An Unusual Case of Tertiary Syphilis Behaving Like Tongue Squamous Cell Carcinoma.

Syphilis may present with a myriad of oral manifestations in the primary, secondary, and tertiary stages, and may be confused with malignancy. Despite a rise in the incidence of syphilis, tertiary syphilis is exceedingly rare. Tertiary syphilis gummas usually affect the hard palate, while tongue involvement is very rare. A 55-year-old male with extensive smoking and alcohol use was referred for malignancy evaluation with an ulcerative mass creating a tongue cleft, and a positron emission tomography scan suggestive for malignancy. Biopsy results demonstrated no carcinoma but histology demonstrated granulomatous inflammation. Further laboratory results demonstrated elevated rapid plasma reagin titers with Treponema pallidum immunoglobulin G antibodies present. The patient was diagnosed with tertiary syphilis, received appropriate antibiotic therapy, and had healing of the tongue with a persistent cleft. Syphilis may mimic many disease processes. As such, it is important to include this disease in the differential of an unusual tongue lesion. An oral lesion may be the first sign of infection

Modelling of hydrological response to climate change in glacierized Central Asian catchments

The arid lowlands of Central Asia are highly dependent on the water supplied by the Tien Shan mountains. Snow and ice storage make large contributions to current runoff, particularly in summer. Two runoff models with different temporal resolutions, HBV-ETH and OEZ, were applied in three glaciated catchments of the Tien Shan mountains. Scenario runs were produced for a climate change caused by the doubling of atmospheric CO2 as predicted by the GISS global circulation model and assuming a 50% reduction of glaciation extent, as well as a complete loss of glaciation. Agreement of the results was best for runs based on 50% glaciation loss, where both models predict an increase in spring and summer runoff compared to current levels. Scenarios for complete loss of glaciation predict an increase in spring runoff levels, followed by lower runoff levels for July and August. Model predictions differ concerning the degree of reduction of late summer runoff. These scenarios are sensitive to model simulation of basin precipitation, as well as to reduction of glaciation extent

Universality class of quantum criticality for strongly repulsive spin-1 bosons with antiferromagnetic spin-exchange interaction

Using the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz equations we study the quantum phase diagram, thermodynamics and criticality of one-dimensional spin-1 bosons with strongly repulsive density-density and antiferromagnetic spin-exchange interactions. We analytically derive a high precision equation of state from which the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid physics and quantum critical behavior of the system are computed. We obtain explicit forms for the scaling functions near the critical points yielding the dynamical exponent $z=2$ and correlation length exponent $\nu=1/2$ for the quantum phase transitions driven by either the chemical potential or the magnetic field. Consequently, we further demonstrate that quantum criticality of the system can be mapped out from the finite temperature density and magnetization profiles of the 1D trapped gas. Our results provide the physical origin of quantum criticality in a 1D many-body system beyond the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid description.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figure

Morphological stability of electromigration-driven vacancy islands

The electromigration-induced shape evolution of two-dimensional vacancy islands on a crystal surface is studied using a continuum approach. We consider the regime where mass transport is restricted to terrace diffusion in the interior of the island. In the limit of fast attachment/detachment kinetics a circle translating at constant velocity is a stationary solution of the problem. In contrast to earlier work [O. Pierre-Louis and T.L. Einstein, Phys. Rev. B 62, 13697 (2000)] we show that the circular solution remains linearly stable for arbitrarily large driving forces. The numerical solution of the full nonlinear problem nevertheless reveals a fingering instability at the trailing end of the island, which develops from finite amplitude perturbations and eventually leads to pinch-off. Relaxing the condition of instantaneous attachment/detachment kinetics, we obtain non-circular elongated stationary shapes in an analytic approximation which compares favorably to the full numerical solution.Comment: 12 page

Microscopic theory of quantum-transport phenomena in mesoscopic systems: A Monte Carlo approach

A theoretical investigation of quantum-transport phenomena in mesoscopic systems is presented. In particular, a generalization to ``open systems'' of the well-known semiconductor Bloch equations is proposed. The presence of spatial boundary conditions manifest itself through self-energy corrections and additional source terms in the kinetic equations, whose form is suitable for a solution via a generalized Monte Carlo simulation. The proposed approach is applied to the study of quantum-transport phenomena in double-barrier structures as well as in superlattices, showing a strong interplay between phase coherence and relaxation.Comment: to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Similar representations of emotions across faces and voices

