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Metastasis to the thyroid gland is rare, with fewer than 450 cases reported in the literature. Furthermore, intrathyroid metastasis from head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is even more unusual, with only nine previously documented cases. This study details the cases of three patients (from one centre) who presented with intrathyroid metastasis from HNSCC and who were treated with a combination of surgery and radiotherapy. Although previous reports have suggested that this pattern of spread is associated with a poor outcome, we are able to show that appropriately selected patients benefit from a combination of both radical surgery and adjuvant radiation therapy, even when this entails some areas of re-irradiation.

The additive recurrent network structure of linear threshold neurons represents a class of biologically-motivated models, where nonsaturating transfer functions are necessary for representing neuronal activities, such as that of cortical neurons. This paper extends the existing results of dynamics analysis of such linear threshold networks by establishing new and milder conditions for boundedness and asymptotical stability, while allowing for multistability. As a condition for asymptotical stability, it is found that boundedness does not require a deterministic matrix to be symmetric or possess positive off-diagonal entries. The conditions put forward an explicit way to design and analyze such networks. Based on the established theory, an alternate approach to study such networks is through permitted and forbidden sets. An application of the linear threshold (LT) network is analog associative memory, for which a simple design method describing the associative memory is suggested in this paper. The proposed design method is similar to a generalized Hebbian approach, but with distinctions of additional network parameters for normalization, excitation and inhibition, both on a global and local scale. The computational abilities of the network are dependent on its nonlinear dynamics, which in turn is reliant upon the sparsity of the memory vectors.

Tandem enantioselective hydrogenation followed by a hydroformylation-cyclisation sequence leading to cyclic alpha-amino acids with ee's > 95% can be achieved in a single pot, one catalyst system by successive reactions of prochiral dienamide esters with H2 followed by H2/CO using Rh(I)-DuPHOS.

In this paper, we propose an energy formulation for homomorphic graph matching by the Hopfield network and a Lyapunov indirect method-based learning approach to adaptively learn the constraint parameter in the energy function. The adaptation scheme eliminates the need to specify the constraint parameter empirically and generates valid and better quality mappings than the analog Hopfield network with a fixed constraint parameter. The proposed Hopfield network with constraint parameter adaptation is applied to match silhouette images of keys and results are presented.

Serum human chorionic somatomammotropin (hCS) was measured in 35 patients with intact unaborted hydatidiform mole by a rapid radioimmunoassay using 70% dioxane in water to separate the bound from unbound fraction. Serum hCG was measured by a hemagglutination inhibition method. Serum hCS ranged from 250 to 5900 ng/ml, while serum hCG ranged from 60 IU/ml on unaborted molar pregnancies. Serum hCS in hydatidiform mole increases from a mean +/- SE of 650 +/- 88.5 ng/ml at 7 to 9 weeks' gestation to 1986.7 +/- 859.3 ng/ml at 22 to 25 week's gestation. There was a significant correlation between uterine size and serum hCS in molar pregnancies (correlation coefficient r = +0.5183; P = 0.0025). There was no significant correlation between serum hCS and serum hCG. Serum hCS in a patient with molar pregnancy who subsequently developed choriocarcinoma was not significantly different from that in patients who did not. The findings indicate: 1) that peripheral hCS increases with increased gestational age in molar pregnancies, 2) that the amount of peripheral serum hCS is related to the mass of molar tissue present and not dependent on serum hCG level, and 3) that the serum hCS level in unaborted hydatidiform mole was a poor index for predicting malignant sequelae.

The cure of trophoblastic disease depends on early recognition and appropriate chemotherapy. In many areas in Asia, doctors face the problems of insufficient funds and poor patient compliance with follow-up. In such situations, the maximum returns for the minimum input would consist of: 1. Routine ultrasound diagnosis for irregular vaginal bleeding associated with amenorrhea; 2. In hydatidiform mole, hysterectomy for women above 40 and those who have completed their families; prostaglandin and suction curettage for evacuation; 3. Prophylactic methotrexate-folinic acid, or dactinomycin or 5-FU for high-risk cases; 4. Follow-up by the simplified regimen using hCG test kits; 5. Chemotherapy with hysterectomy for choriocarcinoma, whether localized in the uterus or metastatic: if the uterus is to be conserved, there must be a good reason; 6. Multiagent chemotherapy as first line in all high-risk cases; and 7. In view of the excellent results with 5-FU in China, investigation of this drug elsewhere, initially in metastatic mole.

Serum progesterone was measured by competitive protein binding assay at regular intervals up to 24 hours after delivery in 4 normal pregnancies. In 6 cases of hydatidiform mole, serum progesterone was assayed before and at regular intervals up to 48 hours after uterine evacuation or hysterectomy. Serum progesterone dropped rapidly by more than 50% during the first hour postpartum, and it was less than 25% of the predelivery levels 24 hours after parturition. In all 6 cases of molar pregnancies, serum progesterone fell rapidly within the first few hours after uterine evacuation. In the presence of theca lutein cysts (2 cases), serum progesterone fell much more slowly than in the absence of theca lutein cysts after removal of the mole tissue. Serum progesterone was less than 5mg/ml after total hysterectomy of uterine evacuation in moles without theca lutein cysts. These findings suggest that while the placenta is the principal source of elevated serum progesterone in normal pregnancy, the molar trophoblast is the principal source of elevated serum progesterone in hydatidiform mole, with the theca lutein cysts making a contribution when they are present.