Giant pleomorphic adenoma of the parotid gland

Pleomorphic adenoma is the most common type of all benign and malignant salivary gland tumors, involving more frequently the parotid gland. It is a benign tumor with a slow and continuous growth that without treatment can reach an enormous size. We present a case of a giant pleomorphic adenoma in a 78-year-old man with a history of more than 30 years of a growing lesion in the parotid gland. Clinical examination revealed a giant mass on the right side of the face, however without any sign of facial nerve damage. The tumor was completely resected by total parotidectomy and preservation of the facial nerve. Macroscopically, the tumor measured 28cm and weighed 4.0 Kg. On the histological examination there was a predominance of epithelial and mioepithelial cells in a hyaline and mixoid stroma. It was not found any area of malignant transformation. In the post-operatory the aesthetic and functional results were excellent

Influence of crustal dust and sea spray supermicron particle concentrations and acidity on inorganic NO_3^- aerosol during the 2013 Southern Oxidant and Aerosol Study

Inorganic aerosol composition was measured in the southeastern United States, a region that exhibits high aerosol mass loading during the summer, as part of the 2013 Southern Oxidant and Aerosol Study (SOAS) campaign. Measurements using a Monitor for AeRosols and GAses (MARGA) revealed two periods of high aerosol nitrate (NO_^3−) concentrations during the campaign. These periods of high nitrate were correlated with increased concentrations of supermicron crustal and sea spray aerosol species, particularly Na^+ and Ca^(2+), and with a shift towards aerosol with larger (1 to 2.5 μm) diameters. We suggest this nitrate aerosol forms by multiphase reactions of HNO_3 and particles, reactions that are facilitated by transport of crustal dust and sea spray aerosol from a source within the United States. The observed high aerosol acidity prevents the formation of NH_4NO_3, the inorganic nitrogen species often dominant in fine-mode aerosol at higher pH. Calculation of the rate of the heterogeneous uptake of HNO_3 on mineral aerosol supports the conclusion that aerosol NO_3^− is produced primarily by this process, and is likely limited by the availability of mineral cation-containing aerosol surface area. Modeling of NO_3^− and HNO_3 by thermodynamic equilibrium models (ISORROPIA II and E-AIM) reveals the importance of including mineral cations in the southeastern United States to accurately balance ion species and predict gas–aerosol phase partitioning

Selected reactive oxygen species and antioxidant enzymes in common bean after Pseudomonas syringae pv. phaseolicola and Botrytis cinerea infection

Phaseolus vulgaris cv. Korona plants were inoculated with the bacteria Pseudomonas syringae pv. phaseolicola (Psp), necrotrophic fungus Botrytis cinerea (Bc) or with both pathogens sequentially. The aim of the experiment was to determine how plants cope with multiple infection with pathogens having different attack strategy. Possible suppression of the non-specific infection with the necrotrophic fungus Bc by earlier Psp inoculation was examined. Concentration of reactive oxygen species (ROS), such as superoxide anion (O2 -) and H2O2 and activities of antioxidant enzymes such as superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and peroxidase (POD) were determined 6, 12, 24 and 48 h after inoculation. The measurements were done for ROS cytosolic fraction and enzymatic cytosolic or apoplastic fraction. Infection with Psp caused significant increase in ROS levels since the beginning of experiment. Activity of the apoplastic enzymes also increased remarkably at the beginning of experiment in contrast to the cytosolic ones. Cytosolic SOD and guaiacol peroxidase (GPOD) activities achieved the maximum values 48 h after treatment. Additional forms of the examined enzymes after specific Psp infection were identified; however, they were not present after single Bc inoculation. Subsequent Bc infection resulted only in changes of H2O2 and SOD that occurred to be especially important during plant–pathogen interaction. Cultivar Korona of common bean is considered to be resistant to Psp and mobilises its system upon infection with these bacteria. We put forward a hypothesis that the extent of defence reaction was so great that subsequent infection did not trigger significant additional response

Biogenic and biomass burning organic aerosol in a boreal forest at Hyytiälä, Finland, during HUMPPA-COPEC 2010

