Hybrid verrucous squamous cell carcinoma of sinonasal tract: a case report

Verrucous carcinoma is a variant of squamous cell carcinoma and should be distinguished from benign papilloma and well-differentiated nonverrucous squamous cell carcinoma. It is rare tumor of the sinonasal tract. Occasionally, conventional squamous cell carcinomatous components may be seen in verrucous carcinoma. This entity is called a hybrid verrucous squamous cell carcinoma. We report a case of hybrid verrucous squamous cell carcinoma occurring in the nasal cavity and paranasal sinus of a 67-year-old male. The removed mass shows the typical feature of verrucous carcinoma, but focally conventional squamous cell carcinomatous area is also noted. The treatment of this case follows verrucous carcinoma, but close follow up is mandatory because it may potentially spread to regional lymph nodes in contrast to pure form of verrucous carcinoma.     

High nutrient loading and climatic parameters influence the dominance and dissimilarity of toxigenic cyanobacteria in northern bays of Lake Victoria

Eutrophication of Lake Victoria led to changes in its phytoplankton communities. However, different levels of eutrophication exist in the open lake and the bays, and between embayments. This study utilized spatial and temporal sampling of Napoleon Gulf and Murchison Bay, exhibiting different trophic conditions. Over one year, we investigated phytoplankton biomass, richness, diversity and dissimilarity, and related the dynamics of the dominant species to the limnological and climatic conditions. The results confirmed that Napoleon Gulf and Murchison Bay showed large differences in eutrophication status, with lower nutrient concentrations in Napoleon Gulf than in Murchison Bay, where a strong gradient was observed from inshore to offshore areas. These nutrient dynamics resulted in a 4 to 10 fold higher chlorophyll-a in Murchison Bay than in Napoleon Gulf. From the embayments, 135 phytoplankton taxa were recorded with no significant differences in alpha diversity. However, high dissimilarity in community structure was observed in beta diversity, mostly due to a turnover among the dominant toxigenic species. Thus, from a similar species pool, there was a shift in the dominant toxigenic cyanobacteria from Microcystis flos-aquae and M. aeruginosa in Murchison Bay, Dolichospermum circinale and Planktolyngbya circumcreta in Napoleon Gulf to D. circinale in the offshore stations. These cyanobacteria are toxigenic taxa with known health hazards. Using partial least square models, we showed that both climatic variables (e.g. wind, solar radiation) and levels of inorganic dissolved nutrients (e.g. SRP, NO₃^–, and NH₄⁺) are the main drivers of differences and dominance in cyanobacteria communities in northern Lake Victoria.     

The effect of silica characterization on the microstructure of BaFe12O19 ferrites

The anisotropically formed BaFe₁₂O₁₉ ferrites were prepared from the hot-rolled mill scale and silica was added to the ferrite during fine milling in the range 0.15 to 0.50 wt%. These ferrites were sintered at 1220° C for 2 h. The grain growth of the ferrites is dominantly influenced by the sizes of the silica added. Coarse-grain ( 1m) silica tends to promote discontinuous grain growth, which increases drastically with slightly increasing amounts of silica added, while fine-grain ( 0.013m) silica tends to retain fine grain microstructures with the same increasing amount of silica. The average grain size of the ferrite without silica addition was 8 to 10m. The size was increased to as large as 30m on addition of 0.15% coarse-grain silica and the microstructure was full of extremely large grains on the addition of 0.50% coarse-grain silica.     

