During opening arguments for sentencing, prosecutors told the court that they would present evidence of an additional three murders and three attempted murders.Dorothy L. Sayers made use of direct injection air embolism as a murder method in her 1927 Lord Peter Wimsey mystery novel Unnatural Death (published in the US in 1928 as The Dawson Pedigree), although her description was subsequently criticised as implausible on account of the injection site and volume.Air embolism was the method used by an insane nurse to euthanize seven terminally ill patients in the episode "Amazing Grace" of the TV series Shadow Chasers.Near the end of young adult novel Catching Fire, as well as its film adaptation, protagonist Katniss Everdeen grabs a syringe and fills it with air, with the intention of killing Peeta Mellark quickly via air embolism. In plants
Air embolisms generally occur in the xylem of vascular plants because a fall in hydraulic pressure results in cavitation. Falling hydraulic pressure occurs as a result of water stress or physical damage. A number of physiological adaptations serve to prevent cavitation and to recover from it. The cavitation may be prevented from spreading by the narrow pores in the walls between vessel elements. The plant xylem sap may be able to detour around the cavitation through interconnections. Water loss may be reduced by closing off leaf stomata to reduce transpiration, or some plants produce positive xylem pressure from the roots. When xylem pressure increases, the cavitation gases may redissolve.
Acute monocytic leukemia (AMoL, or AML-M5) is a type of acute myeloid leukemia. In AML-M5 >80% of the leukemic cells are of monocytic lineage. This cancer is characterized by a dominance of monocytes in the bone marrow. There is an overproduction of monocytes that the body does not need in the periphery. These overproduced monocytes interfere with normal immune cell production which causes many health complications for the infected individual. Causes
The pathology of AML involves abnormal proliferation and differentiation of a population of myeloid stem cells. Genetic mutations are identified in the majority of cases. A common genetic mutation identified in these cases are characterized as chromosomal translocations where information from one chromosome is exchanged to a non-homologous chromosome creating an unusual rearrangement of chromosomes. This translocation is often abbreviated as t(#of one chromosome involved, #of other chromosome involved). M5 is associated with characteristic chromosomal abnormalities, often involving chromosome 11, such as t(9;11), affecting the MLL (KMTA2) locus at 11q23; however MLL translocations are also found in other leukemia subtypes. The t(8;16) translocation in AMoL is associated with hemophagocytosis. These translocations yield the formation of chimeric proteins (RUNX1-RUNX1T1 and PML-RARA, respectively) which disrupt normal myeloid precursor development. Secondary leukaemia, which may include AML-M5, has been associated with exposure to epipodophyllotoxins, such as etoposide.Many cases of AML-M5 are seen to have enhanced phosphorylation of the STAT3 protein due to increased induction of cytokines thus increasing cell proliferation and survival.