Abdominal incisional hernia occurring after an esophagectomy reconstructed with a gastric tube through an antesternal route: report of a case

A Japanese man, who had undergone a subtotal esophagectomy reconstructed with a gastric tube through an antesternal route for esophageal carcinoma 16 years previously, was admitted to our hospital because of an abdominal incisional hernia. The abdominal incisional hernia was in his upper abdomen and was difficult to push back into the intraabdominal cavity by hand. The hernia was successfully repaired by operation. We thus conclude that an abdominal incisional hernia is a rare but important late-phase complication occurring after an esophagectomy reconstructed with either an antesternal or retrosternal route, and an operation should be the treatment of choice.     

Associativity-Based Routing for Ad Hoc Mobile Networks

This paper presents a new, simple and bandwidth-efficient distributed routing protocol to support mobile computing in a conference size ad-hoc mobile network environment. Unlike the conventional approaches such as link-state and distance-vector distributed routing algorithms, our protocol does not attempt to consistently maintain routing information in every node. In an ad-hoc mobile network where mobile hosts (MHs) are acting as routers and where routes are made inconsistent by MHs' movement, we employ an associativity-based routing scheme where a route is selected based on nodes having associativity states that imply periods of stability. In this manner, the routes selected are likely to be long-lived and hence there is no need to restart frequently, resulting in higher attainable throughput. Route requests are broadcast on a per need basis. The association property also allows the integration of ad-hoc routing into a BS-oriented Wireless LAN (WLAN) environment, providing the fault tolerance in times of base stations (BSs) failures. To discover shorter routes and to shorten the route recovery time when the association property is violated, the localised-query and quick-abort mechanisms are respectively incorporated into the protocol. To further increase cell capacity and lower transmission power requirements, a dynamic cell size adjustment scheme is introduced. The protocol is free from loops, deadlock and packet duplicates and has scalable memory requirements. Simulation results obtained reveal that shorter and better routes can be discovered during route re-constructions.     

A Survey of Handover Techniques for Wireless ATM Networks

This paper provides a review and comprehensivecomparison of existing handover schemes proposed forwireless ATM networks. Existing schemes include thoseproposed by NEC, Olivetti, Bell Labs, Cambridge, Stanford, CMU, Berkeley, Michigan, VTT, andColumbia. We highlight the methodologies employed by thevarious schemes and reveal their differences. We discussissues related to the effect of ATM switch architectures on mobility implementation and on futurehandover paradigms.     

cDNA cloning, tissue distribution, and subcellular localization of horseshoe crab big defensin

A full-length cDNA for horseshoe crab big defensin with a strong antimicrobial activity was obtained from a hemocyte cDNA library. The open reading frame of the cDNA coded for an NH2-terminal signal sequence followed by a propeptide and the mature big defensin. The propeptide is linked to the mature protein through an -Arg-X-Lys/Arg-Arg- motif, the processing site for Kex2-like proteases. Northern blot analysis revealed that big defensin is expressed in all the tissues tested, suggesting that big defensin plays an important role not only in hemocytes but also in other tissues for host defense. The subcellular localization, determined by immunocytochemistry at ultrastructural level, confirmed the previous findings obtained by biochemical analysis that big defensin locates in both small and large granules in hemocytes. Big defensin is the first example to demonstrate the existence of broad tissue distribution in horseshoe crab.     

Pathogenicity of glycoprotein C-deficient herpes simplex virus 1 strain TN-1 which encodes truncated glycoprotein C

A clinical isolate of herpes simplex virus 1 (TN-1) from a stromal keratitis patient was found to be defective in the glycoprotein C (gC) gene (UL44), thus resulting in the production of truncated gC upon infection. To study the pathogenetic role of truncated gC, we prepared a recombinant LTN-8 derived from TN-1 with deletions of the 1.5 kilobase pairs of the gC gene including the initiation codon. A penetration assay revealed LTN-8 to be less efficient in its penetration ability than TN-1, the laboratory strain KOS and RTN-1-20-3, a recombinant derived from TN-1 with the KOS gC gene. The penetration of LTN-8 was facilitated by the addition of TN-1-infected culture medium. TN-1 virus preparations had no hemagglutinating activity. However, the animals infected with TN-1 did develop hemagglutination inhibition (HI) antibodies. The LTN-8-infected animals did not develop HI antibodies. The pathogenicity in BALB/c mice following either corneal, intraperitoneal or intracerebral inoculation did not significantly differ among TN-1, RTN-1-20-3 or LTN-8. Our results indicate that truncated gC was sufficient for the induction of HI antibodies and was also able to facilitate penetration in vitro. Although truncated gC might be a virulence factor acting as a decoy, both truncated gC and intact gC had little effect on the outcome following intracerebral, intraperitoneal or corneal inoculation.     

Environmental protection: researches in National Institute of Radiological Sciences

Some studies for radiological protection of the environment have been made at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS). Transfer of radionuclides and related elements has been investigated for dose estimation of non-human biota. A parameter database and radionuclide transfer models have been also developed for the Japanese environments. Dose (rate)-effect relationships for survival, growth and reproduction have been investigated in conifers, Arabidopsis, fungi, earthworms, springtails, algae, duckweeds, daphnia and medaka. Also genome-wide gene expression analysis has been carried out by high coverage expression profiling (HiCEP). Effects on aquatic microbial communities have been studied in experimental ecosystem models, i.e., microcosms. Some effects were detected at a dose rate of 1 Gy day(-1) and were likely to arise from interspecies interactions. The results obtained at NIRS have been used in development of frameworks for environmental protection by some international bodies, and will contribute to environmental protection in Japan and other Asian countries.     

Negative faradaic resistance in extracellular electron transfer by anode-respiring Geobacter sulfurreducens cells

Geobacter sulfurreducens is a gram-negative δ-proteobacterium that is capable of transferring respiratory electrons to solid-state extracellular acceptors, including anodes, via abundant c-type cytochromes expressed in the outer membrane. As extracellular electron transfer (EET) to solid-state acceptors can proceed without the addition of exogenous mediators, this microbe has attracted significant attention with respect to energy conversion between electrical and chemical energy. Here, we revealed that clear redox peaks were present in the whole-cell cyclic voltammogram of G. sulfurreducens at around -0.15 V vs Ag|AgCl when tin-doped In(2)O(3) (ITO) glass was used as an anode. Interestingly, the EET current decreased in the potential region more positive than the midpoint potential (E(m)) of the redox peak. Thus, EET of anode-respiring G. sulfurreducens cells exhibited a negative Faradaic resistance (NFR) characteristic at the E(m) of the redox peak, in contrast to general electrochemical systems where the Faradaic current typically increases with increasing overpotential.     

Advanced fabrication technologies of integrated-type structure for a-Si solar cells

This paper proposes a new advanced fabrication technology for a low-cost integrated-type a-Si solar cell. Integrated-type cells provide many advantages and have been industrialized with a laser patterning method. However, a higher throughput and more efficient patterning method was required for applying a-Si solar cells to a power generating system. Plasma CVM (Chemical Vaporization Machining) was first applied to advanced patterning because of its advantages of high speed and selectivity. In this method, a plasma generated under high pressure localizes near the wire electrode and concentrates reactive radicals. As a result, we achieved an etching rate of more than 1 μm/s and selective patterning of a 200 μm-wide a-Si layer in 1 s multiline patterning was also developed for large-area modules.