Influence of the microenvironment on gene and protein expression of odontogenic-like and osteogenic-like cells

Progenitor cells play an important biological role in tooth and bone formation, and previous analyses during bone and dentine induction have indicated that they may be a good alternative for tissue engineering. Thus, to clarify the influence of the microenvironment on protein and gene expression, MDPC23 cells (mouse dental papilla cell line) and KUSA/A1 cells (bone marrow stromal cell line) were used, both in vitro cell culture and in intra-abdominal diffusion chambers implanted in 4-week-old male immunodefficient mice (SCID mice). Our results indicate that KUSA/A1 cells differentiated into osteoblast-like cells and induced bone tissue inside the chamber, whereas, MDPC-23 showed odontoblast-like characteristics but with a low ability to induce dentin formation. This study shows that MDPC-23 cells are especial cells, which possess morphological and functional characteristics of odontoblast-like cells expressing dentin sialophosphoprotein in vivo. In contrast, dentin sialophosphoprotein gene and protein expression was not detected in both cell lines in vitro. The intra-abdominal diffusion chamber appears as an interesting experimental model for studying phenotypic expression of dental pulp cells in vivo.     

A Method to Predict the Minimum Fluidization Velocity of Binary Mixtures Based on Particle Packing Properties

An approach was made to predict the minimum fluidization velocity for binary mixtures of spherical particles differing in size and/or density. The spherical multiparticle model proposed by Panigrahi and Murty was employed to describe the relationship between the bed pressure drop and the gas velocity; the voidage at minimum fluidization was estimated by the Westman equation, which was originally used to calculate the packing voidage of mixtures. The predictions agree fairly well with the reported experimental data in the range of Re = 0.12 ? 156, covering both the regions of laminar flow and intermediate flow.     

Decision analysis for determining the optimum planning horizon in aggregate production planning: Part 2: Difference between planning horizons in weekly and in monthly schedulings

The effects of changing a unit time length of a planning horizon from a month to a week on the optimum planning horizon were examined by calculating the optimum planning horizon through the methods proposed by Nagasawa, Nishiyama, and Hitomi (1982). It was found that the optimum planning horizon decreased by 20-30% in calendar time when the unit time length was changed from a month (monthly scheduling) to a week (weekly scheduling). However, the degree of this decrease was much smaller than the (65% shown by Bernardo (1978 BERNARDO , J. J. , 1978 ], The effect of inventory and production costs on the optimal planning horizon , International Journal of Production Research , 16 , 103 .[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), and it followed that the optimum planning horizon largely increased in the number of periods with this change of the unit time length. It was also clarified that the large amount of the decrease shown by Bernardo was derived on the basis of the erroneous analysis of the relation between cost coefficients and the unit time length. Consequently, weekly scheduling was not always preferred to monthly scheduling     

Resonance characteristics of Y1 Ba2 Cu3 O7-8 superconductor ceramic coil

This research is concerned with Y₁ Ba₂ Cu₃ O_7-8 a superconductor ceramics. This ceramic pressed into a cylindrical form was cut into a wire coil by manual work and the Q-value as against frequency was measured in parallel resonance of a 5 turn coil. When the coil was cooled below the critical temperature, the electrical resistance of the superconductor vanished and the Q-value increased by about 9 times from 13 to 112 for a parallel capacity of 100 pF. The inductance of the coil was about 0-201μ H for a frequency of 25-2 MHz