Endometrioid carcinoma arising from endometriosis of the sigmoid colon during estrogenic treatment

A case of endometrioid carcinoma arising from endometriosis of the sigmoid colon is reported. The patient had been treated with unopposed continuous estrogen injection for twenty years after bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy because of severe endometriosis. The pathology, pertinent literature and implications of the present case are discussed.     

The pharmacokinetics of pancuronium bromide in infants, children and adults

Laparoscopic retroperitoneal lymph node dissection is a new surgical procedure used to enhance staging in men with clinical stage I nonseminomatous germ cell tumors of the testis. The procedure has been performed in a limited number of patients at several centers with extensive laparoscopic experience. Laparoscopic retroperitoneal lymphadenectomy is a technically demanding procedure which can be successfully completed in the majority of patients. However, the risk of complications is greater than in patients who undergo standard open retroperitoneal lymph node dissection. The primary advantage of a laparoscopic approach is shortened hospitalization and rapid return to normal activity. The role of laparoscopy in the management of patients with testis malignancy has not been defined. The use of this staging procedure may help minimize the need for surveillance studies following surgery and may be best utilized in men with a lower likelihood of nodal metastases. Ultimately, prospective study in large groups of patients will be necessary to determine the role of laparoscopic retroperitoneal lymph node dissection in patients with testis cancer.     

The effects of cholecystokinin A and B receptor antagonists, devazepide and L 365260, on citalopram-induced decrease of exploratory behaviour in rat

The present study has been divided into two sets. In the first set, the aim of the experiments was to investigate the dose-response effect of selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI) citalopram on rat exploratory behaviour in the elevated plus-maze. In the second set of experiments, the effect of cholecystokinin (CCK) CCKA and CCKB receptor antagonists, devazepide and L 365260, on citalopram-induced decrease of exploratory behaviour in the elevated plus-maze was studied. Citalopram (5 and 10 mg/kg) decreased the number of open and total arm entries, line crossings on open arms, and percentage of time spent exploring in open arm. Dose 15 mg/kg was without any effect on rat exploratory behaviour. Devazepide (0.01 and 1.0 mg/kg) failed to modify any of the citalopram-induced changes observed. L 365260 (1.0 mg/kg) reversed most of the effects of citalopram: the numbers of open and total arm entries, the number of line crossings, and the percentage of time spent exploring in open arms. L 365260 at dose level 0.01 mg/kg was ineffective. These results support the involvement of the CCKB receptor subtype in SSRI-induced anxiogenic-like effects in rodents.     

Impact of crosstalk in an arrayed-waveguide multiplexer onN×N optical interconnection

The impact of crosstalk in an arrayed-waveguide N×N wavelength multiplexer is investigated precisely in relation to its application to wavelength-routing N×N all optical networks. In such systems multiple crosstalk light which has the same wavelength as the signal results in signal-crosstalk beat noise. We confirm that the noise is Gaussian and obtain the relation between crosstalk and power penalty. It is shown that the crosstalk must be less than -38 dB for a 16×16 system to keep the power penalty below 1 dB at a bit error rate of 10^-9     

Poly(A) metabolism in Xenopus laevis embryos: substrate-specific and default poly(A) nuclease activities are mediated by two distinct complexes

The metabolism of the poly(A) tail is a process important for the translational regulation of maternal mRNAs in Xenopus laevis oocytes and early embryos. Two poly(A) nuclease (PAN) activities have been described in Xenopus embryo or activated egg extracts (Legagneux et al (1995) RNA 1, 1001-1008). These activities (default PAN and EgPAN) are distinguishable by their deadenylation kinetics and their substrate specificities. In this report, we show that these activities display different sensitivities to biochemical treatments. Urea and, to a lesser extent, spermidine, inhibit EgPAN at concentrations which have no effect on default PAN. Heparin activates default PAN but inhibits EgPAN. When extracts are fractionated by ultracentrifugation, the default activity is recovered in one unique fraction, whereas two fractions must be combined to reconstitute the EgPAN activity. Moreover, these two deadenylation activities are separable by size exclusion chromatography under native conditions. We conclude that these two deadenylation activities are mediated by two protein complexes.     

