Nutcracker syndrome (a Delphi consensus).

Background: Nutcracker syndrome (NCS) describes the symptomatic compression of the left renal vein between the aorta and superior mesenteric artery. Whereas asymptomatic compression is a common radiological finding, patients with NCS can report a range of symptoms. There are no specific diagnostic criteria and interventions include a range of open surgical and endovascular procedures.

Appropriateness of care: Deep venous procedures.

In the past decade, technologies to treat venous pathologies have increased dramatically, to the benefit of an often underserved and overlooked population of patients with venous disease. However, given the rapid release of various technologies, including venous-dedicated stents and thrombectomy devices across varied venous pathologies, evidence-based guidelines have been slow to develop. When discussing appropriateness of care, one needs to consider optimal patient selection, technical approach, medical management, and surveillance protocols, to name a few.

Rotational and translational motions in a homogeneously cooling granular gas.

A granular gas composed of monodisperse spherical particles was studied in microgravity experiments in a drop tower. Translations and rotations of the particles were extracted from optical video data. Equipartition is violated, the rotational degrees of freedom were excited only to roughly 2/3 of the translational ones.

Cooling of a granular gas mixture in microgravity.

Granular gases are fascinating non-equilibrium systems with interesting features such as spontaneous clustering and non-Gaussian velocity distributions. Mixtures of different components represent a much more natural composition than monodisperse ensembles but attracted comparably little attention so far. We present the observation and characterization of a mixture of rod-like particles with different sizes and masses in a drop tower experiment.

Coalescence of biphasic droplets embedded in free standing smectic A films.

We investigate micrometer-sized flat droplets consisting of an isotropic core surrounded by a nematic rim in freely suspended smectic A liquid-crystal films. In contrast to purely isotropic droplets which are characterized by a sharp edge and no long-range interactions, the nematic fringe introduces a continuous film thickness change resulting in long-range mutual attraction of droplets. The coalescence scenario is divided in two phases.