Primary breast sarcoma: case report

Primary breast sarcoma is a rare entity occurring in 0.5% of women with breast malignancy. Like in breast carcinoma, delay in its diagnosis has important clinical and treatment implications. The subject of this report presented at our breast unit with advanced breast lesion months after she noticed a small lump in her right breast. She had no clear diagnosis despite several consultations, in-patient treatments at two facilities in the city, breast ultrasonography, breast mammography and three fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) examinations. The patient needed multiple blood transfusions. A final FNAC showed ductal carcinoma. Histology following wide excision confirmed high-grade primary stromal breast sarcoma. She required adjuvant combination chemotherapy. A combination of diagnostic failures and patient fault caused delay in subject's treatment. Lesion progression during delay which influenced the pattern of physical morbidity, tumour prognosis and need for adjuvant treatment. Embracing the concept of breast care in dedicated breast units may minimise such treatment delays. East African Medical Journal Vol.81(7) 2004: 375-37

Heteroepitaxial growth of ferromagnetic MnSb(0001) films on Ge/Si(111) virtual substrates

Molecular beam epitaxial growth of ferromagnetic MnSb(0001) has been achieved on high quality, fully relaxed Ge(111)/Si(111) virtual substrates grown by reduced pressure chemical vapor deposition. The epilayers were characterized using reflection high energy electron diffraction, synchrotron hard X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoemission spectroscopy, and magnetometry. The surface reconstructions, magnetic properties, crystalline quality, and strain relaxation behavior of the MnSb films are similar to those of MnSb grown on GaAs(111). In contrast to GaAs substrates, segregation of substrate atoms through the MnSb film does not occur, and alternative polymorphs of MnSb are absent

Enhanced magnetoresistance in lateral spin-valves

The effect of feature sizes on the characteristics of lateral spintronic devices have been investigated experimentally and theoretically. It is demonstrated that confining spin-transport in the active region of a device enhances magnitude of the spin-dependent response substantially. Numerical simulation of spin-transport corroborates the experimental observations. Device characteristics are found to be a strong function of spin-polarizer and analyzer dimensions. The response is observed to attain a peak value for an optimum device feature size, and this is seen to be a function of temperature. Spin dependent effects become weaker for very small and very large devices. (c) 2010 [doi:10.1063/1.3488818