Anti-CASPR2 Antibody-Associated Autoimmune Encephalitis Presenting as Refractory Seizures.

Autoimmune encephalitis (AE) is a rare immune-mediated disorder comprised of non-infectious neuroinflammatory disease processes. Clinical presentation overlaps with a broad range of neurodegenerative disorders and infectious encephalitis; therefore, AE remains a diagnosis of exclusion. Patients may present with nonspecific symptoms such as psychiatric disturbances, cognitive deficits, seizures, movement disorders, and confusion. Prompt diagnosis and management are necessary for patients with AE to decrease mortality and improve quality of life. First-line therapy includes immunosuppression with corticosteroids, intravenous immunoglobulin, and plasmapheresis. We report the case of an 86-year-old female with a medical history of Parkinson's disease who presented with nonspecific seizure-like activity and was diagnosed with AE.

Effect of Scanning Strategy on Thermal Stresses and Strains during Electron Beam Melting of Inconel 625: Experiment and Simulation.

This paper develops a hybrid experimental/simulation method for the first time to assess the thermal stresses generated during electron beam melting (EBM) at high temperatures. The bending and rupture of trusses supporting Inconel 625 alloy panels at ~1050 °C are experimentally measured for various scanning strategies. The generated thermal stresses and strains are thereafter simulated using the Finite-Element Method (FEM). It is shown that the thermal stresses on the trusses may reach the material UTS without causing failure. Failure is only reached after the part experiences a certain magnitude of plastic strain (~0.33 ± 0.01 here). As the most influential factor, the plastic strain increases with the scanning length. In addition, it is shown that continuous scanning is necessary since the interrupted chessboard strategy induces cracking at the overlapping regions. Therefore, the associated thermal deformation is to be minimized using a proper layer rotation according to the part length. Although this is similar to the literature reported for selective laser melting (SLM), the effect of scanning pattern is found to differ, as no significant difference in thermal stresses/strains is observed between bidirectional and unidirectional patterns from EBM.

Stochastic Constitutive Model of Isotropic Thin Fiber Networks Based on Stochastic Volume Elements.

Thin fiber networks are widely represented in nature and can be found in man-made materials such as paper and packaging. The strength of such materials is an intricate subject due to inherited randomness and size-dependencies. Direct fiber-level numerical simulations can provide insights into the role of the constitutive components of such networks, their morphology, and arrangements on the strength of the products made of them. However, direct mechanical simulation of randomly generated large and thin fiber networks is characterized by overwhelming computational costs. Herein, a stochastic constitutive model for predicting the random mechanical response of isotropic thin fiber networks of arbitrary size is presented. The model is based on stochastic volume elements (SVEs) with SVE size-specific deterministic and stochastic constitutive law parameters. The randomness in the network is described by the spatial fields of the uniaxial strain and strength to failure, formulated using multivariate kernel functions and approximate univariate probability density functions. The proposed stochastic continuum approach shows good agreement when compared to direct numerical simulation with respect to mechanical response. Furthermore, strain localization patterns matched the one observed in direct simulations, which suggests an accurate prediction of the failure location. This work demonstrates that the proposed stochastic constitutive model can be used to predict the response of random isotropic fiber networks of arbitrary size.