Halo congenital nevus undergoing spontaneous regression. Involvement of T-cell immunity in involution and presence of circulating anti-nevus cell IgM antibodies

BACKGROUND: Halo congenital nevus is a condition in which halo formation is associated with congenital nevocellular nevi. Although several theories have been proposed, the immunologic mechanisms of halo formation and concomitant nevus regression still remain unclear. We presented immunologic findings in a case of halo congenital nevus with unique histologic location of inflammatory cells. OBSERVATIONS: Histologically, the present case of halo congenital nevus undergoing spontaneous regression showed a marked inflammatory infiltrate with remnants of original nevus cell nests. In the infiltrating T cells, CD8+ cells outnumbered CD4+ cells and the infiltrate of natural killer cells was not substantial. Direct and indirect immunofluorescence studies demonstrated the presence of IgM antibodies against nevus cells as well as melanoma cells and cultured melanocytes in the patient's serum. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that both T-cell-mediated immunity and IgM antibodies may be involved in the regression of halo congenital nevus. However, it is important to point out that our results may simply be epiphenomena and not directly responsible for the destruction of nevus cells.     

Detection of Target Embedded in Sea Clutter by Means of Millimeter Wave Radar

Sea clutter was measured using a millimeter wave radar with a frequency of 34.86GHz and pulse length of 30ns. A car carrier ship target was embedded in sea clutter. It has been discovered that target pulse-to-pulse fluctuations obey a Weibull distribution and sea clutter obey a Rayleigh distribution. We obtained target to clutter ratio improvement of 23.8dB by applying the cell average LOG/CFAR techniques. The computer simulation has been made to evaluate the detection probability and the false alarm probability. The simulation result was in good agreement with the observed data.     

Translational lemmas for DLOGTIME-uniform circuits,alternating TMs,and PRAMs

We present translational lemmas for the three standard models of parallel computation, and apply them to obtain tight hierarchy results. It is shown that, for arbitrarily small rational constant , (i) there is a language which can be accepted by a -uniform circuit family of depth and size but not by any -uniform circuit family of depth and size , (ii) there is a language which can be accepted by a -time -space ATM with l worktapes but not by any -time -space ATM with the same l worktapes if the number of tape symbols is fixed, and (iii) there is a language which can be accepted by a -time PRAM with processors but not by any -time PRAM with processors. Here, c > 0, d ≥ 1, r ₁ > 1, and r ₂ ≥ 1 are arbitrary rational constants, and l ≥ 2 is an arbitrary integer. Preliminary versions of different parts of this paper appeared in Proc. MCU 2004 (LNCS 3354) and Proc. FCT 2005 (LNCS 3623).     

WO3/BiVO4 composite photoelectrode prepared by improved auto-combustion method for highly efficient water splitting

We report on the improvement in the water splitting efficiency of a WO₃/BiVO₄ composite photoelectrode by the application of an improved auto-combustion method to the preparation of porous BiVO₄ thin films. The unique feature of this preparation method is the addition of both NH₄NO₃, as a strong oxidizing agent, and an organic additive into BiVO₄ precursor solution. The local decomposition heat of the organic additive and oxidizing agent created a porous film with small, highly crystalline BiVO₄ particles. The photoelectrode has many advantages over existing ones, such as the high light-harvesting efficiency (LHE), a single BiVO₄ phase, the facile access of the holes to the photoelectrode/electrolyte interface, and the ease of water and oxygen diffusion. The maximum incident photon-to-current efficiency (IPCE) was estimated to be 64% (at 440 nm, 1.23 V vs. RHE) and the applied bias photon-tocurrent efficiency (ABPE) reached as high as 1.28%. This ABPE value is highest among all oxide semiconductor photoelectrodes reported previously, except for the case of a stacking photoelectrode system.     

