Effects of repeated cold stress on feeding, avoidance behavior, and pain-related nerve fiber activity

BACKGROUND: Estimation of the mu-agonist opioid effect in anesthetized and paralyzed patients is often imprecise and can be obscured by concomitant administration of drugs that affect the sympathetic nervous system, such as beta-adrenergic blocking agents. As an alternative to hemodynamic measures of opioid effect, the authors tested the hypothesis that the pupillary light reflex or pupillary reflex dilation correlated with alfentanil concentrations during isoflurane anesthesia. METHODS: Six volunteers were anesthetized on 4 days with 0.8% isoflurane. Alfentanil was administered intravenously to target total plasma concentrations of 0, 25, 50, and 100 ng/ml. A 5-s tetanic electrical stimulus was applied to the skin. Pupil size and the pupillary light reflex were recorded before and after alfentanil administration, and before and for 8 min after the stimulus. RESULTS: Alfentanil exponentially impaired reflex pupillary dilation, decreasing the maximum response amplitude from 5 mm at 0 ng/ml, to 2.3 mm at 25 ng/ml, to 1.0 mm at 50 ng/ml, and finally to 0.2 mm at 100 ng/ml. In contrast, only the highest concentration of alfentanil depressed the dilation of the pupil in the first 2 s after the stimulus. Alfentanil administration had no effect on the pupillary light reflex. CONCLUSIONS: Dilation of the pupil in response to a noxious stimulus is a measure of opioid effect in isoflurane-anesthetized volunteers. In contrast, the pupillary light reflex is unaffected by alfentanil during isoflurane anesthesia. These data suggest that stimulus-induced pupillary dilation may be used to evaluate the analgesic component of a combined volatile and opioid anesthetic.     

(J, J′)-lossless factorization based on conjugation

This paper is concerned with a derivation of the state-space form of the (J, J′)-lossless factorization which contains both the inner-outer factorization and the spectral factorization of positive matrices as special cases. Also, the (J, J′)-lossless factorization gives a unified framework of H^∞ control theory. We use the method of conjugation which makes the derivation much simpler than the previous literature, most of which used the technique of (J, J′)-spectral factorization. A necessary and sufficient condition is represented in terms of two Riccati equations one of which is degenerated.     

Electrical properties and microstructure in the system ceria-alkaline earth oxide

The ionic conduction of oxygen in the ceria-alkaline earth oxide system was investigated as a function of temperature, partial pressure of oxygen and oxide composition, together with its crystal structure, density, and microstructure. Undoped ceria and its solid solution with alkaline earth oxides have a cubic fluorite structure. The ionic conductivity of ceria is greatly enhanced by additions of calcia and strontia, even when they are added in excess of the solubility limit. The conductivities of ceria-calcia and ceria-strontia were much higher than those of calcia-and yttria-stabilized zirconia. Up to the limit of calcia and strontia, the ionic transference number was nearly unity in the temperature range between 600 and 900°C. With an increase in calcia and strontia content, the ionic conductivity was little affected by the presence of a second phase of CaO and SrCeO₃.     

The TINA network resource model

TINA, the Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture, is a software architecture for services provided on public and private networks. TINA NRIM adds on the existing concepts and supports a host of new multimedia services that can not be supported by the existing information models. It is expected that network information models will be aligned with those defined by ATM Forum and ITU-T SG15. The authors show a generic information model of network resources, which can be applied to different network technologies. The model contains a number of abstraction levels of network resources. The highest level of abstraction, which is offered at the interface between the network resources and services levels, is defined in terms of a connection graph. The connection graph is an abstract representation of resources describing the connectivity between stream interfaces (media flows). This graph can be used to specify end-to-end connectivity that spans through several layer networks. Thus, a line in the connection graph can be supported by a sequence of trails. The trail, in its turn, consists of subnetwork connections and/or tandem connections. The generic information model with appertained abstraction levels is very well suited to the TINA connection management architecture     

