Effect of a dietary supplement containing glucosamine hydrochloride, chondroitin sulfate and quercetin glycosides on symptomatic knee osteoarthritis: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study

BACKGROUND: Oral glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate, alone and in combination, have been used worldwide for the treatment of osteoarthritis (OA), but their efficacy is controversial. This clinical study was aimed at investigating the potential of a dietary supplement containing glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate in combination with derivatives of quercetin, a naturally occurring flavonoid, (GCQ supplement) for knee OA care. RESULTS: A randomized, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled study was conducted in 40 Japanese subjects with symptomatic knee OA. Subjects were randomly assigned to GCQ supplement (1200 mg glucosamine hydrochloride, 60 mg chondroitin sulfate and 45 mg quercetin glycosides per day) or placebo and the treatment and follow‐up were continued for 16 weeks. The results of symptomatic efficacy assessment based on Japanese Orthopaedic Association criteria showed that scores for two of the four symptom/function subscales, as well as the aggregate scores, were significantly improved at week 16 or earlier in the GCQ group compared to the placebo group. Moreover, analyses of cartilage metabolism biomarkers showed a trend of improvement in type II collagen synthesis/degradation balance in the GCQ group during follow‐up. CONCLUSION: GCQ supplement was thought to be more effective than placebo in decreasing the intensity of knee OA‐associated clinical symptoms. Copyright © 2011 Society of Chemical Industry     

PCR-mediated seamless gene deletion and marker recycling in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Repeated gene manipulations can be performed in yeast by excision of an introduced marker. Cassette modules containing a marker flanked by two direct repeat sequences of hisG or loxP have often been used for marker recycling, but these leave one copy of the repeats in the chromosome after excision. Genomic copies of a repeat can cause increased mistargeting of constructs containing the same repeats or unexpected chromosomal rearrangements via intra- or interchromosomal recombinations. Here, we describe a novel marker recycling procedure that leaves no scar in the genome, which we have designated seamless gene deletion. A 40 base sequence derived from an adjacent region to the targeted locus was placed in an integrating construct to generate direct repeats after integration. Seamless HIS3 deletion was achieved via a PCR fragment that consisted of a URA3 marker attached to a 40 base repeat-generating sequence flanked by HIS3 targeting sequences at both ends. Transformation of the designed construct resulted in his3 disruption and the generation of 40 base direct repeats on both sides of URA3 in the targeted locus. The resulting his3::URA3 disruptants were plated on 5-fluoroorotic acid medium to select for URA3 loss. All the selected colonies had lost URA3 precisely by recombination between the repeats, resulting in his3 deletion without any extraneous sequences left behind in the chromosome.     

Single-shot surface profiling by local model fitting

A new surface profiling algorithm called the local model fitting (LMF) method is proposed. LMF is a single-shot method that employs only a single image, so it is fast and robust against vibration. LMF does not require a conventional assumption of smoothness of the target surface in a band-limit sense, but we instead assume that the target surface is locally constant. This enables us to recover sharp edges on the surface. LMF employs only local image data, so objects covered with heterogeneous materials can also be measured. The LMF algorithm is simple to implement and is efficient in computation. Experimental results showed that the proposed LMF method works very well.     

金属推快V—带型CVT的研究部分4：速比变化时金属块上的作用力

６个力作用于金属推块Ｖ－带的推块上,前文我们采用测量推块和遥测装置成功地测出了稳态下这６个作用力。本文采用相同的试验和测量装置测出速比变化从低到高或相反的不稳定状态下的６个作用力。实验结果表示除法向力和环与推块间的摩擦力外其余４个力的分布形式是稳态不同的。     

Effect of Trace Amounts of NaCl Vapor on High-Temperature Oxidation of TiAl

The effect of trace amounts of NaCl vapor on thehigh-temperature oxidation of TiAl was examined bythermogravimetry and analysis of the scale formed onTiAl. The mass gain due to oxidation at 1273 K in O₂ with trace amounts of NaCl vaporwas far lower than that in pure O₂ withoutNaCl vapor. This low mass gain in the atmosphere withtrace amounts of NaCl vapor resulted from the saturationbehavior of mass gain during the initial period ofoxidation. It was found from X-ray photoemissionspectroscopy (XPS) analyses of the specimen surface thatthe oxide film formed during the initial period in theatmosphere with trace amounts of NaCl vapor consisted ofdense Al₂O₃, thus, the lowoxidation rate of TiAl was attributed to a protectiveoxide film of denseAl₂O₃.     

