Cervical chondroid chordoma in a standard dachshund: a case report

A ten-year-old male standard dachshund was presented with a history of neck pain and progressive gait disturbances. Following a neurological examination and diagnostic imaging, including CT, a neoplastic lesion involving the third and fourth cervical vertebrae was suspected. The lesion included an extradural mass on the right side of the spinal canal causing a local compression of the cervical cord. Surgery, using a modified dorsal laminectomy procedure, was performed in order to decompress the cervical spinal cord. Histopathological examination of the extradural mass indicated that the tumour was a chondroid chordoma. Following discharge, the quality of life for the dog was very good for a sustained period, but clinical signs recurred at 22 months. The dog was euthanased 25 months post-surgery. On post-mortem examination, a regrowth of neoplastic tissue was found to have infiltrated the bone and spinal cord at C3-C4. This is the first report to show that palliative surgery can offer successful long-lasting treatment of chondroid chordoma of the cervical spine in the dog

IdeS: A Bacterial Proteolytic Enzyme with Therapeutic Potential

Background: IdeS, a proteinase from Streptococcus pyogenes, cleaves immunoglobulin (Ig)G antibodies with a unique degree of specificity. Pathogenic IgG antibodies constitute an important clinical problem contributing to the pathogenesis of a number of autoimmune conditions and acute transplant rejection. To be able to effectively remove such antibodies is therefore an important clinical challenge. Methodology/Principal Findings: IdeS was found to specifically and efficiently cleave IgG in human blood in vitro (20 mg of IdeS caused a complete degradation of IgG in one ml of human whole blood in 15 minutes) and to clear IgG from the blood stream of rabbits in vivo (no IgG was detected six hours following an intravenous injection of 5 mg of IdeS) without any side effects. In a mouse model of immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), polyclonal IgG antibodies against platelet surface antigens were used to induce a lethal disease. These profoundly thrombocytopenic animals were treated and cured by a single injection of IdeS. Conclusions/Significance: Novel information is provided concerning the IgG-cleaving activity of IdeS in vitro and in vivo. The highly specific and rapid elimination of IgG in vivo, the dramatic effect in a mouse model of ITP, and the lack of sid

Behavior of the diffractive cross section in hadron-nucleus collisions

A phenomenological analysis of diffractive dissociation of nuclei in proton-nucleus and meson-nucleus collisions is presented. The theoretical approach employed here is able to take into account at once data of the HELIOS and EHS/NA22 collaborations that exhibit quite different atomic mass dependences. Possible extensions of this approach to hard diffraction in nuclear processes are also discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Determination of the LEP beam energy using radiative fermion-pair events

We present a determination of the LEP beam energy using “radiative return” fermion-pair events recorded at centre-of-mass energies from 183 to 209 GeV. We find no evidence of a disagreement between the OPAL data and the LEP Energy Working Group's standard calibration. Including the energy-averaged 11 MeV uncertainty in the standard determination, the beam energy we obtain from the OPAL data is higher than that obtained from the LEP calibration by View the MathML source0±34(stat.)±27(syst.)MeV

Correction to: The intake of flavonoids, stilbenes, and tyrosols, mainly consumed through red wine and virgin olive oil, is associated with lower carotid and femoral subclinical atherosclerosis and coronary calcium

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake. The author’s name Henry Montero-Salazar was incorrectly written as Henry Montero Salazar. © The Author(s) 2022

Consistency of data on soft photon production in hadronic interactions

The glob model of Lichard and Van Hove and the modified soft annihilation model (MSAM) of Lichard and Thompson are used as a phenomenological tool for relating results from various experiments on soft photon production in high energy collisions. The total phenomenological expectation is composed of contributions from classical bremsstrahlung, the soft annihilation model and the glob model. The empirical excess above the background from hadronic decays at very small longitudinal momenta of photons is well reproduced, as well as that for transverse momenta pT >~ 10 MeV/c. Some data do not require the glob model and MSAM components in the phenomenological mixture, but do not exclude them. On the basis of consistency of all data with the total theoretical expectation we argue that the results of all experiments are mutually consistent. The models are unable to describe the excess of ultrasoft photons (pT <~ 10 MeV/c), seen by some, but not all, experiments. This may indicate an as yet unknown projectile-mass-dependent production mechanism. Possible relations of soft photon production to other phenomena are discussed. A simple-to-use, but physically equivalent version of the glob model is developed, which enables an easy check of presented results.Comment: 25 pages, RevTeX, epsf.sty, 12 embedded figure

Aspects of four-jet production in polarized proton-proton collisions

We examine the intrinsic spin-dependence of the dominant $gg \rightarrow gggg$ subprocess contribution to four-jet production in polarized proton-proton collisions using helicity amplitude techniques. We find that the partonic level, longitudinal spin-spin asymmetry, $\hat{a}_{LL}$, is intrinsically large in the kinematic regions probed in experiments detecting four isolated jets. Such events may provide another qualitative or semi-quantitative test of the spin-structure of QCD in planned polarized $pp$ collisions at RHIC.Comment: 9 pages, LaTeX, 2 uuencoded postscript files attache