Vitamin K2 selectively induces apoptosis of blastic cells in myelodysplastic syndrome: flow cytometric detection of apoptotic cells using APO2.7 monoclonal antibody

We have previously reported that vitamin K2 (VK2) but not VK1 has a potent apoptosis-inducing effect on freshly isolated leukemia cells from patients with various types of leukemia. By multi-color flow cytometric analysis using monoclonal antibody (mAb), APO2.7, which detects mitochondrial 7A6 antigen specifically expressed by cells undergoing apoptosis, we further investigated the apoptosis-inducing effect of VK2 on minor populations of leukemic blast cells in bone marrow from patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and overt myeloid leukemia (post-MDS AML). Limiting dilution of CD95 (anti-Fas) mAb-treated apoptotic Jurkat cells with nonapoptotic CTB-1 cells revealed that APO2.7-positive Jurkat cells were consistently detectable by flow cytometry when present at levels of at least 5% in the CTB-1 suspension. In patient samples the gating area for leukemic clone was determined using cell surface antigen-specific mAbs conjugated with either fluorescein isothionate (FITC) or phycoerythrin (PE) and subsequently the cells stained with phycoerythrin cyanine (PE-Cy5)-conjugated APO2.7 mAb were assessed within the gating area of the leukemic clone for monitoring apoptosis. Treatment of the bone marrow mononuclear cells with 3-10 microM of VK2 (menaquinone-3, -4 and -5) in vitro potently induced apoptosis of the leukemic blast cells as compared with the untreated control cells in all 15 MDS patients tested. This effect was more prominent on blastic cells than that on mature myeloid cells such as CD34-/CD33+ gated cells. In addition, VK2 performed much less effectively on CD3-positive lymphoid cells. In contrast to VK2, VK1 did not show apoptosis-inducing activity. These data suggest that VK2 may be used for treatment of patients with MDS in blastic transformation.     

An interactive system for constructing cat''s cradle string diagram using GA

In many method of the cat's cradle string diagram processing in use today, there is no a strong emphasis on user interaction. This paper discusses a method for constructing cat's cradle string diagram in 2-D. The method uses a string representation and processing in 2-D which preserves the topology characteristics of the string diagram and also uses a small data volume. The inputted string diagram is transformed onto its cat's cradle string diagram by geometric transformation and GA. The method allows the user to interactively construct a cat's cradle string diagram. Three operations are used for constructing cat's cradle diagram, they are pull (over and under), release and exchange. An implemented program executed some shapes of cat's cradle for verifying the method.     

Length distribution of aluminum etch tunnels

A model was derived for the length distribution of aluminum etch tunnels, based on an assumed constant death rate per unit length. Both active and dead tunnels were accounted. The model gives reasonable fits to measured tunnel length distribution data with two adjustable parameters, the death rate per unit length and the number of active tunnels. The death rate parameter has a value of about 2% of tunnels dying per m of growth length for the set of experimental data. The numbers of active and dead tunnels appear to be consistent with other tunnel measurements.     

Formation of acrylamide in a processed food model system, and examination of inhibitory conditions

Acrylamide (AAm) is formed from asparagine (Asn) and reducing sugar during cooking of foods at high temperature. We examined the formation of AAm in a model system using a glass fiber filter paper, and looked for suitable conditions for inhibiting AAm formation. In frying, the formation rate was about 10 times that in a moistureless oven. Increase of frying temperature and frying time increased AAm formation when the residual moisture was 5% or less. AAm increased with increasing amount of glucose (Glc) addition up to 1:1 with respect to Asn, but then decreased. On the other hand, in the case of fructose, as the amount added was increased, AAm increased accordingly. The AAm formation rate with respect to Asn increased when valine (Val) was co-present in a Glc and Asn reaction system. Cysteine and lysine inhibited the AAm formation rate. Pathways for the formation of AAm are proposed.