Multiple Patterns Research Articles

Genome and antibiotic resistance characteristics of Shigella clinical isolates in Fujian Province, Southeast China, 2005-2019.

Shigellosis is a serious public health issue in many developing countries. The emergence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) Shigella isolates has deepened the treatment difficulty and health burden of shigellosis. China is the largest developing country in the world, but so far, the genome of MDR Shigella isolates has not been well characterized. In this study, 60 clinical isolates of Shigella spp. in Fujian Province, southeast China, from 2005 to 2019 were characterized for drug resistance phenotype, whole-genome sequencing and bioinformatics analysis. The results showed that the MDR rate of Shigella isolates was 100%, among which the resistance rates of cefotaxime, ciprofloxacin and azithromycin were 36.67, 21.67 and 10.00 %, respectively. The positive rate of extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-producing strains was 23.33%. The resistance profiles of Shigella flexneri and Shigella sonnei to some antimicrobials differed. The MDR isolates carried multiple antimicrobial resistance genes, among which blaCTX-M-14 and blaCTX-M-15 mediated ESBL resistance. 'ISEcp1 -blaCTX-M -IS903' (type I) and 'ISEcp1 -blaCTX-M' (type II) were the most common genetic environments around the blaCTX-M genes, and plasmids containing these structures included IncFII, IncI1, IncI2 and IncN. The double gene mutation pattern of gyrA and parC resulted in a significant decrease in the sensitivity of S. flexneri to ciprofloxacin. The overall resistance phenotype and genotype concordance rate was 88.50%, and the sensitivity and specificity of the genotype antimicrobial susceptibility test (AST) were 93.35 and 82.53 %, respectively. However, inconsistency occurred between phenotypic and genotype profiles for a few antibiotics. Phylogenomic investigation with core genome multi-locus sequence typing (cgMLST) and SNPs were used to characterize the endemic transmission of these infections in Fujian and their evolutionary origin within the global context. For S. flexneri, Fujian isolates were all limited to PG3 and could be divided into three phylogenetic clusters. The ciprofloxacin-resistant strains were mainly F2a and FXv and assigned to the three clusters with different quinolone resistance-determining region mutation patterns. For S. sonnei, most Fujian strains belonged to Lineage III with genotype 3.7.6, except three isolates of Lineage I with genotype 1.3. The strains carrying the blaCTX-M genes were dispersed, indicating different origins of gene acquisition. Most of the circulating isolates in Fujian Province were not related to major international outbreak lineages and were only endemic to the country. In conclusion, multi-drug resistance of Shigella isolates in Fujian Province was serious, and genome-based laboratory surveillance will be crucial to the clinical treatment and public health measures for shigellosis.

Embroidered Transmission Lines with Conductive Yarns: Challenges, Modeling, Fabrication, and Experimental Performance Assessment.

This paper presents an enhanced measurement technique for evaluating embroidered transmission lines (TLs), based on a TL characterization method. The evaluation metric is the "pure" losses of the embroidered TL excluding mismatch losses. Enhanced mechanical stability and removability of embroidered samples under a test is supported by a specially designed measurement setup. Losses are used to find the effective conductivity of each embroidery pattern. Various embroidered samples are fabricated, measured, and evaluated. The repeatability of measurements and fabrication are analyzed and assessed, resulting in average deviations of 0.5 dB and 0.7 dB, respectively. A comparative evaluation of two different yarns of low and high conductivity is presented. Single and double stitching patterns for each yarn are manufactured with stitch densities of 1-7 lines/mm. For interconnection with SMA connectors, a conductive fabric contact (CFC) was selected as the finish of the TL, as a more practical interface instead of direct yarn contact (YC). The analysis of the measurements proved useful findings, such as an increase in the stitch density or the amount of yarn used does not always improve the performance; the use of double stitching greatly improves low-performance stitch densities; the effective conductivity of embroidery patterns changes with frequency; the YC interface yields more losses for medium stitch densities, but for higher stich densities, it presents an improved performance compared with the CFC interconnection.

