The invasion potentials of human biliary tract carcinoma cell lines: correlation between invasiveness and morphologic characteristics

The abilities of 9 kinds of human biliary tract carcinoma cell lines to invade through basement membrane or type I collagen were examined using an in vitro invasion assay system. The correlations between invasiveness and morphologic characteristics of the carcinoma cells in 3 dimensional collagen gel were also examined. most of the biliary tract carcinoma cell lines kept the abilities of glandular differentiation and basement membrane formation of the original tumor. Their invasiveness, however, correlated with the degree of in vitro morphologic differentiation regardless of their original morphology.     

AS-186 compounds, new inhibitors of acyl-CoA: cholesterol acyltransferase from Penicillium asperosporum KY1635

AS-186a, b, c, d, and g were isolated from the cultured broth of Penicillium asperosporum KY1635 as inhibitors of acyl-CoA: cholesterol acyltransferase (ACAT). IC50 values for the effect of AS-186a, b, c, d, and g against ACAT activity of the microsomes from cholesterol-fed rabbit liver were calculated to be 22.9, 8.2, 11.5, 12.4, and 13.9 microM, respectively. Although AS-186a, and b were identical to penicillide and purpactin A, respectively, AS-186c, d, and g were found to be new compounds.     

Complex susceptibility and penetration depth of BEDT-TTF based layered superconductors

We have obtained the parallel penetration depth of two representative compounds of layered organic superconductors, κ-(BEDT-TTF)₂Cu[N(CN)₂]Br and -(BEDT-TTF)₂NH₄(SCN)₄ by ac susceptibility measurements. The former salt gives the depth of 190 μm, while that for the latter is 1.4 mm. These values demonstrate that the NH₄(SCN)₄ salt is more highly-two-dimensional than the Cu[N(CN)₂]Br salt. The ac susceptibility under dc magnetic field probes peculiarities of tile vortex dynamics.     

Breast cancer diagnosis by lactate dehydrogenase isozymes in nipple discharge

BACKGROUND: The diagnosis of breast cancer based on nipple discharge, often the only clinical manifestation of early breast cancer, is currently unsatisfactory. Because M subunits of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) have been noted to increase in cancer tissue, the author assessed the value of using LDH isozyme patterns in nipple discharge for the diagnosis of breast cancer. METHODS: LDH isozyme levels in (1) nipple discharge of patients diagnosed as having breast cancer, intraductal papilloma, mastopathy, drug-induced nipple discharge, mastitis, or benign nipple discharge; (2) control samples of normal nipple discharge (milk) 6 days, 1-5 months, and 6 months to 2 years postpartum; (3) the serum of patients presenting with nipple discharge; and (4) normal and cancerous breast tissue extracts were measured using a Ciba-Corning LDH isozyme system (Ciba Corning Diagnostic Corp., Tokyo, Japan). RESULTS: LDH isozyme levels in the nipple discharge of patients with benign breast diseases displayed various patterns. Levels in the nipple discharge of patients with breast cancer, including noninvasive carcinoma, tended to increase in ascending order from LDH1 to LDH5. This pattern was similar to that in breast cancer tissue and was unrelated to the pattern in serum. CONCLUSION: LDH isozyme assay of nipple discharge may be a useful technique for providing a supporting diagnosis of breast cancer.     

Nursing leadership: to thrive in a world of change

Change is becoming the norm in health care environments. Nurse executives in leadership positions are an essential part of an institution's ability to adapt successfully and flourish with change. It is important for the nurse executive to have a clear concept of leadership, the change process, and organizational cultures. This will allow the nurse executive to create an environment within the organization where change is seen in a positive manner and staff are empowered to meet the challenges of health care today.     

Cross-group secret sharing scheme for secure usage of cloud storage over different providers and regions

With the spread of the Internet, more and more data are being stored in the cloud. Here the technique of secret sharing can be naturally applied in order to provide both security and availability of the stored data, hereby reducing the risks of data leakage and data loss. The privacy property of secret sharing ensures protection against unauthorized access, while protection against data loss may be attained by distributing shares to the servers located in different regions. However, there is still a problem: If we naively employ the secret sharing technique without regarding to whom the cloud servers belong, a dishonest provider can obtain the secret data by collecting enough shares from its servers. In this scenario, there is a need to distribute shares over cloud services operated by different providers. In this paper, we propose a simple secret sharing technique, a cross-group secret sharing (CGSS), which is suitable for storing the data on cloud storage distributed over different groups—that is, different providers and regions. By combining an \(\ell \)-out-of-m threshold secret sharing scheme with a k-out-of-n threshold secret sharing scheme using a symmetric-key encryption scheme, we construct the CGSS scheme that forces k shares to be collected from \(\ell \) groups. Compared with the previous works, our scheme attains the functionality with reasonable computation. We also formalize the problem of allocating shares over different providers and regions as an optimization problem and show the design principles, which one must follow, when applying our proposal in practical settings. An experiment on real IaaS systems shows effectiveness of our proposed scheme, CGSS.     

Strengthening of Alumina by Reactions with Silicon Film on the Surface and Effects of Ion Irradiation

Deposition of Si film on sintered alumina, followed by annealing at 1673 K in air, increased the flexural strength by ∼28%. Mullite formation on the surface was confirmed by X–ray diffraction analysis. Ion irradiation of the Si/alumina interface, followed by annealing, produced anorthite but not mullite, and the flexural strength also increased by ∼35%. Thermal expansion mismatch between surface compounds and the alumina body may be responsible for the strengthening.     

Production and properties of rapidly solidified Al-4.5% Cu alloy powder by the rotating-water-atomization process

Rapidly solidified Al-4.5 wt% Cu powder was produced by the rotating-water-atomization process recently developed by the authors. The particles were not spherical but tear-drop shape. The mean particle size of the powder decreased with increasing rotational speed of the drum and with decreasing nozzle diameter. The dendrite arm spacing of the particles produced was in the range 0.6 to 2.8m. The cooling rate was estimated to range from 10³ to 5×10⁵ K sec^–1. Recrystallization of hot extruded powder material after T6 treatment was remarkably suppressed in the central part, while large fully recrystallized grains were obtained in the cast material extruded under the same conditions. Tensile strength of the powdered material extruded in the range 573 to 723 K was slightly higher than the extruded cast material with little loss in elongation. The surface oxidation was not deleterious to elongation but it was very effective in suppressing recrystallization.     

A 60-ns 16-Mbit CMOS DRAM with a transposed data-line structure

Low-noise, high-speed circuit techniques for high-density DRAMs (dynamic random-access memories), as well as their application to a single 5-V 16-Mb CMOS DRAM with a 3.3-V internal operating voltage for a memory array, are described. It was found that data-line interference noise becomes unacceptably high (more than 25% of the signal) and causes a serious problem in 16-Mb DRAM memory arrays. A transposed data-line structure is proposed to eliminate the noise. Noise suppression below 5% is confirmed using this transposed data-line structure. A current sense amplifier is also proposed to maintain the data-transmission speed in common I/O lines, in spite of a reduced operating voltage and increased parasitic capacitance loading in the memory array. A speed improvement of 10 ns is achieved. Using these circuit techniques, a 16-Mb CMOS DRAM with a typical RAS access time of 60 ns was realized