Acute unilateral hearing loss as an unusual presentation of cholesteatoma

BACKGROUND: Cholesteatomas are epithelial cysts that contain desquamated keratin. Patients commonly present with progressive hearing loss and a chronically discharging ear. We report an unusual presentation of the disease with an acute hearing loss suffered immediately after prolonged use of a pneumatic drill. CASE PRESENTATION: A 41 year old man with no previous history of ear problems presented with a sudden loss of hearing in his right ear immediately following the prolonged use of a pneumatic drill on concrete. The cause was found to be a fractured long process of incus which had been eroded by the presence of an attic cholesteatoma. A tympanomastoidectomy and ossiculoplasty was performed with good result. CONCLUSION: Cholesteatomas may be asymptomatic and insidious in their onset. This case illustrates the point that an indolent disease such as this may present in unusual ways and the clinician must always have a high index of suspicion combined with thorough assessment and examination of every patient

Multiple novel non-canonically transcribed sub-genomic mRNAs produced by avian coronavirus infectious bronchitis virus

Funding: This work was supported by Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) grants BB/L003988/1 and 1645891, and strategic funding to The Pirbright Institute, BBS/E/I/00007035, BBS/E/I/00007034, BBS/E/I/00007037 and BBS/E/I/00007039.Coronavirus sub-genomic mRNA (sgmRNA) synthesis occurs via a process of discontinuous transcription involving complementary transcription regulatory sequences (TRSs), one (TRS-L) encompassing the leader sequence of the 5' untranslated region (UTR), and the other upstream of each structural and accessory gene (TRS-B). Several coronaviruses have an ORF located between the N gene and the 3'-UTR, an area previously thought to be non-coding in the Gammacoronavirus infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) due to a lack of a canonical TRS-B. Here, we identify a non-canonical TRS-B allowing for a novel sgmRNA relating to this ORF to be produced in several strains of IBV: Beaudette, CR88, H120, D1466, Italy-02 and QX. Interestingly, the potential protein produced by this ORF is prematurely truncated in the Beaudette strain. A single nucleotide deletion was made in the Beaudette strain allowing for the generation of a recombinant IBV (rIBV) that had the potential to express a full-length protein. Assessment of this rIBV in vitro demonstrated that restoration of the full-length potential protein had no effect on viral replication. Further assessment of the Beaudette-derived RNA identified a second non-canonically transcribed sgmRNA located within gene 2. Deep sequencing analysis of allantoic fluid from Beaudette-infected embryonated eggs confirmed the presence of both the newly identified non-canonically transcribed sgmRNAs and highlighted the potential for further yet unidentified sgmRNAs. This HiSeq data, alongside the confirmation of non-canonically transcribed sgmRNAs, indicates the potential of the coronavirus genome to encode a larger repertoire of genes than has currently been identified.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

This paper describes the Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), marking the completion of the original goals of the SDSS and the end of the phase known as SDSS-II. It includes 11663 deg^2 of imaging data, with most of the roughly 2000 deg^2 increment over the previous data release lying in regions of low Galactic latitude. The catalog contains five-band photometry for 357 million distinct objects. The survey also includes repeat photometry over 250 deg^2 along the Celestial Equator in the Southern Galactic Cap. A coaddition of these data goes roughly two magnitudes fainter than the main survey. The spectroscopy is now complete over a contiguous area of 7500 deg^2 in the Northern Galactic Cap, closing the gap that was present in previous data releases. There are over 1.6 million spectra in total, including 930,000 galaxies, 120,000 quasars, and 460,000 stars. The data release includes improved stellar photometry at low Galactic latitude. The astrometry has all been recalibrated with the second version of the USNO CCD Astrograph Catalog (UCAC-2), reducing the rms statistical errors at the bright end to 45 milli-arcseconds per coordinate. A systematic error in bright galaxy photometr is less severe than previously reported for the majority of galaxies. Finally, we describe a series of improvements to the spectroscopic reductions, including better flat-fielding and improved wavelength calibration at the blue end, better processing of objects with extremely strong narrow emission lines, and an improved determination of stellar metallicities. (Abridged)Comment: 20 pages, 10 embedded figures. Accepted to ApJS after minor correction

