Fibrillary glomerulonephritis in Castleman's disease

Castleman's disease is an uncommon lymph node disorder which can be associated with renal disease. In this report we describe a patient with fever, weight loss, anorexia, increase in inflammatory proteins, anemia and nephrotic syndrome. Castleman's disease, plasma cell type, was diagnosed by histologic analysis after surgical excision of a pelvic lymph node. The disease was considered localized, since further investigations did not show any other pathologic mass. After resection of the pelvic lymphoid mass, clinical remission of systemic symptoms and laboratory abnormalities was observed, with the exception of the nephrotic syndrome. Renal biopsy was performed and showed a pattern compatible with fibrillary glomerulonephritis. Progressive decline in renal function was observed, despite immunosuppressive therapy.     

Affinement de la structure cristalline de Eu3S4

The crystal structure of Eu₃S₄, type Th₃P₄, was refined, on single crystal data, to a R value of 0.026. Only one site may be attributed to europium, accordingly the Eu²⁺ and Eu³⁺ ions are not differentiated.     

Un compose a structure feuilietee (LaO)4Ag1,5Ga1,5S5

The compound (LaO)₄Ag_{1 · 5}Ga_{1 · 5}S₅ belongs to the quasi-binary La₂O₂SAgGaS₂ system. It undergoes a peritectic decomposition at 1040°C and a order-disorder transition at 750°C. The high temperature variety is tetragonal, with $\text{a}{}_0\text{= 4.18}\text{A}\text{?}$; $\text{c}{}_0\text{= 18.74}\text{A}\text{?}$; Z = 1; space group 1422; it has the same structural type as (CeO)₄Ga₂S₅. The low temperature variety is an orthorhombic superstructure of the preceding one. with a = 17.58 (3 a₀√2); b = 5.90 (a₀√2) and $\text{c}\text{= 18.66}\text{A}\text{?}$ (c₀). The electrical conductivity is mainly of ionic nature. The e.m.f. measurements of a cell Ag/(LaO)₄Ag_{1 · 5}Ga_{1 · 5}S₅/S.C./Pt support this conclusion.     

A framework for risk assessment and decision-making strategies in dangerous good transportation

The risk from dangerous goods transport by road and strategies for selecting road load/routes are faced in this paper, by developing an original site-oriented framework of general applicability at local level. A realistic evaluation of the frequency must take into account on one side inherent factors (e.g. tunnels, rail bridges, bend radii, slope, characteristics of neighborhood, etc.) on the other side factors correlated to the traffic conditions (e.g. dangerous goods trucks, etc.). Field data were collected on the selected highway, by systematic investigation, providing input data for a database reporting tendencies and intrinsic parameter/site-oriented statistics. The developed technique was applied to a pilot area, considering both the individual risk and societal risk and making reference to flammable and explosive scenarios. In this way, a risk assessment, sensitive to route features and population exposed, is proposed, so that the overall uncertainties in risk analysis can be lowered.     

Delay-bounded data gathering in urban vehicular sensor networks

Vehicular sensor networks are an emerging network paradigm, suitable for various applications in vehicular environment making use of vehicles’ sensors as data sources and Inter-Vehicle Communication systems for the transmissions. We present a solution, based on vehicular sensor networks, for gathering data from a certain geographic area while satisfying with a specific delay bound. The method leverages the time interval during which the query is active in order to make the gathering process efficient, properly alternating data muling and multi-hop forwarding strategies like in delay-bounded routing protocols. Simulations show that our proposed solution succeeds in performing efficient data gathering outperforming other solutions.     

Addressing the Bandwidth Demand of Immersive Applications Through NFV in a 5G Network

Mobile Networks and Applications - Immersive technology is expected to become a key player in the next wave of consumer electronics with potential applications spanning a wide variety of sectors....     

Safety First? Users’ Perception of Wearable Sensor Networks for Aging

Mobile Networks and Applications - Population aging is considered to be one of the most significant social transformations of the twenty-first century. In this paper, we evaluate the acceptability...     

Feedstock recycling of agriculture plastic film wastes by catalytic cracking

Feedstock recycling by catalytic cracking of a real plastic film waste from Almeria greenhouses (Spain) towards valuable hydrocarbon mixtures has been studied over several acid catalysts. The plastic film waste was mostly made up of ambient degraded low-density polyethylene (LDPE) and ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) copolymer, the vinyl acetate content being around 4 wt.%. Nanocrystalline HZSM-5 zeolite (crystal size 60 nm) was the only catalyst capable of degrading completely the refuse at 420 °C despite using a very small amount of catalyst (plastic/catalyst mass ratio of 50). However, mesoporous catalysts (Al-SBA-15 and Al-MCM-41), unlike it occurred with virgin LDPE, showed fairly close conversions to that of thermal cracking. Nanocrystalline HZSM-5 zeolite led to 60 wt.% selectivity towards C₁---C₅ hydrocarbons, mostly valuable C₃---C₅ olefins, what would improve the profitability of a future industrial recycling process. The remarkable performance of nanocrystalline HZSM-5 zeolite was ascribed to its high content of strong external acid sites due to its nanometer dimension, which are very active for the cracking of bulky macromolecules. Hence, nanocrystalline HZSM-5 can be regarded as a promising catalyst for a feasible feedstock recycling process by catalytic cracking.     

Postsurgical policy in stage I testicular seminoma: cost and benefit of prophylactic irradiation in a long-term experience

The definitive cure rate for clinical stage 1 testicular seminoma is very close to 100%, and prophylactic irradiation of the regional lymph nodes is associated with a low morbidity. Nevertheless, in recent years a "wait-and-see" policy has been proposed by some researchers. We analysed the cost/benefit ratio of radiotherapy (RT) by review of the case histories of 299 patients treated at the Department of Radiotherapy of the Istituto Nazionale per lo Studio e la Cura dei Tumori in Milan from January 1968 to December 1989. The 5-year overall survival was 99% (97.5% at 10 years), while the 10-year disease-free survival was 96%. The recurrence rate was 2.3%, but no patient relapsed in the irradiated areas. Acute toxicity was very moderate with only 4 (1.3%) serious radiation sequelae occurring 6 to 27 years after treatment. However, 9 second malignancies (3%) were observed. Lastly, we have calculated the costs for our National Health Service comparing surveillance policy and prophylactic irradiation.