A case of biliary cystadenoma with obstructive jaundice

Biliary cystadenoma is a rare cause of obstructive jaundice. We report a case of a 78-year-old Japanese man with biliary cystadenoma presenting repetitive abdominal pain and jaundice. Ultrasound sonography revealed a hyperechoic mass in the left lateral lobe of the liver. Histological examination revealed a biliary cystadenoma. Intracystic hemorrhage was assumed to be the cause of obstruction of the bile ducts.     

Modification of parallel activity elicited by propagating bursts in developing networks of rat cortical neurones

The fine specificity of the cellular immune response to Candida albicans (i.e., recognition of different antigenic components) between normal controls and human immunodeficiency virus-infected patients in various stages of disease was compared. C. albicans-specific T cells, enriched by antigen stimulation and interleukin-2 expansion, were challenged with antigenic fractions of different molecular weight obtained by SDS-gel fractionation of C. albicans extracts in the presence of autologous mononuclear cells as antigen-presenting cells. Proliferative responses showed similar patterns of reactivity between controls and category A and B seropositive subjects. Category C patients with concurrent C. albicans infections did not give rise to C. albicans-specific T cell lines, confirming the T cell defect. Patients without clinically evident C. albicans infection had a low but broad reactivity pattern of C. albicans-specific T cells. These results suggest that depletion of C. albicans-specific T cells, independent of their fine specificity, occurs along with disease progression.     

Design of multivariable feedback systems with infinite gain margin and decoupling

This letter discusses the problem of designing a feedback compensator that attains the infinite gain margin under the uncertainties of feedback gains. A sufficient condition is given for the existence of compensators and then it is shown that the condition becomes necessary subject to the requirement that the feedback system is decoupled. The nonlinear case is also discussed.     

Expectancy theory prediction of the goal theory postulate, "The harder the goals, the higher the performance."

Goal theory postulates that harder goals lead to higher performance than do easier goals. The present study tested the prediction, based on expectancy valence theory, that this would be true only if the payoff for succeeding at the harder goal is sufficiently greater than the alternatives to compensate for its greater difficulty. 63 undergraduates were each given an easy and a hard task/goal, requiring the comparison of paired sets of 3-digit numbers. Expectancy theory measures for the 2 goals were obtained from Ss. Performance was higher for the hard goal than for the easy goal, supporting the goal theory postulate. Force was also higher for the hard goal than for the easy goal. In addition, force change across the 2 goals was associated with performance change, supporting the conclusion that expectancy valence theory can predict the goal theory postulate. The valence of goal attainment was higher for the hard goal than for the easy goal. Valence change across the 2 goals was associated with performance change to a greater degree than was expectancy change, suggesting that the attained performance difference can be attributed to the valence difference. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Antitumor activity of degraded products of lentinan: its correlation with molecular weight

Twelve of 25 patients with mixed connective tissue disease complained of xerostomia and/or ocular symptoms of keratoconjunctivitis sicca. In addition to the clinical features of mixed connective tissue disease, all 12 patients had high titers of antibody to the ribonuclease-sensitive component of the extractable nuclear antigen. Eight patients had both clinical xerostomia and keratoconjunctivitis sicca, one had keratoconjunctivitis sicca and salivary gland enlargement, while there had xerostomia but no ocular complaints. Sj?rgren's syndrome was confirmed in all 12 patients by means of Schirmer's tests, Rose Bengal staining tests, salivary gland scintiscans, radionuclide excretion studies in saliva, parotid sialographies, and lip biopsies. At least three of these tests were abnormal in all patients.     

Dipolar-decoupled carbon-13 NMR study of highly oriented polyethylene films

Summary High-resolution solid-state ¹³C NMR spectra and ¹³C relaxation times T₁ and T₁ have been measured at 40–100° C for uniaxially oriented polyethylene films with the drawing direction parallel to the magnetic field; this sample has a unique morphological structure that the noncrystalline chains are nearly disordered irrespective of the high degree of drawing. A sharp resonance line(line A) appears at the position corresponding to the principal value ₃₃ of the chemical shift tensor for the CH₂ carbons with the trans-trans conformation. Another sharp linedine B) is observed at almost the same chemical shift as for the CH₂ carbons of polyethylene in solution. Although these observations are similar to those for a cold-drawn polyethylene sample reported previously, line B is much enhanced in intensity and the linewidth is narrower in the present sample, reflecting the disorientation of the noncrystalline component. It is found from T₁ measurements that line A contains two components with different molecular mobility, both being assigned to the crystalline components. On the other hand, the line B is composed of a single component assignable to the noncrystalline component with liquid-like molecular mobility.     

