Anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitis is an autoimmune disorder which affects small- and, to a lesser degree, medium-sized vessels. ANCA-associated vasculitis encompasses three disease phenotypes: granulomatosis with polyangiitis (GPA), microscopic polyangiitis (MPA), and eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (EGPA). This classification is largely based on clinical presentations and has several limitations. Recent research provided evidence that genetic background, risk of relapse, prognosis, and co-morbidities are more closely related to the ANCA serotype, proteinase 3 (PR3)-ANCA and myeloperoxidase (MPO)-ANCA, compared to the disease phenotypes GPA or MPA. This finding has been extended to the investigation of biomarkers predicting disease activity, which again more closely relate to the ANCA serotype. Discoveries related to the immunopathogenesis translated into clinical practice as targeted therapies are on the rise. This review will summarize the current understanding of the immunopathogenesis of ANCA-associated vasculitis and the interplay between ANCA serotype and proposed disease biomarkers and illustrate how the extending knowledge of the immunopathogenesis will likely translate into development of a personalized medicine approach in the management of ANCA-associated vasculitis.

To improve not only the basic performance but also the fail-safe performance, power consumption of the main landing gear for helicopters, a semi-active control landing gear using hybrid MR damper, was introduced in this paper. This damper of the configuration to install a permanent magnet in a electromagnet MR damper, was designed by the trade-off study on permanent magnet location and a magnet field analysis. Force control algorithm which keep the sum of air spring force and damping force at a specified value during landing, was used for the controller. The drop simulations using ADAMS Model for this semi-active control landing gear, were done. The improvement of the preceding performances as the result to evaluate the landing performance by the simulations, has been confirmed.

In this paper, we studied the shimmy phenomena of an aircraft nose landing gear considering free-play. Shimmy is a self-excited vibration in lateral and torsional directions of a landing gear during either the take-off or landing. This phenomena is caused by a couple of conditions such as low torsional stiffness of the strut, friction and free-play in the gear, wheel imbalance, or worn parts, and it may make an aircraft unstable. Free-play non-linearity is linearized by the described function for a stability analysis in a frequency domain, and time marching is performed using the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method. We performed the numerical simulation of the nose landing gear shimmy and investigated its linear and nonlinear characteristics. From the numerical results, we found limit-cycle-oscillations at the speed under linear shimmy speed for the case considering free-play and it can be concluded that the shimmy stability can be decreased by free-play.

Shimmy is a self-excited vibration in lateral and torsional directions of a landing gear during either the take-off or landing. It is caused by a couple of conditions such as a low torsional stiffness of the strut, a free-play in the landing gear, a wheel imbalance, or worn parts, and it may make the aircraft unstable. This study was performed for an analysis of the shimmy stability on a small aircraft. A nose landing gear was modeled as a linear system and characterized by state-equations which were used to analyze the stability both in the frequency and time-domain for predicting whether the shimmy occurs and investigating a good design range of the important parameters. The root-locus method and the 4th Runge-Kutta method were used for each analysis. Because the present system has a simple mechanism using a friction to reinforce the stability, the friction, a non-linear factor, was linearized by a describing function and considered in the analysis and observed the result of the instability reduction.

The shock absorber with magnetic effect is suggested for a lunar lander. The shock absorber consists of a metal tube, a piston rod, and several permanent magnets moved by a piston rod in the tube, and the shock energy can be dispersed and dissipated by magnetic effects such as the magnetic force existed between a metal and magnets and the eddy current effect generated by a relative motion with a conductor and magnets. Besides, the shock-absorbing effect similar to that of a coil spring can be obtained by arranging the magnets in line, which are facing the same polar each other. The device has a very simple structure and is usable in space due to the unnecessariness of any oil or gas. The shock absorber was designed and manufactured for experiments and its spring and damping characteristics were studied by the theoretical, analytical and experimental methods.