Aortic aneurysm and aortic graft infection related to Mycobacterium bovis after intravesical Bacille Calmette-Guérin therapy-a case series.

BACKGROUND: So called "mycotic" aortic aneurysms account for only 0.7 to 1.3% of all aortic aneurysms and are commonly caused by Staphylococcus aureus and Salmonella species. Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), a live attenuated strain of Mycobacterium bovis, is part of the therapy of non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC). CASE PRESENTATION: We report a case series of three patients with a mycobacterial graft infection related to BCG after surgical treatment of a presumed mycotic aortic aneurysm as an extremely rare complication after NMIBC treatment. All three patients developed aortic aneurysm after BCG instillation and subsequent mycobacterial graft infection. CONCLUSION: Diagnosis requires a high degree of suspicion because of its nonspecific symptoms and imaging. The pathogen is not detected by standard microbiological testing. Treatment includes triple antimycobacterial therapy and radical surgical interventions. Graft preservation may be considered if no anastomosis is involved.

Broadband multizone sound rendering by jointly optimizing the sound pressure and particle velocity.

In this paper, a recently proposed approach to multizone sound field synthesis, referred to as joint pressure and velocity matching (JPVM), is investigated analytically using a spherical harmonics representation of the sound field. The approach is motivated by the Kirchhoff-Helmholtz integral equation and aims at controlling the sound field inside the local listening zones by evoking the sound pressure and particle velocity on surrounding contours. Based on the findings of the modal analysis, an improved version of JPVM is proposed, which provides both better performance and lower complexity. In particular, it is shown analytically that the optimization of the tangential component of the particle velocity vector, as is done in the original JPVM approach, is very susceptible to errors and thus not pursued anymore. Furthermore, the analysis provides fundamental insights as to how the spherical harmonics used to describe three-dimensional sound fields translate into two-dimensional basis functions as observed on the contours surrounding the zones. By means of simulations, it is verified that discarding the tangential component of the particle velocity vector ultimately leads to an improved performance. Finally, the impact of sensor noise on the reproduction performance is assessed.

The spatial coherence of noise fields evoked by continuous source distributions.

In this work, analytic expressions for the spatial coherence of noise fields are derived in the modal domain with the aim of providing a sparse representation. For this purpose, the sound field in a region of interest is expressed in terms of a given pressure distribution on a virtual surrounding cylindrical or spherical surface. According to the Huygens-Fresnel principle, the sound pressure on this surface is represented by a continuous distribution of elementary line or point sources, where orthogonal basis functions characterize the spatial properties. To describe spatially windowed pressure distributions with arbitrary angular extensions, orthogonal basis functions of limited angular support are proposed. As special cases, circular and spherical pressure distributions with uncorrelated source modes of equal power are investigated. It is shown that these distributions result, respectively, in cylindrically isotropic and spherically isotropic, i.e., diffuse noise fields. The analytic expressions derived in this work allow for a prediction of the spatial coherence between arbitrary positions within the region of interest, such that no microphones need to be placed at the actual points of interest. Simulation results are presented to validate the derived relations.

Identification of a developmentally regulated sialidase in Eimeria tenella that is immunologically related to the Trypanosoma cruzi enzyme.

Sporozoites and merozoites of three species of Eimeria, E. tenella, E. maxima, and E. necatrix, that cause diarrhea in chickens worldwide, were examined for their expression of sialidase (SA) activity. The enzyme was found in three species, and the activity of merozoites was 10-20 times higher than that of sporozoites. The enzyme was resistant to degradation by proteases that are normally present in the intestine, a site inhabited by the Eimeria parasites, and it was relatively resistant to heat, with optimum activity being at 40 degrees C, which is within the range of temperature in the chicken intestine (40-43 degrees C). E. tenella SA was immunoprecipitated by monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies raised against the Trypanosoma cruzi SA (TCSA), and enzyme activity was neutralized by these antibodies. E. tenella SA was identified by immunoblots as a doublet of molecular weight 190,000 and 180,000 using, as a probe, anti-TCSA antibodies and antibodies against a synthetic peptide (TR) derived from the long tandem repeat domain of TCSA. Binding of the monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies to E. tenella was completely blocked by TR, but not by an irrelevant peptide (BR). Therefore, E. tenella expresses a developmentally regulated SA that is structurally related to the T. cruzi counterpart. Because of the high SA activity in merozoites, and by analogy with other SA-producing microbes that inhabit mucin-rich epithelia, we suggest that the Eimeria SA plays a role in desialylating intestinal mucins to reduce viscosity of the local environment and thereby facilitate parasite migration. The enzyme could also play a role in host cell-parasite interaction.

Serendibite, a complicated, new, inorganic crystal structure.

Serendibite with very similar analyses is known from Ceylon and New York. The triclinic cell of symmetry P[unk] and volume 670.9 A(3) contains 2Ca(1.64)Mg(2.64)Fe(0.27) (II)Al(4.64)B(1.66)Si(3)O(20), with 14 metal atoms and 20 oxygen atoms in the asymmetric unit. It was solved by the "direct" method of transforming the ordinary three-dimensional Patterson function into an approximation of the electron density by using conjugate peaks and minimum functions, followed by successive Fourier syntheses and least-squares refinement to R = 7.1%. This new structure is composed of interrupted brucite-type layers which form an octahedral framework, and winged single chains of tetrahedra. The structure has units of similar, but not identical, geometry to those of the minerals sapphirine and aenigmatite, and these similar units are assembled in a different way.

Thermal effect in opal below room temperature.

Opal, once believed to be amorphous silica, was shown by Levin and Ott (1932, J. Amer. Chem. Soc. 54, 828-829) to give an x-ray powder pattern of the high-temperature form of cristobalite. The early explanation of this anomalous existence of a phase below its high-low transition temperature is now known to be untenable. One of us suggested that the tiny sizes of the component cristobalite crystals might explain the anomaly; if so, the transition might be expected below ambient temperatures. The record of a du Pont 900 Thermoanalyzer indeed revealed heat effects in opal below ambient temperatures, with an exotherm having a maximum at about -40 degrees on cooling and an endotherm that began about -50 degrees on heating. This was not a latent-heat effect due to the high-low transition of cristobalite, however, for the low-cristobalite pattern persisted to below -50 degrees . Opal normally contains 4-9% water, which is tenaciously held; water loss is nearly linear with temperatures up to about 422 degrees , when water loss is abruptly complete. Water-free opal does not display the thermal effect, but the same opal rehydrated does display it. Water is housed in minute voids, judged to be a few hundred Angströms across, between minute particles of cristobalite. This water behaves differently from water in bulk, for its begins to melt at about -50 degrees .

Rhodizite: structure and composition.

The mineral rhodizite could not be assigned a chemical formula on the basis of chemical analyses. The solution of the crystal structure reported here reveals that CsB(12)Be(4)Al(4)O(28) is the ideal formula. The oxygen atoms occupy all but four sites per cell of cubic close packing whose period is (1/2)a. The boron, beryllium, and aluminum atoms occupy interstices of this array, the first two in tetrahedral coordination, the last in octahedral coordination. Together these atoms form a continuous network whose composition is B(12)Be(4)Al(4)O(28), which should be neutral. The alkali atom is enclosed in a cage in this network and presumably is not behaving as an ion.