Co-carbonization of solvent fractions of hydrogenated and alkylated SRC pitches in studies of formation of needle-cokes

The optical texture of cokes from two SRC pitches of different coking properties, from co-carbonizations of these materials and of hydrogenated and alkylated products has been studied. The objective, relative to formation of needle-cokes, is to correlate the optical texture of cokes with the chemical structure of the pitch materials using both benzene-soluble (BS) and insoluble (BI) fractions of the pitches. Hydrogenation improved the compatibility of the BS fraction of the inferior SRC pitch (No. 2) with the BI fractions of the two pitches (non-hydrogenated) using a ratio of only 1 to 9. Before hydrogenation, a ratio of BS to BI of 8 to 2 did not give a needle-coke. In contrast, alkylation destroyed the compatibility of the BS fraction of the superior SRC pitch (No. 1) with the BI fraction (non-alkylated) using a ratio of 6 to 4, and which gave a needle-coke before alkylation. Hydrogenation of the alkylated material restored the compatability. The relevance of these studies to industrial carbonization processes is discussed in terms of chemical treatment and the hydrogen economy.     

Volatilization and recovery of mercury from mercury wastewater produced in the course of laboratory work using Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans SUG 2-2 cells

The iron-oxidizing bacterium Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans SUG 2-2 is markedly resistant to mercuric chloride and can volatilize mercury (Hg0) from mercuric ion (Hg2+) under acidic conditions. To develop a microbial technique to volatilize and recover mercury from acidic and organic compound-containing mercury wastewater, which is usually produced in the course of everyday laboratory work in Okayama University, the effects of organic and inorganic chemicals on the mercury volatilization activity of A. ferrooxidans cells were studied. Among 55 chemicals tested, the mercury volatilization from a reaction mixture (pH 2.5) containing resting cells of SUG 2-2 (1 mg of protein) and mercury chloride (14 nmol) was strongly inhibited by AgNO3 (0.05 mM), K2CrO7 (1.0 mM), cysteine (1.0 mM), trichloroethylene (1 microM), and commercially produced detergents (0.05%). However, the strong inhibition by trichloroethylene and detergents was not observed when these organic compounds were chemically decomposed using Fenton's method before the treatment of the wastewater with SUG 2-2 cells. When 20 ml of water acidified with sulfuric acid (pH 2.5) containing ferrous sulfate (3%), diluted mercury wastewater (17.5 nmol of Hg2+) and SUG 2-2 cells (0.05 mg of protein) were incubated for 10 d at 30 degrees C, 47% of the total mercury in the wastewater was volatilized and recovered into a trapping reagent for metal mercury. However, when the organic compounds in the mercury wastewater were decomposed using Fenton's method and then treated with A. ferrooxidans cells, approximately 100% of the total mercury in the wastewater was volatilized and recovered.     

The role of abduction in chance discovery

Recently, researches on discovery science and knowledge discovery have been carried out in various fields. Basically they are types of learning that learn tendencies from the sets of data of the same or similar categories. In this sense, discovery is to discover the tendencies. As a result, they cannot predict the events that are different from the trend. On the other hand, abduction is thought of as an explanatory reasoning. Indeed, abduction is a reasoning to generate hypotheses to explain an observation. However, the original meaning of abduction was to discover new things that cannot be known in a simple way. In this paper, abduction is defined using the original definition that discovers something that cannot be easily predicted. Then, this paper shows a role of abduction that can suggest or foresee the events that are different from the trend. In fact, Abductive Analogical Reasoning that can generate new hypotheses is adopted to solve the problem. Akinori Abe, Ph.D.: He obtained his Doctor of Engineering (Ph.D) from the University of Tokyo in 1991, with a thesis entitledA Fast Hypothetical Reasoning System using Analogical Case. His main research interests are abduction (hypothetical reasoning), analogical reasoning, chance dicovery and language sense processing. He is a member of the Planning Committee of the New Generation Computing. He worked in NTT MSC (Malaysia) from 2000 to 2002. Currently, he works in ATR.