The Eighth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Data from SDSS-III

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) started a new phase in August 2008, with new instrumentation and new surveys focused on Galactic structure and chemical evolution, measurements of the baryon oscillation feature in the clustering of galaxies and the quasar Ly alpha forest, and a radial velocity search for planets around ~8000 stars. This paper describes the first data release of SDSS-III (and the eighth counting from the beginning of the SDSS). The release includes five-band imaging of roughly 5200 deg^2 in the Southern Galactic Cap, bringing the total footprint of the SDSS imaging to 14,555 deg^2, or over a third of the Celestial Sphere. All the imaging data have been reprocessed with an improved sky-subtraction algorithm and a final, self-consistent photometric recalibration and flat-field determination. This release also includes all data from the second phase of the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Evolution (SEGUE-2), consisting of spectroscopy of approximately 118,000 stars at both high and low Galactic latitudes. All the more than half a million stellar spectra obtained with the SDSS spectrograph have been reprocessed through an improved stellar parameters pipeline, which has better determination of metallicity for high metallicity stars.Comment: Astrophysical Journal Supplements, in press (minor updates from submitted version

Progress with the Prime Focus Spectrograph for the Subaru Telescope: a massively multiplexed optical and near-infrared fiber spectrograph

The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) is an optical/near-infrared multi-fiber spectrograph with 2394 science fibers, which are distributed in 1.3 degree diameter field of view at Subaru 8.2-meter telescope. The simultaneous wide wavelength coverage from 0.38 um to 1.26 um, with the resolving power of 3000, strengthens its ability to target three main survey programs: cosmology, Galactic archaeology, and galaxy/AGN evolution. A medium resolution mode with resolving power of 5000 for 0.71 um to 0.89 um also will be available by simply exchanging dispersers. PFS takes the role for the spectroscopic part of the Subaru Measurement of Images and Redshifts project, while Hyper Suprime-Cam works on the imaging part. To transform the telescope plus WFC focal ratio, a 3-mm thick broad-band coated glass-molded microlens is glued to each fiber tip. A higher transmission fiber is selected for the longest part of cable system, while one with a better FRD performance is selected for the fiber-positioner and fiber-slit components, given the more frequent fiber movements and tightly curved structure. Each Fiber positioner consists of two stages of piezo-electric rotary motors. Its engineering model has been produced and tested. Fiber positioning will be performed iteratively by taking an image of artificially back-illuminated fibers with the Metrology camera located in the Cassegrain container. The camera is carefully designed so that fiber position measurements are unaffected by small amounts of high special-frequency inaccuracies in WFC lens surface shapes. Target light carried through the fiber system reaches one of four identical fast-Schmidt spectrograph modules, each with three arms. Prototype VPH gratings have been optically tested. CCD production is complete, with standard fully-depleted CCDs for red arms and more-challenging thinner fully-depleted CCDs with blue-optimized coating for blue arms.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, submitted to "Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy V, Suzanne K. Ramsay, Ian S. McLean, Hideki Takami, Editors, Proc. SPIE 9147 (2014)

Erratum: “The eighth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: first data from SDSS-III” (2011, ApJS, 193, 29)

Section 3.5 of Aihara et al. (2011) described various sources of systematic error in the astrometry of the imaging data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). In addition to these sources of error, there is an additional and more serious error, which introduces a large systematic shift in the astrometry over a large area around the north celestial pole. The region has irregular boundaries but in places extends as far south as declination δ ≈ 41◦. The sense of the shift is that the positions of all sources in the affected area are offset by roughly 250 mas in a northwest direction. We have updated the SDSS online documentation to reflect these errors, and to provide detailed quality information for each SDSS field