Duncan's dermatosis: from the "terra firma-forme" to a possible syndromic condition. The story of a dirty disease.

Since its first description by Duncan, Tschen and Knox in 1987 in the former Archives of Dermatology (1), "Terra firma-forme dermatosis" has been variously described in medical literature, representing a strange, probably underestimated, cutaneous disease. During the last 40 years, the condition has been recorded as an undesirable as well as unexplained event, occurring mainly in childhood, characterized by a brownish-black appearance of the whole skin, resembling dirt. Recently, authors described several cases of atypical patterns of the disease, sometimes with impressing topographic clinical pictures, evocative for syndromic phenotypes. Thanks to more careful examination of the tegument, often with the aid of non-invasive diagnostic tools, attention to this disease is growing. This brief review summarizes the state of the art on the topic, through an historical overview of what is known of this 'dirty' dermatosis.

Metaplastic Breast Cancer.

Metaplastic Breast Cancer (MBC) is a term referring to a heterogeneous group with malignant epithelial and mesenchymal tissue components. MBC is a rare disease, accounting for 0.2% of all breast cancers. Most MBC are triple negative cancers with poor prognosis and an aggressive clinical course. Herein, we aimed to present a 74-year-old patient with metaplastic breast cancer along with clinical, radiologic and pathologic properties.

Treatment of cadmium and nickel electroplating rinse water by electrocoagulation.

Treatments of cadmium-cyanide and nickel-cyanide electroplating rinse water were investigated in an electrochemical reactor equipped with iron plate electrodes in a batch mode by electrocoagulation (EC). Effects of the process variables such as pH, current density, and operating time were explored with respect to removal efficiencies of cadmium, nickel and cyanide in electroplating rinse water and operating costs as well. Removal efficiencies and operating costs under the optimum conditions (30 A/m2, 30 min and pH 8-10 for cadmium; 60A/m2, 80 min and pH 8-10 for nickel) for the EC process in electroplating rinse water were determined as 99.4% and 1.05/m3 for cadmium, 99.1% and 2.45/m3 for nickel and > 99.7% for cyanide, respectively. The results indicated that EC was very effective treatment for the removals of cadmium, nickel, and cyanide ions from the electroplating rinse water.