The role of the interaction between macrophages and mesangial cells in the progression of IgA nephropathy

IgA nephropathy is the most common form of glomerulonephritis in the world. Approximately, 20 to 30% of IgA nephropathy patients progress to end stage renal failure in 20 years. However, the mechanism (s) underlying the progression of IgA nephropathy has not been fully understood. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the role of the interaction between macrophages and mesangial cells in the progression of IgA nephropathy. Renal biopsy specimens from 40 patients with IgA nephropathy were examined to investigate the relationship between glomerular infiltration of monocytes/macrophages (Mo/M phi), glomerular expression of monocyte-specific chemoattractant, and their clinicopathological findings. The results led to the following conclusions. 1. The localization of Mo/M phi within the glomerulus was identified as intracapillary or intramesangial by immuno-cytochemistry with monoclonal antibody against CD68. 2. Close relationships between mesangial expressions of M-CSF and MCP-1, and mesangial localization of Mo/M phi strongly suggested that mesangial production of these factors, in concert with glomerular ICAM-1 expression, enhances the recruitment and survival of Mo/M phi in the mesangium. 3. It was suggested that Mo/M phi localized in the mesangium play an important role in the progression of IgAN through increasing the production of matrix by mesangial cells.     

Stimulus-dependent disorganization of actin filaments induced by overexpression of cofilin in C2 myoblasts

Actin depolymerizing factor (ADF)/cofilin is a widely distributed family of actin-binding proteins which regulate actin polymerization in a pH-dependent manner. In cultured cells, cofilin, as well as ADF, translocates from the cytoplasm into the nucleus together with actin and forms rod-like structures in response to heat shock or dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) treatment. In order to study in vivo interaction of cofilin with actin, we examined the effects of cofilin overexpression on actin cytoskeleton in C2 myoblasts. Interestingly, no remarkable effect was observed on phalloidin-stained patterns in cells overexpressing cofilin as compared with normal cells. However, upon treatment with DMSO, cytoplasmic actin filaments were disrupted and intranuclear rod structures containing cofilin and actin were apparently larger and thicker in cells overexpressing cofilin than in normal cells. Heat shock also stimulated disruption of microfilaments and formation of both intranuclear and prominent cytoplasmic cofilin-actin rods in cofilin-transfected cells, suggesting that DMSO-treatment or heat shock triggers cofilin-actin interaction. We further found that a myosin ATPase inhibitor (BDM) induced a reduction in cytoplasmic staining with phalloidin in cofilin-transfected cells. The results suggest that myosin activity might be involved in the regulation of cofilin-actin interactions in vivo.     

GRADE: A software environment for machine translation

GRADE, a software environment for machine translation is described. It has been developed for the Mu machine translation project, which was supported by the Science & Technology Agency of the Japanese Government. GRADE consists of 3 components: (1) a grammar writing language based on flexible tree-to-tree transformation rules with a control mechanism and an interpreter; (2) software tools for constructing and maintaining grammar rules; and (3) software tools for developing dictionary databases which are based on the concept ofneutral dictionary. In this paper, these software packages are discussed from the viewpoint of the development of a large scale machine translation system.The authors thank their colleagues in the Mu project, who helped in the development of the system and already returned to their private companies to develop their own machine translation systems. We also wish to thank the researchers at the Japan Information Center of Science and Technology, and the Electrotechnical Laboratory of Kyoto University for their cooperation.     

Cytoplasmic localization and nuclear transport of cofilin in cultured myotubes

The loci encoding the major histocompatibility class II cell surface antigens DR, DQ, and DP exhibit a remarkable degree of allelic polymorphism. Strong linkage disequilibrium is also found between these loci in the human population. To study the evolutionary conservation of this disequilibrium the DQA1, DQB1, and DRB1-6 loci were analyzed in chimpanzee and gorilla by sequencing or/and oligonucleotide hybridization of PCR-amplified DNA. This analysis revealed several new DRB sequences. The distribution of DRB loci differs between human and nonhuman primate haplotypes, and the strong disequilibrium found on human haplotypes between alleles at DQA1 and DQB1 as well as between the DQ loci and the DRB1 locus was not detected in the nonhuman hominoids. Extensive recombination within and between the DR and DQ region appears to have occurred during the 3-7 million years since the divergence of the three species, resulting in little similarity of haplotypes between species. The strong disequilibrium found in the human species between these loci may either reflect haplotype-specific barriers to recombination, recent founder effects in the evolution of humans, or selection for specific haplotypes.     

Electrical Conduction in Magnesium Phosphate Glasses Containing Heavy Water

The relation between deconductivity and the concentration of protons or deuterons was investigated in 45MgO · 55P₂O₅ (in mol%) glasses containing small amounts of "water." The conductivity was shown to increase in proportion to the square of the proton concentration as reported in calcium phosphate glasses. The same relation was found to be valid for the deuterated specimens, although their conductivity was somewhat lower than that in the protonated glasses when compared at the same concentration of OD or OH groups. These results strongly suggest that protons are the charge carriers in these glasses. The conductivities were measured also for specimens containing both protons and deuterons in different ratios. No distinct deviation was observed from additivity within the concentration range examined.     

Antibacterial activated carbon fibre derived from phenolic resin fibre by use of co-graftpolymerization

Phenolic-resin fibre was co-graftpolymerized with methyl methacrylate and methacrylic acid. The weight of the fibre increased by 26% after grafting. The grafted fibre was soaked in silvernitrate solution to introduce silver ion on methacrylic acid in the graft by an ion-exchange reaction, followed by carbonization at 900 °C for 30 min under a nitrogen stream and activation at 900 °C under a steam stream. After activation for 40 min, the resulting fibre showed a silver content of 8.3 wt% a specific surface area of 1300 m²g^–1 and antimicrobial activity against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. The average crystallite size of the silver in this fibre was 30 nm, which suggests co-graftpolymerization is a useful technique to disperse fine silver particles in the activated carbon fibre. After soaking in flowing tap water for 10 and 20 days, this activated carbon fibre lost about 50 wt% of silver but kept its antibacterial activity.     

Development and Field Test on a Distribution Line Carrier Communication System

A communication system through distribution lines was developed for distribution automation. This system consists of a two level hierarchy system : a zero-phase-sequence carrier communication system through ungrounded 6kV distribution lines and an earth return communication system through grounded 100V/200V lines. In each system, transmission signals are generated by switching a passive element of small capacity between a line and the ground, and the signals are circulated through the line and the ground. By using this method, the influence of load impedance change and noises generated in loads is avoided sufficiently. Field tests were carried out at Ijiri Substation of the Kyushu Electric Power Co., Inc. for one year starting in September 1983. High reliability of the system was verified in terms of endurance in a severe environment and data transmission performance.     

Recognition of handprinted Hebrew characters using features selected in the Hough transform space

Automatic identification of handprinted Hebrew characters is described in this paper. The recognition model devised constitutes a multi-stage system. In the first stage a coarse classifier allocates the input patterns into one of 17 categories, based on the number and the location of end points within predetermined regions in the characters matrix. The second stage uses features extracted in the Hough transform space to classify characters assigned to each of 16 categories. The remaining one category, composed of similar, square-like (rotated L shape) classes, is recognized by structural analysis and a statistical classifier. An additional step of postprocessing is added to compensate for the sensitivity of the Hough transform to the existence of similar classes within some of the categories. Experiments were conducted with a multi-author (40 writers) data base. An average recognition rate of 86.9% was observed for the system. This compared favorably with the results of two other recognition methods.