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Teppei Hagino,1,2 Shizuka Okazaki,1 Naotaka Serizawa,1 Kaori Suzuki,1 Mio Kaga,2 Yohei Otsuka,2 Erina Mikami,2 Toshihiko Hoashi,2 Hidehisa Saeki,2 Hiroki Matsuda,3 Hiroshi Mitsui,3 Naoko Kanda1 1Department of Dermatology, Nippon Medical School Chiba Hokusoh Hospital, Inzai, Chiba, Japan; 2Department of Dermatology, Nippon Medical School, Tokyo, Japan; 3Department of Dermatology, Tokyo Teishin Hospital, Tokyo, JapanCorrespondence: Naoko KandaDepartment of Dermatology, Nippon Medical School Chiba Hokusoh Hospital, 1715 Kamagari, Inzai, Chiba, 270-1694 JapanTel +81 476 99 1111Fax +81 476 99 1909Email n-kanda@nms.ac.jpPurpose: Alopecia areata (AA) is characterized by non-scarring, patchy hair loss caused by autoimmune reactions to anagen hair follicles. The pathogenesis of AA may be affected by the diet. However, the dietary habits of patients with AA have not been precisely examined. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the dietary habits of patients with AA in comparison to those of healthy controls.Patients and Methods: We evaluated the dietary habits of 70 adult Japanese patients with AA using a brief-type self-administered diet history questionnaire and compared them to the habits of age- and sex-matched healthy controls.Results: Japanese patients with AA had a higher body mass index (BMI) and higher intakes of vitamin C and fruit than the controls. Logistic regression analysis showed that AA was associated with BMI. Retinol intake was positively correlated with severity of alopecia tool (SALT) score, and linear regression analysis revealed that retinol intake was a predictor of SALT score. Retinol intake among patients with moderate to severe AA (ie, a SALT score > 25) was higher than that in patients with mild AA (a SALT score ≤ 25). The mean age of AA patients with atopic dermatitis (AD) was lower than that of AA patients without AD; however, there were no differences in nutrient or food intake between these two groups. Logistic regression analysis showed that the comorbidity AD was negatively associated with age.Conclusion: AA was associated with a high BMI, and high retinol intake was a predictor of SALT score. Further studies should be conducted to clarify whether dietary intervention to reduce BMI or limit retinol intake can alter the development or severity of AA.Keywords: retinol, vitamin C, body mass index, atopic dermatitis

Embedded systems have been applied widely, not only to consumer products and industrial machines, but also to new applications such as ubiquitous or sensor networking. The increasing role of software (SW) in embedded system development has caused a great demand for embedded SW engineers, and university education for embedded SW engineering has become important. The embedded software engineers should learn system architecture design and hardware (HW) technologies as well as SW technologies. However, only a few universities offer education courses for embedded software engineering that include system architecture design and HW technologies. This paper proposes a student experiment method that is designed to nurture embedded SW engineers by teaching these technologies. The proposed method includes an experiment for embedded SW development, an experiment for embedded HW development and a HW/SW co-design experiment, which help students learn system architecture design skills such as system modeling, HW/SW tradeoff design, and SW and HW module design. A model of each experiment was developed and evaluated. (Contains 5 tables and 11 figures.)

Hiroko Mitsui,1,2 Hiroya Ohtake,1 Rintaro Ohe,1 Mitsunori Yamakawa1 1Department of Pathological Diagnostics, 2Department of Gastroenterology, Yamagata University Faculty of Medicine, Yamagata, Japan Abstract: Dendritic cells (DCs) are professional antigen presenting cells that initiate immune responses. We evaluated the relationship between DC infiltration, chemokines/chemokine receptors, and bile duct damage in primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC), compared to cases of cholangiocellular carcinoma arising from the bile duct. Immunohistochemistry revealed significantly more S-100 protein+ DCs infiltrating the epithelial layer of bile ducts in PBC than in chronic hepatitis C or control neonatal livers. Furthermore, a higher number of S-100 protein+ DCs, but not fascin+ or DC lysosomal associated membrane protein+ mature DCs, were found in the epithelial layer of the damaged bile ducts of the PBC liver. CC-chemokine receptor (CCR) 5+ immature DCs frequently accumulated in the portal area in PBC. CCR5 mRNA was also detected in liver tissues from PBC patients by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. In situ hybridization revealed the expression of macrophage inflammatory protein (MIP)-1α and MIP-1ß mRNA in the epithelial cells of damaged bile ducts. However, no CD1a+ immature DCs were found in any of the PBC or chronic hepatitis C specimens or in neonatal liver, whereas they occurred frequently in the cancer nests of cholangiocellular carcinoma, which expressed MIP-3α and were frequently infiltrated by CCR6+ DCs. These results indicate that bile ducts damaged by PBC secrete MIP-1α and MIP-1ß, while neoplastic ones secrete MIP-3α. They also suggest that CCR5+ immature DCs attracted by MIP-1α and MIP-1ß may play an important role in the pathogenesis of chronic nonsuppurative destructive cholangitis in PBC. Keywords: chemokines, cholangiocellular carcinoma, chronic nonsuppurative destructive cholangitis, dendritic cell, primary biliary cirrhosis

The highly stabilized superconducting solenoid has been fabricated successfully by the dry winding method with the appropriate design of former and ground insulators. In this work the unexpected decrease of quench current was remarked as the index of the instability in the superconducting solenoids because it becomes a serious problem in practical application. The change of the contact condition between the former and the winding was thought to induce the instability therefore the optimization of the contact condition was tried. The former with high thermal contraction and high rigidity and the ground insulator coated with the release film were selected for the solenoid design. It was found that the highly stable superconducting solenoids could be designed and fabricated by this selection.

Oil impregnated paper or polymer film is the main insulating system for many kinds of power apparatus. The oil impregnated materials, especially oil impregnated kraft paper, include a significant amount of water, and this water disturbs the insulating performance of the devices. The amount of water in the materials usually is represented by the difference in weight between the normal material and the same material after drying. However it is difficult to measure the absolute value of the water content and to determine the state in which the water exists in the materials. In this study, we examined the IR spectra of water in oil impregnated kraft paper, because the IR spectrum of the water indicates not only the amount of water but also its state. It was found that most of the water behaves as liquid water, and some as hydrogen bonded water, interacting with the paper fiber. The dc conductivity of the kraft paper depends only on the amount and state of the water associated with it whether or not the paper is impregnated with the oil.

The humidity or the dissolved water in insulating oils influences conduction and breakdown phenomena. The corrections between the amount of dissolved water and the electrical properties have been investigated. However, the effect of water has been based only on the total amount of water because in the past there was no way to observe the state of water in oil in an electrical field. With the availability of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) to characterize water clusters, the effect of water in transformer oil can be reassessed based not only on the amount of water, but also on the state of water. In this paper, IR spectra of water in several liquid hydrocarbons and conduction current were measured at the same time. The selection of the liquid hydrocarbons was made on the basis of the degree of polarizability of the liquids. Because of the water molecules combine with the polar structures by hydrogen bonding, the state of water depends on the polarizability of the oil. As a result, there is a difference in conduction phenomena depending on whether water is free or combined with the polar structure of the liquid.