High ratios of free to total insulin-like growth factor-I in early infancy

A case of huge desmoid tumor successfully treated by hyperthermoradiotherapy is described. A 23-year-old man with familial adenomatous polyposis was operated upon for a desmoid tumor in the mesenterium involving the right kidney and small intestine in 1988. In 1990, the tumor recurred and could not be resected because of the involvement of the vena cava. The tumor grew larger and larger, and occupied two-thirds of the right lower quadrant. Several therapies using sulindac, tamoxifen, prednisolone, indomethacin, luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone analogue, and ascorbate were all ineffective. Finally, the combination of radiation and hyperthermia was used over a 6-month period. At the end of the hyperthermoradiotherapy, the tumor in the abdominal wall was markedly reduced in size, and the protruded abdominal wall became flat. To our best knowledge, this is the first report of the successful treatment of a huge desmoid tumor by hyperthermoradiotherapy.     

Loss distribution measurement of silica-based waveguides by using ajaggedness-free optical low coherence reflectometer

The loss distributions in silica-based waveguides are successfully measured using a jaggedness-free optical reflectometer (OLCR). The OLCR reduces jagged fluctuations which appear in Rayleigh backscattering measurements undertaken with conventional OLCRs to within ±1 dB by averaging the wavelength-dependent Rayleigh backscatter signals. Constant loss distributions and a step-like loss increase in the waveguides were clearly observed     

A 220-MHz pipelined 16-Mb BiCMOS SRAM with PLL proportionalself-timing generator

This 512 Kw×8 b×3 way synchronous BiCMOS SRAM uses a 2-stage wave-pipeline scheme, a PLL self-timing generator and a 0.4-μm BiCMOS process to achieve 220 MHz fully-random read/write operations with a GTL I/O interface. Newly developed circuit technologies include: 1) a zig-zag double word-line scheme, 2) a centered bit-line load layout scheme, and 3) a phase-locked-loop (PLL) with a multistage-tapped ring oscillator which generates a clock cycle proportional pulse (CCPP) and a clock edge lookahead pulse (CELP)     

High-speed picosecond optical pulse compression from gain-switched 1.3-µm distributed feedback-laser diode (DFB-LD) through highly dispersive single-mode fiber

Picosecond optical pulse compression characteristics of chirped pulses from gain-switched distributed feedback-laser diodes (DFB-LD) transmitting through highly dispersive media are studied theoretically and experimentally. It is clarified theoretically that gain-switched chirped pulses can be compressed to about a 0.7-time bandwidth product by normal dispersion of the dispersive media and that the optimum dispersion value to obtain a minimum compressed pulse is proportional to the square of original pulsewidth. Through a dispersion, shifted single-mode fiber with -48-ps/nm normal dispersion at a 1.3-μm wavelength, gain-switched 30-ps (FWHM) pulses from a directly modulated 1.3-μm DFB-LD at a 4.4-GHz repetition rate have been successfully compressed to 6.4-ps optical pulses with a 0.86-time bandwidth product. Experimental results agree with the theoretical analysis.     

Pharmacological action of anabolic steroids

Anabolic steroids (AS) are derivatives of androgen (testosterone and its close relatives). AS have been primarily developed for clinical use as anabolic agents with the expectation that they would be relatively less androgenic than testosterone and its close relatives. Various AS are applied to clinical use, but none is free from androgenic activity. Relation between chemical structure and anabolic-androgenic potency of various AS is summarized. AS action in erythropoiesis operates through increased porphyrin formation and production of erythropoietin. Mechanism of AS action in bone formation is suggested that AS potentiate intestinal 1.25(OH)2D receptors. Identification of androgen receptors in normal human osteoblast-like cells suggest that AS act directly on receptor-mediated mechanism. The other action of AS is briefly summarized.     

Ectopic accumulation of 99mTc-HMDP in primary lung cancer in comparison with CT findings

Hypertension attributable to pheochromocytoma is a very attractive model for the elucidation of the pathogenesis of hypertension. Sixteen different point mutations in the RET proto-oncogene and 30 mutations in the Von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) tumor suppressor gene have been identified so far associated with expression of pheochromocytoma. Each of these mutations initiates either the syndrome of multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2 (MEN 2) (MEN 2A and MEN 2B) or the VHL disease. Certain mutations in both genes are associated with the presence of pheochromocytoma. In general, these pheochromocytomas produce catecholamines that result in hypertension. Therefore, analysis for germline mutations in these genes are of practical value, because susceptibility to these diseases can be predicted in as yet clinically unaffected relatives.     

Direct dispersion measurement of highly-erbium-doped optical amplifiers using a low coherence reflectometer coupled with dispersive fourier spectroscopy

The group delay and dispersion, including the erbium ion contributions, of the highly erbium-doped silica planar waveguide amplifier and multicomponent glass fibre amplifiers are directly measured at different pump powers using a low coherence reflectometer and dispersive Fourier spectroscopy. This method derives the refractive index spectra of these amplifiers directly from the produced reflectograms without any physical or mathematical assumptions. The dispersion of the planar waveguide amplifier at 500 mW pumping changes between +300 and -200 ps/km/nm with a 0.4 wt.% erbium concentration.<>     

A video codec LSI for high-definition TV systems withone-transistor DRAM line memories

A video codec LSI for high-definition television (HDTV) systems has been developed. By using a time-compressed integration encoding technique, it converts a 20.0-MHz bandwidth luminance signal and two 5.0-MHz chrominance signals into a compressed image signal at 48.6-MHz sampling frequency. It is useful in many HDTV application systems, such as 400-Mb/s digital transmission system, a video disk player system, or an analog transmission system. Over 288000 elements, including a 52-kb one-transistor DRAM (dynamic random access memory) line memory specially developed for this LSI, were integrated on a 12.16×12.10-mm² chip. A standard cell layout method and a 1.2-μm CMOS logic LSI process were used     

A sub-2.0 V BiCMOS logic circuit with a BiCMOS charge pump

A BiCMOS logic circuit with very small input capacitance has been developed, which operates at low supply voltages. A High-beta BiCMOS (Hβ-BiCMOS) gate circuit which fully utilizes the bipolar transistor features achieves 10 times the speed of a CMOS gate circuit with the same input capacitance and operating at 3.3 V supply voltage. In order to lower the minimum supply voltage of Hβ-BiCMOS, a BiCMOS circuit configuration using a charge pump to pull up the output high level of the BiCMOS gate circuit is proposed. By introducing a BiCMOS charge pump, Hβ-BiCMOS achieves very high speed operation at sub-2.0 V supply voltage. It has also been demonstrated that only a very small number of charge pump circuits are required to drive a large number of Hβ-BiCMOS gate circuits