Severe antecollis during antipsychotics treatment: a report of three cases

1. The authors report on three patients with severe antecollis that developed after chronic treatment with antipsychotics. These patients had been treated with neuroleptics for their delusions and hallucinations. Antecollis is a rare form of tardive dystonia that has drawn little attention. To our knowledge, there have been no reports on this disorder. 2. The patients developed the symptom after receiving a number of antipsychotics for 4 months to 14 years. Neither discontinuation of antipsychotics nor administration of anticholinergic agents affected the symptom. 3. Although spontaneous improvement of dystonia was obtained after several months without any specific treatment in one patient, the symptom persisted for several years in another. The last patient could not be followed after discharge from our hospital since she and her family did not come to the hospital. 4. Severe antecollis may cause disturbances in various functions, such as vision, speaking and swallowing. Forward bending of the neck may cause inspiratory obstruction. Severe antecollis may not be unusual and psychiatrists should be aware of this symptom in routine clinical practice.     

CDR3 size spectratyping and sequencing of spectratype-derived TCR of spinal cord T cells in autoimmune encephalomyelitis

To characterize the nature of autoimmune disease-inducing T cells in the target organ, oligoclonal expansion of spinal cord T cells of Lewis rats with experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) was examined by complementarity-determining region 3 (CDR3) size spectratyping. It is known that TCR of in vitro-established myelin basic protein-specific T cell clones and lines have a short CDR3 and that the amino acid sequence in this region is highly preserved. On the basis of these findings, we analyzed 22 spectratypes of the TCR beta-chain (Vbeta1-20). Among them, only Vbeta8.2 and Vbeta17 showed oligoclonal expansion of TCR with a short CDR3 at the early stage of EAE. More interestingly, the spectratype profile of Vbeta8.2 seen at the early stage was preserved throughout the course of EAE, whereas that of Vbeta17 became more diverse at the peak stage of the disease. Analysis of nucleotide and predicted amino acid sequences of Vbeta8.2 CDR3 derived from the spectratypes revealed that the clones with CASSDSSYEQYFGPG, which is one of the representative sequences of encephalitogenic T cell clones, constituted the predominant population not only at the early stage but also at the peak and recovery stages (71, 71, and 60%, respectively). These findings imply that although the phenotype of T cells in the target organ diversifies as the autoimmune disease progresses, disease-associated TCR spectratype(s) are preserved throughout the course of the disease. Thus, CDR3 size spectratyping is a powerful tool for the screening of disease-inducing T cells in an autoimmune disease of unknown pathomechanism.     

Color segmentation for text extraction

The capability of extracting and recognizing characters printed in color documents will widen immensely the applications of OCR systems. This paper describes a new method of color segmentation to extract character areas from a color document. At first glance, the characters seem to be printed in a single color, but actual measurements reveal that the color image has a distribution of components. Compared with clustering algorithms, our method prevents oversegmentation and fusion with the background while maintaining real-time usability. It extracts the representative colors based on a histogram analysis of the color space. Our method also contains a selective local color averaging technique that removes the problem of mesh noise on high-resolution color images.Received: 25 July 2003, Revised: 10 August 2003, Published online: 6 February 2004Correspondence to: Hiroyuki Hase. Current address: 3-9-1 Bunkyo, Fukui-shi 910-8507, Japan     

Structure and Magnetism of the Composite Crystal Ca0.824CuO2

We have studied the magnetic state from a viewpoint of crystallographic features of the 1-D chain compound Ca_0.824CuO₂. A possible spin-hole arrangement in the magnetically coexisting state was determined by analyzing the local structural distortion in the CuO₂ chain by means of a modulated-crystal-structure analysis. The essential periodic sequence expected is (: up- and down-spin, : hole), which can be regarded as a kind of spin-1/2 ferromagnetic-antiferromagnetic alternating Heisenberg chain.     

Surface tension of molten stainless steels under plasma conditions

The surface tension and the density of 304 stainless steels with the sulfur contents of 10, 100 and 250 ppm were measured under low pressure Ar plasma conditions in the temperature range of 1823–2073 K. The measurements were carried out by the sessile drop method and a (La_0.9Ca_0.1)CrO₃ substrate was used. No significant influence of the plasma was observed on the surface tension and its temperature coefficient. The surface tension and density of 304 stainless steel are expressed using the following equations: $$ \displaylines{ \gamma = - 0.12\times T + 1980 \ ({\rm mN/m}) \quad (10 \,{\rm ppm\, Sulfur})\cr \gamma = 0.29\times T + 1030 \ ({\rm mN/m})\quad (110 \,{\rm ppm \,Sulfur})\cr \gamma = 0.49\times T + 520\ ({\rm mN/m})\quad (250 \,{\rm ppm \,Sulfur})\cr \rho = - 0.616\times T + 8.11\times 10^{+3 } \ ({\rm kg/m^{3}})\cr} $$      

The Role of National Measurement Institutes in Subsecond Current-Heating Methods

The historical role of three national measurement institutes (NMIs), namely, the NBS-NIST (USA), the IMGC (Italy), and the NRLM-NMIJ (Japan), in the development of different pulse-heating methods is reviewed. In relation to their institutional interests, the indicated NMIs were mainly interested in the development and application of new measurement techniques, in the accurate measurement of thermophysical properties at high temperatures, and in the characterization of possible reference materials. An informal intercomparison of published experimental results obtained via pulse-heating techniques over 30 years on the electrical resistivity and heat capacity of niobium, molybdenum, and tungsten is presented, comparing these results with recommended curves from the literature. Good agreement is found among the pulse-heating results from the indicated NMIs, always within the combined uncertainties. Paper presented at the Seventh International Workshop on Subsecond Thermophysics, October 6–8, 2004, Orléans, France.     

