Inhibitory effect of ketamine on depolarization-induced norepinephrine release in the rat ventral hippocampus investigated by in vivo microdialysis

The release of norepinephrine (NE) in the ventral hippocampus was studied in rats with microdialysis method. The basal release of NE with perfusion of normal artificial cerebrospinal fluid (ACSF) was 1.58 +/- 0.37 x 20 microliters-1 sample. The NE concentration increased significantly with perfusion of high potassium (60 mM) ACSF indicating that depolarization-induced release was up to 5 times higher than the basic level. Ketamine (20 mg.kg-1 and 80 mg.kg-1 im) significantly inhibited the depolarization-induced increase of NE, but did not affect the basal release. Neither 5 mg.kg-1 im of ketamine nor MK-801 had any effect on the basic or the depolarization-induced release. These results suggest that the inhibitory effect of ketamine on the depolarization-induced NE release was not due to the NMDA channel blocking properties of ketamine.     

Driver accidents and the neuropsychiatric patient.

Compared the driving records of 533 neuropsychiatric patients with a random sample of 86,717 California drivers in an attempt to improve prediction of accident records. Results indicated that Ss diagnosed schizophrenic reaction had a lower accident rate, while those with a high Mania score on the MMPI or who drank had a higher rate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Corona Current Control by Mesh Grid

Corona charging is widely used for charging dielectric surfaces. It is desirable to attain precise and uniform surface voltage in its application. A corona charging method using a mesh grid is described. It is found that the corona current control characteristics by mesh grid can be expressed by a nondimensional parameter?the corona current transmission rate. This parameter is obtained experimentally. The method of parameter application in dielectric surface charging is expressed by a differential equation. This technique is applied to charging amorphous selenium xerographic plates and to neutralizing the charges on a dielectric surface. It is found that the surface voltage obtained by charging with a mesh grid is far more uniform than that obtained by charging without a mesh grid.     

A Block Processing Unit in a Single-Chip MPEG-2 Video Encoder LSI

This paper describes a block processing unit in a single-chip MPEG-2 MP@ML video encoder LSI. The block processing unit executes algorithms such as a discrete cosine transform (DCT), a quantization, an inverse quantization, and an inverse discrete cosine transform (IDCT). A double-block pipeline scheme has been introduced to execute DCT and IDCT operations on the shared circuits. Using a time-multiplexed DCT/IDCT architecture, we achieve processing performance of 2.0 clk/pel. This architecture has 21% fewer transistors and 30% less power dissipation than a conventional one. The number of transistors of the block processing unit is 240 kTr which measures 7.7% of the total of the chip. By controlling the clock signal supply, power dissipation can be reduced to 43% which is about 400 mW at 3.3 V using a 0.35 m triple-layer metal CMOS cell-base technology at 54 MHz.     

Multi-view fast object detection by using extended haar filters in uncontrolled environments

In this paper, we propose multi-view object detection methodology by using specific extended class of haar-like filters, which apparently detects the object with high accuracy in the unconstraint environments. There are several object detection techniques, which work well in restricted environments, where illumination is constant and the view angle of the object is restricted. The proposed object detection methodology successfully detects faces, cars, logo objects at any size and pose with high accuracy in real world conditions. To cope with angle variation, we propose a multiple trained cascades by using the proposed filters, which performs even better detection by spanning a different range of orientation in each cascade. We tested the proposed approach by still images by using image databases and conducted some evaluations by using video images from an IP camera placed in outdoor. We tested the method for detecting face, logo, and vehicle in different environments. The experimental results show that the proposed method yields higher classification performance than Viola and Jones’s detector, which uses a single feature for each weak classifier. Given the less number of features, our detector detects any face, object, or vehicle in 15 fps when using 4 megapixel images with 95% accuracy on an Intel i7 2.8 GHz machine.     

Visualization of Understanding of Media Characteristics Using Analytic Hierarchy Process

The purpose of this study is to design a tool, adapted to students＇ individual contexts and to enable students to reflect on their understanding of media characteristics. AHP （analytic hierarchy process） is a structured technique for organizing and analyzing complex decisions. Using AHP, students have to define appropriate criteria and priorities for using media. It is expected that students＂ understanding of the characteristics of different types of media will emerge through reflection. Seventy two university students took part in this research. They were asked to prioritize their ways.of obtaining information about current affairs using sets of media such as TV, books, newspapers and web pages, Twitter and Facebook. AHP enables us to visualize a ＂real＂ understanding of media characteristics and students can reflect on that basis. As far as ＂information sources and media＂ is concerned, a few students indicated that it was the information source itself that was important rather than the type of media. Our tool fulfils the role of encouraging this type of reflection.     

Minor components responsible for flavor reversion of soybean oil

Edible refined, bleached and deodorized (RBD) soybean oil was fractionated by silicic acid column chromatography to identify minor components responsible for flavor reversion. Minor components from oil eluted with diethyl ether/n-hexane (1:1) were compared with those from corn and canola oils. All vegetable oils contain free fatty acids, diglycerides and sterols as major ingredients in this fraction. However, unusual triglycerides consisting of 10-oxo-8-octadecenoic acid and 10-and 9-hydroxy octadecanoic acids were detected in RBD and crude soybean oils.     

Wax ester biosynthesis in the liver of myctophid fishes

The biosynthetic properties of wax esters in the liver were compared between two types of myctophid fishes having different body lipid composition, i.e., three triglyceriderich species (Lampanyctus jordani, Diaphus theta, and Symbolophorus californiensis) and three was ester-rich species (L. regalis, Stenobracius nannochir, and Stenobracius leucopsarus). n-Heptadecanol (17∶0-ALC) and/or 10-cis-heptadecenoic acid (17∶1-ACID) was incubated with liver homogenate of the six myctophid fishes and with co-factors such as NADPH and ATP for 2 to 5 h. Considerable amounts of wax esters with odd-numbered fatty acids and/or alcohols were produced in the liver homogenate of the was ester-rich species. Stenobracius nannochir and L. regalis, which exclusively contained wax esters as neutral lipids, showed the highest activity of wax ester synthesis, followed by S. leucopsarus, which contained triglyceride as the minor constituent. Only trace amounts at most of odd-numbered fatty acids and alcohols were incorporated into the wax esters after incubation with the liver homogenates of the triglyceride-rich fishes. Active interchange between the fatty acids and the alcohols occurred during wax ester biosynthesis in the wax ester-rich fishes. The chain elongation and shortening of acyl moieties were also observed during incubation. These results suggested that the deposition of lipids in myctophid fishes is mainly due to their biosynthetic activities.