A case of eosinophilic fasciitis and generalized morphea overlap

A 60-year old man developed skin hardening and edema on his extremities. Although he had been treated with oral prednisolone at another hospital, skin stiffness relapsed during tapering of prednisolone. At the initial visit to our department, physical examination showed skin hardening of the extremities and also symmetric erythematous macules on the back. Histological examination revealed fasciitis on the forearm and morphea on the back. Eosinophilic fasciitis is occasionally associated with morphea. However, cases of concurrent eosinophilic fasciitis and generalized morphea are rare. In the present case, CD34 was differentially expressed in both lesions, suggesting eosinophilic fasciitis and morphea are separate diseases with different origin of mesenchymal cells

Amide‐Based Ionic Liquid Electrolytes for Alkali‐Metal‐Ion Rechargeable Batteries

Ionic liquids (ILs) have a wide variety of applications in energy storage and material production. ILs are composed of only cations and anions, without any molecular solvents, and are generally known as “designer liquids (solvents)” because their physicochemical properties can be tuned by the combination of ionic species. In recent several decades, research and development activities of rechargeable batteries have garnered considerable attention because certain groups of ILs exhibit high electrochemical stability and moderate ionic conductivity, rendering them suitable for application in high-voltage batteries. ILs with amide anions are representative electrolytes and are extensively researched by many research groups, including our group. This paper focuses on amide-based ILs as electrolytes for alkali-metal-ion rechargeable batteries, introducing their history, characteristics, and existing challenges to be addressed

Vascular Changes in Bleomycin-Induced Scleroderma

Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is characterized by vascular injury, immunological abnormalities, and fibrosis of the skin as well as various internal organs. Vascular impairment is the early manifestation and plays a fundamental role in the pathogenesis of SSc. Recent studies suggest that complex interactions among the endothelial cells, pericytes, smooth muscle cells, and fibroblasts are involved in the systemic vasculopathy in SSc, and histological feature of proliferation of vascular wall is seen in the lesional scleroderma skin at the late stage of disease. One of the most representative mouse models for scleroderma is the bleomycin-induced scleroderma; however, aspects of vascular alteration have not been described in detail so far. A number of studies have shown that bleomycin stimulates endothelial cells and fibroblasts to induce proinflammatory and fibrogenic cytokines, apoptosis, reactive oxygen species, and so on. This paper makes a focus on the vascular involvement in the bleomycin-induced murine scleroderma

Workshop Synthesis: System Based Passive Data Streams Systems; Smart Cards, Phone Data, GPS

AbstractEach day, huge quantities of passive data streams are collected by smart card, GPS, Bluetooth and mobile phone systems all over the world. These data happen to be very useful to transport planners, because of the valuable spatial and temporal information they contain. This paper is a synthesis of a workshop on passive data streams held in Australia in November 2014. Many issues are discussed here: definitions, data collection and processing, privacy, how to use these data for transport planning, how to integrate these data with traditional and more “active” data sources, such as household travel surveys that respondents are explicitly asked to participate in, and how to cope with the absence of socio-demographic attributes in passive data streams

The role of attitudes and public transport service on vehicle ownership in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

Empirical evidence suggests that urban form has a strong influence on travel behaviour. This finding, however, has been challenged by the debate on the confounding effects of subjective dimensions such as individual attitudes and preferences (the self-selection hypothesis). Residential self-selection has been found to significantly influence travel behaviour though the effects of land use remain important. Although people have more options than just residential choice to self-select, researchers have focused on residential self-selection only, mostly in the US. The paper examines the effects of attitudes and public transport service on household multiple vehicle ownership behaviour, controlled for socio-demographic and land use characteristics. This study contributes empirical results of Generalised Nested Logit models using large scale household interview survey data collected in Ho Chi Minh metropolitan area, Vietnam. The study finds that both subjective and objective dimensions of the built environment such as bus coverage, bus operators’ attitudes, walking and cycling conditions, and the diversity of land use at residential locations are important to multiple vehicle ownership behaviour while the effects of self-selection are relatively modest