Contribution of Invariant Natural Killer T Cells to the Clearance of Pseudomonas aeruginosa from Skin Wounds

Chronic infections are considered one of the most severe problems in skin wounds, and bacteria are present in over 90% of chronic wounds. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is frequently isolated from chronic wounds and is thought to be a cause of delayed wound healing. Invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells, unique lymphocytes with a potent regulatory ability in various inflammatory responses, accelerate the wound healing process. In the present study, we investigated the contribution of iNKT cells in the host defense against P. aeruginosa inoculation at the wound sites. We analyzed the re-epithelialization, bacterial load, accumulation of leukocytes, and production of cytokines and antimicrobial peptides. In iNKT cell–deficient (Jα18KO) mice, re-epithelialization was significantly decreased, and the number of live colonies was significantly increased, when compared with those in wild-type (WT) mice on day 7. IL-17A, and IL-22 production was significantly lower in Jα18KO mice than in WT mice on day 5. Furthermore, the administration of α-galactosylceramide (α-GalCer), a specific activator of iNKT cells, led to enhanced host protection, as shown by reduced bacterial load, and to increased production of IL-22, IL-23, and S100A9 compared that of with WT mice. These results suggest that iNKT cells promote P. aeruginosa clearance during skin wound healing.     

Effect of oxygen potential on the sintering behavior of MgO-based heterogeneous fuels containing (Pu, Am)O2−x

The effect of oxygen potential on the sintering behavior of MgO-based heterogeneous fuels containing (Pu, Am)O_2−x was experimentally investigated. Sintering tests in various atmospheres, i.e. air, moisturized 4%H₂-Ar, and 4%H₂-Ar atmosphere, were carried out. The sintering behavior was found to be significantly affected by the oxygen potential in the sintering atmosphere. The sintered density decreased with decreasing oxygen potential. The (Pu, Am)O_2−x phase sintered in a reductive atmosphere had hypostoichiometry. The aggregates of the (Pu, Am)O_2−x phase sintered in the reductive atmosphere grew, in comparison with those in the oxidizing one. The sintering mechanism was discussed in terms of the difference in sintering behavior of (Pu, Am)O_2−x and MgO.     

A Method for Automatic Detection of Vocal Fry

Vocal fry (also called creak, creaky voice, and pulse register phonation) is a voice quality that carries important linguistic or paralinguistic information, depending on the language. We propose a set of acoustic measures and a method for automatically detecting vocal fry segments in speech utterances. A glottal pulse-synchronized method is proposed to deal with the very low fundamental frequency properties of vocal fry segments, which cause problems in the classic short-term analysis methods. The proposed acoustic measures characterize power, aperiodicity, and similarity properties of vocal fry signals. The basic idea of the proposed method is to scan for local power peaks in a ldquovery short-termrdquo power contour for obtaining glottal pulse candidates, check for periodicity properties, and evaluate a similarity measure between neighboring glottal pulse candidates for deciding the possibility of being vocal fry pulses. In the periodicity analysis, autocorrelation peak properties are taken into account for avoiding misdetection of periodicity in vocal fry segments. Evaluation of the proposed acoustic measures in the automatic detection resulted in 74% correct detection, with an insertion error rate of 13%.     

The Need of Terahertz Cameras for Standardizing Sensitivity Measurements

The applicability of a blackbody source to sensitivity measurements and calibration of an uncooled Terahertz (THz) focal plane array (FPA) is discussed, but the combination of a blackbody source and a band-pass filter may not be suitable for these purposes. Two ways to measure the minimum detectable power (MDP) of uncooled THz-FPAs are described and compared when used with strong THz sources such as a quantum cascade laser (QCL). The MDP is defined as the radiant power that produces a signal-to-noise ratio of unity in the output of a THz imager that uses a THz-FPA operating at a TV frame rate. One method (method 1) is based on the hypothesis that the beam pattern of the THz source is close to a Gaussian pattern. In another method (method 2), the signal level of the background in an image that does not contain a THz source is subtracted from the signal of the image. While method 2 is more flexible, how large the signals coming from THz source should be, as compared with the noise level, remains to be defined. Finally, based on issues with the current non-uniformity correction (NUC) technique, specifications are proposed for THz source power and wobbling technique to obtain uniform illumination for an ideal NUC technique.     

Evidence and a computational explanation of cultural differences in facial expression recognition.

Facial expressions are crucial to human social communication, but the extent to which they are innate and universal versus learned and culture dependent is a subject of debate. Two studies explored the effect of culture and learning on facial expression understanding. In Experiment 1, Japanese and U.S. participants interpreted facial expressions of emotion. Each group was better than the other at classifying facial expressions posed by members of the same culture. In Experiment 2, this reciprocal in-group advantage was reproduced by a neurocomputational model trained in either a Japanese cultural context or an American cultural context. The model demonstrates how each of us, interacting with others in a particular cultural context, learns to recognize a culture-specific facial expression dialect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

MICROSTRUCTURE CHANGE OF LASER SURFACE REMELTING WC-Co COATING

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The intratumoral levels of thymidylate synthetase and folate in gastric and colon cancer

Currently, biochemical modulation for 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) is one of the most successful chemotherapy for both colo-rectal and gastric cancer. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the significance of measuring intratumoral thymidylate synthetase (TS) and folate (FH4) levels as predictive parameters for the successful treatment. Samples were collected from 16 advanced colo-rectal and 21 advanced gastric cancer. TS and tetrahydrofolate levels in the specimens were measured by binding assay. Results showed that there were no significant difference in TS levels between the different pathologic types of carcinoma. On the other hand, well (3.94 +/- 1.75 p mol/g) and moderately (5.95 +/- 2.69 p mol/g) differentiated carcinoma showed lower FH4 levels compared to poorly differentiated carcinoma (9.58 +/- 5.27 p mol/g). In conclusion, biochemical modulation by cisplatin or leucovorin, which elevates intratumoral folate levels, is more needed for well and moderately differentiated carcinoma. Finally, measuring TS levels can also be important because two cases who responded to cisplatin/5-FU chemotherapy showed low TS levels compared to the others who had lower response.     

Cytodiagnosis of placental site trophoblastic tumor. A report of two cases

Phorbol esters exert a dual function in human leukemia cells, induction of differentiation and activation of integrin-mediated functions. Here we have shown that the plastic adherence of phorbol ester-treated U937 cells is mediated by expression of integrin Mac-1 (CD11b/CD18) on the cell surface and that these adherent cells exhibit anoikis (apoptosis when adherent cells are detached or adherence is inhibited). We used U937-derived clones overexpressing either antisense RNAs antisense to CD11b and CD18 mRNAs or mRNA from a truncated mutant CD11b gene. We have also shown that apoptosis in non-adherent cells or anoikis was mediated by sphingosine and that survival of adherent cells was achieved by a shift of the dynamic balance between sphingosine and sphingosine 1-phosphate toward the latter by adherence-activated sphingosine 1-kinase.