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Solitary fibrous tumors of the pleura are rare neoplasms with both benign and malignant behaviors that are not reliably predicted by histologic findings. We report the case of a 55-year-old woman with recurrent pneumonias whose left mainstem bronchus was occluded by a 2.1- x 1.4-cm endobronchial mass that extended extraluminally into the subcarina. The mass was tissue diagnosed to be a solitary fibrous tumor preoperatively, and was completely resected by sleeve resection of the left mainstem bronchus with lung preservation. This report describes the challenging surgical management of an infrequently encountered tumor in a unique location., (Copyright 2010 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

CD4(+)CD25(bright) regulatory T cells (T(reg)) play an important role in cancer-mediated immunosuppression. We and others have previously shown that prostaglandin E2 (PGE(2)) and transforming growth factor beta (TGF-beta) induce CD4(+)CD25(bright)FOXP3(+)T(reg). Based on these studies, we investigated the requirement for PGE(2) in Treg induction by TGF-beta. TGF-beta stimulation of human CD4(+) T cells induced COX-2-dependent production of PGE(2). PGE(2)-neutralizing antibody treatment significantly reduced the suppressive function of TGF-beta-induced T(reg) (TGF-beta-T(reg)) in vitro. TGF-beta concentration measured in the plasma of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients directly correlated with the frequency of circulating CD4(+)CD25(bright)FOXP3(+)T cells. Flow cytometry analysis showed increased FOXP3 expression in circulating CD4(+)CD25(+)HLA-DR- cells of lung cancer patients compared to control subjects. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed co-expression of TGF-beta, COX-2, and FOXP3 in serial sections from resected lung tumor tissues. All together these observations suggest interplay between TGF-beta and COX-2 in the induction of T(reg) activities. Interrupting TGF-beta and PGE(2) signaling may be important in therapeutic interventions that aim to limit T(reg)function in lung cancer.

Hearing impaired persons (HIPs) are afraid of walking along a street and living a life alone. If they can successfully get sound information via some machine interface, dangerous situations outdoors will be avoided, and their quality of life indoors will be improved. This paper describes a notification system for transmitting sound information to HIPs with two-channel electrotactile stimulation, assuming that it is used both outdoors and indoors. The proposed system consists of two subsystems: one is a block which detects sound information and another one is to transmit the detected sound information with electrotactile stimulation. In the system developed, sound information is provided with the attention arousal, notifying the direction of the sound source (four states) and the sound category (seven states). Thus, 28 states of sound information are sent. We adopted 12 stimulation patterns comprising several burst profiles, each burst composed of several pulses modulated in amplitude. In the first subsystem, recognition ratio of the direction was 90% and detection ratio of the sound category was 80%. In the second subsystem, recognition experiments for the direction of the sound source and the sound category performed for four healthy subjects showed that the average percentages of correct recognition were 91 % and 89 %, and the reaction times 1.21 seconds and 1.62 seconds. These results suggested the possible applicability of the proposed system to assist HIPs.