1 minutes vs 35.6 minutes in OA and 33.4 minutes in LA) and higher costs (12.84 thousand Chinese yuan [RMB] vs 8.41 thousand RMB in LA and 4.99 thousand RMB in OA). OA was characterised by more blood loss (9.8ml vs 7.5ml in SPLA and 6.8ml in LA), longer hospital stay (7.5 days vs 3.5 days in LA and 3.4 days in SPLA) and lower costs. The total number of complications was higher for OA (n=2) than for LA and SPLA (n=0) although this was not statistically significant. Conclusions Where feasible, LA should be undertaken as the initial treatment of choice for most cases of suspected appendicitis.
Putting the player back in their place: Spatial analysis from below
Authors: Golding Daniel 
Published: October 2013

Abstract
Though theorists have long regarded spatiality as an essential facet of the videogame, the figure of the player has been largely absent from this research. In the language of Michel de Certeau, videogame space is theorized as ‘from above’, and outside of the direct experience of the player. Therefore, this article seeks to re-place the figure of the player as central within a theoretical schema of videogame space, and gesture towards the study of videogame space ‘from below’. Through the theoretical framework provided by de Certeau, we can understand the player in space as more prone to error, appropriation and unintended movements through videogame diegeses. The player is comparable to de Certeau’s city walker, and theory which instead finds itself at the perspective of the bureaucrat, looking down on the videogame ‘from above’, can never fully account for the player. This article will examine the possibilities of spatial analysis ‘from below’.
Argh!: An exploration of the response cries of digital game players
Authors: Conway Steven 
Published: October 2013

Abstract
Response cries are often viewed by an audience as instinctive, asocial and primitive: as simply cathartic release for whatever sensation currently overwhelms the invoker, whether that be the dropping of a phone, stubbing a toe or burning of one’s hand. Yet these response cries, as articulated by Erving Goffman, are in many instances also social performances, as the performer attempts to create or sustain a particular impression beneficial to his or her status within a group or larger community. This article focuses upon the response cries of digital game players, discussing what kinds of social meaning are communicated through such shouts and curses, and how they can be productively viewed through the prism of social status, role and gaming capital. In doing so, response cries, though often neglected in analyses of gamers, are shown to be an essential facet of player performance in social contexts, filled with meaning for the attentive analyst.
Strong and weak procedurality
Authors: Skolnik Michael Ryan 
Published: October 2013

Abstract
This article examines the procedural and constructivist approaches to interpreting political meaning in interventionist video games, i.e., games that are designed to play with the fundamental beliefs of the player to change or reinforce these beliefs. The procedural approach involves the meaning being embedded in the game’s rule set and the constructivist approach asserts that the player constructs the meaning through the performative process of game play. These two approaches are frequently viewed as a binary opposition. This article attempts to reconcile these approaches by introducing a continuum of procedurality, bounded at its ends by ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ procedurality, which favour procedural and constructivist interpretive approaches, respectively. By examining case studies of interventionist games and game play near each end of the spectrum, it makes claims about the relative efficacy of strong and weak procedurality as approaches for designing interventionist video games and advocates for a holistic general game criticism informed by these concepts.
Diggy Holes and Jaffa Cakes: The rise of the elite fanproducer in video-gaming culture
Authors: MacCallum-Stewart Esther 
Published: October 2013

Abstract
Online communities have developed rapidly in the last few years, and key to this is their growing visibility outside the game itself. Fan conventions, cosplay, videos on YouTube and gamer ‘chic’ are becoming increasingly prevalent parts of mainstream culture. This article investigates the growth of these groups through a discussion of ‘fan-producers’: gamers who make videos, machinima and webcasts. Specifically, it examines the role of the group. The Yogscast, and the game Minecraft, in developing the relationship between game and fan. It also argues that the self-supporting nature of the gaming community has, despite some notable issues, started to change the ways in which gaming is perceived and developed. The player now takes an active role in the development and dissemination of many games – especially indie titles such as Minecraft – and this in turn is changing the ways in which the game text is interpreted.
Constructing and measuring an ‘audience’ for digital games
Authors: Boyer Steven 
Published: October 2013

