Breast cancer development in a female with Poland's syndrome.

BACKGROUND: Poland's syndrome, a rare congenital anomaly characterized by a defect of the pectoralis muscles, has been reported in association with lymphoreticular malignancies and some solid tumors. CASE REPORT: We report the case of a 53-year-old woman with Poland's syndrome who developed breast cancer in the afflicted ipsilateral hypoplastic breast. FNA cytology revealed a moderately differentiated carcinoma and histology was consistent with a well differentiated invasive ductal carcinoma. CONCLUSION: Poland's syndrome can be associated with breast cancer so all females with the syndrome should be thoroughly examined for early detection of neoplasia.

Development of an algorithm for the calculation of the scattering properties of agglomerates.

A new, improved, and more efficient algorithm for calculation of the scattering, extinction, and absorption characteristics of agglomerates consisting of Rayleigh-size primary particles is presented. The computer code is based on a new formulation of the light scattering for such agglomerates and is more than 10 times faster than the codes based on previous formulations. The computational times required by the old and the new algorithms, run on VAX 7000, IBM 3090, and UNIX RS6000 mainframe computers, are compared for different agglomerate configurations, such as straight chains, clusters, and randomly branched chains. A distributed-parallel-computing scheme was used to run the new algorithm on four UNIX RS6000 processors concurrently, resulting in computational times 47 times faster than required for the calculations. Furthermore, the robustness and convenience of the algorithm are assessed.