Batch-adaptive ship's autopilots*

Sea conditionsand ship's motions might be considered as a locally stationary process. This paper proposes an on-line fitting procedure using the AIC to such a process and applies it to design two kinds of batch-adaptive autopilot systems. In the first one, the ship's manoeuvring motion including yawing, rolling and rudder motions are modelled by using a MARX model and at the end of every batch period, an on-line judgement for the following period is carried out by applying the minimum AIC procedure and the best MARX model to represent the present states of the manoeuvring motion. The second autopilot is an extension of the adaptation rule to a noise-adaptive autopilot system. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A novel polyethylene–chlorella composite. I. Characterization of chlorella biologically fixing CO2

Chlorella, a microalga massively produced from biological fixation of CO₂, was investigated to evaluate the possibility of processing it with polyethylene. Chlorella grain, a hollow aggregate sphere constituted of chlorella cells binding with each other by hydrogen bonds, exhibits a higher thermal stability than cellulose and strong resistance to cracking under mechanical forces up to 150 MPa, possibly due to the spherical structure and unique manner of assembly of chlorella cells. These characteristics of chlorella strongly indicate that it can resist deformation and thermal decomposition in a compounding process with polyethylene. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 77: 2278–2284, 2000     

Thermal decomposition behavior of miscible cellulose/synthetic polymer blends

The thermal decomposition behavior of the miscible cellulosic blends cellulose(Cell)/poly(N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone) (PVP), Cell/poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), and Cell/poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) was investigated by thermogravimetry. The thermal stability of Cell in the Cell/PVP blends decreased but that of Cell in the Cell/PEG and Cell/PVA blends was hardly influenced. The thermal stability of synthetic polymers in the blends was little affected. The difference in thermal decomposition behavior was correlated to the difference in miscibility. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 69: 2133–2137, 1998     

Three-Dimensional Analysis of Fragmentation Process of Al3Ti Platelet Particles in Al–Al3Ti Multiphase Alloy Deformed by Asymmetric Rolling

Asymmetric rolling (ASR) can introduce larger shear strains than symmetric rolling (SR). Therefore, application of ASR to metal-based multiphase alloy containing platelet particles will yield different particle distributions compared with SR. In this study, differences in the fragmentation behavior of Al₃Ti platelet particles in Al–Al₃Ti multiphase alloy after SR or ASR were investigated in three dimensions. The size of the Al₃Ti platelet particles in the ASR-treated multiphase alloy was smaller than that in the SR-treated multiphase alloy. The platelet shape of the Al₃Ti particles in the multiphase alloy deformed by rolling was retained because deformation by rolling occurs via plane strain. The results show that both SR and ASR can be used to modify the distribution of Al₃Ti platelet particles in Al–Al₃Ti multiphase alloy, but that ASR can change it more severely.

     

BPF: a novel cluster boundary points detection method for static and streaming data

Data points situated near a cluster boundary are called boundary points and they can represent useful information about the process generating this data. The existing methods of boundary points detection cannot differentiate boundary points from outliers as they are affected by the presence of outliers as well as by the size and density of clusters in the dataset. Also, they require tuning of one or more parameters and prior knowledge of the number of outliers in the dataset for tuning. In this research, a boundary points detection method called BPF is proposed which can effectively differentiate boundary points from outliers and core points. BPF combines the well-known outlier detection method Local Outlier Factor (LOF) with Gravity value to calculate the BPF score. Our proposed algorithm StaticBPF can detect the top-m boundary points in the given dataset. Importantly, StaticBPF requires tuning of only one parameter i.e. the number of nearest neighbors \((k)\) and can employ the same \(k\) used by LOF for outlier detection. This paper also extends BPF for streaming data and proposes StreamBPF. StreamBPF employs a grid structure for improving k-nearest neighbor computation and an incremental method of calculating BPF scores of a subset of data points in a sliding window over data streams. In evaluation, the accuracy of StaticBPF and the runtime efficiency of StreamBPF are evaluated on synthetic and real data where they generally performed better than their competitors.