Recalcitrant tumor of the fifth metacarpal bone in a hemodialyzed patient

The article presents a case report about a 38‐year‐old hemodialyzed woman who presented to our department with a painful, expansile, lytic bone lesion of the fifth metacarpal epiphysis. The lesion was resected and replaced by corticocancellous bone graft. At 3 months, imaging suggested signs of graft resorption and local recurrence which necessitated repeat excision and grafting. Because of secondary parathyroidism subsequent subtotal parathyroidectomy was performed. This procedure leads to appropriate bone remodeling by 8 weeks postoperatively, and recurrence has not been observed at 2 years of follow up.     

Central limit theorem for reducible and irreducible open quantum walks

In this work we aim at proving central limit theorems for open quantum walks on \({\mathbb {Z}}^d\). We study the case when there are various classes of vertices in the network. In particular, we investigate two ways of distributing the vertex classes in the network. First, we assign the classes in a regular pattern. Secondly, we assign each vertex a random class with a transition invariant distribution. For each way of distributing vertex classes, we obtain an appropriate central limit theorem, illustrated by numerical examples. These theorems may have application in the study of complex systems in quantum biology and dissipative quantum computation.     

Potential of Cultivated Ganoderma lucidum Mushrooms for the Production of Supplements Enriched with Essential Elements

Ganoderma lucidum is an important medicinal mushroom species and there is continuous interest in its bioactive properties. This study evaluated whether it may additionally serve as a nutritional supplement for the trace elements: selenium (Se), copper (Cu), and zinc (Zn). Mushrooms were cultivated on substrates enriched with 0.1 to 0.8 mM of inorganic Se alone or in combination with Zn and/or Cu. Supplementation increased accumulation of the elements in fruiting bodies regardless of the applied cultivation model. G. lucidum demonstrated the ability to accumulate significant amounts of organic Se, maximally amounting to (i) over 44 mg/kg when the substrate was supplemented only with Se, (ii) over 20 mg/kg in the Se+Cu model, (iii) over 25 mg/kg in the Se+Zn model, and (iv) 15 mg/kg in the Se+Cu+Zn model. The accumulation of Cu and Zn steadily increased with their initial substrate concentrations. Maximum concentrations found after supplementation with 0.8 mM amounted to over 55 mg/kg (Se+Zn) and 52 mg/kg (Se+Cu+Zn) of Zn, and 29 mg/kg (Se+Cu) and over 31 mg/kg (Se+Cu+Zn) of Cu. The greater the supplemented concentration and number of supplemented elements, the lower the biomass of G. lucidum fruiting bodies. Nevertheless, it still remained high when the substrate was supplemented up to 0.4 mM with each element. These results highlight that G. lucidum can easily incorporate elements from the substrate and that, when biofortified, its dried fruiting bodies may serve as a nutritional source of these essential elements.     

k‐sample median test for vague data

Classical statistical tests may be sensitive to violations of the fundamental model assumptions inherent in the derivation and construction of these tests. It is obvious that such violations are much more probable in the presence of vague data. Thus nonparametric tests seem to be promising statistical tools. In the present paper, a distribution‐free statistical test for the so‐called “many‐one problem” with vague data is suggested. This test is a generalization of the k‐sample median test. In our approach, we utilize the necessity index of strict dominance, suggested by Dubois and Prade. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The impact of metallic coagulants on the removal of organic compounds from oil sands process-affected water

Coagulation/flocculation (CF) by use of alum and cationic polymer polyDADMAC, was performed as a pretreatment for remediation of oil sands process-affected water (OSPW). Various factors were investigated and the process was optimized to improve efficiency of removal of organic carbon and turbidity. Destabilization of the particles occurred through charge neutralization by adsorption of hydroxide precipitates. Scanning electron microscope images revealed that the resultant flocs were compact. The CF process significantly reduced concentrations of naphthenic acids (NAs) and oxidized NAs by 37 and 86%, respectively, demonstrating the applicability of CF pretreatment to remove a persistent and toxic organic fraction from OSPW. Concentrations of vanadium and barium were decreased by 67-78% and 42-63%, respectively. Analysis of surface functional groups on flocs also confirmed the removal of the NAs compounds. Flocculation with cationic polymer compared to alum, caused toxicity toward the benthic invertebrate, Chironoums dilutus, thus application of the polymer should be limited.     

Automated qualitative assessment of multi-modal distortions in digital images based on GLZ

This paper introduces a novel approach to a qualitative assessment of images affected by multi-modal distortions. The idea is to assess the image quality perceived by an end user in an automatic way in order to avoid the usual time-consuming, costly and non-repeatable method of collecting subjective scores during a psycho-physical experiment. This is achieved by computing quantitative image distortions and mapping results on qualitative scores. Useful mapping models have been proposed and constructed using the generalised linear model (GLZ), which is a generalisation of the least squares regression in statistics for ordinal data. Overall qualitative image distortion is computed based on partial quantitative distortions from component algorithms operating on specified image features. Seven such algorithms are applied to successfully analyse the seven image distortions in relation to the original image. A survey of over 12,000 subjective quality scores has been carried out in order to determine the influence of these features on the perceived image quality. The results of quantitative assessments are mapped on the surveyed scores to obtain an overall quality score of the image. The proposed models have been validated in order to prove that the above technique can be applied to automatic image quality assessment.