A case of hypoxemic acute bronchiolitis presenting with diffuse nodular shadows caused by Mycoplasma pneumoniae

A fifty year-old female who had previously been well presented with a productive cough and a high fever. Her initial chest X-ray film showed no abnormal lung shadows. Despite partial improvement of the fever and the serum level of acute phase reactant (CRP) in response to intravenous administration of piperacillin, she complained of increasing severity of cough and dyspnea. Follow-up chest X-ray films taken five days after therapy with piperacillin showed diffuse nodular shadows in the mid-to-lower lung fields bilaterally. Chest CT scan disclosed diffuse miliary nodules at the lung periphery and thickening of bronchovascular markings. Chest auscultation revealed late inspiratory coarse crackles and expiratory wheezing, and the patient's arterial oxygen tension was 61 mmHg. Suspected of suffering from primary atypical pneumonia, she was started on therapy with intravenous minocyclin (200 mg/day), two days after treatment her symptoms began improving significantly. Anti-mycoplasma antibody was found to be x 1280, and cold hemoagglutinin x 1024, establishing the diagnosis of Mycoplasma pneumoniae infection. The patient's condition completely recovered following a one week treatment with minocyclin. We concluded that her respiratory infection was caused by piperacillin-sensitive mico-organism, and also Mycoplasma pneumoniae which brought about hypoxic acute bronchiolitis to the patient.     

Mitochondrial DNA polymerase from rat liver

A DNA-dependent DNA polymerase from rat liver mitochondria was partially purified and characterized. Mitochondrial DNA polymerase has been found to be quite different from other DNA-dependent DNA polymerases alpha and beta present in the rat liver in the following points: elution patterns in a DEAE-cellulose column chromatography, sedimentation coefficients determined by the glycerol gradient centrifugation in the presence of high salt, and sensitivities to N-ethylmaleimide, ethidium bromide and KCl.     

Establishment of anti-idiotype monoclonal antibodies to human anti lung cancer monoclonal antibody (4G12)

The object of this study is to establish anti-idiotype (anti-ID) monoclonal antibodies (MoAbs) against a human MoAb (4G12) that highly reacts with lung squamous cell carcinomas. Two murine anti-ID MoAbs (2H1 and 2B12) were established by hybridoma technology. They showed specific reactivity with 4G12 but not with 3H12 human MoAb, human IgM and human IgG. These two MoAbs demonstrated more than 90% of binding inhibition of 4G12 to lung squamous cell cancer cell line (PC10). Moreover, cross inhibition test showed that 2H1 and 2B12 detect different idiotypes of 4G12 each other. Furthermore, specific reactivity of anti 2H1 and anti 2B12 sera to PC10 were observed by cell binding ELISA. These two anti-ID MoAbs had internal image of the original antigen.     

Novel method for numerical analysis of electron trajectories in electrostatic fields of implicit functional forms

A novel method for calculating 2-dimensional electron trajectories is given, which is useful for the case when the electric fields are expressed by implicit functional forms which are not suited to a conventional electron-trajectory analysis. This method is applied to parallel-plate and parallel-cylinder deflection systems.     

Control of colloidal behavior of polystyrene latex nanoparticles and their cytotoxicity toward yeast cells using water-soluble polymers

Positively charged polystyrene latex (PSL) nanoparticles (NPs) dispersed in physiological saline (154?mM NaCl solution) are taken up by yeast cells. However, in low ionic strength solutions, the yeast cells are covered with the NPs, leading to cell death. The environmental conditions under which NPs are taken up are therefore limited. In this study, we attempted to control the uptake of positively charged PSL NPs by Saccharomyces cerevisiae in 5?mM NaCl solution using a water-soluble polymer. Addition of a small amount of anionic sodium carboxymethylcellulose (CMC), which has a carboxyl group, to 5?mM NaCl solution allowed the uptake of PSL NPs by living yeast cells. In contrast, non-ionic methylcellulose did not affect the NP behavior. This is because the negatively charged CMC adhered to the positively charged PSL NP surfaces and the surface charge changed from positive to negative. Atomic force microscopy using a single-NP probe consisting of one NP immobilized on the flattened end of the silicon nitride tip showed that CMC significantly reduced the interaction force between a negatively charged living yeast cell and a positively charged PSL NP.     

Adjoint Hamiltonian Monte Carlo algorithm for the estimation of elastic modulus through the inversion of elastic wave propagation data

Efficient inversion of noisy seismic waveform data produced due to elastic wave propagation for the estimation of a high-dimensional elastic modulus vector is achieved. Estimation is carried out in a Bayesian framework using Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) that enables efficient statistical estimation over high-dimensional parameters. The truncated Karhunen-Loève (K-L) expansion is introduced to reduce the dimensionality of the elastic modulus vector. Expensive computations of the gradient of the state vector with respect to the parameter vector at every step are also eliminated through the adjoint method, which is developed from a general one-step discretization of the governing second-order ordinary differential equations (ODEs). An Adjoint HMC algorithm that employs a truncated K-L expansion of the elastic modulus vector is presented. The efficacy of the algorithm is investigated with respect to two representative problems with varying geometric complexity. Adjoint HMC offers a significant speed up in gradient calculation time over the direct differentiation counterpart as the number of terms in the K-L expansion increases. The algorithm is able to estimate the true elastic modulus within the credible intervals for both cases.     

A triple quantum dot in a single-wall carbon nanotube

A top-gated single-wall carbon nanotube is used to define three coupled quantum dots in series between two electrodes. The additional electron number on each quantum dot is controlled by top-gate voltages allowing for current measurements of single, double, and triple quantum dot stability diagrams. Simulations using a capacitor model including tunnel coupling between neighboring dots captures the observed behavior with good agreement. Furthermore, anticrossings between indirectly coupled levels and higher order cotunneling are discussed.     

Evidence that a phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5-trisphosphate-binding protein can function in nucleus

PIP3BP is a phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5-trisphosphate-binding protein (PIP3BP) abundant in brain, containing a zinc finger motif and two pleckstrin homology (PH) domains. Staining of rat brain cells with anti-PIP3BP antibody and determination of localization of PIP3BP fused to the green fluorescent protein (GFP-PIP3BP) revealed that PIP3BP was targeted to the nucleus. Targeting was dependent on a putative nuclear localization signal in PIP3BP. Generation of PIP3 in the nucleus was detected in H2O2-treated 293T cells, nerve growth factor (NGF)-treated PC12 cells, and platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF)-treated NIH 3T3 cells. Translocation of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI 3-kinase) to the nucleus and enhanced activity of PI 3-kinase in the nucleus fraction were observed after H2O2 treatment of 293T cells, suggesting that PI 3-kinase can be activated in the nucleus as well as in the membrane after appropriate stimulation of the cells. Co-expression of the constitutively active PI 3-kinase with PIP3BP resulted in exportation of the protein from the nucleus to the cytoplasm, suggesting that PIP3BP can function as a PIP3-binding protein in the intact cells. These results imply that there may be an unknown function of PI 3-kinase in the nucleus.