Femoral osteomyelitis after tooth extraction

Medial dislocation of the great toe without fracture or sesamoid separation is an unusual event. We are reporting such a case which occurred in a man after a motor vehicle accident. The patient was treated with closed reduction and cast immobilization. The patient recovered all his activities after 30 days. Three-year follow-up showed a complete recovery, clinically and radiographically, with only slight radiographic signs of osteoarthritis, which was present also in the contralateral foot.     

Peptide growth factors in the prostate as mediators of stromal epithelial interaction

Peptide growth factors play a role in the maintenance of normal prostatic growth and differentiation (Fig. 2). It seems likely that the androgen sensitivity of human prostate is mediated by the production of peptide growth factors from stromal cells which act as the direct intermediate of androgen action on epithelial cells. TGF-beta 1 inhibition of epithelial cells is opposed by the stimulatory action of EGF, IGF and FGFs to maintain an equilibrium of epithelial cell numbers. The indirect mitogenic action of androgens appear to act by down-regulation of TGF-beta 1 and possibly EGF receptors. There is also interaction with the effects of IGF-II, produced by prostatic stromal cells and acting on epithelial cells to increase proliferation. The growth of normal prostatic fibroblasts is under the control of bFGF and TGF-beta 1. However, although our understanding of the actions of these growth factors in the normal prostate has improved over the last decade, their role in the development and maintenance of prostate cancer is less clearly defined. TGF-beta 1, classically considered to be inhibitory for epithelial cells, may be up-regulated in prostatic tumours, stimulating growth. Alternatively, autocrine production of such growth factors by tumour cells may lead to loss of inhibitory effects from exogenous TGF-beta 1, a mechanism also witnessed with TGF-alpha and bFGF. The role of EGF in the development of prostate cancer is confusing because results from the use of different cell types and experimental conditions is contradictory. It may be that a switch in the production of the predominant EGFr ligand from EGF to TGF-alpha is an important feature in the development and maintenance of the malignant phenotype. The presence of TGF-alpha autocrine loops has been shown clearly in some tumour cell lines. This switch in the production of a particular ligand may also be a feature of IGFs in prostate cancer. IGF-II may be replaced by IGF-I during malignant progression, both of which are able to act via the type 1 receptor. This change in IGF expression appears to be accompanied by altered expression of the IGF-BP2, with less detectable within prostatic tissues but elevated serum levels [58]. Basic FGF is normally produced by prostatic fibroblasts but is also produced by some prostatic cancer cell lines [64]. However, as with all growth factors, the expression of the bFGF protein and its receptor is dependent on the cell line examined. The autocrine and paracrine control of normal and abnormal prostatic growth by growth factors is important in determining their role in the development and maintenance of prostate cancer. Better understanding of such mechanisms is essential for the development of novel therapeutic strategies in the control and treatment of prostate cancer.     

In vivo purging with high-dose cytarabine followed by high-dose chemoradiotherapy and reinfusion of unpurged bone marrow for adult acute myelogenous leukemia in first complete remission

PURPOSE: To evaluate in a prospective study the efficacy of autologous bone marrow transplantation (BMT) in adult patients with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) in first remission, using a single course of high-dose Cytarabine (HD Ara-C) consolidation therapy as in vivo purging. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Sixty consecutive adult patients with AML in first complete remission (CR) were treated with HD Ara-C consolidation therapy as a method of in vivo purging before marrow collection. High-dose therapy consisted of fractionated total-body irradiation (FTBI) 12 Gy, intravenous etoposide 60 mg/kg, and cyclophosphamide 75 mg/kg, followed by reinfusion of cryopreserved marrow. RESULTS: Sixty patients underwent consolidation treatment with HD Ara-C with the intent to treat with autologous BMT. Sixteen patients were unable to proceed to autologous BMT (10 patients relapsed, one died of sepsis, one developed cerebellar toxicity, two had inadequate blood counts, and two refused). Forty-four patients underwent autologous BMT and have a median follow-up time of 37 months (range, 14.7 to 68.7) for patients who are alive with no relapse. The cumulative probability of disease-free survival (DFS) at 24 months in the intent-to-treat group is 49% (95% confidence interval [CI], 37% to 62%) and in those who actually underwent autologous BMT is 61% (95% CI, 46% to 74%). The probability of relapse was 44% (95% CI, 31% to 58%) and 33% (95% CI, 20% to 49%) for the intent-to-treat and autologous BMT patients, respectively. CONCLUSION: This approach offers a relatively high DFS rate to adult patients with AML in first CR. The results of this study are similar to those achieved with allogeneic BMT.     

