Castleman's Disease of the Chest Wall

AbstractPrimary Castleman's disease of the chest wall is unusual. Furthermore, such tumors arising from a surgical wound are extremely rare. We report a 33-year-old female with a history of a thoracic surgery at 5 years of age. A round, homogenous 4 × 3.5-cm mass protruded into the thoracic cavity on the posterior portion of the previous posterolateral incision. The tumor was completely removed, with combined rib resection. The resected specimen showed Angiofollicular Lymph Node Hyperplasia (Castleman's disease), hyaline-vascular type. No recurrence has been found for 10 years. This is the first report of primary chest wall Castleman's disease arising from the surgical wound

Design and Experimental Evaluation of a Database-Assisted V2V Communications System Over TV White Space

Automakers are increasingly employing wireless communications technologies into vehicles, which are expected to be one of the primary tools to improve traffic flow and traffic safety. Anticipating a significant increase in the accompanying spectrum and capacity requirements, in this paper, we speculate about using dynamic spectrum access in general, and TV white space in particular for vehicular communications. To this end, we describe the concept, design, general architecture and operation principles of a vehicle-to-vehicle communications system over TV white space. This system makes dual use of a geolocation database and spectrum sensing to understand spectrum vacancies. In this architecture, whenever a database query result is available, that information is prioritized over sensing results and when the database access is disrupted, vehicles rely on the spectrum sensing results. After describing the general concepts, we numerically analyze and evaluate the benefits of using proxy vehicles for geolocation database access. Finally, we present the middleware-centric implementation and field test results of a multi-hop vehicle-to-vehicle communications system over the licensed TV-band. We present results regarding multi-hop throughput, delay, jitter, channel switching and database access latencies. This study complements our previous work which described spectrum sensing based vehicle-to-vehicle communications design and testing

Changes in Ocular Surface Characteristics after Switching from Benzalkonium Chloride-Preserved Latanoprost to Preservative-Free Tafluprost or Benzalkonium Chloride-Preserved Tafluprost

Purpose. The aim of the present study was to examine the effects of switching from Latanoprost ophthalmic solution containing a preservative to preservative-free Tafluprost ophthalmic solution or Tafluprost containing a preservative on ocular surfaces. Materials and Methods. Forty patients (40 eyes) with glaucoma (mean age: 62.0 ± 10.9 years) using Latanoprost with preservative for six months or longer were assigned either to a Tafluprost-containing-preservative group (20 eyes) or preservative-free-Tafluprost group (20 eyes). The intraocular pressure, corneal epithelial barrier function (fluorescein uptake concentration with fluorophotometer FL-500), superficial punctate keratopathy (AD classification), and tear film breakup time (TBUT) were assessed before switching and at 12 weeks after switching. Results. No significant differences in intraocular pressure were noted after switching in either group. Corneal epithelial barrier function was improved significantly after switching in both the Tafluprost-containing-preservative and the preservative-free-Tafluprost groups. There were no significant differences in AD scores after switching in the Tafluprost-containing-preservative group, but significant improvements were noted in the preservative-free-Tafluprost group. No significant differences in TBUT were noted in the Tafluprost-containing-preservative or preservative-free-Tafluprost groups after switching. Conclusion. After switching from preservative Latanoprost to Tafluprost containing-preservative or preservative-free Tafluprost, corneal epithelial barrier function was improved while the intraocular pressure reduction was retained

Testicular seminoma after the complete remission of extragonadal yolk sac tumor : a case report

BACKGROUND: Between 2% and 5% of malignant germ-cell tumors in men arise at extragonadal sites. Of extragonadal germ cell tumors, testicular carcinoma in situ (CIS) are present in 31–42% of cases, and CIS are reported to have low sensitivity to chemotherapy in spite of the various morphology and to have a high likelihood of developing into testicular tumors. A testicular biopsy may thus be highly advisable when evaluating an extragonadal germ cell tumor. CASE PRESENTATION: A 36-year-old man was diagnosed as having an extragonadal non-seminomatous germ cell tumor, that was treated by cisplatin-based chemotherapy, leading to a complete remission. In the meantime, testicular tumors were not detected by means of ultrasonography. About 4 years later, a right testicular tumor was found, and orchiectomy was carried out. Microscopically, the tumor was composed of seminoma. CONCLUSIONS: We herein report a case of metachronous occurrence of an extragonadal and gonadal germ cell tumor. In the evaluation of an extragonadal germ cell tumor, a histological examination should be included since ultrasonography is not sufficient to detect CIS or minute lesions of the testis

Determining Spin through Quantum Azimuthal-Angle Correlations

Determining the spin of new particles is critical in identifying the true theory among various extensions of the Standard Model at the next generation of colliders. Quantum interference between different helicity amplitudes was shown to be effective when the final state is fully reconstructible. However, many interesting new physics processes allow only for partial reconstruction. In this paper, we show how the interference effect can be unambiguously extracted even in processes that have two-fold ambiguity, by considering the correlation between two decay planes in e+ e- collisions.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

