Correlated disorder in entropic crystals

We report computational evidence of a new type of disordered phase in crystals resulting from entropy driven self-assembly of hard convex polyhedra. The disorder was reflected in the orientations of the anisotropic particles and not in the positions of the centers of geometry. Despite the lack of order, particle orientations were not random and exhibited strong correlations. The correlations were manifested in terms of ``quantized'' rotational motions in a fixed number of absolute orientations, while maintaining equal populations and specific measure of pairwise angular differences among the discrete values. This gave rise to a discretely mobile phase in the low density solid and a quenched disordered state at high pressure. This finding can be interpreted as the simplest example of correlated disorder in crystalline materials.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures in the main text, 11 figures in the supporting informatio

Carcinoma in situ

Carcinoma in situ (precancerous lesion) of true vocal cord in a nonsmoker adolescent female without any history of prior neck irradiation is rare. A 16-year-old female patient without any of the known risk factors presented with history of gradual-onset hoarseness of voice unrelieved by symptomatic treatments for 1 year. Contrast-enhanced CT scan of neck and laryngoscopy and histopathology of the tissue from irregular lesions along the medial margin of the left vocal cord diagnosed it as a case of carcinoma in situ of vocal cord. Absence of known risk factors and very young age of the patient made this case a rarity and hence the case is being reported