A giant leiomyoma of the breast

Breast leiomyoma is a rare benign tumor arising from the nipple and/or areola or from smooth muscle metaplasia of myoepithelial or myofibroblast cells. Despite its benign morphology, breast leiomyoma can create diagnostic confusion. Here, we report a rare case of a single leiomyoma of the breast in a 52-year-old woman. The patient reported a lump in her right breast for 1 year, and in the past 6 months, it has grown in size. Physical examination showed a dense mass in the right breast, without axillary lymphadenomegaly. Excisional biopsy revealed a well-defined cell tumor by intertwining the spindle cell folds with fibrillar and eosinophilic cytoplasm. Histopathological and immunohistochemical studies help to discriminate between leiomyoma and other benign and malignant breast lesions. Her results are discussed in our report.

Spindle Cell Carcinoma of the Breast: A Case Report Representing Diagnostics, Therapeutics, Intervention, and Outcome

Background: Spindle cell carcinoma (SpCC) is an unusual form of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and can sometimes present in the breast. Owing to the rarity of breast SpCC, few case studies are available nowadays and proper evidence is scarce. Case presentation: We herein report a 60-year-old female patient, who was referred to the surgery services after presenting with a right breast ulcerated mass. On physical examination, a 7x7 cm mass was found along with a 3 cm ulcer on the top of it. Both mammography and ultrasound showed a dense mass, and tru-cut and skin punch biopsies confirmed neoplastic spindle cells within the lesion. The patient underwent a right total mastectomy with sentinel lymph node biopsies with no further chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Conclusion: Owing to the heterogeneity of SpCC, there is no exact treatment protocol for this type of cancer, and mastectomy or conservative surgery can be performed in certain groups of patients depending on tumor size, stage, and lymph node involvement. Fortunately, promising medical and biological therapies might be of use in the near future.

Assessing the Role of Program Suspend Operation in 3D NAND Flash Based Solid State Drives

3D NAND Flash is the preferred storage medium for dense mass storage applications, including Solid State Drives and multimedia cards. Improving the latency of these systems is a mandatory task to narrow the gap between computing elements, such as CPUs and GPUs, and the storage environment. To this extent, relatively time-consuming operations in the storage media, such as data programming and data erasing, need to be prioritized and be potentially suspendable by shorter operations, like data reading, in order to improve the overall system quality of service. However, such benefits are strongly dependent on the storage characteristics and on the timing of the single operations. In this work, we investigate, through an extensive characterization, the impacts of suspending the data programming operation in a 3D NAND Flash device. System-level simulations proved that such operations must be carefully characterized before exercising them on Solid State Drives to eventually understand the performance benefits introduced and to disclose all the potential shortcomings.

Influence of Lime and Marble powder Waste on the Strength Activity Index of Self Compacting Mortar and Concrete

Void free mass, congested reinforcement, reduced section, and surface finishes are the present demand in the construction sector that can be fulfilled using Self Compacting Concrete (SCC). It flows under self-weight and develops a homogeneous dense mass of concrete without external energy (Vibration). The research described in this research examined the making of SCC with readily available materials. The most crucial distinction is the presence of filler material and small aggregate size in the SCC mixture. To obtain the benefit of filler material, reduced cement content, improve workability and strength in SCC, two fillers selected from a group of natural inert by-product, limestone powder (LP), and marble powder (MP). For this purpose, mortar cube prepared as per BS 3892 with two fillers, LP and MP by 10%, 15%, and 20% of replacement with a different combination. Present work also investigates the pozzolanic and filler effect of partial replacement in mortars by strength activity index (SAI), also tried to develop the relationship between fresh SCC slump flow and V-flow spread time. The observed value in the SAI test for the sixteen samples of a mineral filler of 10%,15%, and 20% replacement compared with a normal mix, all samples have the value lower than the control mix of 80% as per BS 3892. It is due to the effect of the filler on the microstructure and the presence of superplasticizer. From these results, it is concluded that filler, LP, and MP does not contribute to pozzolanic reaction, and it is still unhydrated at the age of 28 days.

Epithelial inclusion cyst of the equine digital flexor tendon sheath: diagnosis by ultrasonography and magnetic resonance and successful treatment by tenoscopy

A six-year-old warmblood horse was presented with a longstanding frontlimb lameness with mild digital flexor tenosynovitis and swelling of the distomedial pastern. Ultrasonography and magnetic resonance revealed a dense mass lesion in the distal aspect of the digital flexor tendon sheath, with a partial lamellar architecture, absence of internal vascularization and adjacent smooth pressure osteolysis of the middle phalanx. After surgical excision, histopathology confirmed an epithelial inclusion cyst. Epithelial inclusion cysts, also known as keratinizing or follicular cysts, are expansile benign mass-like lesions of aberrant epidermal tissue. In the horse, they are known to occur in cutaneous and several non-cutaneous tissues. In the digital flexor tendon sheath, they have rarely been described. Given their often chronic presentation in this location, they may appear as an atypical dense mass on imaging, uncommon for cystic lesions. Complete tenoscopic removal, even for larger masses, is achievable and considered curative with good prognosis for return.

