80 research outputs found

    A rare case of bone marrow infiltration by medulloblastoma in a child.

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    A seven-year-old boy was previously treated for the primarya posterior fossa tumour, medulloblastoma, with extensive central nervous system metastases including leptomeningeal and intrathecal spinal disease; methylation profiling confirmed a Group 4 tumour. At initial presentation a chemotherapy approach was preferred, due to both his young age and extent of disease; this achieved complete radiological and cytological remission prior to consolidation with high-dose chemotherapy and autologous stem cell rescue. He then experienced an asymptomatic localised posterior fossa relapse on surveillance imaging, treated with complete surgical resection, craniospinal irradiation and maintenance chemotherapy. This chemotherapy was interrupted due to poor count recovery following irradiation, and a bone marrow aspirate and trephine were performed which excluded metastatic medulloblastoma or secondary leukaemia. Alternative maintenance with temozolomide was well tolerated. Unfortunately, end-of-treatment MRI imaging of the neuro-axis revealed an asymptomatic new small enhancing intracranial lesion. An early repeat MRI was performed six weeks later which showed minor progression of the intracranial disease and no intrathecal metastases, but new low T1 signal in multiple vertebral bodies with sparing of T3 and T7 vertebrae (arrows; left image) compared with the imaging performed just six weeks previously. Full blood count revealed Hb 97 g/l, WCC 7.7 x109/l, neutrophils 5.4 x109/l and platelets 204 x109/l. In view of the radiological appearances, bone marrow aspirate and trephine were performed from the posterior iliac crest. Aspirate revealed heavy infiltration with clusters of non-haematopoietic cells, characterized by high nuclear:cytoplasmic ratio, open chromatin and agranular, pale basophilic cytoplasm with vacuolation (right upper image). Trephine immunohistochemistry demonstrated positive staining for synaptophysin, CD56, Neu-N (right lower image), retained INI1 and negative CD99 and desmin, confirming medulloblastoma. Spread of medulloblastoma to the bone marrow is a very rare event. In this case, despite an unremarkable full blood count, radiological changes in the spinal column correlated with easily identified disease in aspirate and trephine samples taken from the posterior iliac crest suggesting widespread marrow infiltration were confirmed by bone marrow examination. Early identification of extracranial metastasis afforded the family and clinicians the opportunity to make informed choices regarding ongoing management

    Global Pattern Search at Scale

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    In recent years, data collection has far outpaced the tools for data analysis in the area of non-traditional GEOINT analysis. Traditional tools are designed to analyze small-scale numerical data, but there are few good interactive tools for processing large amounts of unstructured data such as raw text. In addition to the complexities of data processing, presenting the data in a way that is meaningful to the end user poses another challenge. In our work, we focused on analyzing a corpus of 35,000 news articles and creating an interactive geovisualization tool to reveal patterns to human analysts. Our comprehensive tool, Global Pattern Search at Scale (GPSS), addresses three major problems in data analysis: free text analysis, high volumes of data, and interactive visualization. GPSS uses an Accumulo database for high-volume data storage, and a matrix of word counts and event detection algorithms to process the free text. For visualization, the tool displays an interactive web application to the user, featuring a map overlaid with document clusters and events, search and filtering options, a timeline, and a word cloud. In addition, the GPSS tool can be easily adapted to process and understand other large free-text datasets

    The Hubble Deep Field South Flanking Fields

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    As part of the Hubble Deep Field South program, a set of shorter 2-orbit observations were obtained of the area adjacent to the deep fields. The WFPC2 flanking fields cover a contiguous solid angle of 48 square arcminutes. Parallel observations with the STIS and NICMOS instruments produce a patchwork of additional fields with optical and near-infrared (1.6 micron) response. Deeper parallel exposures with WFPC2 and NICMOS were obtained when STIS observed the NICMOS deep field. These deeper fields are offset from the rest, and an extended low surface brightness object is visible in the deeper WFPC2 flanking field. In this data paper, which serves as an archival record of the project, we discuss the observations and data reduction, and present SExtractor source catalogs and number counts derived from the data. Number counts are broadly consistent with previous surveys from both ground and space. Among other things, these flanking field observations are useful for defining slit masks for spectroscopic follow-up over a wider area around the deep fields, for studying large-scale structure that extends beyond the deep fields, for future supernova searches, and for number counts and morphological studies, but their ultimate utility will be defined by the astronomical community.Comment: 46 pages, 15 figures. Images and full catalogs available via the HDF-S at http://www.stsci.edu/ftp/science/hdfsouth/hdfs.html at present. The paper is accepted for the February 2003 Astronomical Journal. Full versions of the catalogs will also be available on-line from AJ after publicatio

    Application of targeted molecular and material property optimization to bacterial attachment-resistant (meth)acrylate polymers

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    Developing medical devices that resist bacterial attachment and subsequent biofilm formation is highly desirable. In this paper, we report the optimization of the molecular structure and thus material properties of a range of (meth)acrylate copolymers which contain monomers reported to deliver bacterial resistance to surfaces. This optimization allows such monomers to be employed within novel coatings to reduce bacterial attachment to silicone urinary catheters. We show that the flexibility of copolymers can be tuned to match that of the silicone catheter substrate, by copolymerizing these polymers with a lower Tg monomer such that it passes the flexing fatigue tests as coatings upon catheters, that the homopolymers failed. Furthermore, the Tg values of the copolymers are shown to be readily estimated by the Fox equation. The bacterial resistance performance of these copolymers were typically found to be better than the neat silicone or a commercial silver containing hydrogel surface, when the monomer feed contained only 25 v% of the “hit” monomer. The method of initiation (either photo or thermal) was shown not to affect the bacterial resistance of the copolymers. Optimized synthesis conditions to ensure that the correct copolymer composition and to prevent the onset of gelation are detailed

    Trust in God: an evaluative review of the literature and research proposal

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    Until recently, psychologists have conceptualised and studied trust in God (TIG) largely in isolation from contemporary work in theology, philosophy, history, and biblical studies that has examined the topic with increasing clarity. In this article, we first review the primary ways that psychologists have conceptualised and measured TIG. Then, we draw on conceptualizations of TIG outside the psychology of religion to provide a conceptual map for how TIG might be related to theorised predictors and outcomes. Finally, we provide a research agenda for future empirical work in this area, as well as practical applications for counsellors and religious leaders

    Three Lyman-alpha Emitters at z approx 6: Early GMOS/Gemini Data from the GLARE Project

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    We report spectroscopic detection of three z~6 Lyman-alpha emitting galaxies, in the vicinity of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, from the early data of the Gemini Lyman-α\alpha at Reionisation Era (GLARE) project. Two objects, GLARE#3001 (z =5.79) and GLARE#3011 (z =5.94), are new detections and are fainter in zz' (z'_{AB} =26.37 and 27.15) than any Lyman break galaxy previously detected in Lyman-alpha. A third object, GLARE#1042 (z =5.83) has previously been detected in line emission from the ground; we report here a new spectroscopic continuum detection. Gemini/GMOS-S spectra of these objects, obtained using nod & shuffle, are presented together with a discussion of their photometric properties. All three objects were selected for spectroscopy via the i-drop Lyman Break technique, the two new detections from the GOODS v1.0 imaging data. The red i'-z' colors and high equivalent widths of these objects suggest a high-confidence z>5 Lyman-alpha identification of the emission lines. This brings the total number of known z>5 galaxies within 9 arcmin of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field to four, of which three are at the same redshift (z=5.8 within 2000 km/s suggesting the existence of a large-scale structure at this redshift.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. Revised to match accepted versio
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