Lactate metabolism and lactic acidosis

Lactate can be viewed as a metabolic dead end in that it can only be produced or utilized via pyruvate. Lactate production is determined primarily by pyruvate concentration and to a lesser extend by the redox state. Increased lactate production may result from tissue hypoxia, alkalosis, catecholamine and alanine transamination to pyruvate. Hyperlactatemia is observed in many pathological conditions. Current diagnostic criteria for lactic acidosis are a pH less than 7.35 and lactate concentration greater than 5 to 6 mmol/l. In our study series, malignancy was the most common underlying disease accompanied by lactic acidosis. Organ failure, cardiovascular disease and diabetes mellitus were also common. The prognosis of patients with these diseases were grave. In cases of lactic acidosis associated with diabetes mellitus, alcoholic liver disease, rhabdomyolysis and diabetic comas were noticeable as complications. Alcohol abuse was the most common cause of lactic acidosis associated with diabetes mellitus. In these cases, laboratory data showed prominent hyperlactatemia, hyperglycemia and acidemia and elevated anion gap. The mortality rate in these cases was 36% and higher in cases with organ failure. Treatment of lactic acidosis consists of alkalization by sodium bicarbonate with carbicarb, insulin-glucose-infusion, dichloroacetate therapy, tham administration, bicarbonate-buffered peritoneal dialysis and high bicarbonate-containing dialysis.     

Machine learning approach for finding business partners and building reciprocal relationships

Business development is vital for any firms. However, globalization and the rapid development of technologies have made it difficult to find appropriate business partners such as suppliers and customers, and build reciprocal relationships among them, while it simultaneously offers many opportunities. In this contribution, we propose AI-based approach to find plausible candidates of business partners using firm profiles and transactional relationships among them. We employ machine learning techniques to build a prediction model of customer–supplier relationships. We applied our approach to the large amount of actual business data. The results showed that our approach successfully found potential business partners with F-values of about 84% and reciprocity among them with F-values of about 77%. Using our method, we also developed the Web-based system that helps people in actual businesses to find their new business partners. These contribute to developing one’s own business in the complicated, specialized and rapidly changing business environments of recent years.     

The Attitude Control Performance of the BSE and its Influence on the Received Television Signal Strengths on the Ground

The Japanese Medium-scale Broadcasting Satellite for Experimental Purpose (BSE) is a zero-momentum three-axis stabilized spacecraft and has the ability to broadcast simultaneously two channels of color television in the frequency band of 12 GHz.     

Using acknowledgement data to characterize funding organizations by the types of research sponsored: the case of robotics research

Funded research has been linked to academic production and performance. While the presence of funding acknowledgements may serve as an indicator of quality to some extent, we still lack tools to evaluate whether funding agencies allocate resources to novel and innovative research rather than mature fields. We address this issue in the present study by using bibliometrics. In particular, we exploit the citation network properties of academic articles to classify specific research fields into four categories: change maker, breakthrough, incremental, and matured. We then use funding acknowledgement information to identify the sponsors involved in each research type to characterize funding agencies. We focus our analysis on the robotics field in order to reveal international trends of financial acknowledgements. We find that the incremental and matured research areas show the highest counts of funding acknowledgements. Moreover, although research funded by some agencies is mostly recognized as incremental-type research, those in other categories may perform better in terms of the number of citations. Additionally, we analyze the interest of selected funding agencies in granular subject categories. The characterization of funding agencies in this study may help policymakers and funding organizations assess or adjust their strategies, benchmark with other key players, and obtain an overview of local and global acknowledgement trends.     

Stimulatory and inhibitory effects of protein amino acids on growth rate and efficiency of mixed ruminal bacteria

Mixed ruminal bacteria were incubated in vitro with glucose, xylose, cellobiose, and various protein amino acids replaced isonitrogenously with 25% (i.e., 25 mg of N/L) of ammonia-N, to determine the growth rate and the amount of sugar consumed in the exponential growth phase. The growth rate and efficiency (grams of bacteria per gram of sugars) increased by 46 and 15%, respectively, when a mixture of 20 amino acids was added. On the other hand, neither growth rate nor efficiency increased when any one of these amino acids was added singly, except for Glu and Gln, each of which produced significant but small improvements. The stimulatory effect of the combined amino acids on bacterial growth declined when each of Leu, Trp, Tyr, Glu, Met, Phe, and Val was removed from the original group of 20. When a mixture of only these seven amino acids was used as a supplement, their stimulatory effects on growth rate and efficiency were only 21 and 25%, respectively, of the effects that the mixture of 20 amino acids showed. The effects increased to 76 and 72% on growth rate and efficiency, respectively, when Gly, Cys, and His were supplied in addition to the seven amino acids. The growth rate and efficiency of the ruminal bacteria were inhibited by an addition of each of Ile, Thr, Cys, Phe, Leu, Lys, or Val to ammonia-N, and the effects of the first five of these amino acids were highly significant. Isoleucine, threonine, and phenylalanine were each inhibitory even at a low concentration (1 mg of NL), while cysteine and leucine showed inhibitory effects at higher concentrations (more than 10 mg of N/L). A higher growth rate of the ruminal bacteria when supplemented with amino acid mixtures was accompanied with a higher growth efficiency, which was attributable to a relatively smaller proportion of energy expended on maintenance according to the Pirt derivation.     

Application of the distinct element method to the analysis of the concrete members under impact

In this paper, the distinct element method is applied to the analysis of the behavior of a structure under impact. At first, this method is applied to the one-dimensional wave propagation problem by comparing with the experimental results and the theoretical results. The effectiveness of this method is confirmed by including not only elastic behavior but also the fracture of a structural member. Second, this method is developed to two-dimensional problems to simulate the behavior of a simply supported beam under an impact load. Finally, it could be shown that this method is effective to simulate wide phenomena from elastic behavior to a fracture under impact.     

The influence of dietary lipids on nephrolithiasis in rats

PURPOSE: The influence of dietary lipids on nephrolithogenesis is unclear. In the present study, I investigated the role of dietary lipids concerning both the etiology and the prevention of nephrolithiasis using 9-week-old male Wistar rats. METHODS: Study 1: The rats were divided into five groups and reared on standard, low protein, high protein and high cholesterol diets for 23 weeks. Study 2: The effects of cholesterol on nephrolithiasis was examined. The animals were given a 30 intraperitoneal injection of 2 ml of 8.5% calcium gluconate. Study 3: A nephrolithiasis model was prepared by intraperitoneal administration of 40 mg/kg of glyoxylic acid and 0.25 microgram of vitamin D3 daily for 2 weeks. The inhibitory effects of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) on nephrolithiasis were studied. RESULTS: Study 1: In the groups given the high protein and high cholesterol diets, an increase in renal osteopontin-mRNA, one of the major matrix ingredients of stones containing calcium, was observed. Study 2: Microlith was more frequently observed in the high cholesterol group than in the standard diet group. Study 3: In the EPA group, lithiasis was less extensively than in the groups administered distilled water or olive oil, and this was assumed to be caused by factors other than inorganic substances such as calcium and oxalic acid in the urine. When the renal tissue specimens in Studies 2 and 3 were examined, initial calcium deposition was found to start from the basement membrane of renal tubular cells and gradually spread throughout the cells. CONCLUSION: These results suggested that cholesterol is a risk factor in nephrolithiasis, and EPA is effective in its prevention. The elimination of hyperlipidemia should be included in dietary instructions for nephrolithiasis patients.