Primary gastric plasmacytoma: a rare entity

Extramedullary plasmacytomas (EP) are tumours composed by a monoclonal population of plasma cells that arise in extraosseus tissues, comprising <5% of all plasma cell neoplasms. Usually, EP arise in the head and neck region, and the stomach is the second most common location-gastric plasmacytoma (GP). Clinical and radiological manifestations are unspecific and may mimic other tumours like gastric adenocarcinomas, gastric stromal tumours and lymphomas, mainly marginal cell lymphoma (MALT lymphoma) and usually definitive diagnosis is provided by pathological evaluation. We present a case of primary GP, discovered incidentally as a polypoid lesion. Tumour was composed by sheets of mature and immature plasmocytes positive for CD138 on immunohistochemistry, without Helicobacter pylori identification. The patient is alive 6 years later and without tumour relapse.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Baltic Salmon, Salmo salar, from Swedish River Lule Älv Is More Resistant to Furunculosis Compared to Rainbow Trout

BACKGROUND: Furunculosis, caused by Aeromonas salmonicida, continues to be a major health problem for the growing salmonid aquaculture. Despite effective vaccination programs regular outbreaks occur at the fish farms calling for repeated antibiotic treatment. We hypothesized that a difference in natural susceptibility to this disease might exist between Baltic salmon and the widely used rainbow trout. STUDY DESIGN: A cohabitation challenge model was applied to investigate the relative susceptibility to infection with A. salmonicida in rainbow trout and Baltic salmon. The course of infection was monitored daily over a 30-day period post challenge and the results were summarized in mortality curves. RESULTS: A. salmonicida was recovered from mortalities during the entire test period. At day 30 the survival was 6.2% and 34.0% for rainbow trout and Baltic salmon, respectively. Significant differences in susceptibility to A. salmonicida were demonstrated between the two salmonids and hazard ratio estimation between rainbow trout and Baltic salmon showed a 3.36 higher risk of dying from the infection in the former. CONCLUSION: The finding that Baltic salmon carries a high level of natural resistance to furunculosis might raise new possibilities for salmonid aquaculture in terms of minimizing disease outbreaks and the use of antibiotics

Micro Abrasive Wear Behaviour Study of Carburization and Ion Plasma Nitriding of P20 Steel

P20 steel, which is mainly used in plastic molds, was thermochemically treated by ion plasma nitriding and solid and gas carburization. In this work, the solid and gas carburization were performed at 925 ºC for four different durations. The ion plasma nitriding was performed at 520 ºC for four different durations. The thermochemical treatment increased the micro abrasive wear resistance of the studied material. The gas carburizing treatment resulted in a greater surface microhardness. Longer treatment times increased the effectiveness of the thickness layer in all cases. The solid carburization produced a larger thickness layer than the gas carburization and ion nitriding

Troublesome Heterotopic Ossification after Central Nervous System Damage: A Survey of 570 Surgeries

BACKGROUND: Heterotopic ossification (HO) is a frequent complication after central nervous system (CNS) damage but has seldom been studied. We aimed to investigate features of HO for the first time in a large sample and the rate of early recurrence of HO in terms of the time of surgery. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We retrospectively analyzed data from an anonymous prospective survey of patients undergoing surgery between May 1993 and November 2009 in our institution for troublesome HO related to acquired neurological disease. Demographic and HO characteristics and neurological etiologies were recorded. For 357 consecutive patients, we collected data on 539 first surgeries for HO (129 surgeries for multiple sites). During the follow-up, recurrences requiring another surgery appeared in 31 cases (5.8% [31/539]; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 3.8%-7.8%; 27 patients). Most HO requiring surgery occurred after traumatic brain injury (199 patients [55.7%]), then spinal cord injury (86 [24.0%]), stroke (42 [11.8%]) and cerebral anoxia (30 [8.6%]). The hip was the primary site of HO (328 [60.9%]), then the elbow (115 [21.3%]), knee (77 [14.3%]) and shoulder (19 [3.5%]). For all patients, 181 of the surgeries were performed within the first year after the CNS damage, without recurrence of HO. Recurrence was not associated with etiology (p = 0.46), sex (p = 1.00), age at CNS damage (p = 0.2), multisite localization (p = 0.34), or delay to surgery (p = 0.7). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: In patients with CNS damage, troublesome HO and recurrence occurs most frequently after traumatic brain injury and appears frequently in the hip and elbow. Early surgery for HO is not a factor of recurrence

SdiA, an N-Acylhomoserine Lactone Receptor, Becomes Active during the Transit of Salmonella enterica through the Gastrointestinal Tract of Turtles

encode a LuxR-type AHL receptor, SdiA, they cannot synthesize AHLs. In vitro, it is known that SdiA can detect AHLs produced by other bacterial species..We conclude that the normal gastrointestinal microbiota of most animal species do not produce AHLs of the correct type, in an appropriate location, or in sufficient quantities to activate SdiA. However, the results obtained with turtles represent the first demonstration of SdiA activity in animals

A new family of giardial cysteine-rich non-VSP protein genes and a novel cyst protein

