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Introduction Malignant diseases are well-known complications after lung transplantation (LT). Among these, inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor (IMT) is a rare neoplasm with a not well-known and often aggressive biological behavior. Material and Methods We hereby describe 2 cases of cystic fibrosis patients who underwent bilateral sequential LT (BSLT) complicated by IMT. Results A 26-year-old man presented a right endobronchial lesion 6 months after BSLT. Two consecutive fiber bronchoscopic biopsies showed granulation tissue. For the persistent lesion growth, the patient underwent a transthoracic biopsy showing histologic diagnosis of IMT. Therefore, he underwent to right pneumonectomy that was unfortunately complicated after 6 months with a late bronchopleural fistula and empyema with exitus 6 months later. A 31-year-old woman 1 year after BSLT presented with a left voluminous pleural-parenchymal lesion; the histologic examination after biopsy revealed an IMT. She underwent a removal of the lesion with a macroscopic R0 resection. Histologic, immunophenotypic, and cytogenetic examinations showed a strong overexpression of anaplastic lymphoma kinase requiring biological adjuvant therapies; however, the patient refused it. Four years later, she presented a recurrence treated with debulking procedure and adjuvant radiotherapy. At last follow-up, the patient was alive with stable disease and optimal graft function. Conclusions Although IMT is a rare complication after lung transplant, to obtain a careful diagnosis, an early and aggressive treatment is mandatory.

In the field of simulations storing and exchanging simulation data are important tasks. The quantity of simulation data can be rather big and at the same time this data can appear in different formats. The conversion of big quantities of data can be extremely time­ consuming. In this article we focus on simulations in telecommunications. Therefore we have studied the needs of the telecommunication community and defined a reference model of a simulation process. According to the needs we have developed a software tool CostGlue, which represents a central repository for data produced with different types of simulation tools and acts as a converter of different output formats into different input formats. CostGlue has modular software architecture. This enables further development and contributions from any other research sphere of activity. The core of the software tool represents the application CoreGlue responsible for communicating with the database. CoreGlue represents unified interface for writing to the database and reading from it. Specific functions like import and export of data and different mathematical calculations are represented as a set of self­described modules, which are loaded as necessary. The graphic user interface is introduced as a web application for the simplicity of use and effective remote access to the application. The software package CostGlue is going to be released as free software with the possibility of further development. 1 Introduction

Though storing and exchanging simulation data is a rather simple task done by simulation practitioners, it is quite often a challenge as huge quantities of data are not uncommon, and conversion between different formats can be much time consuming. After examining some of the needs of the telecommunications simulation community, we describe the architecture of a working prototype - CostGlue - to be used as a general-purpose archiver and converter for large quantities of simulation data. The software architecture of the CostGlue tool is modular therefore allowing further development and contributions from other research sphere of activity. The core of the tool - CoreGlue - is responsible for communicating with the database. It acts as a unified interface for writing to the database and reading from it. Specific functions like import and export of data and different mathematical calculations are represented as a set of self-described modules, which are loaded as necessary. The graphic user interface is introduced as a web application for the simplicity of use and effective remote access to the application. The software package CostGlue is going to be released as free software with the possibility of further development.

Storing and exchanging simulation data is a common task among simulation practitioners, but quite often it becomes a challenge as huge quantities of data are not uncommon, and conversion between different formats can become an unwieldy task. After examining some of the needs of the telecommunications simulation community, we describe the architecture of the working prototype of a general purpose archiver and converter for big quantities of simulation data to be released as free software.

Researchers performing simulations work in the field of computer telecommunications are often faced with the time-consuming task of converting huge quantities of data to and from different formats. We examine some of the requirements of the telecommunications simulation community and propose an architecture for a general purpose archiver and converter for big quantities of simulation data to be released as free software.

Background Burkholderia contaminans is one of the 20 closely related bacterial of the Burkholderia cepacia complex, a group of bacteria that are ubiquitous in the environment and capable of infecting people with cystic fibrosis (CF). This species is an emerging pathogen and it has been widely isolated from CF patients in Argentina, Spain, Portugal, Australia, Canada, USA with a low prevalence in Ireland, France, Russia, Switzerland, Czech Republic, and Italy. This is the first report of B. contaminans affecting two Italian CF patients attending the same CF Centre. We correlate B. contaminans colonisation with lung function decline and co-infection with other clinically relevant CF pathogens. Case presentation B. contaminans was identified by Multi Locus Sequence Typing in routine sputum analysis of two Caucasian CF women homozygous for Phe508del CFTR mutation. Sequence Type 102 was detected in both strains. It is known that B. contaminans ST102 was isolated both from CF and non-CF patients, with an intercontinental spread across the world. Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA analysis revealed the genetic relatedness between the two strains. We examined their susceptibility to antimicrobial agents, comparing the latter with that recorded for other B. contaminans isolated from different countries. We also described key virulence factors possibly linked with a clinical outcome. Specifically, we attempted to correlate colonization with the incidence of acute exacerbation of symptoms and lung function decline. Conclusions This case presentation suggests that acquisition of B. contaminans ST102 is not directly associated with a lung function decline. We retain that the presence of other CF pathogens (i.e. MRSA and Trichosporon) along with B. contaminans ST102 might have contributed to the worsening of clinical conditions in our CF patients. The circumstances leading to the establishment of B. contaminans ST102 infections are still unknown. We highlight the importance to proper detect and typing bacteria implicated in CF infection by using molecular techniques.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients have reduced circulating hemopoietic progenitors. We hypothesized that severity of COPD parallels the decrease in progenitors and that the reduction in body mass index (BMI) could be associated with more severe bone marrow dysfunction. We studied 39 patients with moderate to very severe COPD (18 with low-BMI and 21 with normal-BMI) and 12 controls. Disease severity was associated to a greater reduction in circulating progenitors. Proangiogenetic and inflammatory markers correlated with disease severity parameters. Compared to normal-BMI patients, low-BMI patients showed: greater reduction in circulating progenitors; higher VEGF-A, VEGF-C, HGF, Ang-2, TNF-alpha, IL-6 and MCP-1 levels. Furthermore, among patients with similar pulmonary impairment, those who displayed low-BMI had a more markedly reduced number of CD34(+) cells and late endothelial progenitors. We show that the reduction in hematopoietic and endothelial progenitor cells correlates with COPD severity. Our findings also indicate that, in severe low-BMI COPD patients, bone marrow function seems to be further impaired and may lead to reduced reparative capacity.