Distribution of anti-p80-coilin autoantibody in collagen diseases and various skin diseases

Several lines of evidence indicate that the extent of ischemic injury is not defined immediately after arterial occlusion, but that infarction expands over time. Episodes of spreading depression have been linked to this secondary increase in infarct volume. Tissue bordering the infarction fails to repolarize following spreading depression and is incorporated into the lesion. The result is that ischemic infarctions expand stepwise after each episode of spreading depression. Another line of evidence has demonstrated that gap junction blockers effectively inhibit spreading depression. These observations suggest that traffic of potentially harmful cytosolic messengers between ischemic cells and surrounding nonischemic cells might cause amplification of injury in focal stroke. It is therefore conceivable that minimizing gap junction permeability might reduce final infarct volume. To test this hypothesis, the authors pretreated rats with the gap junction blocker, octanol, before occluding the middle cerebral artery and compared the sizes of the ischemic lesions to those in rats that received the vehicle, dimethyl sulfoxide, prior to arterial occlusion. Histopathological analysis was performed 24 hours later. The 12 octanol-treated animals showed a significantly decreased mean infarction volume (80 +/- 16 mm3) compared with the nine control rats (148 +/- 9 mm3). In a separate set of experiments, the frequency of experimentally induced waves of spreading depression was evaluated after octanol treatment. Octanol pretreatment resulted in complete inhibition in two of nine animals, transient inhibition in five, and no inhibition in two. The results indicate that gap junction inhibitors, when not limited by toxicity, have significant therapeutic potential in the treatment of acute stroke.     

Tribo-Film Formation of Lubricant Additives on Cr-Plated Surface Sliding Against Nitrile–Butadiene Rubber

A Bowden and Leben type sliding tester was used with a base oil to evaluate four types of friction modifier additives—acid phosphate, hydrogen phosphite, acid phosphate amine salt, and amine—as a fundamental study on hydraulic fluid additives for sliding of nitrile–butadiene rubber on Cr-plated metal. Acid phosphate showed the lowest friction coefficient among the phosphorus acids. After the sliding test, the formation of tribo-films on the Cr-plated surface was investigated by Fourier transform infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy and a time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometer. The analytical results suggest that tribo-films formed by the phosphorus acids effectively reduced friction.     

Dynamic changes of native Rhododendron colonies in the urban fringe of Kyoto city in Japan: detecting the long-term dynamism for conservation of secondary nature

Secondary nature, which is maintained by human interference, in a sense is more difficult to preserve than virgin nature because it deeply relates to lifestyles of human beings. Secondary forests of satoyama, including pine-dominated forests and coppice forests, are facing increased crises since oil for fuel took the place of firewood and charcoal in 1950s. We tried to detect the long-term dynamism of satoyama in a fringe area of Kyoto city quantitatively and spatially by the survival of native Rhododendrons, ecological indicators of ancient satoyama. In the landscape of the eastern fringe of Kyoto city, native Rhododendrons have decreased, while the total basal area has increased in the 21 years since 1974. The survival and reproductive situations of native Rhododendrons were different in each type of ecotope, which were extracted from features of geology, topology and forest physiognomy. A relatively high number of native Rhododendrons survived in the ecotope types of deciduous forests on granite compared to that in the ecotope types of evergreen forests. Seedlings of native Rhododendrons were observed only on mosses in the natural forest of Japanese cypress on consolidated sediment of the Mesozoic and Paleozoic eras. Without resuming coppicing for regeneration of native Rhododendrons, or litter clearing for establishment of seedlings, colonies of native Rhododendrons are expected to go on decreasing. We need to take different measures to meet each situation of ecotope type. In order to work out a strategy for conservation of secondary nature, it is necessary to make the target clear in quantity and in space. Detecting the long-term dynamism of representative species of secondary nature should provide practical information for strategic planning of conserving secondary nature.     

