Combination of the vertical and periareolar mammaplasty

Two female and three male patients with acquired "tufted angioma" are presented. The age of these patients ranged from 10 to 62 years. Two lesions were sited in the head and neck region, two in the upper extremities, and one on the trunk. Clinically, the angiomatous lesions appeared as elevated plaques, flat lesions with papular and macular areas, or erythematous plaques with small nodules. In four cases a biopsy was done, and in one case the tumour was excised. Histologically, the neoplasms were characterized by irregularly distributed vascular tufts in the dermis, and, in one case, in the upper subcutis. The vascular tufts were composed of plump endothelial cells and spindle-shaped pericytes surrounded by crescent-shaped vascular spaces. The positive staining for CD 31 and for CD 34 and alpha-smooth muscle actin, and the negative staining of endothelial cells for factor VIII underline both the existence of two cellular components in tufted angioma and the immaturity of endothelial cells. Evidence of regular mitotic figures in two cases and increased proliferative activity in three out of four cases tested, emphasize the neoplastic nature of slowly growing tufted angioma. Benign tufted angioma is a distinct entity in the spectrum of capillary haemangiomas and must be distinguished from other vascular neoplasms.     

Primary Founder Mutations in the PRKDC Gene Increase Tumor Mutation Load in Colorectal Cancer

The clonal composition of a malignant tumor strongly depends on cellular dynamics influenced by the asynchronized loss of DNA repair mechanisms. Here, our aim was to identify founder mutations leading to subsequent boosts in mutation load. The overall mutation burden in 591 colorectal cancer tumors was analyzed, including the mutation status of DNA-repair genes. The number of mutations was first determined across all patients and the proportion of genes having mutation in each percentile was ranked. Early mutations in DNA repair genes preceding a mutational expansion were designated as founder mutations. Survival analysis for gene expression was performed using microarray data with available relapse-free survival. Of the 180 genes involved in DNA repair, the top five founder mutations were in PRKDC (n = 31), ATM (n = 26), POLE (n = 18), SRCAP (n = 18), and BRCA2 (n = 15). PRKDC expression was 6.4-fold higher in tumors compared to normal samples, and higher expression led to longer relapse-free survival in 1211 patients (HR = 0.72, p = 4.4 × 10⁻³). In an experimental setting, the mutational load resulting from UV radiation combined with inhibition of PRKDC was analyzed. Upon treatments, the mutational load exposed a significant two-fold increase. Our results suggest PRKDC as a new key gene driving tumor heterogeneity.     

Antimicrobial functionalization of Ca alginate-coconut oil latent heat storing microcapsules by Ag nanoparticles

Latent heat storage by phase change materials (PCM) is a promising way of thermal energy storage for equilibrating the daily fluctuation of temperature in office- and home buildings. Bio-originated compounds have got great importance to evade further plastic contamination all over the world. Durability of biodegradable natural materials by means of environmentally friendly agents is an exciting challenge. In this study Ca alginate-coconut oil eco-friendly core-shell PCM microcapsules were functionalized with Ag nanoparticles, following their synthesis using harmless reducing agents. Throughout the preparation of the PCM microcapsules by repeated interfacial coacervation/crosslinking procedure, the Ag nanoparticles were homogeneously dispersed in the Ca alginate shell. High coconut oil content was achieved in the Ag nanoparticle-loaded microcapsules, which was not influenced by the Ag nanoparticle content. The high PCM content resulted in correspondingly high latent heat storing capability. The freezing and melting heat storing capacities were in the range of 83.6 and 85.6 J/g, as well as 89.7 to 92.6 J/g, respectively, matching to the extremely high PCM content in the range of 82.7% to 84.8% (m/m). Leaking of the heat storing microcapsules was not observed after 200 heating-cooling cycles. The Ag nanoparticle content did not influence the PCM ratio of the microcapsules, although as expected their antimicrobial potential was significantly enhanced by it. The highest Ag nanoparticle loading, that was 1.3% (m/m) related to the total mass of microcapsules, exerted excellent antibacterial and antifungal impact.     

