Abstract. Recent research has focused on the effects of ambient particulate pollution and much evidence has indicated that particulate pollution is associated with the onset of asthma and allergy; however, the effect of diesel exhaust particles (DEP) on the development of allergen-induced airway remodeling has not been fully investigated in vivo. In the present study, we examined the effects of DEP on Dermatophagoides farinae allergens (Der f)-induced asthma-like phenotypes in mice. Mice were administered i.t. 8 times with Der f. DEP were injected i.t. with Der f 4 times throughout the experiment or twice at the sensitization period. In both cases, DEP aggravated Der f-induced increases in airway responsiveness to acetylcholine, the number of eosinophils and neutrophils in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF), serum Der f-specific IgG1 levels, Th2 cytokines and transforming growth factor-β 1 levels in BALF, and amount of hydroxyproline in the right lungs. Furthermore, goblet cell hyperplasia and subepithelial fibrosis were also markedly aggravated. These findings indicate that DEP can potentiate airway remodeling induced by repeated allergen challenge as well as Th2-drived airway hyperresponsiveness, eosinophilic inflammation, and IgG1 production and that DEP can exhibit adjuvant activity for airway remodeling, probably due to the enhancement of allergen sensitization and/or of Th2 polarizing pathways.

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Perception and categorization of objects in a visual scene are essential to grasp the surrounding situation. However, it is unclear how neural activities in spatially-distributed brain regions, especially in the aspect of temporal dynamics, represent visual objects. To address this issue, we explored spatial and temporal organization of visual object representations using concurrent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG), combined with neural decoding by deep neural networks (DNNs). Visualization of the fMRI DNN revealed that visual categorization (faces or non-face objects) occurred in brain-wide cortical regions, including the ventral temporal cortex. Interestingly, the EEG DNN valued the earlier phase of neural responses for categorization and the later phase of neural responses for sub-categorization. Combination of both DNNs improved classification performance for both categorization and sub-categorization. These deep learning-based results demonstrate a categorization principle in which visual objects are represented in a spatially organized and coarse-to-fine manner.

An 89-year-old woman developed aortic dissection (type B) with unruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm measuring 40 mm. She has treated atrial fibrillation with direct oral anticoagulants (DOAC); then, we switched to antihypertensive therapy and discontinued DOAC. Eight days post-admission contrastenhanced computed tomography showed a new floating mural thrombus (37×27 mm) in the abdominal aortic aneurysm. DOAC was resumed without surgery owing to advanced age and frailty. The new floating thrombus disappeared 3 months later. Drug therapy should be considered for new floating thrombi in aneurysms if they show both low with no echoic areas (AC sign) on echography.