Anomalies of the tracheobronchial tree in patients with esophageal atresia

Bone marrow examination revealed a lipid-laden histiocytosis in seven patients undergoing long-term total parenteral nutrition necessitated by extensive short-bowel surgical resection. Clinical abnormalities occurred during this treatment which required bone marrow examination. These included hepatosplenomegaly and peripheral blood cytopenia; the median time to the detection of these abnormalities was 64 months. The most striking change within the bone marrow was the presence of many pigment-laden histiocytes which had the typical morphology of sea-blue histiocytes seen in the so-called idiopathic sea-blue histiocyte syndrome. The occurrence of sea-blue histiocytosis in the bone marrow in association with long-term parenteral nutrition for short-bowel syndrome has not, to our knowledge, been reported previously and should now be considered in the differential diagnosis of bone marrow sea-blue histiocytosis.     

Dynamics and biogeochemical significance of the physical environment in Lake Biwa

We have examined two aspects of the dynamics and biogeochemical significance of the physical environment in Lake Biwa. One is the horizontal distribution of cyanobacteria as it relates to the ‘first gyre’ in the north basin of Lake Biwa. We could easily measure the first gyre using a vessel‐mounted acoustic doppler currents profiler. We were able to quantify the dynamics of the horizontal and vertical structure of currents and water temperature of this gyre. The first gyre did not remain at a fixed position; it moved north and south according to the growth of the gyre. This may play a role in the redistribution of cyanobacteria from place to place in the north basin. The second important environmental dynamic we measured was oxygen consumption rates from 1994 to 2000. We found that the minimum oxygen concentration in the hypolimnion has a clear inverse relationship with the apparent oxygen consumption rates in the 80–85 m depth layer. As a reduction in oxygen concentration in the hypolimnion can have a serious impact on benthic organisms, we concluded that the Lake Biwa environment should be monitored carefully and systematically.     

Development of a geographical information system and its application to Escherichia coli O-157 patient distribution

The so called Geographical Information System (GIS) is one of the basic tools for wide range of public health applications. We had developed a general purpose GIS and applied it to represent geographical distribution of patients of the bacterium E. coli O-157 which bursted out in Japan last early summer particularly at Sakai City in Osaka Prefecture. The patient record have been supplied from the Food Safety Office of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. These records were handled by EXCEL. The basic geographical data was constructed from the map data provided by Japan Geographical Survey Institute, and ArcView 2 was used as the map system. The maps were converted to Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) files and put on our Web server.     

Formation and Characterization of Ce3ZrO8 Prepared by the Hydrazine Method

A compound denoted as (Ce_0.75Zr_0.25)O₂ (Ce, ZrO₈) is formed near room temperature from cerium and zirconium nitrates using hydrazine monohydrate. It has a cubic unit cell with a = 0.5342 nm. Characterization of powders heated to various temperatures at 10°C/min demonstrates that the specific surface area does not decrease below 20 mVg until >1000°C.     

Inhibition of acid secretion in gastric parietal cells by the Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II inhibitor KN-93

A novel Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaM Kinase II) inhibitor, KN-93 potently inhibits gastric acid secretion from parietal cells. As previously reported (1), treatment of parietal cells with a selective inhibitor of CaM kinase II, KN-62 resulted in the inhibition of cholinergic-stimulated rabbit parietal cell secretion, whereas it failed to inhibit the histamine and forskolin response. In contrast effects of carbachol, histamine and forskolin were significantly inhibited by KN-93 with an IC50 of 0.15, 0.3 and 1 microM, respectively; these effects occurred without any changes in intracellular cyclic AMP and Ca2+ levels. In the present study we investigated the mechanism by which KN-93 acts upon the acid-secreting machinery of gastric parietal cells. Neither redistribution of the proton pump activity nor the morphological transformation were affected by KN-93. The drug only weakly inhibited the H+, K(+)-ATPase activity but strongly dissipated the proton gradient formed in the gastric membrane vesicles and reduced the volume of luminal space. Thus KN-93 acts at pH gradient formation whereas KN-62 acts only at CaM Kinase II.     

Rutile-type TiO2 thin film for high-k gate insulator

We investigated rutile-type titanium dioxide (TiO₂) films for possible use as a high-k gate insulator. The TiO₂ thin films were directly deposited on Si substrates using a RF magnetron sputtering method with a sintered oxide target. A single phase of rutile-type TiO₂ whose dielectric constant of approximately 75 was obtained when the film was deposited in an inert gas atmosphere and annealed at 800 °C in an oxidizing gas atmosphere. The oxygen ions were deficient in the as-deposited film, and consequently, a sufficient oxygen supply was needed to crystallize the film to a single phase of rutile during the post-annealing. However, the interfacial SiO₂ layer between the TiO₂ and the Si substrate simultaneously grew thicker than 2 nm. As the interfacial SiO₂ grew, the leakage current was decreased and the equivalent oxide thickness was increased, in the Au/rutile-type TiO₂/Si capacitor. Therefore, we concluded that the growth of the interfacial SiO₂ layer thicker than 2 nm is inevitable to form the single phase of rutile-type TiO₂ and to decrease the leakage.     

Automated low-power technique exploiting multiple supply voltagesapplied to a media processor

This paper describes an automated design technique to reduce power by making use of two supply voltages. The technique consists of structure synthesis, placement, and routing. The structure synthesizer clusters the gates off the critical paths so as to supply the reduced voltage to save power. The placement and routing tool assigns either the reduced voltage or the unreduced one to each row so as to minimize the area overhead. The reduced supply, voltage is also exploited in a clock tree to reduce power. Combining these techniques together, we applied it to a media processor chip. The combined technique reduced the power by 47% in random-logic modules and by 73% in the clock tree, while keeping the performance