Interactions and Chemical Transformations of Coronene Inside and Outside Carbon Nanotubes

By exposing flat and curved carbon surfaces to coronene, a variety of van der Waals hybrid heterostructures are prepared, including coronene encapsulated in carbon nanotubes, and coronene and dicoronylene adsorbed on nanotubes or graphite via π–π interactions. The structure of the final product is determined by the temperature of the experiment and the curvature of the carbon surface. While at temperatures below and close to the sublimation point of coronene, nanotubes with suitable diameters are filled with single coronene molecules, at higher temperatures additional dimerization and oligomerization of coronene occurs on the surface of carbon nanotubes. The fact that dicoronylene and possible higher oligomers are formed at lower temperatures than expected for vapor‐phase polymerization indicates the active role of the carbon surface used primarily as template. Removal of adsorbed species from the nanotube surface is of utmost importance for reliable characterization of encapsulated molecules: it is demonstrated that the green fluorescence attributed previously to encapsulated coronene is instead caused by dicoronylene adsorbed on the surface which can be solubilized and removed using surfactants. After removing most of the adsorbed layer, a combination of Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy was employed to follow the transformation dynamics of coronene molecules inside nanotubes.     

All well if starts well? Citation infancy of recently launched chemistry journals

The impact factor and the journal self-citation rate of 22 newly launched chemistry journals has been investigated. The dependence of these indicators on the journal's age was found to be rather characteristic to the initial period of a journal's life cycle.     

Synthesis of gonadotropin-releasing hormone III analogs. Structure-antitumor activity relationships

Following the observation that the activity of gonadotropin-releasing hormone III (GnRH-III) in the suppression of growth of MDA-MB-231 and MCF-7 breast cancer cells surpasses that of GnRH and other analogs thereof, analogs of GnRH-III were synthesized to investigate the structural basis for the improved antitumor activity. Compounds synthesized include analogs with changes in the central sequence in which GnRH-III differs from GnRH and in the C- and N-terminal regions. The results indicate that a salt bridge between Asp6 and Lys8 stabilizes the active conformation of GnRH-III and show the importance of the Trp7. Replacement of the C-terminal Gly-NH2 with D-Ala-NH2 was not well tolerated, but replacement with ethylamide was. Replacement of pGlu1 with Ac-D-Trp appears to have a significantly deleterious effect on a unique conformation of GnRH-III which is responsible for its binding to the receptors on cancer cell lines and the resultant antitumor activity.     

Free-scaling your data center

The increasing popularity of both small and large private clouds and expanding public clouds poses new requirements to data center (DC) architectures. First, DC architectures should be incrementally scalable allowing the creation of DCs of arbitrary size with consistent performance characteristics. Second, initial DC deployments should be incrementally expandable supporting small-scale upgrades without decreasing operation efficiency. A DC architecture possessing both properties satisfies the requirement of free-scaling.Recent work in DC design focuses on traditional performance and scalability characteristics, therefore resulting in symmetric topologies whose upgradability is coarse-grained at best. In our earlier work we proposed Scafida, an asymmetric, scale-free network inspired DC topology which scales incrementally and has favorable structural characteristics. In this paper, we build on Scafida and propose a full-fledged DC architecture achieving free-scaling called FScafida. Our main contribution is threefold. First, we propose an organic expansion algorithm for FScafida; this combined with Scafida’s flexible original design results in a freely scalable architecture. Second, we introduce the Effective Source Routing mechanism that provides near-shortest paths, multi-path and multicast capability, and low signaling overhead by exploiting the benefits of the FScafida topology. Third, we show based on extensive simulations and a prototype implementation that FScafida is capable of handling the traffic patterns characteristic of both enterprise and cloud data centers, tolerates network equipment failures to a high degree, and allows for high bisection bandwidth.