Brain Metastasis With a Solitary Lesion Secondary to Knee Joint Ewing Sarcoma: A Case Report.

Brain metastasis from Ewing sarcoma is rare and can present with various symptoms. We present a 21-year-old female who underwent surgery for Ewing sarcoma of the knee joint and, after six months, was reported with complaints of headache and vomiting. Considering recommended investigations, metastatic Ewing sarcoma of the brain was diagnosed, and a treatment protocol, such as a combination of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, was given. Our observation shows this is the first case reported with a solitary metastatic brain lesion associated with Ewing sarcoma.

Pulse-driven self-reconfigurable meta-antennas.

Wireless communications and sensing have notably advanced thanks to the recent developments in both software and hardware. Although various modulation schemes have been proposed to efficiently use the limited frequency resources by exploiting several degrees of freedom, antenna performance is essentially governed by frequency only. Here, we present an antenna design concept based on metasurfaces to manipulate antenna performances in response to the time width of electromagnetic pulses. We numerically and experimentally show that by using a proper set of spatially arranged metasurfaces loaded with lumped circuits, ordinary omnidirectional antennas can be reconfigured by the incident pulse width to exhibit directional characteristics varying over hundreds of milliseconds or billions of cycles, far beyond conventional performance. We demonstrate that the proposed concept can be applied for sensing, selective reception under simultaneous incidence and mutual communications as the first step to expand existing frequency resources based on pulse width.

Comparison of mean pain score of oral non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents and locally injectable steroid for the treatment of plantar fasciitis.

OBJECTIVE: To compare the efficacy of oral non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs with locally injectable steroids in the treatment of plantar fasciitis. METHODS: This comparative study was conducted from 10 May 2013 to 10 December 2013 at the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Punjab Medical College/Allied Hospital, Faisalabad, Pakistan, and comprised patients of either gender aged 26-60 years having unilateral plantar fasciitis who were not on any prior treatment and had moderate to severe pain intensity. The patients who received diclofenac sodium 50mg and acetaminophen 500mg twice a day for 4 weeks were assigned as Group-A, and those who received a single of 40mg (1ml) of methylprednisolone combined with 2ml of 0.5% bupivacaine into the tender most point of the inflamed plantar fascia were assigned as group - B. Pain was assessed using visual analogue scale at baseline and after 2 months of regular follow-up. Data was analysed using SPSS 10. RESULTS: Of the 140 patients, there were 70(50%) in each of the two groups. There were 102(72.9%) males and 38(27.1%) females, with an overall mean age of 42.24±9.30 years. While pain intensity decreased in both the groups, it was significant in group B (p=0.0001), but non-significant in group A (p=0.723). CONCLUSIONS: Locally injectable steroid was found to be a better modality for the management of plantar fasciitis in reducing mean pain score and sustained pain relief compared to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.

The risk of cutaneous mucormycosis associated with COVID-19: A perspective from Pakistan.

As a developing country, Pakistan reports a high burden of fungal diseases, of which cutaneous mucormycosis remains a prominent infection, presenting as a highly invasive disease with significant mortality. Apart from a high population of at-risk individuals, multiple factors have precipitated an increment in mucormycosis cases in the country following the COVID-19 pandemic. These include increased use of corticosteroids, immunosuppression following the viral infection, prolonged stays in the intensive care unit and sub-optimal laboratory testing available in the country. This article aims to assess the potential implications of a mucormycosis epidemic on a healthcare system already strained under the COVID-19 pandemic, and provides subsequent recommendations to weather the dual challenge of two deadly pathogens.

Single-layered meta-reflectarray for polarization retention and spin-encrypted phase-encoding.

Broadband communication with high data rates is a dire need for state-of-the-art wireless technologies. For achieving efficient wireless communication (particularly in an indoor environment), the electromagnetic (EM) waves should maintain their state of polarization despite encountering multiple reflections. Metasurfaces provide a unique platform to design subwavelength-featured meta-reflectarrays which enable the desired retention of the polarization state of an EM wave upon reflection. We present a single-layered broadband meta-reflectarray, simultaneously breaking n-fold (n > 2) rotational and mirror symmetry, which exhibits an unprecedented control over the phase, amplitude, and polarization of a reflected EM wave. This unique control enables the retention of polarization state and recording of spin-encrypted information for the reflected EM waves. Such novel multifunctional meta-reflectarray can be crucial to building an indoor setup for high data rate wireless communications. Meanwhile, the meta-array's ability to encode phase information provides an extra degree of freedom to structure and control (via incident spin) the reflected EM beam in the desired way. For the proof of concept, we have experimentally demonstrated a spin-encrypted holographic display which reconstructs the recorded holographic image at an image plane for the left circularly polarized (LCP) illumination and exhibits circular dichroism for the right circularly polarized (RCP) incident waves. The proposed meta-array can find applications in 5G indoor wireless communication, chiral sensing, spin-selective imaging, holography, and encryption.

Bi-layer metasurface based on Huygens' principle for high gain antenna applications.

A planar isotropic unit cell based on Huygens' principle is presented for achieving transmission phase control. By tailoring overlapping electric and magnetic resonances with geometry of the proposed unit cell, the transmission phase ranging from 0 - 2π is achieved with high transmittance. The proposed unit cell is then employed to design a metasurface lens with center frequency at 9.3 GHz and a square shaped patch antenna is placed at the focal point of the designed lens to perform conversion from spherical wave front of the source antenna to planar wave front. The designed lens antenna is capable to realize pencil beam radiation pattern with a gain of 19.6 dB and side lobe levels less than -15 dB in simulation. To experimentally verify the proposed design, a prototype of the metasurface lens is fabricated and measured. The measurement results well validate the proposed design and its enhanced performance.

Ultrathin Single Layer Metasurfaces with Ultra-Wideband Operation for Both Transmission and Reflection.

Artificially engineered metasurfaces provide extraordinary wave control at the subwavelength scale. However, metasurfaces proposed so far suffer due to limited bandwidths. In this paper, extremely thin metasurfaces made of single metallic layer is experimentally presented for ultra-wideband operation from 9.3 to 32.5 GHz (with a fractional band of 112%), working at both transmission and reflection modes simultaneously. The phase control is achieved by azimuthally rotating the scatterer based on Pancharatnam-Berry phase principle. Nearly uniform efficiency (≈25%), approaching the theoretical limit of the infinitely thin metasurface, is achieved throughout the operation band. Finally, the proposed design is implemented for applications, e.g., the generation of electromagnetic waves carrying orbital angular momentums as well as anomalous reflections and refractions. The metasurfaces are characterized numerically and experimentally and the results are in good agreements.

Highly efficient generation of Bessel beams with polarization insensitive metasurfaces.

We present a generic approach for the generation of pseudo non-diffracting Bessel beams using polarization insensitive metasurfaces with high efficiency. Cascaded unit cells, which are fully symmetric, are designed for the complete 2π phase control in the transmission mode. Based on the topological arrangements of such unit cells, two metasurfaces for the generation of zero-order (i.e., single phase profile) and first-order (i.e., merger of two distinct phase profiles) Bessel beams are designed and characterized. Both numerical simulations and experimental measurements are in agreement with each other, confirming the electromagnetic characteristics of the reported Bessel beams. Owing to the isotropy of the unit cells and the rotational symmetry of the arrangements, the proposed metasurfaces are polarization insensitive, providing a promising avenue for achieving such wave manipulations with any linear or circular polarization.