Abstract
What is the ‘audience’ for digital games? This article argues that measurement is a crucial component of conceptions of the audience, exemplifying the complexities of translating theories and models of the audience to digital games. Beginning with mass communication studies, the common audience conception based on invisibility, exposure, institutional agreement, advertising value, and technological measurement found widespread resistance from game studies. This model gave way to reception studies’ focus on interpretation and sociocultural context, more readily aligned with game studies’ emphasis on interactivity. However, the shift towards a constructionist model of the audience, as a discursive construct separate from actual people and reified by measurement technologies, has not been widely applied to digital games. Ultimately, this article argues that a constructionist approach complicates naturalized notions of game ‘players’ and ‘cultures’ as the medium both integrates into and disrupts traditional conceptions of the audience.
‘Animating’ the narrative in abstract comics
Authors: Davies Paul Fisher 
Published: October 2013

Abstract
How can one read an abstract graphic narrative? Under what conditions do we cease to view a set of images as static representations, or as marks on paper existing for their own sake, and begin to read them as the story of a changing world in motion, or even invest them with impetus, emotions and desires? In this article I will explore the ways in which readers can make sense of abstract comics. The notion of an abstract graphic narrative seems to be a contradiction in terms: how can something be non-representational, and also be a narrative, a category which seems to presuppose representations of characters, settings and events? When confronted with these visual texts, readers will have to seek out and create such ‘actants’ and ‘existents’ from the material abstract comics offer, if the text is to warrant its status as narrative. The article will use a number of exemplar stories from Andrei Molotiu’s 2009 collection Abstract Comics to explore the process of reading these image texts. It will use ideas from narratology and philosophy of consciousness to help outline some of the ways we can ‘animate’ the static images we see across the sequence of panels, in which we recognize and reconstitute persistent entities, bringing a narrative life to the apparently inert marks on the comics page. I will explore the limits of readers’ ability to apply this process and comment on its relevance to more mainstream graphic narrative in general.
Invisible symmetries: Superheroes, Grant Morrison and Isaiah Berlin’s two concepts of liberty
Authors: Murray Chris 
Published: October 2013

Abstract
Throughout his career in comics Scottish writer Grant Morrison has interrogated concepts of liberty and power and their relationship to revolutionary action, often using the superhero as a metaphor. This article examines liberalism in his work with reference to the ideas of political philosopher Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997), whose influential lecture ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ ([1958] 2002), described the dangers of ‘positive liberty’, and set out the case for the virtues of ‘negative liberty’. Both Berlin and Morrison were profoundly influenced by the Cold War, and the philosophical and ideological arguments about the definition of freedom that arose from it. The superhero was also shaped by these debates, and Morrison’s liberalism, as expressed through his writing in this genre, owes much to the distinctions Berlin put in place. This article argues that a greater understanding of the politics of the superhero, and Morrison’s changing attitude towards the genre and its underlying themes of identity and freedom, can be gained by applying Berlin’s schema. Indeed, several of Morrison’s key works, such as Zenith (1987–1993), The Invisibles (1994–2000), Flex Mentallo (1996) and All Star Superman (2005–2008), dramatize the struggle between positive and negative concepts of liberty, but his views have undergone shifts, from a rather sceptical conception of the superhero in his early work to the point where he now enshrines the superhero as the best example of liberty and aspiration.
The cognitive grammar of ‘I’: Viewing arrangements in graphic autobiographies
Authors: Schneider Christian W. 
Published: October 2013

