Impact of Serum Chemerin Levels on Liver Functional Reserves and Platelet Counts in Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Obesity-related metabolic abnormalities, including adipokine imbalance and chronic inflammation, are involved in liver carcinogenesis. Chemerin, a novel adipokine, plays a critical role in adipogenesis, energy metabolism, and inflammation. We evaluated the impact of serum chemerin levels on liver functional reserves in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients and on the recurrence and prognosis of HCC. This study included 44 patients with any stage of HCC who underwent curative treatment at Gifu Municipal Hospital (Gifu, Japan) between 2006 and 2007. Recurrence-free survival and overall survival were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method. Serum albumin levels (Pearson’s correlation coefficient; r = 0.3110, p = 0.0399), platelet counts (r = 0.4159, p = 0.0050), and prothrombin times (r = 0.3775, p = 0.0115) were significantly correlated with serum chemerin levels in patients with HCC, and they were inversely correlated with Child-Pugh scores (r = −0.3732, p = 0.0126), serum alanine aminotransferase levels (r = −0.3864, p = 0.0105), and total bilirubin levels (r = −0.4023, p = 0.0068). Among these variables, a multiple comparison test identified that platelet counts and total bilirubin levels were associated with serum chemerin levels (p < 0.0083). No significant correlation was found between serum chemerin levels and recurrence-free survival (p = 0.3691) or overall survival (p = 0.7916). In HCC patients, serum chemerin concentrations were correlated with liver functional reserves and platelet counts, but not with recurrence or prognosis.     

Effects of ventilation and pleural effusion on measurements of airway thermal volume and blood flow in dog lungs

We studied the effects of ventilation and pleural effusion on measurements of airway thermal volume (ATV) and pulmonary blood flow (PBF) by using the airway gas thermometry method of V. B. Serikov, M. S. Rumm, K. Kambara, M. I. Bootomo, A. R. Osmack, and N. C. Staub (J. Appl. Physiol. 72: 944-953, 1992) in 39 anesthetized dogs with or without lung edema or pleural effusion. To examine the differential effects of increased-pressure and increased-permeability lung edema on accuracy and sensitivity of ATV and PBF, two models of lung edema were induced by intravenous infusion of a Dextran 70 solution and alloxan monohydrate, respectively. Dogs were hyperventilated for 3 min by using a wide range of minute ventilation (VE) to produce two steady-state conditions of airway temperature. Higher levels of VE increased an estimated amount of ATV. The ATV produced by hyperventilation at VE values of 559, 158, and 72 ml.min-1.kg-1 was consistent with the gravimetric total lung mass, the blood-free wet lung weight, and the extravascular lung water volume, respectively. The coefficient of lung thermal conductivity, a practical index of the rate of heat conduction through tissue from lung vessels, was related to the ratio of the decrease in expired air temperature to VE, and estimated PBF was consistent with the thermodilution cardiac output. Pleural effusion had little effect on measurements of ATV and PBF. However, ATV and PBF showed increased variation in dogs with dextran-induced lung edema.     

Mechanical properties of amorphous alloy compacts prepared by different consolidation techniques

Amorphous alloy compacts of Fe₇₈B₁₃Si₉ prepared by three different techniques (explosive consolidation, high hydrostatic pressure consolidation and warm extrusion) were deformed in compression between 573 and 723 K at a strain rate ranging from 8.3×10^–5–4.2×10^–4s^–1. Explosively consolidated compacts had high strength ranging from 1.9–2.5 GPa below 623 K and could be plastically deformed to a strain of more than 50% at 673 K while preserving the amorphous state. Amorphous alloy compacts prepared by high hydrostatic pressure consolidation showed lower compressive strength. Those produced by warm extrusion were anisotropic in strength, the highest strength being as high as 2.74 GPa. It was also found that the geometry of the starting powders had a profound effect on the strength of the product compacts. Compacts prepared from flaky powders were stronger than those prepared from spherical ones. It is concluded that the mechanical properties of the amorphous alloy compacts depend on the consolidation technique, powder geometry and surface conditions of the powders, especially existence of oxide films.     

Prevalence and growth characteristics of malignant stem cells in B-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia

We used a stroma-supported culture method to study the prevalence and growth characteristics of malignant stem cells in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). In 51 of 108 B-lineage ALL samples, bone marrow-derived stroma not only inhibited apoptosis of ALL cells but also supported their proliferation in serum-free medium. When single leukemic cells were placed in the stroma-coated wells of microtiter plates, the percentage of wells with leukemic cell growth after 2 to 5 months of culture ranged from 6% to 20% (median, 15%; 5 experiments). The immunophenotypes and genetic features of cells recovered from these cultures were identical to those noted before culture. All cells maintained their stroma dependency and self-renewal capacity. Leukemic clones derived from single cells contained approximately 10(3) to 10(6) cells after 1 month of culture; other clones became detectable only after prolonged culture. Cell growth in stroma-coated wells correlated with the number of initially seeded cells (1 or 10; r = .87). However, the observed percentages of positive wells seeded with 10 cells always exceeded values predicted from results with single-cell-initiated cultures (P < .003 by paired t-test), suggesting stimulation of leukemic cell growth by paracrine factors. In conclusion, the proportion of ALL cells with clonogenic potential may be considerably higher than previously thought.     

