Participation of NK1.1+ T cells in the rejection of lpr alphabetaT cells when bone marrow cells of lpr mice are transplanted into B6 mice

BACKGROUND: Cause-of-death statistics are widely used for comparing health characteristics of European Community (EC) countries. Before attempting to interpret between-country differences, it is essential to assess the biases affecting the comparability of the data. EUROSTAT decided to address globally this problem with the objective to improve the quality and comparability of cause-of-death data within the EC. METHODS: The material is based on a review of results of international comparative cause-of-death studies and on specific inquiries among EC. Both cause-of-death certification and codification practices are analysed. Certification is studied comparing the models of death certificates, the type of information captured, certifiers training and querying practices. The different coding systems are analysed (International classification of diseases (ICD) in use, interpretation of the ICD rules, implementation of automated coding systems). RESULTS: International studies on comparability of certification and coding practices between countries are rare. These studies are based on certification of cases histories and recoding of samples of death certificates. Recent studies on respiratory diseases, cancers and diabetes outline differences that influenced on the reported level of mortality. The specific EUROSTAT investigation (1997) outline general discrepancies: models of death certificates, nature and amount of information entered, way to establish the diagnosis, degree of consistency of the certification process, autopsy practices, certifiers practices, implementation of ICD-10 and implementation of automated coding systems. CONCLUSION: EUROSTAT studies are now focused on causes of death requiring special attention for comparability (e.g. suicide, accidental deaths, drug and alcohol related deaths, unknown and ill-defined causes), on procedures to improve the homogeneity of certifiers training and querying practices, on the effect of the transition to ICD-10. The international model of death certificate recommended by the World Health Organization should be adopted as widely as possible. Uniform complementary information (e.g. surgery, pregnancy, autopsy, place of occurrence of accidental deaths, work accident) should also be adopted. The EUROSTAT investigations must result in definitions of common recommendations and guidelines to EC.     

Timing Jitter Measurement of Intrinsic Random Jitter and Sinusoidal Jitter Using Frequency Division

This paper presents a new method for measuring random timing jitter or sinusoidal timing jitter in signals of telecommunication devices. The method uses a divide-by-M circuit to reduce the frequency and the number of clock samples, and applies the Hilbert transform to measure the timing jitter. This new frequency division method is validated with experimental data from a serializer-deserializer device and a modulated signal source generating a 2.5 GHz FM signal.     

The DNA Repair Enzyme Apurinic/Apyrimidinic Endonuclease (Apex Nuclease) 2 Has the Potential to Protect against Down-Regulation of Chondrocyte Activity in Osteoarthritis

Apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease 2 (Apex 2) plays a critical role in DNA repair caused by oxidative damage in a variety of human somatic cells. We speculated that chondrocyte Apex 2 may protect against the catabolic process of articular cartilage in osteoarthritis (OA). Higher levels of Apex 2 expression were histologically observed in severely compared with mildly degenerated OA cartilage from STR/OrtCrlj mice, an experimental model which spontaneously develops OA. The immunopositivity of Apex 2 was significantly correlated with the degree of cartilage degeneration. Moreover, the OA-related catabolic factor interleukin-1β induced the expression of Apex 2 in chondrocytes, while Apex 2 silencing using small interfering RNA reduced chondrocyte activity in vitro. The expression of Apex 2 in chondrocytes therefore appears to be associated with the degeneration of articular cartilage and could be induced by an OA-related catabolic factor to protect against the catabolic process of articular cartilage. Our findings suggest that Apex 2 may have the potential to prevent the catabolic stress-mediated down-regulation of chondrocyte activity in OA.     

A simple diagnostic method for plasma jet in strong magnetic field

An experimental study was carried out to examine the effect of strong magnetic field on the characteristics of argon plasma jet. An approximate expression was introduced to the distribution of emission line intensity and the color intensity. The distribution of the emission intensity was compared to that of the color intensity. The modified profiles of the spectral intensity agree well with those of the color intensity. The two-point analysis, that is, a calculation method with only two selected wavelengths in Boltzmann plots, was selected in the evaluation of excitation temperature because the calculation becomes significantly simple. The lateral distribution of excitation temperature obtained from the modified intensity becomes more accurate than that without the approximation. The radial distributions of excitation temperature based on the Abel inversion can be determined by the present approximation. It is found that the simple diagnostic method can utilize for understanding the characteristics on plasma jet.     

Limitation of the Inverse Problem in Body Surface Potential Mapping

The inverse problem in electrocardiography is ill-conditioned, and small noise included in the measured potentials causes large errors in the solution. Since the inverse problem is mostly described as a linear problem, the entire problem has often been treated in terms of a transfer matrix. The degree of linear independence among the vectors in the transfer matrix, which is directly related to the stability of the solution, is well represented by the singular values of the transfer matrix. By means of the singular value decomposition of the transfer matrix, the stability of solution to the inverse problem has been discussed when the potential data contain noise or the transfer matrix includes some error. We have derived expressions of maximum possible error magnification and a root-mean-square error magnification and, in terms of these parameters, found that only 4 equivalent cardiac dipoles or only 15 independent epicardial potentials can be estimated from body surface potentials when they are measured with an accuracy as high as 99 percent.     

Computer Aided Analysis of Cell-Cycle Phase from Cytophotometric Histogram

A method for estimating, from cytophotometric data, the proportion of cells in three different phases of the cell cycle is proposed. Computation is done by means of determining seven parameters in the approximate function for the fluorescence intensity histogram. The proportion of cells in the GI, S, and G2-M phases, obtained by this method, was found to be reliable.     

1/f fluctuations in the spontaneous spike discharge intervals of a giant snail neuron

It has been found in a tonically autoactive neuron (TAN) of an African giant snail that spike discharge interval fluctuations have a power spectral density that is inversely proportional to frequency (the 1/f spectrum). This result was obtained when the suboesophageal ganglia which contained the TAN had been removed from the snail body.     

On the relations between the excitation fronts propagating in theheart and the equivalent dipoles

The equivalent dipoles of cardiac electrical activity are determined either by minimizing the square deviation between the measured potential distribution and that generated by the dipoles or by comparing them through their multiple expansion coefficients. The two methods, called the direct and indirect method, respectively, are applied to the potential distribution obtained from a three-dimensional heart model composed of about 50000 unit cells, and the dipole locations thus obtained are compared to the mean location of the excitation fronts. When there is a single excitation front with simple shape, the equivalent dipole location obtained from the single-moving-dipole approximation coincides with the mean location of the excitation front. The coincidence is better with the direct method, but it needs longer calculation time than with the indirect method. For 25-30 ms after the onset of the ventricular depolarization, the excitation fronts have complicated shapes, and the deviations of the equivalent dipole locations from their mean locations become large even if the two-moving-dipole approximation is used     

Absolute-length determination of a long-baseline Fabry-Perot cavity by means of resonating modulation sidebands

A new method has been demonstrated for absolute-length measurements of a long-baseline Fabry-Perot cavity by use of phase-modulated light. This method is based on determination of a free spectral range (FSR) of the cavity from the frequency difference between a carrier and phase-modulation sidebands, both of which resonate in the cavity. Sensitive response of the Fabry-Perot cavity near resonant frequencies ensures accurate determination of the FSR and thus of the absolute length of the cavity. This method was applied to a 300-m Fabry-Perot cavity of the TAMA gravitational wave detector that is being developed at the National Astronomical Observatory, Tokyo. With a modulation frequency of ~12 MHz, we successfully determined the absolute cavity length with resolution of 1 mum (3 x 10(-9) in strain) and observed local ground strain variations of 6 x 10(-8).