The K computer Operations: Experiences and Statistics

AbstractThe K computer, released on September 29, 2012, is a large-scale parallel supercomputer system consisting of 82,944 compute nodes. We have been able to resolve a significant number of operation issues since its release. Some system software components have been fixed and improved to obtain higher stability and utilization. We achieved 94% service availability because of a low hardware failure rate and approximately 80% node utilization by careful adjustment of operation parameters. We found that the K computer is an extremely stable and high utilization system

Electroweak Symmetry Breaking via UV Insensitive Anomaly Mediation

Anomaly mediation solves the supersymmetric flavor and CP problems. This is because the superconformal anomaly dictates that supersymmetry breaking is transmitted through nearly flavor-blind infrared physics that is highly predictive and UV insensitive. Slepton mass squareds, however, are predicted to be negative. This can be solved by adding D-terms for U(1)_Y and U(1)_{B-L} while retaining the UV insensitivity. In this paper we consider electroweak symmetry breaking via UV insensitive anomaly mediation in several models. For the MSSM we find a stable vacuum when tanbeta < 1, but in this region the top Yukawa coupling blows up only slightly above the supersymmetry breaking scale. For the NMSSM, we find a stable electroweak breaking vacuum but with a chargino that is too light. Replacing the cubic singlet term in the NMSSM superpotential with a term linear in the singlet we find a stable vacuum and viable spectrum. Most of the parameter region with correct vacua requires a large superpotential coupling, precisely what is expected in the ``Fat Higgs'' model in which the superpotential is generated dynamically. We have therefore found the first viable UV complete, UV insensitive supersymmetry breaking model that solves the flavor and CP problems automatically: the Fat Higgs model with UV insensitive anomaly mediation. Moreover, the cosmological gravitino problem is naturally solved, opening up the possibility of realistic thermal leptogenesis.Comment: 27 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

Physics Opportunities of e+e- Linear Colliders

We describe the anticipated experimental program of an e+e- linear collider in the energy range 500 GeV -- 1.5 TeV. We begin with a description of current collider designs and the expected experimental environment. We then discuss precision studies of the W boson and top quark. Finally, we review the range of models proposed to explain the physics of electroweak symmetry breaking and show, for each case, the central role that the linear collider experiments will play in elucidating this physics. (to appear in Annual Reviews of Nuclear and Particle Science)Comment: 93 pages, latex + 23 figures; typos corrections + 1 reference adde

Building Models Of Gauge Mediated Supersymmetry Breaking Without A Messenger Sector

We propose a general scheme for constructing models in which the Standard Model (SM) gauge interactions are the mediators of supersymmetry breaking to the fields in the supersymmetric SM, but where the SM gauge groups couple directly to the sector which breaks supersymmetry dynamically. Despite the direct coupling, the models preserve perturbative unification of the SM gauge coupling constants. Furthermore, the supergravity contributions to the squark and slepton masses can be naturally small, typically being much less than 1% of the gauge mediated contributions. Both of these goals can be achieved without need of a fine-tuning or a very small coupling constant. This scheme requires run-away directions at the renormalizable level which are only lifted by non-renormalizable terms in the superpotential. To study the proposed scheme in practice, we develop a modified class of models based on $SU(N)\times SU(N-1)$ which allows us to gauge a $SU(N-2)$ global symmetry. However, we point out a new problem which can exist in models where the dynamical supersymmetry breaking sector and the ordinary sector are directly coupled -- the two-loop renormalization group has contributions which can induce negative $(mass)^2$ for the squarks and sleptons. We clarify the origin of the problem and argue that it is likely to be surmountable. We give a recipe for a successful model.Comment: 33 pages, LaTeX. Report number: LBNL-39865, UCB-PTH-96/55, IASSNS-HEP-96/10

A spindle cell carcinoma presenting with osseous metaplasia in the gingiva: a case report with immunohistochemical analysis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Spindle cell carcinoma (SpCC) is a rare, high malignant variant of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), which shows biphasic proliferation of conventional SCC component and malignant spindle shape cells with sarcomatous appearance.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A case of Spindle cell carcinoma with bone-like calcified materials, occurring at the mandibular molar region of 71-years-old Japanese male patient was presented with gross finding, histological findings and MRI image. To identify the characteristics of the bone-like materials, immunohistochemistry were performed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Histologically, the cancer cells were composed of spindle cells and epithelial cells which form nests with prominent keratinization. Histological findings showed typical histology of the SpCC, however, as an uncommon finding, spatters of calcified, bone-like materials were observed in between the cancer cells. Immunohistochemistry revealed that cancer cells were positive for cytokeratins and vimentin to a varying degree and negative for Desmin, S-100, Osteopontin, BMP-2 or BMP-4. These findings implied that the calcified materials were formed by metaplasia of the stromal cells.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Bone-like materials formation by osseous and/or cartilaginous metaplasia of the stroma in the carcinoma has been reported. However, the detailed mechanism of these metaplasia and affection on the clinical feature, prognosis and therapies are not well established. In summary, we presented an unique case of SpCC, which has not been described in the literature.</p