The Bivariate Transmuted Family of Distributions: Theory and Applications

The bivariate distributions are useful in simultaneous modeling of two random variables. These distributions provide a way to model models. The bivariate families of distributions are not much widely explored and in this article a new family of bivariate distributions is proposed. The new family will extend the univariate transmuted family of distributions and will be helpful in modeling complex joint phenomenon. Statistical properties of the new family of distributions are explored which include marginal and conditional distributions, conditional moments, product and ratio moments, bivariate reliability and bivariate hazard rate functions. The maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) for parameters of the family is also carried out. The proposed bivariate family of distributions is studied for the Weibull baseline distributions giving rise to bivariate transmuted Weibull (BTW) distribution. The new bivariate transmuted Weibull distribution is explored in detail. Statistical properties of the new BTW distribution are studied which include the marginal and conditional distributions, product, ratio and conditional momenst. The hazard rate function of the BTW distribution is obtained. Parameter estimation of the BTW distribution is also done. Finally, real data application of the BTW distribution is given. It is observed that the proposed BTW distribution is a suitable fit for the data used.     

Observing Inequality: Can Ergonomic Observations Help Interventions Transform the Role of Gender in Work Activity?

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) - Work activity ergonomics (sometimes called francophone ergonomics) draws heavily on observation in order to support transformation of work to arrive at...     

Novel hybrid DNN approaches for speaker verification in emotional and stressful talking environments

Neural Computing and Applications - In this work, we conducted an empirical comparative study of the performance of text-independent speaker verification in emotional and stressful environments....     

Intelligent copyright protection system using a matching video retrieval algorithm

Many video service sites headed by YouTube know what content requires copyright protection. However, they lack a copyright protection system that automatically distinguishes whether uploaded videos contain legal or illegal content. Existing protection techniques use content-based retrieval methods that compare the features of video. However, if the video encoding has changed in resolution, bit-rate or codec, these techniques do not perform well. Thus, this paper proposes a novel video matching algorithm even if the type of encoding has changed. We also suggest an intelligent copyright protection system using the proposed algorithm. This can serve to automatically prevent the uploading of illegal content. The proposed method has represented the accuracy of 97% with searching algorithm in video-matching experiments and 98.62% with automation algorithm in copyright-protection experiments. Therefore, this system could form a core technology that identifies illegal content and automatically excludes access to illegal content by many video service sites.     

Laser glazing of an Fe-C-Sn alloy

Morphology and geometry of melted zones, cooling rates, microstructure and microhardness in the laser-glazed Fe-4%C-10%Sn alloy have been investigated. The computer simulation on the basis of the moving gaussian source model was used successfully to predict the maximum width and depth of the melted zone and the cooling rate. The microstructure from the surface to the bottom of the laser-melted zone is a non-crystalline phase, dendritic grains and a microcrystalline zone successively. Values of the averaged-spacing of the non-crystalline phase are 0.205⁶ and 0.121⁹nm, respectively; twinned martensites, having an axial ratioc/a of 1.128, existed in dendritic grains, and carbides of Fe₃ C at the interdendritic regions; the microcrystalline zone was composed of -Fe and a new bet (a=0.415 nm,c=0.955 nm) phase. The different microstructure in the melted zone can be explained by the results of the heat flow calculation. A fine eutectic structure (-Fe + Fe₃C) was observed in heat-affected zones. Microhardness of the eutectic structure can be predicted by the empirical relation of fracture stress to the interlamellar spacing of pearlite.     

Particular behavior of spindle thermal deformation by thermal bending

Thermally induced errors reduce the accuracy in precision machining, and a great deal of research has been presented on compensation for these errors in machine tools. However, during the transition period after commencing or stopping spindle rotation, thermal deformation behavior is very complex. In particular, the y-directional movement of the vertical machining center cannot be explained by thermal expansion alone because of the relationship between deformation and temperature. Thermal bending that is generated from the thermal gradient in the structure causes this movement. In the research described in this paper, a theoretical explanation and an experimental verification is given for the particular behavior of spindle thermal deformation. As it is not easy to map the relationship of the compensation model, separation of the steady from the non-steady state in the mapping process is strongly recommended.     

Fabrication of a novel latex-based membrane for oily wastewater filtration: effect of degassing on the properties of membrane

Iranian Polymer Journal - Nitrile butadiene rubber latex/graphene oxide (NBR/GO) membranes were fabricated by latex compounding and curing method. This was a new method to produce membrane, thus,...