High-frequency average phase compensation method for gamma nonlinearity based on optimal-frequency strategy

The accuracy of fringe projection phase-shifting profilometry (PSP) is affected by gamma nonlinearity greatly, and the average phase compensation method is an effective technique to reduce the nonlinear error. However, double fringe patterns are commonly required, especially combined with the multi-frequency phase unwrapping method (MFPU), using 6 × 3 images in three-frequency method, which limits the measurement eiciency. To reduce the number of required images, this paper presents an efficient average phase compensation method using 6f h + 3f l + 3f u algorithm based on an optimal-frequency strategy. Six high-frequency standard and π/3 shifted 3-step phase-shifting fringe patterns are used together to generate high-accuracy wrapped phase. Three unit-frequency and three low-frequency fringe patterns are used to obtain coarse a unit-frequency wrapped phase and a coarse low-frequency wrapped phase, respectively. To ensure the robust phase unwrapping for high-frequency phase, the mathematical model of the optimal frequency is derived and determined by phase error amplitude calculation. Simulation and experimental results verified that only applying average phase compensation under the guidance of optimal-frequency selection strategy could achieve robust phase unwrapping and high-accurate measurement by reducing the nonlinear error substantially.

Migration and transformation mechanisms of iron and manganese during river infiltration affected by the changes in riverbed sediment thickness

Riverbed scouring and siltation, affected by variations in river flow and sediment concentration, can cause changes in the sediment thickness, leading to the complex feedback between riverbed permeability and nutrient–reactive transport processes. Currently, the migration and transformation of iron and manganese under changed riverbed sediment thickness have not been taken into account. Based on indoor one-dimensional soil column simulation experiments, along with in-situ monitoring, Rhizon pore water sampling, and 16 s rRNA high-throughput sequencing technologies, this study revealed the migration and transformation patterns of iron and manganese in the river infiltration zone and their contribution rates under different sediment thickness conditions. The results demonstrated that as the riverbed sediment thickness increased, the river infiltration rate and sediment permeability coefficient demonstrated a significant decrease over time. For instance, a 5 cm sediment thickness can decrease the sediment permeability coefficient by 30 % within 32 d of infiltration, expand the disconnection zone to 25 cm, narrow the oxidation–reduction zone, and cause the iron and manganese reduction zone to evolve from a single peak to a double peak pattern. Additionally, as the sediment thickness increased, the contribution of organic matter bound iron-manganese oxidation and iron-manganese oxide reduction to Mn2+ and Fe2+ concentrations in sediment pore water decreased, while the contribution of adsorption and complexation-precipitation increased. This study holds great significance for ensuring the safety of drinking water supply and promoting the sustainable utilization of groundwater resources.

Numerical simulation of arc stabilizing cycle in vacuum arc remelting of titanium alloy

Through utilizing numerical simulation methods, the flow state of the molten pool during the vacuum self-consumption melting process of titanium alloy was analyzed. The influence of the stable arc cycle on the shape of the molten pool, dendrite arm spacing, surface quality, and shrinkage cavity was examined. The results showed that without an external magnetic field, the molten pool for smelting a Φ720 mm specification titanium alloy ingot is dominated by self-inductance magnetic force, leading to a downward flow in the central part of the melt. A mere 0.5 G stray magnetic field can result in Ekman pumping, causing an upward secondary flow in the core to counteract it. At an externally added magnetic field strength of 50 G, choosing a 10 s-20 s cycle can achieve a relatively stable double loop flow pattern. The shape of its molten pool, dendrite arm spacing, and contact ratio all reach optimal performance, thus verifying the possibility and feasibility of the double loop flow, and the macroscopic segregation of the simulated ingots essentially matches the experimental results, aiming to provide references for selecting parameters in actual production.

Symmetrical vortices and laminar dust flow induced by an intense electron beam interacting with a strongly coupled dusty plasma

A strongly coupled quasi-two-dimensional dusty plasma confined electrostatically in the plasma sheath of a radio frequency (RF) plasma is irradiated by a collimated and mono-energetic pulsed electron beam (e-beam) with an energy of 13 keV and a high peak current per pulse of 30 mA. A stream of rapidly moving charged dust particles is created inside the dust crystal due to the drag force of the electrons in the e-beam. The dust flow is split into two symmetrical branches when it reaches the boundary of the round dust crystal, each following the limit of the circular confining region. This results in the formation of a double vortex flow pattern with the dust particles being transported along the irradiation direction and then aside, eventually back to the entrance position of the e-beam. The observed flow regime is laminar at all times, with the speed in the central region increasing up to 12 mm s−1 in the first 200 ms and then diminishing gradually to a steady value of about 5–6 mm s−1 during a stress relaxation time period of 360 ms. The vorticity follows a similar trend with peak values −3.8 and 3.8 s−1 and steady state values between −2.5 and 2.5 s−1 in the two symmetrical vortices. Time-resolved particle-image-velocimetry and particle-tracking-velocimetry are used to characterize the flow. Molecular dynamics simulations confirm qualitatively the experimental observations showing dust stream and double vortex formation.

Effective Emotion Recognition by Learning Discriminative Graph Topologies in EEG Brain Networks.

Multichannel electroencephalogram (EEG) is an array signal that represents brain neural networks and can be applied to characterize information propagation patterns for different emotional states. To reveal these inherent spatial graph features and increase the stability of emotion recognition, we propose an effective emotion recognition model that performs multicategory emotion recognition with multiple emotion-related spatial network topology patterns (MESNPs) by learning discriminative graph topologies in EEG brain networks. To evaluate the performance of our proposed MESNP model, we conducted single-subject and multisubject four-class classification experiments on two public datasets, MAHNOB-HCI and DEAP. Compared with existing feature extraction methods, the MESNP model significantly enhances the multiclass emotional classification performance in the single-subject and multisubject conditions. To evaluate the online version of the proposed MESNP model, we designed an online emotion monitoring system. We recruited 14 participants to conduct the online emotion decoding experiments. The average online experimental accuracy of the 14 participants was 84.56%, indicating that our model can be applied in affective brain-computer interface (aBCI) systems. The offline and online experimental results demonstrate that the proposed MESNP model effectively captures discriminative graph topology patterns and significantly improves emotion classification performance. Moreover, the proposed MESNP model provides a new scheme for extracting features from strongly coupled array signals.

Adjusting Mood in Mandarin Chinese: A Game Theory Approach to Double and Redundant Negation with Entropy

Abstract This study investigates how Mandarin Chinese speakers use double and redundant negations to adjust information entropy and convey the speaker’s mood. Integrating Gricean implicature, signaling game theory, and information entropy, we quantified uncertainty in negation sentences by calculating self-information of negation markers and overall entropy for negations versus affirmatives. Analyzing sentences from the BCC Corpus of Mandarin Chinese newspapers, we extracted double and redundant negation patterns, calculated their frequencies, and compared entropy values in payoff matrices against affirmatives. Contextual analysis of surrounding discourse interpreted pragmatic functions. Our findings reveal that universal double negations reduce sentence entropy, intensifying assertiveness. Modal forms further decrease entropy, amplifying necessity, while conditional patterns strengthen the asserted conditions. Euphemistic double negations increase entropy, weaken assertiveness, and align with Levinson’s Manner Principle. This increase in entropy quantifies pragmatic markedness, allowing tentative critiques. Redundant negations significantly reduce entropy, strengthening negative attitudes. We elucidate how interlocutors navigate cooperative discourse by quantifying uncertainty via entropy measures, making contextually-optimal linguistic choices like assertion, indirectness, and emphasis. These findings impact signaling game theory and pragmatic markedness, with applications in natural language processing, cross-cultural communication, and computational models. Future research could explore other languages and cognitive and social factors in negation use.

Warren truss inspired hierarchical beams for three dimensional hierarchical truss lattice materials

Networks of beams are a subject of increasing interest to create architected materials with exceptional mechanical properties and low density. This paper investigates the mechanical properties of one dimensional (1D) hierarchical beams for the development of three dimensional (3D) truss lattice materials. These 1D hierarchical beams are constructed in two configurations by placing axial and inclined struts in single and double laced Warren truss patterns in each side of a beam with polygon cross section. Analytical and numerical analyses have been used to characterize their mechanical properties, including the elastic modulus, second moment of area, and shear stiffness of hierarchical beams drawn from a broad design space. Also, the failure limits of the beams with respect to parent material failure and various buckling modes are probed. Finally, the hierarchical beams have been implemented as the constituent members of Kelvin and octet lattices, and the elastic modulus and failure boundaries of the second-order hierarchical lattices are evaluated. The investigation reveals the competition between the elastic properties in the individual hierarchical beams based on different combinations of the design variables. The stiffness of the designs under compression and bending is found to be a function of the axial member size and cross sectional shape of the hierarchical beam. On the other hand, the shear stiffness of hierarchical beam designs is a function of the inclined member size and their inclination angle. It is demonstrated that incorporating hierarchy in the Kelvin and octet truss lattices can enhance the load bearing capacity of designs at low relative densities when compared to their hollow counterparts. Also, it is shown that second-order hierarchical stretching and bending-dominated lattices incorporating first-order hierarchical beams, can not only achieve but also surpass the strength and stiffness scaling relations established for first-order lattices. This becomes particularly noteworthy when considering bending-dominated lattices, as the hierarchy can drive their stiffness toward the boundaries, enabling them to outperform their equivalent stretching-dominated rivals.

Ballistic impact wave and bulge profile propagation characteristics and blunt injury assessment of UHMWPE laminate composite

Amid escalating localized conflicts worldwide, the elucidation of the mechanisms and quantification blunt trauma the emergency services and military personnel confronted becomes imperatively. However, the understanding of bullet-induced bulge formation on the laminate's back face, impact wave propagation, and consequent trauma assessment methods remains incomplete. This study applies 3-dimension digital image correlation (3D-DIC) method to reveals these phenomena by utilizing a lead-core bullet traveling at 334.93 m/s to impact an ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) laminate. The results show that the initial transverse propagation velocity of bulge profile is 24.79% smaller than the theoretical calculation, which indicates the reduction caused by cohesive matrix. The transverse wave demonstrates a double exponential attenuation pattern, which could be decomposed into two single exponential attenuation curves. The bulge profile shows hyperbolic pattern, which reveals the stability of the bulge shape and the temporal evolution pattern. Increasing the laminate-body gap leads to a decline in Blunt Criterion (BC) and the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) values reduce from 2 to 0 correspondingly. The numerical model confirms the compression wave velocity as 1447.77 ± 123.10 m/s in the thickness direction and 9542.86 ± 3087.75 m/s in the fiber direction. These findings reveals and quantified the propagation patterns of back bulge and compressive wave, and thus could provide data-driven insights to improve body armor performance and blunt trauma assessment for individual soldiers.

Numerical investigation of cylinder rotors with various endplates

For a finite-length cylinder rotor, rotation induces unique pattern tip vortices at the free end, significantly altering the aerodynamic characteristics of the rotor. Endplates are often applied to finite-length cylinders as a means of restraining end effects. The endplates change the aerodynamic characteristics of the rotor by affecting the end axial flow. In the present study, cylinder rotors with static and rotating endplates of various diameters are investigated by means of large eddy simulation. By analyzing the aerodynamic force, wind pressure, and flow field characteristics of the rotors, the varying patterns and reasons for the aerodynamic characteristics of rotors with static and rotating endplates are clarified. The results show that the endplate induces disk vortices and changes the vortex patterns at the free end of the rotor, and the static endplates show little effect on the development of tip vortices, so the wake vortices show the triple vortex pattern, whereas the rotating endplates enhance the intensity of the plate vortices and inhibit the tip vortices development, leading to the double vortex pattern, which in turn produces a different pattern of aerodynamic characteristics compared to the rotor with the static endplates. The mechanism of the variation in the aerodynamic characteristics and vortex patterns is partially explained by analyzing and discussing the flow field results.

Multipattern Mining Using Pattern-Level Contrastive Learning and Multipattern Activation Map.

Visual patterns are basic elements in images and represent the discernible regularity in the visual world. Thus, mining visual patterns is a fundamental task in computer vision. Most previous studies consider that only one visual pattern exists in a category, and then builds up a one-to-one mapping using category label. In reality, however, many categories include multiple patterns, which are many-to-one mappings. Without knowing the information of patterns, few existing pattern mining methods can discover and distinguish varied patterns in a category. To tackle this problem, we propose a novel framework, PaclMap, which learns medium-grained features to represent patterns. It includes an unsupervised pattern-level contrastive learning and a multipattern activation map. Their joint optimization encourages the network to mine both discriminative and frequent patterns in a category. Extensive experiments conducted on four benchmark datasets (Place-20, imagenet large scale visual recognition challenge (ILSVRC)-20, visual object classes (VOC), and Travel) demonstrate that PaclMap outperforms six state-of-the-art methods with average improvements of 2.9% on accuracy and 12.3% on frequency, respectively.

Diurnal variation of heart rate variability in individuals with spinal cord injury

BackgroundHeart rate variability (HRV) may provide objective information about cardiogenic autonomic balance in individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI). The aim of this study was to characterize the diurnal variation of HRV in individuals with SCI at lesion level T6 and above and lesion level below T6.MethodsThis was a retrospective analysis of a prior cross-sectional study. Individuals with chronic SCI underwent 24 h recording of the time between consecutive R waves (RR interval) to derive parameters of HRV as follows: standard deviation of all normal-to-normal R–R intervals (SDNN) and square root of the mean of the squared differences between successive R–R intervals (RMSSD) (time domain); and high frequency power (HF), low-frequency power (LF), very low frequency power (VLF), ultra-low frequency power (ULF) and total power (TP) (frequency domain). Changes in the magnitude of HRV outcomes over the 24 h period were investigated using a novel multi-component cosinor model constrained to the form of a three-harmonic Fourier series.ResultsParticipants were grouped as lesion level T6 and above (n = 22) or below T6 (n = 36). Most of them were male (n = 40, 69%) and the median age (interquartile range) was 50.5 (28) years. Both groups exhibited similar diurnal patterns in most HRV metrics. The lowest values occurred in the late afternoon (4–6 pm) and gradually increased, peaking around midnight to early morning (1–6 am). Exceptions included RMSSD, which peaked before midnight, and ULF, which showed a double peak pattern that peaked from 11 am to 1 pm and 4–6 am in participants with lesion level at T6 and above. The HRV values in participants with lesion level T6 and above were generally lower than participants with lesion level below T6, except for peak values of RMSSD, HF and LF.ConclusionThis study demonstrated substantial diurnal variation of HRV in participants with SCI in both groups of participants. In clinical and research settings, diurnal variations in HRV must be taken into consideration.

Clinicopathological features of kidney injury in patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICPi) combined with anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) therapy

BackgroundImmune checkpoint inhibitor (ICPi) combined with anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) therapy has increasingly become a promising strategy in various malignancies. However, the combination might be associated with increased risk...

Influences of crop diversification on yield, resource use efficiency, and environmental footprint in farmland landscapes in intensive farming

Enhancing crop diversification in intensive fields has the potential to increase crop yield and reduce environmental footprint. However, these relationships at the landscape scale remained unclear in intensive farming. Addressing this gap, this paper aims to elucidate how crop yield, resources use efficiency (RUE), and environmental footprint (EF) vary with crop diversification levels in the North China Plain. Management practices, including crop pattern, field size, and agronomic inputs, were collected for 421 landscapes of 1 × 1 km subplots using Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 images and survey. The results showed that, at the landscape scale, energy and fertilizer contributed over 53 %, and 37 % of the carbon footprint, respectively. N fertilizer constituted >98 % of the nitrogen footprint. P fertilizer accounted for over 80 %, while electricity comprised >13 % of the phosphorus footprint. Compared with simplified landscapes, diversified landscapes exhibited several significant features: 1) 56 % reduction of the area ratio of winter wheat-summer maize double crop pattern (WM), 2) a significant decrease in field size, 3) the decreased use of total NPK fertilizers at 32 %, 30 %, and 30 %, respectively, 4) the increased inputs of irrigation water, diesel, electricity, pesticide and labour at 21 %, 19 %, 21 %, 77 %, and 92 %, respectively. Although yield could be reduced at 33 % when transforming simplified landscapes into moderately diversified ones, they increased with the further promotion of crop diversification. Thus, the diversified landscapes could achieve a balance in yield, RUE, and EF to enhance sustainability, whereas simplified landscapes can similarly achieve a balance to benefit productivity. We emphasize the viable potential of diversified landscapes to enhance sustainable agricultural development by optimizing crop composition. This analysis offers pioneering evidence of landscape-scale agronomic and environmental performances of crop diversification.

Efficiency of non-identical double helix patterns in minimizing ropelength of torus knots

The ropelength of a knotted string with volume is defined as the ratio of the length of its central curve to the radius of its sectional disc. In a physical context, achieving minimal ropelength corresponds to a state of minimal potential energy, and geometrically, it signifies a tightly-packed conformation. The quest to establish a connection between the topological complexity of knotted strings and their minimal ropelength has persisted into recent years. In this paper, we introduce a new upper bound on the minimal ropelength of (2, n)-torus knots and links: Rop(T(2, n)) ≤ 7.3163 Cr(T(2, n)) + 17.1657. This upper bound is derived from a torus knot conformation constructed based on a tightened pattern of double helix with non-identical radii of winding. A comparative analysis with conformations generated from a superhelix and a circular helix underscores the efficiency of the non-identical double helix pattern, particularly when it appears as a long repeated motif in knotted strings.

