An unusual presentation of congenital infantile myofibromatosis arising from the interspinous ligament

The authors describe an extremely rare presentation of congenital infantile myofibromatosis. A full-term newborn boy presented with a thumb-sized subcutaneous mass on the mid-spinal line between the 2nd and 3rd lumbar spinous processes. A solid tumor arising from the interspinous ligament was resected. Microscopic and immunohistochemical studies revealed myofibromatosis.     

An Analysis of Two Liquid-State Adaptive Feedback Experiments

Adaptive feedback experiments, which provide an engineering oriented approach to optimizing a desired target in a molecular process, have been extensively developed over the past decade. Efforts to extract the control mechanisms that underlie the observed control have, however, only recently begun in earnest. We describe the results of the analyses of two liquid state adaptive feedback experiments, showing that the resultant control takes little advantage of coherent quantum effects.     

Construction of a novel beer proteome map and its use in beer quality control

Beer proteins were analysed by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2DE). The protein species associated with major spots on 2DE gels were identified by mass spectrometry followed by a database search to construct a comprehensive beer proteome map. As a result, 85 out of 199 protein spots examined were positively identified and categorised into 12 protein species. A total of 11 beer samples were brewed from the malt of eight cultivars having different levels of protein modification. This experiment was designed to demonstrate the influences of barley cultivar and malt modification on beer protein composition and beer quality characters. The beers produced from these brewing trails were subsequently analysed by 2DE and their proteomes were compared. Cultivars and malt modification affected the concentration of several proteins in beer. Beer protein concentration was associated with differences in the desirable beer quality trait, foam stability. In addition, expression of yeast derived proteins were observed that may also influence beer quality. Overall, the application of a comprehensive beer proteome map provides a strong platform for detection and potential manipulation of beer quality related proteins.     

An 800-MHz embedded DRAM with a concurrent refresh mode

An 800-MHz embedded DRAM macro employs a memory cell utilizing a device from the 90-nm high-performance technology menu; a 2.2-nm gate oxide 1.5 V IO device. A concurrent refresh mode is designed to improve the memory utilization to over 99% for a 64 /spl mu/s data retention time. A concurrent refresh scheduler utilizes up-count and down-count registers to identify at least one array to be refreshed at every clock cycle, emulating a classical distributed refresh mode. A command multiplier employs low frequency phased clock signals to generate the clock, commands, and addresses at rates up to 4/spl times/ that of the tester frequency. The macro integrates masked redundancy allocation logic during at speed multibank test. The hardware results show a 312-MHz random access frequency and 800-MHz multibank frequency at 1.2 V, respectively.     

A Method of Study of Radioactive Tracer Kinetics

This paper presents an approach to the problem of estimating the number of exponential functions and the pertinent parameters in the output of a radioactive tracer kinetic process. In particular, application of a criterion called an information theoretical criterion (AIC) for the estimation of the number of exponential functions is proposed; AIC was introduced by Akaike for the estimation of the order of linear dynamical systems and has been successfully applied for statistical model identification in a wide range of fields. Also, the maximum likelihood method was applied in order to evaluate AIC and to estimate decay constants and coefficients.     

Noninvasive recording of pre-P wave related to sinus node electrical activity using P wave-triggered signal-averaging technique

To determine whether the sinus node electrogram (SNE) could be detected noninvasively, a specially modified P wave-triggered signal-averaged electrocardiogram was recorded through the standard V1, V2 and V3 precordial leads in 39 patients. The data between 500 ms before and 300 ms after the trigger point were processed using a digital bandpass filter of 0.5 Hz (12 dB/oct)-20 Hz (18 dB/oct). Pre-P signals were observed just before the P wave resembling SNE recorded directly. Pre-P potential duration closely correlated with direct SACT (r = 0.856, P < 0.0005). Thus, it is believed that signals obtained by this new method would be related to sinus electrical activity and that it could be useful for noninvasive estimation of SACT.     

Long-term clinical effect of nilvadipine in patients with chronic heart failure: a double-blind placebo-controlled study

The long-term effect of calcium channel blockers on chronic heart failure is disappointing, probably because of reflex sympathetic activation through arterial vasodilation. However, nilvadipine may be beneficial for treatment of chronic heart failure since this drug has minimal effects on sympathetic activation. In this study, the effects of 12-week administration of nilvadipine or placebo on symptoms of heart failure and cardiac function were investigated in 23 patients with mild-to-moderate chronic heart failure in a double-blind trial. The patients were randomly assigned to either a nilvadipine group (16 mg daily) or a placebo group. Intergroup comparisons did not show significant differences in any parameters. Serious adverse effects were not observed during the study. Thus, this study failed to show any beneficial effect of nilvadipine in the long-term treatment of patients with chronic heart failure. We conclude that the long-term administration of nilvadipine (16 mg daily) is neither effective nor harmful in the treatment of patients with chronic heart failure.     

Breeding of lipoxygenase‐1‐less malting barley variety ‘Satuiku 2 go’

The lipoxygenase‐1‐less (LOX‐less) trait has positive effects on beer quality, in particular, improvement of flavour stability related to the reduction of beer‐deteriorating substances such as trans‐2‐nonenal. ‘Ryohfu’ is the only spring‐sown malting barley variety grown in Hokkaido, located in the northern part of Japan, and has been used in the Japanese brewing industry for over 20 years. ‘Satuiku 2 go’ was developed as the first LOX‐less malting barley variety in Japan by successive back‐crossing with molecular marker‐assisted selection to introduce the LOX‐less trait into the recurrent parent ‘Ryohfu’. The agronomic performance and general malt quality of ‘Satuiku 2 go’ were almost equivalent to those of ‘Ryohfu’. Wort and beer analyses at the pilot‐scale brewing trial indicated that the LOX‐less trait had little effect on the general characteristics. In contrast, the beers made from ‘Satuiku 2 go’ malt exhibited reduced levels of trans‐2‐nonenal and trihydroxyoctadecenoic acid. The sensory evaluation demonstrated the superiority of ‘Satuiku 2 go’ beers stored under differing conditions in terms of staleness. It can be concluded that the LOX‐less trait was effective in different genetic backgrounds of the recurrent parents used for the development of LOX‐less malting barley varieties. Copyright © 2018 The Institute of Brewing & Distilling     

Low‐resistive and transparent AZO films prepared by PLD in magnetic field

Al₂O₃‐doped ZnO (AZO) thin films have been deposited onto glass substrates using a split target consisting of AZO (1 wt%) and AZO (2 wt%) by pulsed laser deposition with an ArF excimer laser (λ = 193 nm, 15 mJ, 10 Hz, 0.75 J/cm²). By applying a magnetic field perpendicular to the plume, the lowest resistivity of 8.54 × 10^?5Ω·cm and an average transmittance exceeding 91% over the visible range were obtained at a target‐to‐substrate distance of 25 mm for approximately 279‐nm‐thick AZO film (1.8 wt%) grown at a substrate temperature of 230 °C in vacuum. From cross‐sectional TEM observations and the XRD spectrum, a reason why the low resistivity (54 × 10^?5Ω·cm) was reproducibly obtained was considered to be due to the fact that a disorder of crystal growth originating in the vicinity of the interface between the substrate and the film was suppressed by application of the magnetic field and the c‐axis orientation took preference, giving rise to the increase of mobility. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 151(2): 40–45, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.20026