Hydrogen absorption properties of Li–Mg–N–H system

Isothermal hydrogen absorption properties of the ball milled mixture of 3Mg(NH₂)₂ and 8LiH after dehydrogenation at 200 °C under high vacuum were investigated at two different temperatures of 150 and 200 °C. The pressure–composition isotherm (PCT) curve at 200 °C revealed a two-plateaus-like behavior, while the PCT curve at 150 °C showed a single-plateau-like behavior. The hydrogenated phases were composed of LiH and Mg(NH₂)₂ under 9 MPa at 200 °C, while those were observed as mixed phases of LiH and LiNH₂ at 150 °C without any trace of Mg(NH₂)₂ in XRD measurements. These results indicate that there are two-step hydrogenation processes corresponding to high and low pressures at 200 °C, but the kinetics at 150 °C is too slow to proceed with the second hydrogenating step at high pressure region.     

Morphological and functional characterization of circulating hemocytes using microscopy techniques

In the present study, Microscopy studies were performed to characterize the blood cells of the mangrove crab Episesarma tetragonum. Three types of hemocytes were observed: granulocytes, semi‐granulocytes, and hyalinocytes or agranulocytes. Hyalinocytes have a distinguished nucleus surrounded by the cytoplasm, and a peculiar cell type was present throughout the cytosol, lysosomes with hemocyte types (granules) stained red (pink). Giemsa staining was used to differentiate between the large and small hemocytes. Ehrlich's staining was used to differentiate granule‐containing cells in acidophils (55%), basophils (44%), and neutrophils (<1%). Periodic acid–Schiff staining was used to identify the sugar molecules in the cytoplasm. Cell‐mediated immune reactions including phagocytosis, encapsulation, agglutination, and peroxidase‐mediated cell adhesion are the functions of hemocytes. Agglutination reaction involves both kind of cells involved in yeast and heme‐agglutination responses in invertebrates. The beta glucan outer layer of yeast cells was recognized by hemocyte receptors. Human RBC cells were agglutinated via granulocytes. E. tetragonum hemocytes are an important animal model for studying both ultrastructural and functional activity of circulating cells. In addition, E. tetragonum hemocytes exhibited excellent antibacterial and antibiofilm activities were studied through plating and microplate assays. Biofilm inhibition was also visualized through changes in biochemical assays and morphological variations were visualized through levels in in situ microscopy analysis.     

A Study on Error Recovery Search Strategies of Electronic Connector Mating for Robotic Fault-Tolerant Assembly

In this paper, a CAD-based trajectory planning scheme for parallel machining robots is introduced using the parametric Non-uniform rational basis spline (NURBS) curves. First, a trajectory is designed via a NURBS curve then, a motion scheduling architecture consisting of time-dependent and constant feedrate profiles is advised to generate the position commands on the represented NURBS curve as the tool path. Using the generated commands, the inverse kinematics is elaborated to obtain the joints motions of the parallel machining robot. This paper investigates the NURBS trajectory generation for a parallel robot with 4(UPS)-PU mechanism as the case study. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, the inverse kinematic results for the parallel machining robot of 4(UPS)-PU is compared with the simulation results obtained from the CATIA software. The results confirmed that the proposed trajectory planning scheme along with the advised motion planning architecture is not only feasible for the parallel machining robots but also yields a smooth trajectory with a satisfactory performance for all the joints.     

Effect of strain on “hardening by annealing and softening by deformation” phenomena in ultra-fine grained aluminum

Ultra-fine grained (UFG) metals fabricated by severe plastic deformation (SPD) sometimes exhibit peculiar mechanical properties. For example, the “hardening by annealing and softening by deformation” was reported in UFG aluminum, which was totally opposite to the behaviors of conventionally coarse-grained materials. In this study, the effect of SPD strain on the peculiar phenomena was investigated. The UFG aluminum was fabricated by various cycles of the accumulative roll-bonding (ARB) process with lubrication at ambient temperature. The specimen ARB-processed by ten cycles certainly showed the peculiar phenomena. On the other hand, the 6-cycle specimen did not show the phenomena but was softened by annealing and hardened by deformation normally. From the results of microstructural characterization, it was suggested that the difference in the change of the mechanical property during annealing and deformation between 6-cycle and 10-cycle specimens was caused by the difference in the grain size and/or the texture components, which depended on the SPD strain.