Posterior mediastinal leiomyosarcoma: Case report and literature review.

BACKGROUND: Posterior mediastinal leiomyosarcoma is an extremely rare malignant mesenchymal tumor with no special clinical symptoms, which is easily confused with some common tumors in the posterior mediastinum, affecting the accuracy of the first diagnosis by clinicians and delaying the treatment of patients. CASE SUMMARY: We report a 59-year-old woman with a space-occupying lesion in the posterior mediastinum. The patient was mistakenly diagnosed with lumbar muscle or vertebral body lesions due to chest and back pain and underwent conservative treatment, but her symptoms did not improve significantly and she gradually developed pain in both lower limbs. Chest computed tomography (CT) scan indicated the left lower lung paraspinal space and underwent standard single-aperture video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS), which was pathologically confirmed as posterior mediastinal leiomyosarcoma. CONCLUSION: Complete surgical resection of posterior mediastinal leiomyosarcoma can achieve good clinical results.

Bifurcation and chaos detection of a fractional Duffing-van der Pol oscillator with two periodic excitations and distributed time delay.

This paper analytically and numerically investigates the dynamical characteristics of a fractional Duffing-van der Pol oscillator with two periodic excitations and the distributed time delay. First, we consider the pitchfork bifurcation of the system driven by both a high-frequency parametric excitation and a low-frequency external excitation. Utilizing the method of direct partition of motion, the original system is transformed into an effective integer-order slow system, and the supercritical and subcritical pitchfork bifurcations are observed in this case. Then, we study the chaotic behavior of the system when the two excitation frequencies are equal. The necessary condition for the existence of the horseshoe chaos from the homoclinic bifurcation is obtained based on the Melnikov method. Besides, the parameters effects on the routes to chaos of the system are detected by bifurcation diagrams, largest Lyapunov exponents, phase portraits, and Poincaré maps. It has been confirmed that the theoretical predictions achieve a high coincidence with the numerical results. The techniques in this paper can be applied to explore the underlying bifurcation and chaotic dynamics of fractional-order models.

H∞ Optimization of Three-Element-Type Dynamic Vibration Absorber with Inerter and Negative Stiffness Based on the Particle Swarm Algorithm.

Dynamic vibration absorbers (DVAs) are extensively used in the prevention of building and bridge vibrations, as well as in vehicle suspension and other fields, due to their excellent damping performance. The reliable optimization of DVA parameters is key to improve their performance. In this paper, an H∞ optimization problem of a novel three-element-type DVA model including an inerter device and a grounded negative stiffness spring is studied by combining a traditional theory and an intelligent algorithm. Firstly, to ensure the system's stability, the specific analytical expressions of the optimal tuning frequency ratio, stiffness ratio, and approximate damping ratio with regard to the mass ratio and inerter-mass ratio are determined through fixed-point theory, which provides an iterative range for algorithm optimization. Secondly, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is used to further optimize the four parameters of DVA simultaneously. The effects of the traditional fixed-point theory and the intelligent PSO algorithm are comprehensively compared and analyzed. The results verify that the effect of the coupling of the traditional theory and the intelligent algorithm is better than that of fixed-point theory alone and can make the two resonance peaks on the amplitude-frequency response curves almost equal, which is difficult to achieve using fixed-point theory alone. Finally, we compare the proposed model with other DVA models under harmonic and random excitation. By comparing the amplitude-frequency curves, stroke lengths, mean square responses, time history diagrams, variances and decrease ratios, it is clear that the established DVA has a good vibration absorption effect. The research results provide theoretical and algorithm support for designing more effective DVA models of the same type in engineering applications.