Suppressed UDP-galactose: ceramide galactosyltransferase and myelin protein mRNA in twitcher mouse brain

To investigate the role of temporal processing in language lateralization, we monitored asymmetry of cerebral activation in human volunteers using positron emission tomography (PET). Subjects were scanned during passive auditory stimulation with nonverbal sounds containing rapid (40 msec) or extended (200 msec) frequency transitions. Bilateral symmetric activation was observed in the auditory cortex for slow frequency transitions. In contrast, left-biased asymmetry was observed in response to rapid frequency transitions due to reduced response of the right auditory cortex. These results provide direct evidence that auditory processing of rapid acoustic transitions is lateralized in the human brain. Such functional asymmetry in temporal processing is likely to contribute to language lateralization from the lowest levels of cortical processing.     

Development of virtual and real-field construction management systems in innovative, intelligent field factory

In this study, we proposed a concept of virtual and real-field construction management systems (VR-Coms), which is integrated with virtual construction simulation, planning, scheduling, and performance management systems to evaluate productivity and safety in virtual simulated and real-field constructions. And, we built up a computational environment to develop the VR-Coms. The VR-Coms offer supporting modules for learning and discovering solutions with objective to manage construction at right speed with improved humanware and constructability. The configuration of VR-Coms is described. This paper also shows an application of agent theory to construction management.     

Structure and function of the long terminal repeats of feline leukemia viruses derived from naturally occurring acute myeloid leukemias in cats

Long terminal repeats of feline leukemia viruses cloned from feline acute myeloid leukemias frequently contained direct repeats of 40 to 74 bp in the upstream region of the enhancer (URE). The repetitive URE conferred an enhancer function upon gene expression in myeloid cells, suggesting its association with tumorigenic potential in myeloid cells.     

Fluorescence-, isotope- or biotin-labeling of the 5 '-end of single-stranded DNA/RNA using T4 RNA ligase

A rapid 5'-labeling method of single-stranded DNA/RNA was developed, which is based on the utilization of an adenylated intermediate in the reaction of T4 RNA ligase. This method is commonly useful for fluorescence-, isotope- or biotin-labeling of the 5'-ends of both oligo- and polynucleotides.     

Evaluating Flood Hazard for Land-Use Planning in Greater Dhaka of Bangladesh Using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques

Floods are a common feature in rapidly urbanizing Dhaka and its adjoining areas. Though Greater Dhaka experiences flood almost in every year, flood management policies are mostly based on structural options including flood walls, dykes, embankments etc. Many shortcomings of the existing flood management systems are reported in numerous literatures. The objective of this paper is to assess flood hazard in Greater Dhaka for the historical flood event of 1998 using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data with GIS data. Flood-affected frequency and flood depth calculated from the multi-date SAR imageries were used as hydrologic parameters. Elevation heights, land cover classification, geomorphic division and drainage network data generated from optical remote sensing and analogue maps were used through GIS approach. Using a ranking matrix in three dimensional multiplication mode, flood hazard was assessed. All possible combination of flood hazard maps was prepared using land-cover, geomorphology and elevation heights for flood-affected frequency and floodwater depth. Using two hazard maps which produced the highest congruence for flood frequency and flood depth, a new flood hazard map was developed by considering the interactive effect of flood-affected frequency and floodwater depth, simultaneously. This new hazard map can provide more safety for flood countermeasures because pixels belonging to higher hazard degrees were increased due to the consideration of higher degrees of ranks. The estimation of flood hazard areas revealed that a major portion of Greater Dhaka comprised moderate to very high hazard zone. Only a little portion (8.04%) was found to be the least vulnerable to potential flood hazard. Conversely, 28.70% of Greater Dhaka was found within very high hazard zone. Based on this study, comprehensive flood hazard management strategies for land use planning decision were proposed for the efficient management of future flood disasters.     

Privacy-preserving similarity evaluation and application to remote biometrics authentication

In this paper, a new method for secure remote biometric authentication preventing the vulnerability of compromised biometrics is presented. The idea is based on a public-key cryptographical protocol, referred as zero-knowledge proof, which allows a user to prove that she has surely a valid biometric data without revealing the data. Hence, the scheme is free from the risk of disclosure of biometric data. Even if a malicious administrator has a privilege access to the private database, it is infeasible for him to learn the private template. This paper studies two well-known definitions, the cosine correlation and the Euclidean distance as similarities of given two feature vectors. Both similarities are defined with some multiplications and additions, which can be performed in privacy-preserving way because of the useful property of public-key commitment scheme, additive homomorphism. The estimation based on the experimental implementation shows that the private Euclidean distance scheme archives better accuracy in terms of false acceptance and rejection than the private cosine coloration scheme, but it requires about $5/2 n \ell$ overhead to evaluate $n$ -dimension feature vectors consisting of $\ell$ -bit integers.