Abstract
Gerard Genette’s classic questions about narrative perspective – ‘Who sees?’ and ‘Who speaks?’ – are at their most relevant when it comes to the multimodal narrative intricacies of autobiographical graphic novels. The already complex matter of narration and focalization in a purely visual medium is distinctly complicated when taking the different perspectives of the narrating ‘I’ and the experiencing ‘I’ into account. Furthermore, many acclaimed autobiographical comics, including works like Maus, Fun Home, Blankets or Safe Area Goražde, thematize the construction of their viewpoints, addressing issues of memory, objectivity and (un-)reliability. In this article, I propose a new approach to this complexity, turning to cognitive linguistics – more specifically, to the model of cognitive grammar established by Ronald Langacker and his concept of ‘viewing arrangements’. In Langacker’s theory, all categories of grammar are based on cognitive conceptualizations that represent our position in the world and our relation to our surroundings. These conceptualizations have a distinctly visual bent. In Langacker’s terminology, a ‘viewing arrangement’ is a model of how a viewer conceptualizes a scene, ‘the overall relationship between the “viewers” and the situation, being “viewed”’. These arrangements change constantly, as conceptualizers focus on various parts of their environment, imbuing them with different meanings and expressing various degrees of subjectivity. Applying Langacker’s model to examples from autobiographic graphic novels, I will use the concept of the ‘viewing arrangement’ to illustrate how intricate narrative perspectives in these works can be analysed systematically and how different degrees of subjectivity are constructed with the formal means of comics. The model may not only help to untangle the narrative intricacies of autobiographies, but may enrich discussions of narration and focalization in comics generally.
Resisting narrative immersion
Authors: Schneider Greice 
Published: October 2013

Abstract
The following article will discuss the work of Chris Ware in terms of narrative immersion, that is, the state of mental absorption, the capacity of being dragged in the storyworld, or being ‘carried away’ in the game of ‘make-believe’. The taxonomy by Marie-Laure Ryan will be taken here as a guideline to look at three main types of narrative immersion, namely, spatial, temporal and emotional immersion. I will depart from a negative approach, addressing Ware’s unrelenting resistance towards fictional immersion (that should not be taken as a complete rejection, but a deliberate delay).
The myth of Eco: Cultural populism and comics studies
Authors: Singer Marc 
Published: October 2013

Abstract
For decades, Umberto Eco’s essay ‘The myth of Superman’ has been cited as the authoritative study of superhero comics. More recently, however, Eco’s work has been a site of argument as cultural and media studies scholars such as Angela Ndalianis and Henry Jenkins contend that the narrative logic of contemporary superhero comics has become more complex than Eco imagines. These scholars replace Eco’s ‘oneiric climate’ of suspended time with models of multiple and intertextual narratives that extend across diverse media. While Eco’s observations are more historically contingent than he acknowledges, his analysis remains more applicable than his critics allow. Some scholars have misread Eco’s arguments and overstated the radicalism of contemporary superhero narratives. This article argues that it is time to re-evaluate Eco’s work and move beyond the populist, predominantly celebratory tone of his critics.
From illustration to narrativization: Connecting to a reader in three parodies by Hunt Emerson
Authors: Thompson Christopher J. 
Published: October 2013

Abstract
In contrast to the dynamic ‘visual’ image, Will Eisner in 1985 characterizes the ‘illustration’ as simply repeating a textual description or decorating it, embodying the antithesis of comics idealized form. Curiously it is this very technique that forms a starting point from which British alternative comix artist Hunt Emerson is able to strike a relationship with his readers in the adaptations Lady Chatterley’s Lover! (1986), Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1989) and Dante’s Inferno (2012). This article investigates the ways in which Emerson’s comics participate with a reader in the formation of certain ambiguous narrator positions, exploring their ultimate connections to a project designed to engage with wider audiences both inside and beyond the classroom. In making its investigation, this article utilizes Thierry Groensteen’s concept of the monstrator to delineate between visual and verbal narrative positions in conflict with one another. These positions are fundamental in establishing a sense of humour where, in the case of Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1989), the verbal narrative is seemingly misinterpreted in order to draw attention to its mediation; in the case of Dante’s Inferno (2012) a complicity between visual and verbal channels is employed as a means of issuing forth contextual information needed to appreciate an archaic text; and in Lady Chatterley’s Lover! (1986) a visual narrator is used to bring into question the representation of the subjectivity of certain characters. This article employs theoretical advances made by Monika Fludernik in 1996 to understand the ways in which these visual and verbal narrative channels are ‘narrativized’ by the reader in the formulation of ambiguous narrator positions that offer conflicting accounts of their mediation. As a consequence the reader takes an active role of involvement in the comics thereby completing Emerson’s project of engaging participatory readers beyond the institutional confines of the traditional literatures he adapts.
Reviews
Authors: Crucifix Benoît , O’Donnell Stephen , Round Julia 
Published: October 2013