Effect of sulfur sources on specific desulfurization activity of Rhodococcus erythropolis KA2-5-1 in exponential fed-batch culture

The effects of sulfur sources on the desulfurization activity of Rhodococcus erythropolis KA2-5-1 were investigated by using an exponential fed-batch culture technique. The feed rate of a sulfur source was controlled independently of the feed rate of ethanol, which was used as a carbon and energy source. Among the sulfur sources examined were dibenzothiophene (DBT), ammonium sulfate, L-cysteine, L-methionine, and 2-amino-ethanesulfonic acid. When the fed-medium contained DBT as the sole sulfur source, KA2-5-1 cells showed a maximum desulfurization activity of approximately 130 mmol 2-HBP kg-cell(-1) h(-1). Similar levels of enzyme activity were also achieved with inexpensive ammonium sulfate by using the exponential fed-batch culture technique. In addition, higher levels of desulfurization activity were achieved by increasing the dosage of the DBT desulfurization (dsz) operon and dszD gene in R. erythropolis KA2-5-1. The recombinant strain showed a maximum desulfurization activity of approximately 250 mmol 2-HBP kg-cell(-1) h(-1) in the exponential fed-batch cultures.     

Identification, cloning, and characterization of a Sporobolomyces singularis beta-galactosidase-like enzyme involved in galacto-oligosaccharide production

Sporobolomyces singularis can be used as a biocatalyst in galacto-oligosaccharide production. We isolated 2-deoxy-D-glucose-resistant mutants of S. singularis ATCC 24193 and recovered a mutant that showed 10-fold higher beta-galactosidase-like activity than the parent strain and which was insensitive to catabolite repression. Thereafter, the beta-galactosidase-like enzyme was purified from the mutant and revealed to be a glycoprotein with both beta-glucosidase- and beta-galactosidase-like activity, the Michaelis-Menten constants of which for o-nitrophenyl-beta-D-galactopyranoside and p-nitrophenyl-beta-D-glucopyranoside were 5.40 and 1.96 mM, respectively, and the maximum velocities were 3.07 and 2.30 micromol/min per mg of protein, respectively. Its molecular mass was estimated to be 73.9 kDa by sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and 146 kDa by gel filtration, suggesting that it has a homodimeric structure. We sequenced the N-terminus and internal peptides of this protein and isolated both a cDNA and a gene with degenerate primers. The gene, named bg l A, has 18 introns and 19 exons and encodes a polypeptide of 594 amino acids. The Bg l A protein was approximately 35% identical and 50% similar to plant beta-glucosidases belonging to family 1 glycosyl hydrolases, but with a unique 110-amino-acid sequence at the N-terminus. The beta-galactosidase-like enzyme (i.e., Bg l A protein) in S. singularis is a beta-glucosidase with high transgalactosidase activity.     

Enantiomer-selective activation of racemic catalysts

Asymmetric catalysts can be evolved into highly activated catalysts by association with chiral activators. This asymmetric activation process is particularly useful in racemic catalysis through selective activation of one enantiomer of the racemic catalysts. Recently, a strategy whereby a racemic catalyst is selectively deactivated by a chiral additive has been reported to yield nonracemic products. However, we have reported a strategy that is an alternative to asymmetric catalysts but is conceptually opposite, in which a chiral activator selectively activates rather than deactivates one enantiomer of a racemic chiral catalyst. The advantage of this activation strategy over the deactivation counterpart is that the activated catalyst can produce a greater enantiomeric excess (x(act)% ee) in the products than the ee attained by the enantiomerically pure catalyst on its own. Therefore, 'asymmetric activation' could provide a general and powerful strategy for the use of not only atropisomeric and, hence, racemic ligands but also chirally flexible and 'pro-atropisomeric' ligands without enantiomeric resolution!     

Three-dimensional shape measurement of a diffusing surface by use of a femtosecond amplifying optical Kerr gate

We propose a system for three-dimensional (3D) shape measurement of a diffusing surface by use of a previously developed femtosecond amplifying optical Kerr gate (fs-amp OKG). The system has an opening time of 459 fs and a maximum transmittance of 185%. It also provides good 3D imaging performance: a transverse imaging resolution of 70 mum, a depth resolution of 100 mum, and a positioning accuracy of 5.9 mum in depth. It is found that the optical Kerr effect and the amplification process in the fs-amp OKG do not cause the quality of a time-resolved image to deteriorate. We prove the effectiveness of the proposed system by measuring the shapes of completely diffusing objects with stepped and spherical surfaces.