We report a case of Crohn's disease associated with nephrotic syndrome due to renal amyloidosis in a 21-year-old man in whom remission of both Crohn's disease and the nephrotic syndrome has been maintained with an elemental diet. The patient developed toxic megacolon and nephrotic syndrome due to renal amyloidosis. Intensive intravenous prednisolone therapy with total parenteral nutrition was dramatically effective in treating the toxic megacolon and inducing remission in Crohn's disease and afterward, remission of the nephrotic syndrome. Remission of both conditions has been maintained for more than 2 years with the elemental diet. To our knowledge, this is the first confirmed case of Crohn's disease complicated with renal amyloidosis in which only slight proteinuria (below 0.3 g/day) was shown with an elemental diet used for a long period.

The inverse kinematics of a free-floating variable geometry truss are formulated in conjunction with the conservation of momentum, and the Moore-Penrose inverse is employed to give the solution. Based on the generalized Jacobian matrix, a two-order solution of task priority is derived, and its possible applications to obstacle avoidance, shape control, and free-endplane control are also discussed. Moreover, the issues of the dynamic singularities of a free-floating variable geometry truss are addressed, and an approach through actively handling the orientation of the free-endplane of a free-floating variable geometry truss is proposed to reduce the coupling of singularities with its dynamic parameters. With the aim of applications in space engineering, a free-floating variable geometry truss model is manufactured and set up in the laboratory, and a distributed control architecture is constructed to provide it with an effective parallel control. Finally, a docking experiment with this model is carried out.Shenyang Huang received his B.Eng. degree in applied machanics from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, in 1983 and the M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees, both in computational mechanics, from Dalian

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It is well known that the superfinishing is a high efficient surface finishing method to cylindrical workpieces. In this method, grinding stones are pressed to the outside of cylindrical surfaces. Rotating cylindrical workpieces and making relative vibrations between grinding stones and ground surfaces in the directions of the center lines of workpiece rotations, the cylindrical surfaces are ground and mirror surfaces are realized relatively in short time. Therefore, this finishing method is widely applied to the finishing of precise machine elements. However, this method cannot be applied in case of that the workpiece which is not simple cylindrical geometries so far. In this study, a new application method of superfinishing to the cylindrical workpieces having curved parts is proposed and its performance is discussed experimentally.

In order to obtain the effective depth of cut on the ground surface, a new grinding process model taking into account thermal expansions of the grinding wheel and the workpiece, elastic deformations of the grinding machine, the grinding wheel and the workpiece and the wheel wear was proposed. Using proposed model, the effective depth of cut was calculated using measured results of the applied depth of cut and the normal grinding force.