Submicron aerosol particles were collected during July and August 2010 in Hyytiälä, Finland, to determine the composition and sources of aerosol at that boreal forest site. Submicron particles were collected on Teflon filters and analyzed by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy for organic functional groups (OFGs). Positive matrix factorization (PMF) was applied to aerosol mass spectrometry (AMS) measurements and FTIR spectra to identify summertime sources of submicron aerosol mass at the sampling site. The two largest sources of organic mass (OM) in particles identified at Hyytiälä were (1) biogenic aerosol from surrounding local forest and (2) biomass burning aerosol, transported 4–5 days from large wildfires burning near Moscow, Russia, and northern Ukraine. The robustness of this apportionment is supported by the agreement of two independent analytical methods for organic measurements with three statistical techniques. FTIR factor analysis was more sensitive to the chemical differences between biogenic and biomass burning organic components, while AMS factor analysis had a higher time resolution that more clearly linked the temporal behavior of separate OM factors to that of different source tracers even though their fragment mass spectrum were similar. The greater chemical sensitivity of the FTIR is attributed to the nondestructive preparation and the functional group specificity of spectroscopy. The FTIR spectra show strong similarities among biogenic and biomass burning factors from different regions as well as with reference OM (namely olive tree burning organic aerosol and α-pinene chamber secondary organic aerosol (SOA)). The biogenic factor correlated strongly with temperature and oxidation products of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs), included more than half of the oxygenated OFGs (carbonyl groups at 29% and carboxylic acid groups at 22%), and represented 35% of the submicron OM. Compared to previous studies at Hyytiälä, the summertime biogenic OM is 1.5 to 3 times larger than springtime biogenic OM (0.64 μg m^−3 and 0.4 μg m^−3, measured in 2005 and 2007, respectively), even though it contributed only 35% of OM. The biomass burning factor contributed 25% of OM on average and up to 62% of OM during three periods of transported biomass burning emissions: 26–28 July, 29–30 July, and 8–9 August, with OFG consisting mostly of carbonyl (41%) and alcohol (25%) groups. The high summertime terrestrial biogenic OM (1.7 μg m^−3) and the high biomass burning contributions (1.2 μg m^−3) were likely due to the abnormally high temperatures that resulted in both stressed boreal forest conditions with high regional BVOC emissions and numerous wildfires in upwind regions

Organic nitrate aerosol formation via NO_3 + biogenic volatile organic compounds in the southeastern United States

Gas- and aerosol-phase measurements of oxidants, biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) and organic nitrates made during the Southern Oxidant and Aerosol Study (SOAS campaign, Summer 2013) in central Alabama show that a nitrate radical (NO_3) reaction with monoterpenes leads to significant secondary aerosol formation. Cumulative losses of NO_3 to terpenes are correlated with increase in gas- and aerosol-organic nitrate concentrations made during the campaign. Correlation of NO_3 radical consumption to organic nitrate aerosol formation as measured by aerosol mass spectrometry and thermal dissociation laser-induced fluorescence suggests a molar yield of aerosol-phase monoterpene nitrates of 23–44 %. Compounds observed via chemical ionization mass spectrometry (CIMS) are correlated to predicted nitrate loss to BVOCs and show C_(10)H_(17)NO_5, likely a hydroperoxy nitrate, is a major nitrate-oxidized terpene product being incorporated into aerosols. The comparable isoprene product C_5H_9NO_5 was observed to contribute less than 1 % of the total organic nitrate in the aerosol phase and correlations show that it is principally a gas-phase product from nitrate oxidation of isoprene. Organic nitrates comprise between 30 and 45 % of the NOy budget during SOAS. Inorganic nitrates were also monitored and showed that during incidents of increased coarse-mode mineral dust, HNO_3 uptake produced nitrate aerosol mass loading at a rate comparable to that of organic nitrate produced via NO_3 + BVOCs

Predicting ambient aerosol thermal-optical reflectance (TOR) measurements from infrared spectra: organic carbon

