Stereotypic T cell receptor clonotypes in the thymus and peripheral blood of Myasthenia gravis patients.

Myasthenia Gravis (MG) patients with anti-acetylcholine receptor (AChR) antibodies frequently show hyperplastic thymi with ectopic germinal centers, where autoreactive B cells proliferate with the aid of T cells. In this study, thymus and peripheral blood (PB) samples were collected from ten AChR antibody-positive MG patients. T cell receptor (TCR) repertoires were analyzed using next-generation sequencing (NGS), and compared with that of an age and sex matched control group generated from a public database. Certain V genes and VJ gene recombination pairs were significantly upregulated in the TCR chains of αß-T cells in the PB of MG patients compared to the control group. Furthermore, the TCR chains found in the thymi of MG patients had a weighted distribution to longer CDR3 lengths when compared to the PB of MG patients, and the TCR beta chains (TRB) in the MG group's PB showed increased clonality encoded by one upregulated V gene. When TRB sequences were sub-divided into groups based on their CDR3 lengths, certain groups showed decreased clonality in the MG group's PB compared to the control group's PB. Finally, we demonstrated that stereotypic MG patient-specific TCR clonotypes co-exist in both the PB and thymi at a much higher frequency than that of the clonotypes confined to the PB. These results strongly suggest the existence of a biased T cell-mediated immune response in MG patients, as observed in other autoimmune diseases.

Relevance analysis using revision identifier in MS word.

Electronic documents often contain personal or confidential information, which can be used as valuable evidence in criminal investigations. In the digital investigation, special techniques are required for grouping and screening electronic documents, because it is challenging to analyze relationships between numerous documents in storage devices manually. To this end, although techniques such as keyword search, similarity search, topic modeling, metadata analysis, and document clustering are continually being studied, there are still limitations for revealing the relevance of documents. Specifically, metadata used in previous research are not always values present in the documents, and clustering methods with specific keywords may be incomplete because text-based contents (including metadata) can be easily modified or deleted by users. In this work, we propose a novel method to efficiently group Microsoft Office Word 2007+ (MS Word) files by using revision identifier (RSID). Through a thorough understanding of the RSID, examiners can predict organizations to which a specific user belongs, and further, it is likely to discover unexpected interpersonal relationships. An experiment with a public dataset (GovDocs) provides that it is possible to categorize documents more effectively by combining our proposal with previously studied methods. Furthermore, we introduce a new document tracking method to understand the editing history and movement of a file, and then demonstrate its usefulness through an experiment with documents from a real case.

Reassembling Linux-based Hybrid RAID.

Network-attached storage (NAS) is a system that uses a redundant array of disks (RAID) to create virtual disks comprising multiple disks and provide network services such as FTP, SSH, and WebDAV. Using these services, the NAS's virtual disks store data about individuals or groups, making them a critical analysis target for digital forensics. Well-known storage manufacturers like Seagate, Synology, and NETGEAR use Linux-based software RAID, and they usually support Berkeley RAID (e.g., RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and 10) as well as self-developed hybrid RAID. Those manufacturers have published data on the introduction and features of hybrid RAID, but there is not enough information to reassemble RAID from a digital forensic perspective. Besides, digital forensic tools (such as EnCase, FTK, X-ways, and RAID Reconstructor) do not support automatic RAID reassembly for hybrid RAID, so research on hybrid RAID reassembly methods is necessary. This paper analyzes the disk array composed of hybrid RAID and explains the layout of disk array, partition layout in hybrid RAID, and hybrid RAID configuration strategy. Furthermore, it suggests parameters that are required for RAID reassembly and then propose a hybrid RAID reassembly procedure using them. Finally, we propose a proof-of-concept tool (Hybrid RAID Reconstructor) that identifies hybrid RAID from disk array and parse RAID parameters.

Long-term outcomes of simplified gingivoperiosteoplasty performed at the time of hard palatal closure: A review of 55 alveolar clefts.

Few studies have examined the long-term outcomes of gingivoperiosteoplasty at the age of permanent canine eruption. The success rates of gingivoperiosteoplasty vary significantly depending on the surgeon because of the difficulty of the surgical technique. Therefore, the authors utilized a simplified gingivoperiosteoplasty technique by inserting one or two large, triangular-shaped mucoperiosteal flaps on the opposite side in a tongue-in-groove or interdigitation fashion. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the long-term outcomes of this simplified gingivoperiosteoplasty technique at the age of permanent canine eruption. Forty nonsyndromic cleft lip and palate patients who had undergone simplified gingivoperiosteoplasty were retrospectively reviewed. Canine eruption and the bone formation rate of the interalveolar septum using the Bergland method and a modified Long et al. method were evaluated. A total of 55 alveolar cleft sites were treated. Simplified gingivoperiosteoplasty was performed at a mean age of 13.4 months, and the mean age at the time of follow-up was 14.3 years. The overall success rate of simplified gingivoperiosteoplasty was 50.90%. With regard to cleft types, clefts of the primary palate and unilateral alveolar clefts showed a significantly higher success rate than clefts of the primary and secondary palates and bilateral alveolar clefts, respectively. Our gingivoperiosteoplasty technique is a simple surgical procedure and is performed at 12 months of age, at which time the cleft alveolus has grown sufficiently, to ensure the success of the delicate surgical technique. Therefore, we could obtain favorable outcomes.