Breast abscess due to Actinomyces europaeus

Actinomyces europaeus was first described in 1997 as a new species causing predominantly skin and soft-tissue infections. Mastitis due to A. europaeus is an unusual condition. This article reports a case of primary breast abscess caused by A. europaeus in a postmenopausal woma

Molecular-Marker-Mediated Characterization of Favorable Exotic Alleles at Quantitative Trait Loci in Maize

Exotic maize (Zea mays L.) germplasm, shown to be useful for developing improved temperate cultivars, has remained little used partly because of many inherent shortcomings. Five F2 populations, developed from South American and U.S. germplasm, were used to detect favorable factors of exotic origin at quantitative trait loci (QTL) with isozymes and RFLPs. A number of traits of agronomic importance, including grain yield, were measured on F2 individuals and/or F3 families grown in several environments. Many QTLs, mostly with small effects, were identified. Major QTLs for grain yield and number of ears per plant were located on chromosomes 3 and 6. Stability of QTLs across environments was high. Favorable alleles of exotic origin were found at QTLs for several traits including grain yield and number of ears per plant. Most of these alleles also showed undesirable effects on other traits, however. Nevertheless, the superiority of exotic alleles over adapted alleles was demonstrated clearly at a few QTLs, re-affirming the usefulness of exotic germplasm for temperate maize breeding

On the accuracy and precision of cardiac magnetic resonance T2 mapping: A high-resolution radial study using adiabatic T2 preparation at 3 T.

The goal of this study was to characterize the accuracy and precision of cardiac T2 mapping as a function of different factors including low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), imaging in systole, and off-resonance frequencies. Bloch equation and Monte Carlo simulations were used to determine the influence of SNR and the choice of T2 preparation echo time (TET2prep ) increments on the accuracy and precision of high-resolution radial cardiac T2 mapping at 3.0 T. Healthy volunteers were scanned to establish the difference in precision and inter- and intraobserver variability between T2 mapping in diastole and systole, as well as the effect of SNR and off-resonance frequencies on the accuracy of T2 maps. The simulations demonstrated that a TET2prep increment of ∼0.75 times the T2 value of interest optimally increases the precision of the T2 fit. Systolic T2 maps were found to have a higher precision (P = 0.002), but similar inter- and intraobserver variability compared with diastolic T2 maps, whereas off-resonance frequencies beyond ± 100 Hz cause a significant decrease in both accuracy and precision (P < 0.05). This evaluation of the accuracy and precision of cardiac T2 mapping characterizes the major vulnerabilities of the technique and will help guide protocol definition of studies that include T2 mapping. Magn Reson Med 77:159-169, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Robust Beamforming with Pilot Reuse Scheduling in a Heterogeneous Cloud Radio Access Network

© 1967-2012 IEEE. This paper considers a downlink ultradense heterogeneous cloud radio access network, which guarantees seamless coverage and can provide high date rates. In order to reduce channel state information (CSI) feedback overhead, incomplete intercluster CSI is considered, i.e., each remote radio head or macro base station only measures the CSI from user equipments (UEs) in its serving cluster. To reduce pilot consumption, pilot reuse among UEs is assumed, resulting in imperfect intracluster CSI. A two-stage optimization problem is then formulated. In the first stage, a pilot scheduling algorithm is proposed to minimize the sum mean square error (MSE) of all channel estimates. Specifically, the minimum number of required pilots along with a feasible pilot allocation solution are first determined by applying the Dsatur algorithm, and adjustments based on the defined level of pilot contamination are then carried out for further improvement. Based on the pilot allocation result obtained in the first stage, the second stage aims at maximizing the sum spectral efficiency (SE) of the network by optimizing the beam vectors. Due to incomplete intercluster CSI and imperfect intracluster CSI, an explicit expression of each UE's achievable rate is unavailable. Hence, a lower bound on the achievable rate is derived based on Jensen's inequality, and an alternative robust transmission design algorithm along with its distributed realization are then proposed to maximize the derived tight lower bound. Simulation results show that compared with the existing algorithms, the system performance can be greatly improved by the proposed algorithms in terms of both sum MSE and sum SE

Hormonal gain control of a medial preoptic area social reward circuit

Neural networks that control reproduction must integrate social and hormonal signals, tune motivation, and invigorate social interactions. However, the neurocircuit mechanisms for these processes remain unresolved. The medial preoptic area (mPOA), an essential node for social behaviors and is comprised of molecularly-diverse neurons with widespread projections. Here, we identify a steroid-responsive subset of neurotensin (Nts) expressing mPOA neurons that interface with the ventral tegmental area (VTA) to form a socially-engaged reward circuit. Using in vivo 2-photon imaging in female mice, we show that mPOANts neurons preferentially encode attractive male cues compared to non-social appetitive stimuli. Ovarian hormone signals regulate both the physiological and cue encoding properties of these cells. Furthermore, optogenetic stimulation of mPOANts-VTA circuitry promotes rewarding phenotypes, social approach, and striatal dopamine release. Collectively, these data demonstrate that steroid-sensitive mPOA neurons encode ethologically-relevant stimuli and co-opt midbrain reward circuits to promote prosocial behavior critical for species survival