Coronary revascularization and abdominal aortic aneurysm repair in a patient with Beh?et's diseases

Beh?et's disease is a systemic disease characterized by oral aphta, genital ulcer, and ocular lesion. Arterial involvement is an uncommon complication of Beh?et's disease, and it most frequently affects the abdominal aorta followed by the femoral artery and the pulmonary artery. Coronary lesions in Beh?et's disease have been little reported in the literature. In this communication, we present a case with coronary artery stenosis and with subsequently developed supra-renal abdominal aortic aneurysm. The coronary lesions were revasculized with gastroepiploic artery, right internal mammary artery, and saphenous vein graft. Abdominal aortic repair was performed with partial cardiopulmonary stand by, because of the risk of coronary ischemia during the cross clamp including the celiac artery. To our knowledge, this is the first report of successful repair of combined lesions of the coronary and the abdominal aorta in a patient with Beh?et's disease.     

Characteristics of color memory for natural scenes

To study the characteristics of color memory for natural images, a memory-identification task was performed with differing color contrasts; three of the contrasts were defined by chromatic and luminance components of the image, and the others were defined with respect to the categorical colors. After observing a series of pictures successively, subjects identified the pictures using a confidence rating. Detection of increased contrasts tended to be harder than detection of decreased contrasts, suggesting that the chromaticness of pictures is enhanced in memory. Detecting changes within each color category was more difficult than across the categories. A multiple mechanism that processes color differences and categorical colors is briefly considered.     

Visual search in natural scenes explained by local color properties

Success in visually searching for a small object or target in a natural scene depends on many factors, including the spatial structure of the scene and the pattern of observers' eye movements. The aim of this study was to determine to what extent local color properties of natural scenes can account for target-detection performance. A computer-controlled high-resolution color monitor was used to present images of natural scenes containing a small, randomly located, shaded gray sphere, which served as the target. Observers' gaze position was simultaneously monitored with an infrared video eye-tracker. About 60% of the adjusted variance in observers' detection performance was accounted for by local color properties, namely, lightness and the red-green and blue-yellow components of chroma. A similar level of variance was accounted for by observers' fixations. These results suggest that local color can be as influential as gaze position in determining observers' search performance in natural scenes.     

Fatty acid composition of oil in snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio) by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry

The hepatopancreatic fatty acid extract of the snow crab contains a high percentage (26%) of odd-carbon-numbered fatty acids and a substantial quantity (29%) of methyl-branched fatty acids, as indicated by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) and gas liquid chromatography (GLC). A wide distribution in chain length of the fatty acids (C₁₀ to C₂₆) and in positional isomers of the linear monoenes are also indicated by GC/MS.     

Simultaneous Determination of Complex Permittivity and Permeability of Columnar Materials With Arbitrarily Shaped Cross Section

An effective simultaneous evaluation method for the complex permittivity and permeability of lossy materials is proposed by applying it to an arbitrarily shaped cross-sectional post placed in a rectangular waveguide. We use one sample and only measure S ₂₁ parameters for two different locations of the sample. The measurement of complex reflection parameter S ₁₁ is not required in this evaluation method. The scheme of electromagnetic field analysis for the evaluation is based on the extended spectral-domain approach combined with the mode-matching method, which is accurate and efficient, and can be flexibly used for the iterative fitting operation for the estimation of material parameters. Sample preparation and setting is significantly easier in this method compared to conventional methods. The error caused by deviations in the setting of a sample is investigated. The estimated values for the sample material by this procedure show good agreement with the results obtained using the conventional method over the X-band.     

HLA-DRB1*04 and DRB1*14 alleles are associated with susceptibility to pemphigus among Japanese

It has previously been demonstrated that susceptibility to pemphigus vulgaris is associated with human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-DR4 serologic specificity among Ashkenase Jews, and with DR4 as well as DR6 (DR14) in other ethnic groups. We genotyped HLA-DRB1, DQA1, DQB1, and DPB1 alleles in 16 patients with pemphigus by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism, to find evidence of potential HLA class II allele associations with pemphigus in Japanese patients who have a relatively homogeneous ethnic background. All nine patients with pemphigus vulgaris and five of seven patients with pemphigus foliaceus carried one or two alleles of HLA-DRB1*04 (*0403, *0406) and HLA-DRB1*14 (*1401, *1405, *1406) subtypes. Sequence analysis of these DRB1*04 and DRB1*14 alleles revealed the amino acid homology of phenylalanine at position 26 and valine at position 86 with the DRB1*0402 allele that reportedly confers a strong susceptibility to pemphigus vulgaris in Ashkenazi Jews. Thus our findings, together with previous HLA studies on pemphigus vulgaris patients of different ethnic groups, suggest that HLA-DRB1*04 and DRB1*14 alleles are commonly associated with pemphigus vulgaris across racial barriers. These HLA-DRB1 alleles are likely to be also associated with pemphigus foliaceus. Further studies on more diverse ethnic populations will be helpful in determining the significance of the association between certain amino acid residues of the class II molecules and disease susceptibility to pemphigus vulgaris as well as pemphigus foliaceus.