Emotions are a vital component of social communication, carried across a range of modalities and via different perceptual signals such as specific muscle contractions in the face and in the upper respiratory system. Previous studies have found that emotion recognition impairments after brain damage depend on the modality of presentation: recognition from faces may be impaired whilst recognition from voices remains preserved, and vice versa. On the other hand, there is also evidence for shared neural activation during emotion processing in both modalities. In a behavioural study, we investigated whether there are shared representations in the recognition of emotions from faces and voices. We used a within-subjects design in which participants rated the intensity of facial expressions and non-verbal vocalisations for each of the six basic emotion labels. For each participant and each modality, we then computed a representation matrix with the intensity ratings of each emotion. These matrices allowed us to examine the patterns of confusions between emotions and to characterise the representations of emotions within each modality. We then compared the representations across modalities by computing the correlations of the representation matrices across faces and voices. We found highly correlated matrices across modalities, which suggest similar representations of emotions across faces and voices. We also showed that these results could not be explained by commonalities between low-level visual and acoustic properties of the stimuli. We thus propose that there are similar or shared coding mechanisms for emotions which may act independently of modality, despite their distinct perceptual inputs.This research was supported by an ESRC 1+3 PhD studentship to Lisa Kuhn (ES/I90042X/1)

Experimental modelling of evaporation and boiling processes in a two-phase thermosyphon

A model of a closed two-phase thermosyphon was developed to study thermo-physical processes in a thermosyphon thermal condition systems of energy-saturated equipment. This model differs from the known by reasoned choice of thermocouples installation providing sealing the device during operation. In addition, the program VI (Virtual Instrument) was created in graphical environment Labview for registration of the temperatures and pressure in the thermosyphon

Dynamics of laser induced metal nanoparticle and pattern formation

5 págs.; 4 figs.© 2015 AIP Publishing LLC. Discontinuous metal films are converted into either almost round, isolated, and randomly distributed nanoparticles (NPs) or fringed patterns of alternate non transformed film and NPs by exposure to single pulses (20 ns pulse duration and 193 nm wavelength) of homogeneous or modulated laser beam intensity. The dynamics of NPs and pattern formation is studied by measuring in real time the transmission and reflectivity of the sample upon homogeneous beam exposure and the intensity of the diffraction orders 0 and 1 in transmission configuration upon modulated beam exposure. The results show that laser irradiation induces melting of the metal either completely or at regions around intensity maxima sites for homogeneous and modulated beam exposure, respectively, within ≤10 ns. The aggregation and/or coalescence of the initially irregular metal nanostructures is triggered upon melting and continues after solidification (estimated to occur at ≤80 ns) for more than 1 μs. The present results demonstrate that real time transmission rather than reflectivity measurements is a valuable and easy-to-use tool for following the dynamics of NPs and pattern formation. They provide insights on the heat-driven processes occurring both in liquid and solid phases and allow controlling in-situ the process through the fluence. They also evidence that there is negligible lateral heat release in discontinuous films upon laser irradiation.R.J.P., T.K., and C.E.R., respectively, acknowledge the Grant No. JCI-2012_13034 from the Juan de la Cierva program, the support of DAAD, and CONACYT-Mexico postdoctoral fellowship No. 175641. The authors gratefully thank Professor P. Leiderer from University of Konstanz for his support and the Electron Microscopy Laboratory of CENIM for helping with the SEM observations.Peer Reviewe

Writing clinical practice guidelines in controlled natural language

Clinicians could benefit from decision support systems incorporating the knowledge contained in clinical practice guidelines. However, the unstructured form of these guidelines makes them unsuitable for formal representation. To address this challenge we translated a complete set of pediatric guideline recommendations into Attempto Controlled English (ACE). One experienced pediatrician, one physician and a knowledge engineer assessed that a suitably extended version of ACE can accurately and naturally represent the clinical concepts and the proposed actions of the guidelines. Currently, we are developing a systematic and replicable approach to authoring guideline recommendations in ACE