Organic carbon (OC) can constitute 50% or more of the mass of atmospheric particulate matter. Typically, organic carbon is measured from a quartz fiber filter that has been exposed to a volume of ambient air and analyzed using thermal methods such as thermal-optical reflectance (TOR). Here, methods are presented that show the feasibility of using Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) absorbance spectra from polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE or Teflon) filters to accurately predict TOR OC. This work marks an initial step in proposing a method that can reduce the operating costs of large air quality monitoring networks with an inexpensive, non-destructive analysis technique using routinely collected PTFE filter samples which, in addition to OC concentrations, can concurrently provide information regarding the composition of organic aerosol. This feasibility study suggests that the minimum detection limit and errors (or uncertainty) of FT-IR predictions are on par with TOR OC such that evaluation of long-term trends and epidemiological studies would not be significantly impacted. To develop and test the method, FT-IR absorbance spectra are obtained from 794 samples from seven Interagency Monitoring of PROtected Visual Environment (IMPROVE) sites collected during 2011. Partial least-squares regression is used to calibrate sample FT-IR absorbance spectra to TOR OC. The FTIR spectra are divided into calibration and test sets by sampling site and date. The calibration produces precise and accurate TOR OC predictions of the test set samples by FT-IR as indicated by high coefficient of variation (R-2; 0.96), low bias (0.02 mu g m(-3), the nominal IMPROVE sample volume is 32.8 m(3)), low error (0.08 mu g m(-3)) and low normalized error (11%). These performance metrics can be achieved with various degrees of spectral pretreatment (e.g., including or excluding substrate contributions to the absorbances) and are comparable in precision to collocated TOR measurements. FT-IR spectra are also divided into calibration and test sets by OC mass and by OM / OC ratio, which reflects the organic composition of the particulate matter and is obtained from organic functional group composition; these divisions also leads to precise and accurate OC predictions. Low OC concentrations have higher bias and normalized error due to TOR analytical errors and artifact-correction errors, not due to the range of OC mass of the samples in the calibration set. However, samples with low OC mass can be used to predict samples with high OC mass, indicating that the calibration is linear. Using samples in the calibration set that have different OM / OC or ammonium / OC distributions than the test set leads to only a modest increase in bias and normalized error in the predicted samples. We conclude that FT-IR analysis with partial least-squares regression is a robust method for accurately predicting TOR OC in IMPROVE network samples - providing complementary information to the organic functional group composition and organic aerosol mass estimated previously from the same set of sample spectra (Ruthenburg et al., 2014)

Essential role of CCL21 in establishment of central self-tolerance in T cells.

The chemokine receptor CCR7 directs T cell relocation into and within lymphoid organs, including the migration of developing thymocytes into the thymic medulla. However, how three functional CCR7 ligands in mouse, CCL19, CCL21Ser, and CCL21Leu, divide their roles in immune organs is unclear. By producing mice specifically deficient in CCL21Ser, we show that CCL21Ser is essential for the accumulation of positively selected thymocytes in the thymic medulla. CCL21Ser-deficient mice were impaired in the medullary deletion of self-reactive thymocytes and developed autoimmune dacryoadenitis. T cell accumulation in the lymph nodes was also defective. These results indicate a nonredundant role of CCL21Ser in the establishment of self-tolerance in T cells in the thymic medulla, and reveal a functional inequality among CCR7 ligands in vivo

Postlimiters and Simple Dirty-Cell Detection for Three-Dimensional Unstructured (Unlimited) Aerodynamic Simulations

The postlimiter (simple a posteriori slope limiter) is an anti-slope-limiting mechanism to preserve nominal second order in space as much as possible. This technique has been demonstrated to increase resolutions of two-dimensional simulations up to four times in each dimension [Kitamura, K., and Hashimoto, A., “Simple a posteriori Slope Limiter (Post Limiter) for High Resolution and Efficient Flow Computations,” Journal of Computational Physics, Vol. 341, July 2017, pp. 313–340]. This paper extends the postlimiter to three dimensions with an emphasis on ”dirty” (meaning ill-shaped) cells, which arise in practical three-dimensional (3-D) unstructured grids over complex geometries. Gradient accuracy is known to significantly deteriorate on dirty cells, and a slope limiter needs to be applied. However, the original postlimiter does not recognize dirty cells and deactivates a slope limiter. To address this issue, a simple dirty-cell detection method is proposed and incorporated into the postlimiter. The 3-D version of postlimiter (referred to as “postlimiter 3”) is successfully incorporated into fast aerodynamic routine (FaSTAR), a 3-D unstructured grid flow solver is developed at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Postlimiter 3 can handle general 3-D unstructured grids. Numerical examples support its efficiency, accuracy, robustness, and applicability to a wide spectrum of aerodynamic problems of high engineering importance.journal articl