Dynamics and organization of MAP kinase signal pathways

In the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, four separate but structurally related mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) activation pathways are known. The best understood of these regulates mating. Pheromone binding to receptor informs cells of the proximity of a mating partner and induces differentiation to a mating competent state. The MAPK activation cascade mediating this signal is made up of Ste11 (a MEK kinase [MEKK]), Ste7 (a MAPK/ERK kinase [MEK]), and the redundant MAPK-related Fus3 and Kss1 enzymes. Another MAPK activation pathway is important for cell integrity and regulates cell wall construction. This cascade consists of Bck1 (a MEKK), the redundant Mkk1 and Mkk2 enzymes (MEKs), and Mpk1 (a MAPK). We exploited these two pathways to learn about the coordination and signal transmission fidelity of MAPK activation cascades. Two lines of evidence suggest that the activities of the mating and cell integrity pathways are coordinated during mating differentiation. First, cells deficient in Mpk1 are susceptible to lysis when they make a mating projection in response to pheromone. Second, Mpk1 activation during pheromone induction coincides with projection formation. The mechanism underlying this coordination is still unknown to us. Our working model is that projection formation generates a mobile second messenger for activation of the cell integrity pathway. Analysis of a STE7 mutation gave us some unanticipated but important insights into parameters important for fidelity of signal transmission. The Ste7 variant has a serine to proline substitution at position 368. Ste7-P368 has higher basal activity than the wild-type enzyme but still requires Ste11 for its function. Additionally, the proline substitution enables the variant to transmit the signal from mammalian Raf expressed in yeast. This novel activity suggests that Ste7-P368 is inherently more permissive than Ste7 in its interactions with MEKKs. Yet, Ste7-P368 cross function in the cell integrity pathway occurs only when it is highly overproduced or when Ste5 is missing. This behavior suggests that Ste5, which has been proposed to be a tether for the kinases in the mating pathway, contributes to Ste7 specificity and fidelity of signal transmission.     

Impact of dietary n−3 FA deficiency on rat bone tissue FA composition

The effect of dietary n−3 FA deficiency on bone tissue FA composition was evaluated in growing rats. Two mixtures combining hydrogenated coconut oil with safflower oil served as the n−3-deficient dietary treatments and provided two levels of linoleic acid (LA). The n−3 treatments were formulated with added α-linolenic acid (LNA) from flaxseed oil (diet LNA) or LNA plus DHA, and both were balanced for LA. This study showed that bone is sensitive to changes in dietary n−3 FA and that DHA is more effective than LNA in maintaining DHA levels in these tissues.     

Ozone Treatment of Surface Water to Provide High Quality Cooling Water and Process Water

The characteristic feature of this cooling tower water treatment is the intermittent addition of ozone for several days.     

Electrocatalytic oxidation of ethanol on Pt–Mo bimetallic electrodes in acid medium

Pt–Mo alloy electrocatalysts were prepared by an arc-melting furnace process to investigate the origin of their enhanced activity toward ethanol oxidation. Two Mo contents were chosen in zones of the binary phase diagram where they are supposed to form either a pure alloy mixture or a solid solution. Pt–Mo alloy catalysts were more active than Pt-alone. Gradual Mo dissolution at the electrode surface was observed after voltammetric and chronoamperometric measurements. The dissolved Mo contributed to the catalytic effect of the electrode as underpotentially deposited (upd) adatoms. This dissolution probably also leads to an increase in the electrode surface roughness. Low molybdenum content in the electrode material enhances the activity toward ethanol oxidation when compared to Pt-alone. Ethanol oxidation was also investigated by in situ infrared reflectance spectroscopy in order to determine the presence of adsorbed intermediates like CO species. Acetaldehyde, acetic acid and CO₂ were also found by spectroscopic experiments.     

激光熔区中应力缓解的X射线衍射法测定

AISI 304奥氏体不锈钢表面经激光熔化处理,引入一个大的张应力,它可用注Ne的方法使其缓解本文介绍测量0.1μm薄层应力变化的原理和技术,由测得的应力分布曲线证明了注Ne缓解表面张应力的效果     

Clustering high dimensional data: A graph-based relaxed optimization approach

There is no doubt that clustering is one of the most studied data mining tasks. Nevertheless, it remains a challenging problem to solve despite the many proposed clustering approaches. Graph-based approaches solve the clustering task as a global optimization problem, while many other works are based on local methods. In this paper, we propose a novel graph-based algorithm “GBR” that relaxes some well-defined method even as improving the accuracy whilst keeping it simple. The primary motivation of our relaxation of the objective is to allow the reformulated objective to find well distributed cluster indicators for complicated data instances. This relaxation results in an analytical solution that avoids the approximated iterative methods that have been adopted in many other graph-based approaches. The experiments on synthetic and real data sets show that our relaxation accomplishes excellent clustering results. Our key contributions are: (1) we provide an analytical solution to solve the global clustering task as opposed to approximated iterative approaches; (2) a very simple implementation using existing optimization packages; (3) an algorithm with relatively less computation time over the number of data instances to cluster than other well defined methods in the literature.