Influence of electrolytes on the photovoltaic performance of organic dye-sensitized nanocrystalline TiO2 solar cells

We have studied the influence of electrolytes on the photovoltaic performance of mercurochrome-sensitized nanocrystalline TiO₂ solar cells using LiI, LiBr, and tetraalkylammonium iodides as the electrolyte. Short-circuit photocurrent density (J_sc) and open-circuit photovoltage (V_oc) depended strongly on the electrolyte. J_sc of 3.42 mA cm⁻² and V_oc of 0.52 V were obtained for the LiI electrolyte and J_sc of 2.10 mA cm⁻² and V_oc of 0.86 V were obtained for the Pr₄NI electrolyte. This difference in photovoltaic performance was due to the change in the conduction band level of the TiO₂ electrode. Large V_oc of 0.99 V was obtained for the LiBr electrolyte due to the large energy gap between the conduction band level of TiO₂ and the Br/Br₂ redox potential. Solar cell performance also depended strongly on organic solvent, suggesting that the physical properties of solvents such as Li ion conductivity and donor number affect photovoltaic performance.     

A challenge of new materials for next generation's magnetic recording

Our recent study on a challenge of new materials for next generation's magnetic recording approaching an ultra high areal recording density beyond 1 Tbit/in.² is overviewed. We proposed novel methods for fabricating high performance magnetic recording heads and media by making the best use of wet (electro- and electroless-deposition) and dry (sputtering) processes. We believe that these results contribute significantly to the progress in magnetic recording and constitute a breakthrough for materializing an unexplored areal recording density beyond 1 Tbit/in.².     

Near-IR sensitization of nanocrystalline TiO2 with a new ruthenium complex having a 2,6-bis(4-carboxyquinolin-2-yl)pyridine ligand

A new ruthenium(II)–polypyridine complex (1) having a 2,6-bis(4-carboxyquinolin-2-yl)pyridine ligand was synthesized as a sensitizer for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs). This complex exhibited remarkable light-harvesting properties in the near-IR region. DSCs sensitized with 1 showed a 35% incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency (IPCE) at 900 nm.     

Suppression of Sea-Ice Clutter Observed by a Millimeter Wave Radar Using a New Log-Weibull/CFAR System

Sea-ice clutter was measured using a millimeter wave radar with frequency of 34.860GHz, beamwidth of 0.25° and pulse length of 30ns. To determine the sea-ice clutter amplitude statistics, we investigated the log-normal, Weibull, log-Weibull and K-distributions using the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), which is more rigorous fit of the distribution to the data than the least-squares method. It is shown that the amplitude of sea-ice clutter obeys the log-Weibull distribution with shape parameters of 2.36 to 2.93 for both entire data and data within the beam width of an antenna. We propose a new log-Weibull/CFAR system uses a modified cell-averaging LOG/CFAR system. It is found that this log-Weibull/CFAR procedure is effective for suppression of sea-ice clutter and detection of target.     

Soft error susceptibility mapping of DRAMs using a high-energy nuclear microprobe

Soft errors in 16 Mbit dynamic random access memories (DRAMs) have been investigated using proton microprobes at 400 keV with a spot size of 1 × 1 μm². The newly developed susceptibility mapping can reveal the correlation between the particle hit-position position and the susceptibility to soft errors in a DRAM. The cell-mode soft-errors were found to take place by the incidence of ions within 6 μm around a monitored cell. These errors would be induced by minority carrier diffusion in a lateral direction. This result manifests the possibility of multiple-bit errors by the incidence of an energetic particle.     

Amplitude Statistics of Sea-Ice Clutter Using a Millimeter Wave Radar

Sea-ice clutter was measured using a millimeter wave radar with frequency of 34.86GHz and pulse length of 30ns. To determine the sea-ice clutter amplitude statistics, we investigated the log-normal, Weibull, log-Weibull and K-distributions using the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), which is more rigorous fit of the distribution to the data than the least-squares method. It is shown that the amplitude of sea-ice clutter obeys almost a log-Weibull distribution.