Abstract
The Cultural Standing of Comics: Ambiguities and Changes, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, 2–3 May 2013
International Comics and Graphic Novel and International Bande Dessinée Society Joint Conference, University of Glasgow, June 2013
Transnational Perspectives on Graphic Novels: Comics at the Crossroads, Shane Denson, Christina Meyer and Daniel Stein (eds) (2013) London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 294 pp., ISBN 978-1-4411-875-4, h/bk, £65.00
Non-pheochromocytoma (PCC)/paraganglioma (PGL) tumors in patients with succinate dehydrogenase-related PCC–PGL syndromes: a clinicopathological and molecular analysis
Authors: Papathomas Thomas G , Gaal Jose , Corssmit Eleonora P M , Oudijk Lindsey , Korpershoek Esther , Heimdal Ketil , Bayley Jean-Pierre , Morreau Hans , van Dooren Marieke , Papaspyrou Konstantinos , Schreiner Thomas , Hansen Torsten , Andresen Per Arne , Restuccia David F , van Kessel Ingrid , van Leenders Geert J L H , Kros Johan M , Looijenga Leendert H J , Hofland Leo J , Mann Wolf , van Nederveen Francien H , Mete Ozgur , Asa Sylvia L , de Krijger Ronald R , Dinjens Winand N M 
Published: October 2013

ObjectiveAlthough the succinate dehydrogenase (SDH)-related tumor spectrum has been recently expanded, there are only rare reports of non-pheochromocytoma/paraganglioma tumors in SDHx-mutated patients. Therefore, questions still remain unresolved concerning the aforementioned tumors with regard to their pathogenesis, clinicopathological phenotype, and even causal relatedness to SDHx mutations. Absence of SDHB expression in tumors derived from tissues susceptible to SDH deficiency is not fully elucidated.Design and methodsThree unrelated SDHD patients, two with pituitary adenoma (PA) and one with papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), and three SDHB patients affected by renal cell carcinomas (RCCs) were identified from four European centers. SDHA/SDHB immunohistochemistry (IHC), SDHx mutation analysis, and loss of heterozygosity analysis of the involved SDHx gene were performed on all tumors. A cohort of 348 tumors of unknown SDHx mutational status, including renal tumors, PTCs, PAs, neuroblastic tumors, seminomas, and adenomatoid tumors, was investigated by SDHB IHC.ResultsOf the six index patients, all RCCs and one PA displayed SDHB immunonegativity in contrast to the other PA and PTC. All immunonegative tumors demonstrated loss of the WT allele, indicating bi-allelic inactivation of the germline mutated gene. Of 348 tumors, one clear cell RCC exhibited partial loss of SDHB expression.ConclusionsThese findings strengthen the etiological association of SDHx genes with pituitary neoplasia and provide evidence against a link between PTC and SDHx mutations. Somatic deletions seem to constitute the second hit in SDHB-related renal neoplasia, while SDHx alterations do not appear to be primary drivers in sporadic tumorigenesis from tissues affected by SDH deficiency.
Sex-Specific Effects ofCis-Regulatory Variants inDrosophila melanogaster
Authors: Coolon Joseph D , Webb William , Wittkopp Patricia J 
Published: October 2013

AbstractSexual dimorphism at the level of gene expression is common and well documented, but much less is known about how different cis-regulatory alleles interact with the different trans-regulatory environments present in males and females. Here we show that sex-specific effects of cis-regulatory variants are common in Drosophila.