Swell and microstructural characteristics of high-plasticity clay blended with cement

This study presents the effect of high plasticity on swell potential, swelling pressure and micro-structural characteristics of kaolinite-bentonite mixed clays. Five different mix ratios of kaolinite bentonite mixture of 100:0, 90:10, 75:25, 50:50 and 25:75 in % by weight of dry kaolinite were used. All five synthesised soils were then mixed with 0%, 5% and 8% of cement by weight of dry soil, cured for 28 days and subjected to the Atterberg limit, one-dimensional oedometer and scanning electron microscope test. The inclusion of 5% and 8% cement reduces the plasticity index of the treated soils as the percentage of bentonite increases. The effects on plasticity of treatment with 5% and 8% cement after a 28-day curing period was evaluated, and the results show that reduction in plasticity index resulted in decreased swell potential and swelling pressure of the kaolinite-bentonite mixed clays. The results of microstructural analysis of 5% cement-treated soils show formation of flocculated fabric and cementation of soil particles, and filling with cementitious compounds of the voids of flocculated fabric in the soil. The reduction in swell can be attributed to the resulting compacted and dense mass of treated soils due to cementation of soil particles and cation exchange. The complex swell behaviour of high-plasticity kaolinite-bentonite mix is explained using the one-dimensional oedometer test, by further experimental study and examination of the microstructure of treated soils.

Primary Breast Sarcoma in a Middle Age Lady: A Rare Presentation

Sarcoma is an aggressive, malignant condition of a breast. It is a rare condition, which makes it difficult to diagnose at clinicopathological study. We are reporting a case of a primary breast sarcoma in a 54-year-old menopausal lady that came with painless fast growing right breast lump within 6 months of duration. Clinically, there was a huge mobile painless right breast lump without discoloration of skin noted. Both axilla and supraclavicular lymph node were not palpable. A mammogram showed large lobulated dense mass 8.3cm x 10.0cm in size occupying right upper outer quadrant correspond to BIRADS 4 lesion. A trucut biopsy reported as a papillary lesion. Repeated trucut biopsy reported as mesenchymal lesion with smooth muscle differentiation. With this histopathology report, she was diagnosed with mesenchymal tumor of right breast. She underwent an uneventful mastectomy. Histopathological examination of the surgical specimen reported as tumor with mesenchymal differentiation which requiring further confirmation by breast-endocrine pathologist as primary breast sarcoma. She was subjected to post op radiotherapy to the chest wall followed by adjuvant chemotherapy.

A Fast Contrast Improved Zero-Phase Filtered Delay Multiply and Sum in Ultrasound Computed Tomography

In linear array B-mode imaging, the zero-phase filtered delay multiply and sum beamforming (ZPF-DMAS) weighted by space-time smoothing coherence factor (StS-CF) has been proved to enhance the image contrast resolution than the traditional delay and sum method. However, the large number of virtual received signals may increase the computational cost of this method in ultrasound computed tomography (USCT) with ring array. Here, a method with less computation amount is proposed in USCT: the received signals are separated into different groups by their spatial lag; the groups form a new smaller size receive aperture; StS-CF is finally applied to the new receive aperture. CIRS model 055A is tested to compare the performances of the proposed method and ZPF-DMAS. The results show that the computational complexity has been reduced by N*B*D((M2–3M)/2+1) multiplications, supposing there are N ultrasound waves transmitted, B scan lines, D imaging points on each line and M-element receive aperture. StS-CF with a subarray size of L = 16 (far less than half the receive aperture) and P = 5 time samples gives the best result in USCT, which is different from that in linear array B-mode imaging. The proposed method can enhance contrast ratio about 6.3 dB and 5.7 dB for the cystic mass and dense mass than ZPF-DMAS, respectively.

SAXS analysis of single- and multi-core iron oxide magnetic nanoparticles

This article reports on the characterization of four superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles stabilized with dimercaptosuccinic acid, which are suitable candidates for reference materials for magnetic properties. Particles p1 and p2 are single-core particles, while p3 and p4 are multi-core particles. Small-angle X-ray scattering analysis reveals a lognormal type of size distribution for the iron oxide cores of the particles. Their mean radii are 6.9 nm (p1), 10.6 nm (p2), 5.5 nm (p3) and 4.1 nm (p4), with narrow relative distribution widths of 0.08, 0.13, 0.08 and 0.12. The cores are arranged as a clustered network in the form of dense mass fractals with a fractal dimension of 2.9 in the multi-core particles p3 and p4, but the cores are well separated from each other by a protecting organic shell. The radii of gyration of the mass fractals are 48 and 44 nm, and each network contains 117 and 186 primary particles, respectively. The radius distributions of the primary particle were confirmed with transmission electron microscopy. All particles contain purely maghemite, as shown by X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy.