Childhood hypopigmented mycosis fungoides: a commonly delayed diagnosis

Primary cutaneous lymphomas (PCLs) are exceedingly rare in children and adolescents, with mycosis fungoides (MF) being the most frequent PCL diagnosed in childhood. There are numerous unusual clinical variants of MF, including the hypopigmented type form (HMF). HMF is exceptional overall, but comparatively common among children. We present an 8-year-old boy with a 3-year history of progressive, generalised, scaly, hypopigmented round patches and few erythematous papules. He was first diagnosed with pityriasis alba (PA), and moisturisers were prescribed with no improvement. Skin biopsy showed typical features of MF, and the patient was successfully treated with narrowband ultraviolet B. HMF may simulate atopic dermatitis, PA, pityriasis lichenoides, tinea versicolour, vitiligo, postinflammatory hypopigmentation or leprosy. Therefore, persistent and unusual hypopigmented lesions should be biopsied to rule out this rare variant of MF

The Near-Horizon Limit of the Extreme Rotating d=5 Black Hole as a Homogenous Spacetime

We show that the spacetime of the near-horizon limit of the extreme rotating d=5 black hole, which is maximally supersymmetric in N=2,d=5 supergravity for any value of the rotation parameter j in [-1,1], is locally isomorphic to a homogeneous non-symmetric spacetime corresponding to an element of the 1-parameter family of coset spaces SO(2,1)x SO(3)/SO(2)_j in which the subgroup SO(2)_j is a combination of the two SO(2) subgroups of SO(2,1) and SO(3).Comment: Some points clarified and misprints corrected. Version to be published in Classical and Quantum Gravit

Paraneoplastic pemphigus with clinical features of lichen planus associated with low-grade B cell lymphoma

BACKGROUND: Neoplasia-induced lichen planus is described as a cell-mediated reaction to unknown epithelial antigens. Paraneoplastic pemphigus (PNP), characterized by the presence of a specific array of autoantibodies, probably represents a different form of presentation of the same autoimmune syndrome where the mucocutaneous expression depends on the dominant pathologic mechanism. METHODS: The authors report a case of PNP with predominant lichen planus-like lesions and review the relevant literature. We observed a 74-year-old female with vesico-bullous, erosive, target-shaped and flat papular lichenoid lesions on the lower legs, palms and soles, evolving for 3 weeks. Histopathology revealed a lichenoid dermatitis. Direct immunofluorescence showed C3 deposition around keratinocytes and epidermal IgG intranuclear deposition. Indirect immunofluorescence revealed circulating IgG with intercellular staining on rat bladder substrate. Immunoblotting demonstrated bands of 130, 190, 210 and 250 kDa antigens. A pararenal B cell lymphoma was found. RESULTS: Oral corticotherapy with 40 mg prednisolone daily was initiated with a good cutaneous response. Four months later, cyclophosphamide (50 mg/day) was introduced because of a discrete enlargement of the pararenal mass. The patient died on the seventh month of follow up as a result of respiratory insufficiency. CONCLUSION: PNP has different forms of presentation and the lack of a consensus about diagnostic criteria may contribute to underdiagnosed cases. Advances on the knowledge of the sensitivity and specificity of diagnostic criteria have allowed a better accuracy of diagnosis

Unilateral progressive osseous heteroplasia

A 50-year-old male patient presented with firm subcutaneous nodules and plaques with a gritty texture, unilaterally affecting the left side of the trunk and the left limbs. These lesions had had a progressive course since early childhood and caused functional impairment. There was no family history of similar disorders. No phospho-calcium metabolism abnormalities were observed. Biopsies of the affected areas demonstrated osteoma cutis. Analysis of DNA showed no mutation of the GNAS gene. The clinical features were consistent with progressive osseous heteroplasia, atypically presented in a unilateral form, probably revealing a mosaic distribution

Bowel-associated dermatosis-arthritis syndrome in an adolescent with short bowel syndrome

Bowel-associated dermatosis-arthritis syndrome (BADAS) is a neutrophilic dermatosis, characterized by the occurrence of arthritis and skin lesions related to bowel disease with or without bowel bypass. We report an unusual case of BADAS in a 15-year-old white male with congenital aganglionosis of the colon and hypoganglionosis of the small intestine and multiple bowel surgeries in childhood complicated by short bowel syndrome. He presented with recurrent peripheral polyarthritis, tenosynovitis, and painful erythematous subcutaneous nodules located on the dorsolateral regions of the legs and on the dorsa of the feet. Histological examination disclosed a neutrophilic dermatosis confirming the diagnosis of BADAS.Although an uncommon disease, especially at pediatric age, it is important to evoke the diagnosis of BADAS in children and adolescents with bowel disease, because treatment options and prognosis are distinct from other rheumatologic conditions

Building Bridges in the Clouds: Connecting Researchers and Hidden Works

The work of two researchers, Mercedes Agullo and Rita Arditti, is the raw material for the development of two projects using cloud-based turn-key solutions. The resulting digital libraries bring together primary and secondary sources to a global audience of scholars and researchers that previously could not access these valuable yet hidden scholarly works. Mercedes Agulló y Cobo is a Spanish historian who, over the course of her career, has produced important scholarly reference works in the historiography of the book, painting, sculpture, and theater. The Library at UMass Boston was approached by a faculty member in Latin American & Iberian Studies interested in providing broad access to Agulló’s extensive, though largely inaccessible, body of work. In the 1990s, Argentine-born activist and educator Rita Arditti traveled to Buenos Aires from the U.S. to interview the Abuelas (Grandmothers) of the Plaza de Mayo, a group founded in 1977 to search for children who were abducted or born into captivity during the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983

Einstein-Maxwell gravitational instantons and five dimensional solitonic strings

We study various aspects of four dimensional Einstein-Maxwell multicentred gravitational instantons. These are half-BPS Riemannian backgrounds of minimal N=2 supergravity, asymptotic to R^4, R^3 x S^1 or AdS_2 x S^2. Unlike for the Gibbons-Hawking solutions, the topology is not restricted by boundary conditions. We discuss the classical metric on the instanton moduli space. One class of these solutions may be lifted to causal and regular multi `solitonic strings', without horizons, of 4+1 dimensional N=2 supergravity, carrying null momentum.Comment: 1+30 page

p-branes on the waves

We present a large family of simple, explicit ten-dimensional supergravity solutions describing extended extremal supersymmetric Ramond-Ramond p-branes embedded into time-dependent dilaton-gravity plane waves of an arbitrary (isotropic) profile, with the brane world-volume aligned parallel to the propagation direction of the wave. Generalizations to the non-extremal case are not analyzed explicitly, but can be pursued as indicated.Comment: 11 pages; v.2 minor notation changes, minor typos corrected (published version

Uniqueness of M-theory PP-Wave Background with Extra Supersymmetries

We examine Killing spinor equations of the general eleven-dimensional pp-wave backgrounds, which contain a scalar H(x^m,x^-) in the metric and a three-form \xi(x^m,x^-) in the flux. Considering non-harmonic extra Killing spinors, we show that if the backgrounds admit at least one extra Killing spinor in addition to the standard 16 Killing spinors, they can be reduced to the form with H=A_{mn}(x^-)x^mx^n and \xi(x^-) modulo coordinate transformations. We further examine the cases in which the extra Killing spinor is characterized by a set of Cartan matrices. The super-isometry algebras of the resulting backgrounds are also derived.Comment: 25 pages, LaTeX2e, comments added, version to appear in PR