Tickborne oculoglandular tularemia: case report and review of seasonal and vectorial associations in 106 cases

A patient acquired tickborne oculoglandular tularemia in early summer in rural Virginia. Tick exposure may be a clue to the diagnosis of tularemia in the eastern as well as the western United States, especially in summer months. A review of the experience with tularemia in Virginia for the last 13 years shows a bimodal seasonal incidence of tularemia with an associated vector exposure in 77.4% of 106 cases. The majority of cases occurring during winter months have been associated with rabbit exposure, while those in summer months are often associated with tick exposure.     

Hypernephroma in the solitary kidney: experience with 20 cases and review of the literature

Twenty patients with renal cell carcinoma in anatomically or functionally solitary kidneys were treated and followed for up to 18 years. Factors pertinent to management and survival of these patients and 66 other well documented similar patients reported in the literature are analyzed. Most of the patients were unusually young and a significant number had had nephrectomy for contralateral renal cell carcinoma. Survival was closely related to the earlier presence of malignant disease in the other kidney, the duration of the interval between detection of the 2 neoplasms and the stage of the lesion in the solitary kidney. Partial nephrectomy has been the most successful treatment. The mean survival in the Mayo Clinic series has been 6 years for patients still alive and 2.4 years for those dead at the time of this analysis. Results in this and other series emphasize the importance of thorough long-term followup after nephrectomy for hypernephroma and of aggressive therapy when the remaining kidney becomes involved. It is foolhardy to abandon hope merely because there is a malignant tumor in a solitary kidney.     

Systemic sclerosis and regional enteritis occurring simultaneously

A 58-year-old white female who had regional enteritis for many years insidiously developed scleroderma. A review of the literature failed to reveal any previous reports of this combination of diseases. The possible etiologies of both diseases are discussed along with their overlapping clinical manifestations.     

Experimental and numerical studies of springback in air v-bending process for cold rolled TRIP steels

In this investigation, attention is focused on the springback behavior of cold rolled transformation induced plasticity (TRIP) steels in air v-bending process. Experimental studies were carried out on the TRIP steels with various thicknesses and the geometric parameters affecting springback were identified. The change in Young's modulus in simple tension is experimentally investigated and by using the experimentally derived Young's modulus, the air v-bending process is simulated by the implicit finite element method (FEM) code Abaqus/Standard using user subroutine USDFLD. It is shown that, for a better accuracy in v-bending, the change in Young's modulus due to plastic deformation should be taken into consideration. In addition, the influence of friction coefficient on springback in the v-bending simulation is also studied.     

Enhancement of electrical conductivity and emission stability of oxide cathodes using Ni addition

An investigation has been carried out into the use of conductive phase additions to enhance the conductivity and emission behavior of the oxide cathode coating as used in CRTs. Electrical and emission characteristics have been studied for various additions of filamentary nickel (Ni) added to the sprayed strontium-barium carbonate precursors prior to spray deposition, followed by conventional thermal conversion and activation processes in vacuum. The conductivity and the electronic activation energy have been studied as a function of temperature in the range 300 to 1250 K, during conversion and activation processes allowing the conduction behavior to be compared to conventional materials. The conduction behavior has been found to change as a function of heat-treatment temperature as the conduction paths develop and subsequently evolve in the microstructure of the resultant composite coating during conversion, activation and subsequent aging/service life conditions, with metallic-dominated conduction at temperatures below 850 K and pore conduction mechanisms dominating at higher temperatures. The emission characteristics immediately after conversion are impaired by the Ni addition, however, the long-term emission characteristics show improvement with the conductive phase.