Experimental and numerical study on the formation and detachment of bubbles at orifices under the impinging jet flow

Three detachment patterns, i.e. single bubble pattern, double bubble pattern, atomizing pattern, are observed as the jet velocity increases. The bubble formation and detachment model are established, and the intensification mechanisms of the impinging jet on the bubble formation and detachment is revealed: Instantaneous flow field fluctuations changes the direction of the pressure difference force, forcing the bubble to detach and shortening the bubble growth time. The fluctuations of the flow field cause the total force on the bubble in the radial direction to be non-zero and the displacement of the bubble in the radial direction appears, which reduces the axial drag and the resistance of bubble to leave the orifice. In summary, under the effect of the impinging jet, the growth time of the bubble is shortened and the detachment size is reduced, which provides the possibility of producing small bubbles through large-diameter holes.

Energy harvesting from vibrations of a beam under moving mass using auxetic cantilever beams: Theoretical and experimental investigations

Recent research aims to enhance piezoelectric energy harvesting for low-power electronic circuits like sensors and wireless systems using cantilever energy harvesters with piezoelectric substrates featuring auxetic structures such as reentrant, missing rib, and double arrowhead patterns. Employing the Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin (WKB) method is a novel method to analyze these structures based on Euler–Bernoulli beam theory. The study comprises theoretical analysis, finite element simulations, and experimental tests. The highest power output is achieved when consecutive masses excite the bridge using the double arrowhead auxetic unit cell substrate, yielding power outputs of 1.152 μ W / N . The effect of increasing unit cells has also been investigated. Highlights Creating unique analytical methods for auxetic substrate use in energy harvesters. Analyzing three auxetic harvester substrates, emphasizing their unique performance. Auxetic harvesters were studied under various bridge simulator base excitations. The study examines three auxetic structures' effect on harvested power. Study of moving masses' influence on bridge simulator, weights, and velocities.

The Perception of Fisherman in The Burau Pantai, District of Burau, East Luwu Regency for The Importance of Formal Education

This research aims to determine the characteristics of the education level of fishermen in Burau Pantai Village, Burau District, East Luwu Regency and to find out fishermen's perceptions of formal education and to find out what fishermen do in continuing their children's formal education. This research was carried out in November 2020 - December 2020 in Burau Pantai Village, Burau District, East Luwu Regency, South Sulawesi. The sampling method used was Non Probability sampling. The data sources used were primary data and secondary data. The data analysis used percentage analysis. Education, Likersts scale and qualitative data analysis. Educational characteristics of fishermen in Burau Pantai Village as many as 87 people did not take formal education This is influenced by many factors, especially fishermen's socio-economic factors. Public perception of children's formal education where fishermen choose that education will determine profession and work In the future, fishermen choose that education will make someone knowledgeable, fishermen's assumptions about the cost of education can be cultivated, there are no fishermen who say that education is cheap, fishermen say that education can change the status and position of fishermen social. Various efforts have been made by fishermen in meeting the educational needs of their children, namely the double income pattern.

Resolving Discrepancies in Idylla BRAF Mutational Assay Results Using Targeted Next-Generation Sequencing.

BRAF mutation identification is important for the diagnosis and treatment of several tumor types, both solid and hematologic. Rapid identification of BRAF mutations is required to determine eligibility for targeted BRAF inhibitor therapy. The Idylla BRAF mutation assay is a rapid, multiplex allele-specific PCR test designed to detect the most common oncogenic BRAF V600 mutations in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue samples. Here, we describe the validation of the Idylla BRAF mutation assay in our laboratory. During routine clinical practice, we noticed cases in which BRAF V600 mutations were identified with unusual amplification curves, with three cases displaying a delayed amplification within a double amplification pattern and two false-positive calls. We therefore initiated a quality improvement effort to systematically and retrospectively evaluate next-generation sequencing (NGS)-tested cases with BRAF mutations identified within five amino acids of BRAF codon V600 and did not identify additional false-positive cases. We hypothesize that late amplification in a double amplification pattern may represent non-specific amplification, whereas cases displaying single delayed amplification curves may stem from the presence of either non-V600 variants, very low-level V600 variants, cytosine deamination artifacts, and/or non-specific amplification by an allele-specific PCR primer. Regardless, we recommend that Idylla BRAF cases with non-classical amplification curves undergo reflex NGS testing. These findings are likely relevant for other Idylla assays interrogating hotspot mutations in genes such as EGFR, IDH1/2, KRAS, and NRAS.