Mechanism of crystallization of purified human midcycle cervical mucus

The crystallization phenomenon of human midcycle cervical mucus was studied with purified mucin and sodium chloride. The drying of the purified mucin in saline was subjected to stress by the use of an air curtain, and crystallization (fern pattern) was found to follow the stress. Lithium chloride and calcium chloride were not compatible with the mucin for the formation of fernlike crystals. When a dilute solution of mucin dissolved in saline was dried, a radial crystallization pattern was observed to emanate from a single crystal in the center. Upon closer examination, the pattern was observed to emanate from the corners of the crystal.     

A period of anaerobic exercise increases the accumulation of reactive carbonyl derivatives in the lungs of rats

Compartment syndrome is caused by an increase in intracompartmental pressure above the capillary level, preventing capillary flow. The acute onset of symptoms occurs after events such as fracture, soft tissue trauma, and revascularization and usually necessitates prompt fasciotomy to avoid loss of function or even necrosis of the enclosed muscle. Compartment syndromes in athletes are of a recurrent nature and are usually referred to as chronic. Nonoperative treatment is often successful. Although compartment syndromes can occur in several anatomic regions, the most commonly seen in athletes involve the leg. Chronic compartment syndromes of the upper extremity are rare, and only a few cases have been reported in the literature. The intracompartmental pressures causing chronic symptoms in these cases ranged between 22 mm Hg at rest and 40 mm Hg after 30 minutes of exercise. Under maximal contraction, a pressure of 58 mm Hg has been recorded. The object of this paper is to report a case of a tennis player where much higher flexor-pronator muscle intracompartmental pressures than those noted above were recorded. We compared the intracompartmental pressure data of this patient with intracompartmental pressures measured in six symptom-free volunteers.     

Ectopic expression of DAN enhances the retinoic acid-induced neuronal differentiation in human neuroblastoma cell lines

Retinoic acid (RA) plays a major role in neuronal cell differentiation. Neuroblastoma cells differentiate in vitro by extending neurites and forming ganglion-like aggregates in response to RA. In the present study, we have examined a biological role(s) of DAN in the regulation of RA-mediated cellular differentiation in neuroblastoma cells. RTBM1 and SH-SY5Y cells undergo marked morphological changes associated with a remarkable induction of DAN gene expression when exposed to RA. By transfecting an expression vector harboring a rat DAN cDNA into SH-SY5Y cells, we have obtained two independent transfectants which express a large amount of DAN. The forced expression of DAN gene enhanced the neurite extension in the presence of RA, suggesting that DAN gene product might contain some regulatory role(s) in the RA-induced cellular differentiation in neuroblastoma cells.     

Robust comprehension of natural language instructions by a domestic service robot

We present a method through which domestic service robots can comprehend natural language instructions. For each action type, a variety of natural language expressions can be used, for example, the instruction, ‘Go to the kitchen’ can also be expressed as ‘Move to the kitchen.’ We are of the view that natural language instructions are intuitive and, therefore, constitute one of the most user-friendly robot instruction methods. In this paper, we propose a method that enables robots to comprehend instructions spoken by a human user in his/her natural language. The proposed method combines action-type classification, which is based on a support vector machine, and slot extraction, which is based on conditional random fields, both of which are required in order for a robot to execute an action. Further, by considering the co-occurrence relationship between the action type and the slots along with the speech recognition score, the proposed method can avoid degradation of the robot’s comprehension accuracy in noisy environments, where inaccurate speech recognition can be problematic. We conducted experiments using a Japanese instruction data-set collected using a questionnaire-based survey. Experimental results show that the robot’s comprehension accuracy is higher in a noisy environment using our method than when using a baseline method with only a 1-best speech recognition result.     

Effect of in-flight particle behavior on the morphology of flame sprayed Er2O3 splats

The morphology and microstructure of splats impact the comprehensive capability of a new coating methodology called chelate flame spraying (CFS). This study addresses the quantitative characterization of the spread morphologies of flame sprayed Er₂O₃ splats directly deposited under different spray conditions on aluminum alloy substrates with a mirror finish. The influence of the in-flight particle temperature and velocity, carrier gas type, and carrier gas ratio on the solidification mechanism of molten droplets was investigated. Image analysis methods were employed to identify single splats from the morphology observed with field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). In addition, Er₂O₃ films were synthesized on an Al–Mg alloy (A5052) substrate using N₂ or O₂ as the carrier gas. When O₂ was used as the carrier gas, 109-μm-thick films were deposited on the A5052 substrate. The cross-sectional porosity of the films was 3.8%. In contrast, films with 101-μm thickness were synthesized on the A5052 substrate when N₂ was used as the carrier gas. The cross-sectional porosity of these films was 13.8%. The results showed that the carrier gas type (N₂) and carrier gas ratio had a significant effect on the flattening behavior of the molten droplets. A spraying method combined with multidimensional modes is proposed to control the morphology of the splats.     

Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma Contributes to Differentiation of Monocyte-Derived Tumor-Associated Macrophages via PAI-1 and IL-8 Production

Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) promote cancer cell proliferation and metastasis, as well as anti-tumor immune suppression. Recent studies have shown that tumors enhance the recruitment and differentiation of TAMs, but the detailed mechanisms have not been clarified. We thus examined the influence of cancer cells on the differentiation of monocytes to TAM subsets, including CD163⁺, CD204⁺, and CD206⁺ cells, in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) using immunohistochemistry, flow cytometry, and a cytokine array. Furthermore, we investigated the effect of OSCC cells (HSC-2, SQUU-A, and SQUU-B cells) on the differentiation of purified CD14⁺ cells to TAM subsets. The localization patterns of CD163⁺, CD204⁺, and CD206⁺ in OSCC sections were quite different. The expression of CD206 on CD14⁺ cells was significantly increased after the co-culture with OSCC cell lines, while the expressions of CD163 and CD204 on CD14⁺ cells showed no change. High concentrations of plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) and interleukin-8 (IL-8) were detected in the conditioned medium of OSCC cell lines. PAI-1 and IL-8 stimulated CD14⁺ cells to express CD206. Moreover, there were positive correlations among the numbers of CD206⁺, PAI-1⁺, and IL-8⁺ cells in OSCC sections. These results suggest that PAI-1 and IL-8 produced by OSCC contribute to the differentiation of monocytes to CD206⁺ TAMs.