© 2006 Davids et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The definitive version was published in PLoS ONE 1 (2006): e44, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000044.Since the Giardia lamblia cyst wall is necessary for survival in the environment and host infection, we tested the hypothesis that it contains proteins other than the three known cyst wall proteins. Serial analysis of gene expression during growth and encystation revealed a gene, “HCNCp” (High Cysteine Non-variant Cyst protein), that was upregulated late in encystation, and that resembled the classic Giardia variable surface proteins (VSPs) that cover the trophozoite plasmalemma. HCNCp is 13.9% cysteine, with many “CxxC” tetrapeptide motifs and a transmembrane sequence near the C-terminus. However, HCNCp has multiple “CxC” motifs rarely found in VSPs, and does not localize to the trophozoite plasmalemma. Moreover, the HCNCp C-terminus differed from the canonical VSP signature. Full-length epitope-tagged HCNCp expressed under its own promoter was upregulated during encystation with highest expression in cysts, including 42 and 21 kDa C-terminal fragments. Tagged HCNCp targeted to the nuclear envelope in trophozoites, and co-localized with cyst proteins to encystation-specific secretory vesicles during encystation. HCNCp defined a novel trafficking pathway as it localized to the wall and body of cysts, while the cyst proteins were exclusively in the wall. Unlike VSPs, HCNCp is expressed in at least five giardial strains and four WB subclones expressing different VSPs. Bioinformatics identified 60 additional large high cysteine membrane proteins (HCMp) containing ≥20 CxxC/CxC's lacking the VSP-specific C-terminal CRGKA. HCMp were absent or rare in other model or parasite genomes, except for Tetrahymena thermophila with 30. MEME analysis classified the 61 gHCMp genes into nine groups with similar internal motifs. Our data suggest that HCNCp is a novel invariant cyst protein belonging to a new HCMp family that is abundant in the Giardia genome. HCNCp and the other HCMp provide a rich source for developing parasite-specific diagnostic reagents, vaccine candidates, and subjects for further research into Giardia biology

GW190814: Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a 23 Solar Mass Black Hole with a 2.6 Solar Mass Compact Object

We report the observation of a compact binary coalescence involving a 22.2–24.3 M⊙ black hole and a compact object with a mass of 2.50–2.67 M⊙ (all measurements quoted at the 90% credible level). The gravitational-wave signal, GW190814, was observed during LIGO's and Virgo's third observing run on 2019 August 14 at 21:10:39 UTC and has a signal-to-noise ratio of 25 in the three-detector network. The source was localized to 18.5 deg2 at a distance of Mpc; no electromagnetic counterpart has been confirmed to date. The source has the most unequal mass ratio yet measured with gravitational waves, , and its secondary component is either the lightest black hole or the heaviest neutron star ever discovered in a double compact-object system. The dimensionless spin of the primary black hole is tightly constrained to ≤0.07. Tests of general relativity reveal no measurable deviations from the theory, and its prediction of higher-multipole emission is confirmed at high confidence. We estimate a merger rate density of 1–23 Gpc−3 yr−1 for the new class of binary coalescence sources that GW190814 represents. Astrophysical models predict that binaries with mass ratios similar to this event can form through several channels, but are unlikely to have formed in globular clusters. However, the combination of mass ratio, component masses, and the inferred merger rate for this event challenges all current models of the formation and mass distribution of compact-object binaries

GWTC-2: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo during the First Half of the Third Observing Run

We report on gravitational-wave discoveries from compact binary coalescences detected by Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo in the first half of the third observing run (O3a) between 1 April 2019 15∶00 UTC and 1 October 2019 15∶00 UTC. By imposing a false-alarm-rate threshold of two per year in each of the four search pipelines that constitute our search, we present 39 candidate gravitational-wave events. At this threshold, we expect a contamination fraction of less than 10%. Of these, 26 candidate events were reported previously in near-real time through gamma-ray coordinates network notices and circulars; 13 are reported here for the first time. The catalog contains events whose sources are black hole binary mergers up to a redshift of approximately 0.8, as well as events whose components cannot be unambiguously identified as black holes or neutron stars. For the latter group, we are unable to determine the nature based on estimates of the component masses and spins from gravitational-wave data alone. The range of candidate event masses which are unambiguously identified as binary black holes (both objects ≥ 3 M⊙) is increased compared to GWTC-1, with total masses from approximately 14 M⊙ for GW190924_021846 to approximately 150 M⊙ for GW190521. For the first time, this catalog includes binary systems with significantly asymmetric mass ratios, which had not been observed in data taken before April 2019. We also find that 11 of the 39 events detected since April 2019 have positive effective inspiral spins under our default prior (at 90% credibility), while none exhibit negative effective inspiral spin. Given the increased sensitivity of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo, the detection of 39 candidate events in approximately 26 weeks of data (approximately 1.5 per week) is consistent with GWTC-1

Erratum: "Searches for Gravitational Waves from Known Pulsars at Two Harmonics in 2015–2017 LIGO Data" (2019, ApJ, 879, 10)

This is a correction for 2019 ApJ 879 1

Search for gravitational waves from Scorpius X-1 in the second Advanced LIGO observing run with an improved hidden Markov model

We present results from a semicoherent search for continuous gravitational waves from the low-mass x-ray binary Scorpius X-1, using a hidden Markov model (HMM) to track spin wandering. This search improves on previous HMM-based searches of LIGO data by using an improved frequency domain matched filter, the J-statistic, and by analyzing data from Advanced LIGO’s second observing run. In the frequency range searched, from 60 to 650 Hz, we find no evidence of gravitational radiation. At 194.6 Hz, the most sensitive search frequency, we report an upper limit on gravitational wave strain (at 95% confidence) of h95%0=3.47×10−25 when marginalizing over source inclination angle. This is the most sensitive search for Scorpius X-1, to date, that is specifically designed to be robust in the presence of spin wandering