Myxofibrosarcoma of the thyroid gland

AbstractIntroductionMyxofibrosarcoma of the thyroid is exceptional: a Medline search found a single case report. We report a new case which raised diagnostic and therapeutic problems.ObservationWe report the case of a 74-year-old woman who presented with swelling of the left thyroid lobe and ipsilateral cervical lymphadenopathy. Total thyroidectomy with cervical lymph-node dissection was performed. Histological analysis diagnosed myxofibrosarcoma. Evolution was marked by rapid local recurrence, and chemotherapy based on doxorubicin and ifosfamide was introduced.Discussion/conclusionHead and neck myxofibrosarcoma is rare. MRI is essential and should always precede treatment. Diagnosis is histological. There is elevated risk of local recurrence after resection, accompanied by worsening tumor grade, whence the need for accurate diagnosis, appropriate treatment and regular MRI follow-up

Water Adsorption at the Tetrahedral Titania Surface Layer of SrTiO₃(110)-(4 × 1)

The interaction of water with oxide surfaces is of great interest for both fundamental science and applications. We present a combined theoretical (density functional theory (DFT)) and experimental (scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and photoemission spectroscopy (PES)) study of water interaction with the two-dimensional titania overlayer that terminates the SrTiO₃(110)-(4 × 1) surface and consists of TiO₄ tetrahedra. STM and core-level and valence band PES show that H₂O neither adsorbs nor dissociates on the stoichiometric surface at room temperature, whereas it does dissociate at oxygen vacancies. This is in agreement with DFT calculations, which show that the energy barriers for water dissociation on the stoichiometric and reduced surfaces are 1.7 and 0.9 eV, respectively. We propose that water weakly adsorbs on two-dimensional, tetrahedrally coordinated overlayers