Oncocytic hepatocellular carcinoma with numerous globular hyaline bodies

The current approach to the management of physician resources in Canada needs to be re-examined by all concerned. Canada is about to enter a phase of accelerating depletion of physicians as the result of two separate and evolving circumstances. Because of the unusually large number of physicians who graduated from Canadian medical schools in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a significantly larger than usual number of practising physicians will reach their normal retirement age in the decade ahead. In addition, if the recent surge in the emigration of Canadian physicians continues, the loss of so many physicians will exaggerate the impact of the expected increase in retirements. Therefore, the decision to cut medical school class sizes in the 1990s would have been more suitable in the early 1980s. Existing physician work force policies may be leading to unexpected or undeclared consequences for health care across Canada. On the basis of current trends, the author concludes that policy makers now should reconsider current physician workforce policies in anticipation of a possible shortfall of physicians beginning in the early decades of the next century.     

Hydration of β-dicalcium silicate at high temperatures under hydrothermal conditions

Hydration of β-dicalcium silicate was carried out under hydrothermal conditions at different temperatures from 50 °C to 400 °C up to 5 days by using two methods to start the reactions at room temperature or at a desired reaction temperature. 9 C-S-H phases with the same Ca/Si ratio as precursor (γ-dicalcium silicate hydrate and α-dicalcium silicate hydrate and dellaite), Ca-rich compositions (jaffeite and reinhardbraunsite), Si-rich compositions (Ca₈Si₅O₁₈, kilchoanite and foshagite), and C-S-H gel were obtained at the initial stage of the hydration of β-dicalcium silicate. The reaction products were different in dependence in the hydrothermal processes. It was found that α-dicalcium silicate hydrate was directly formed from β-dicalcium silicate at low temperatures below 220 °C. The products obtained at above 240 °C were different in dependence in the hydrothermal processes, due to the different decomposition route of γ-dicalcium silicate hydrate, the initial product from β-dicalcium silicate. The room temperature mixing method gave reinhardbraunsite and kilchoanite through Ca₈Si₅O₁₈. In the case of the high temperature mixing method, γ-dicalcium silicate hydrate decomposed to from Ca₈Si₅O₁₈ and reinhardbraunsite with jaffeite, then Ca₈Si₅O₁₈ decomposed to from jaffeite and kilchoanite, and final products at 400 °C were reinhardbraunsite and foshagite which was formed from kilchoanite.     

Assessment of energy consumption in desalination of sea water on the basis of conceptual designs and surveys

Energy equivalent of sea water desalination are quoted as the most suitable measure in the phase discussing here from various survey reports in Japan which include conceptual designs of desalting plants such as dual purpose systems and MSF processes to utilize industrial waste heats.These systems are alloted for supplementing the shortage of drinking water from rivers which may dependent on the rainfall. Then, a diagram is proposed to indicate preferable region for construction of desalting plants or river development from view points of both energy consumption and economyThese ideas were applied to the survey for introducting desalting plant in an industrial city and the necessary energy to produce fresh water from the sea was estimated for the case of 1/10 arid year. The amount of the order of a little less than 1% to the total energy consumption of the city should be evaluated from the view point of total human activities     

The preparation of ductile high strength Fe-base filaments using the methods of glass-coated melt spinning

High toughness glass-coated metallic fibres show great promise for use in composite materials as reinforcement for brittle matrixes such as fine ceramics. This paper describes the glass-coated melt spinning of austenitic steel and Fe-B base alloys in order to prepare a ductile high strength filament. The toughness was estimated from the area of the stress-strain curves of the filament obtained. Continuous high toughness steel filament, which had a maximum toughness of 6600 MPa% with a tensile strength of 3050 MPa and an elongation of 3.1% was obtained from the molten state at 1600 K for a winding speed of 7.95 m sec^–1. The filament was 3×10^–6m diameter and polycrystalline with a grain size of 1000×10^–10m. The crystal structure of the filament was a single b c c phase and the phase transformed into a stable f c c structure by heat treatment at 1073 K for 600sec. Ductile filaments of Fe_78-x Co₅Ni₅Cu₂B₁₀M _x (M _x Cr_5–20, Cr₅Si₃, Cr₅Co₅, Cr₅Ni₅, Cr₁₀Mo_0.5, Cr₁₀Nb_0.5) alloys were also successfully produced. The Fe_67.5Co₅Cr₁₀Ni₅Cu₂B₁₀Mo_0.5 filament had the highest toughness of 13 900 MPa% with tensile strength of 3760 MPa and an elongation of 4.8%. The filament had a single b c c phase.     

Preparation of alkaline-earth titanates by accelerated solid-state reaction in water vapor atmosphere

Alkaline-earth titanates, MTiO₃ (M = Mg, Ca, Sr and Ba), were prepared by solid-state reactions in air and water vapor atmospheres to investigate the effects of water vapor on the formation of MTiO₃. The formation of MTiO₃ was accelerated more or less by water vapor. Acceleration effect by water vapor increased in the following order: MgTiO₃ and CaTiO₃ ? SrTiO₃ < BaTiO₃. The formation of SrTiO₃ and BaTiO₃ was drastically accelerated by water vapor even though the coarse particles of SrCO₃ and BaCO₃ remained in the starting mixtures. The difference in its effect might be mainly attributed to the vapor pressure of M(OH)₂. Gas-phase transport of M(OH)₂ would become important for the formation of MTiO₃ by solid-state reactions in water vapor atmosphere.     

Response of osteoblast-like MG63 cells to TiO2 layer prepared by micro-arc oxidation and electric polarization

Micro-arc oxidation (MAO) is one of the useful surface modifications of titanium implants to improve bioactivity. Also, electric polarization treatment enhances bioactivity of calcium phosphate. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of the combination of two surface modifications, micro-arc oxidation (MAO) with electric polarization, on the behavior of osteoblast-like osteosarcoma MG63 cells. MAO-treated materials had a surface geometry that was favored by MG63 cells as determined using scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction; additionally, electric polarization induced surface electric fields, which were measured using thermally stimulated depolarization currents. The results of assays to study cell–material interactions suggest that these two approaches could regulate cell attachment, spreading, proliferation, and differentiation without the addition of other reagents. This new surface modification processes produce materials with a good surface geometry, generate surface electric fields and enhance the osteopromotive ability of osteoblasts.     

A maximum-likelihood strategy for directing attention during visualsearch

A precise analysis of an entire image is computationally wasteful if one is interested in finding a target object located in a subregion of the image. A useful “attention strategy” can reduce the overall computation by carrying out fast but approximate image measurements and using their results to suggest a promising subregion. The paper proposes a maximum-likelihood attention mechanism that does this. The attention mechanism recognizes that objects are made of parts and that parts have different features. It works by proposing object part and image feature pairings which have the highest likelihood of coming from the target. The exact calculation of the likelihood as well as approximations are provided. The attention mechanism is adaptive, that is, its behavior adapts to the statistics of the image features. Experimental results suggest that, on average, the attention mechanism evaluates less than 2 percent of all part-feature pairs before selecting the actual object, showing a significant reduction in the complexity of visual search     

An Identification Method of Magnetizing Inrush Current Phenomena by Voltage Waveform

In this paper, the authors propose a new method for identification of magnetizing inrush current phenomena. In general, the identification is performed using the current waveform. However, saturation of current transformers makes it impossible to obtain such a waveform. Therefore, the authors introduce an identification method using the voltage waveform, in which the transformer saturation voltage does not occur. By applying Aitken's Δ² process, it is shown that the new identification method gives accurate saturation start and end times.