Increasing the service properties of weld joints by electrohydroimpulse treatment

Known examples of the positive influence of electrohydroimpulse treatment on the quality of weld joints of various steels, particularly including an increase in their long-term and cyclic strength and also corrosion resistance, are analyzed. It is shown that in this case there is a reduction in residual macro- and micro-stresses and also a change in the parameters of the dislocation structure of the joint metal in the direction of stabilization of it.Translated from Problemy Prochnosti, No. 4, pp. 119–123, April, 1996.     

Position-sensitive superheated-liquid-droplet neutron dosimeter

The one-dimensional (1D) position-sensitive superheated-liquid-droplet dosimeter (SLDD) has been fabricated and tested in the laboratory. The 1D SLDD is fabricated from a 9.525-mm OD, 6.35-mm ID, 20-cm long, Plexiglas-walled tube filled with a mixture of superheated-liquid Freon droplets and host medium glycerol. Washer-shaped piezoelectric acoustic transducers are positioned at both ends of the tube; they determine the number and positions of the acoustic events when the superheated-liquid droplets evaporate upon neutron irradiation. The SLDD is irradiated with the ¹³⁷Cs and ⁶⁰Co γ-sources, as well as ²⁵²Cf neutron source to test for its radiation response and spatial resolution. The SLDD based on the Freon-134a superheated-liquid droplets operating at 20°C and 1 atm is found to be ideal for measuring absorbed neutron dose. This study also proves that the positions of the radiation-induced nucleation acoustic events can be linearly determined from the differences in the transmission times received by the acoustic transducers on the 1D SLDD. The spatial resolution of the neutron depth-dose is 1 mm due the finite response time (1 μs) of the piezoelectric acoustic transducers.     

Effect of oxygen deficiency (δ) on transition temperature of yttrium cuprate superconductors

The nature of pairing mechanism as well as transition temperature of yttrium cuprates is discussed using the strong coupling theory. An interaction potential has been developed for the layered structure with two conducting CuO₂(a–b) layers in a unit cell. The interaction potential properly takes care of electron-electron, electron-phonon and electron-plasmon interactions. Furthermore, the electron-phonon coupling parameter (λ), the modified Coulomb repulsive parameter (μ*) and the 2D acoustic phonon (plasmon) energy as a function of oxygen deficiency is worked out. Finally, the superconducting transition temperature (T _c) is then evaluated by using these coupling parameters and obtainedT _c = 95(92)K for Y(Yb)Ba₂Cu₃O_7−δ superconductors withδ = 0·0. The model parameters estimated from the layered structure approach are consistent with the strong coupling theory. The result deduced on the variation ofT _c withδ are in fair agreement with the earlier reported data on yttrium cuprates. The analysis of the above results are discussed.     

Teaching Design to Freshmen: Style and Content

This paper describe a freshman course in engineering design that stresses the open-ended and ill-structured nature of design in a project-based context. The projects are chosen in part for their social context and utility. The projects are supplemented by lectures on design methodology and other topics related to engineering practice. Among the deliverables required of the students are proposals, progress reports, and written and oral presentations—the latter to an external design jury as part of a design competition.     

Estimation of linear parametric models of nonGaussian discreterandom fields with application to texture synthesis

A general (possibly asymmetric noncausal and/or nonminimum phase) 2D autoregressive moving average random field model driven by an independent and identically distributed 2D nonGaussian sequence is considered. The model is restricted to be invertible, i.e., system zeros are not allowed to lie on the unit bicircle. Three performance criteria are investigated for parameter estimation of the system parameters given only the output measurements (image pixels). The proposed criteria are functions of the higher order cumulant statistics of an inverse filter output. One of these criteria is novel and the others have been considered in past only for moving average inverses and without any analysis of their consistency. In the paper strong consistency of the proposed methods under the assumption that the system order is known is proved. The convergence of the proposed parameter estimators under overparametrization is also analyzed. Experimental results involving synthesized as well as real life textures are presented to illustrate the performance of two of the considered approaches. Experimental results of synthesis of 128x128 textures visually resembling several real life textures in the Brodatz album (and other sources) are presented.