Role of alveolar macrophages in initiation and regulation of inflammation in Pseudomonas aeruginosa pneumonia

To evaluate the role of alveolar macrophages (AMs) in acute Pseudomonas aeruginosa pneumonia in mice, AMs were depleted by aerosol inhalation of liposomes containing clodronate disodium. AM-depleted mice were then intratracheally infected with 5 x 10(5) CFU of P. aeruginosa. In addition to monitoring neutrophil recruitment and chemokine releases, lung injury was evaluated soon after infection (8 h) and at a later time (48 h). At 8 h, depletion of AMs reduced neutrophil recruitment, chemokine release, and lung injury. At 48 h, however, depletion of AMs decreased bacterial clearance and resulted in delayed movement of neutrophils from the site of inflammation with aggravated lung injury. With instillation of 5 x 10(7) CFU of bacteria, AM-depleted mice showed low mortality within 24 h of infection but high mortality at a later time, in contrast to non-AM-depleted mice. These results demonstrate that depletion of AMs has beneficial early effects but deleterious late effects on lung injury and survival in cases of P. aeruginosa pneumonia.     

Peritectic transformation during cooling of iron-carbon alloy

Peritectic transformation behavior during cooling of iron-carbon alloys is simulated by a numerical analysis. The peritectic transformation, δ+L=γ, is divided into δ-γ transformation at δ/γ interface and L-γ solidification at γ/L interface, and proceeds by the following two mechanisms: (1) carbon diffusion from liquid (referred to as L) through austenite (γ) into δ-ferrite (δ) and (2) precipitation of austenite from δ-ferrite and crystallization of it from liquid due to cooling. Approximately 80% of the austenite formed during the peritectic transformation is the products of δ-y transformation, which may cause the generation of tensile stress in the solidification shell of cast steels due to the difference in density between δ-ferrite and austenite The amount of the δ-γ transformation is largest, when the initial carbon content is 0.17 mass%. However, when the transformation in a well-developed dendrite network structure is focused on, the carbon content for the maximum amount of the δ-γ transformation decreases to 0.14–0.16 mass%, which corresponds to the carbon content at which surface cracking of continuously cast slabs is reported to be most frequent     

Vortices within the Separation Region in a Decelerating Channel Flow （Effect of Inlet Velocity Gradient）

An experimental investigation was made into three-dimensional separated flow and the vortices within the flow separation in a decelerating channel flow generated by the suction from a porous side wall. The flows along the side and bottom walls were visualized by the surface tuft method. The turbulent internal flow was measured by the split-film probe to investigate the turbulent flow including the reverse flow. In the flow visualization for the strong decelerating flow (the suction flow ratio:0.8), two typical flow patterns appear alternatively. One is that the flow near the bottom wall separates more upstream than the flow near the top wall and a clockwise vortex can be seen in the separation region. Another is the reversal flow pattern with a counterclockwise vortex. By the turbulent flow measurement using the split-film probe, two peaks of turbulence level are observed for the strong decelerating flow case. These peaks can be related with two flow patterns mentioned above.     

Dynamic range improvement by narrow-channel effect suppression andsmear reduction technologies in small pixel IT-CCD image sensors

Technologies for narrow-channel effect suppression in photodiodes (PDs) and vertical CCDs (V-CCDs) and for smear reduction in PDs have been developed in order to improve dynamic range in small pixel interline-transfer CCD (IT-CCD) image sensors. The new technologies have been applied to a progressive-scan IT-CCD image sensor with 5 μm square pixels and have (1) increased the charge handling capability of its V-CCDs to 4500 electrons/V; (2) improved its smear value to -95 dB; and (3) increased the saturation charge of its PDs to 2.3×10⁴ electrons