Molecular Targeted Therapy for the Bone Loss Secondary to Pyogenic Spondylodiscitis Using Medications for Osteoporosis: A Literature Review

Pyogenic spondylodiscitis can cause severe osteolytic and destructive lesions in the spine. Elderly or immunocompromised individuals are particularly susceptible to infectious diseases; specifically, infections in the spine can impair the ability of the spine to support the trunk, causing patients to be bedridden, which can also severely affect the physical condition of patients. Although treatments for osteoporosis have been well studied, treatments for bone loss secondary to infection remain to be elucidated because they have pathological manifestations that are similar to but distinct from those of osteoporosis. Recently, we encountered a patient with severely osteolytic pyogenic spondylodiscitis who was treated with romosozumab and exhibited enhanced bone formation. Romosozumab stimulated canonical Wnt/β-catenin signaling, causing robust bone formation and the inhibition of bone resorption, which exceeded the bone loss secondary to infection. Bone loss due to infections involves the suppression of osteoblastogenesis by osteoblast apoptosis, which is induced by the nuclear factor-κB and mitogen-activated protein kinase pathways, and osteoclastogenesis with the receptor activator of the nuclear factor-κB ligand-receptor combination and subsequent activation of the nuclear factor of activated T cells cytoplasmic 1 and c-Fos. In this study, we review and discuss the molecular mechanisms of bone loss secondary to infection and analyze the efficacy of the medications for osteoporosis, focusing on romosozumab, teriparatide, denosumab, and bisphosphonates, in treating this pathological condition.     

Craze yielding and fracture mechanism in PE/PS/PE laminated films

The change in polystyrene (PS) layer thickness, which has been simultaneously determined during post-yield deformation, shows that crazing is the basic mechanism of toughening in all laminated films, and that shear deformation supplements the contribution of crazing especially for samples with high polyethylene (PE) volume fractions. Crazes formed in PS layers in the laminated films are slender and regular compared with the short and lenticular crazes formed in bulk PS film. When PE volume fraction increased, craze advance speed decreased because of the reduction of the stress concentration effect at craze tips. The life-time of the first mature craze to be formed at a given strain rate increased with PE volume fraction because the PE supporting the mature crazes could effectively inhibit craze rupture and blunt out the propagating crack by absorbing the stored elastic energy in the PS layer that would have been dissipated as fracture surface energy.     

Performance analysis of disk allocation method usingerror-correcting codes

The problem of distributing a Cartesian product file on multiple disks to maximize the parallelism for partial match queries is addressed. C. Faloutsos et al. (1989) have proposed an allocation method for Cartesian product files on multiple disks by using linear error-correcting codes. The performance of the allocation method is analyzed. Some conditions under which the allocation method is strictly optimal for queries with a given number of unspecified attributes are presented. A necessary and sufficient condition for a linear code to give a strictly optimal allocation method is discussed. Formulas for the average response time on queries with w unspecified attributes, denoted T_w, in terms of the weight distribution of the code or its dual code, and formulas for the average response time Ton all queries, are given. Several examples whose average response times T_w or T are close to theoretical lower bounds are presented     

The heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of finned tube banks in forced convection (effects of fin height on pressure drop characteristics)

In recent years the requirement for the reduction of energy consumption has been increasing to solve the problems of global warming and the shortage of petroleum resources. For example, in the power generation field, as thermal power generation occupied 60% of the power generation demand, considerable improvement of the thermal efficiency is required. This paper describes the pressure drop characteristics of finned tube banks used for heat exchangers in thermal power generation that were clarified by testing serrated finned tube banks with different fin heights for improved heat transfer and conventional spiral finned tube banks with different fin heights, and an equation to predict pressure drop which is necessary for the heat exchanger design is proposed. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heat Trans Asian Res, 35(3): 179–193, 2006; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/htj.20112     

Premixed flame propagating into a narrow channel at a high speed, part 2: Transient behavior of the properties of the flowing gas inside the channel

The behavior of a premixed flame propagating from a chamber into a narrow channel at a high speed was examined using high speed and instantaneous schlieren photography, ion current measurement with electrostatic probes, and temperature measurement with an optical method. From detailed measurements of flames passing through the channel, flame extinguishment in the channel, no matter whether transient or not, was found to occur due to quenching of the reacting gas by rapid turbulent mixing with cold fresh mixture at the downstream of the contraction region and by heat transfer to the cold channel walls. Extinguishment must occur when these heat losses exceed the heat released by the chemical reaction of the flowing mixture.     

Thermal properties of poly(tetramethyl-p-silphenylene siloxane) and (tetramethyl-p-silphenylene siloxane-dimethyl siloxane) copolymers

Some physical properties of poly(tetramethyl-p-silphenylene siloxane) homopolymer and random block copolymers of tetramethyl-p-silphenylene siloxane-dimethyl siloxane have been determined and correlated with polymer structure. Differential scanning calorimetry (d.s.c.), differential thermal analysis (d.t.a.), density gradient column measurements and optical hot stage melting point determination and diluent techniques were used. The thermodynamic melting temperature of the homopolymer was estimated to be 160°C and its heat of fusion, ΔH_u, found to be 54.4 J/g (13 cal/g or 2710 cal/mol of monomer repeat units). Its limiting glass transition temperature, T_g, was ?20°C. T_g of the copolymer was found to vary almost monotonically with increasing dimethyl siloxane (DMS) content ranging from ?20° (0% DMS) to just above ?123°C, for pure DMS polymer. The copolymer melting temperature was found to increase as the fraction of the crystalline (hard) TMPS constituent was increased. Based upon copolymer theory and extrapolated melting point data, it was estimated that the block size of soft DMS component in the copolymer most probably consists of twelve monomer units distributed amongst TMPS sequences of varying length.     

Effect of dietary fatty acid composition on the biosynthesis of unsaturated fatty acids in rat liver microsomes

A study was made of the influence of semisynthetic diets of low and high unsaturation on the fatty acid composition and desaturation-chain elongation enzymatic activity of the liver microsomal fractions of male Sprague-Dawley rats of different ages. Groups of rats were fed 5 or 20% coconut oil (CO), or a 5 or 20% mixture of corn and menhaden oils (3∶7) (CME) from weaning to 100 wk of age. Growth rate and food consumption were measured during this period in which animals were sacrificed at 36, 57, 77 and 100 wk of age. Both the level and composition of the dietary fat supplements produced marked effects on the fatty acid composition of the liver microsomal lipids. In general, the fatty acid composition of the microsomal fractions reflected that of the dietary fat and was more unsaturated with the higher level of fat fed. The rate of conversion of linoleic to arachidonic acid in assays performed in vitro with liver microsomal preparations from animals of the different groups also showed marked differences. The 6-desaturase-chain elongation activity was higher in the 5% than 20% group and corresponded to the essential fatty acid (EFA) status of the animals in these groups as represented by the triene-tetraene ratio of the microsomal lipid. The relationship of the 6-desaturase activity to fatty acid composition of the microsomal lipid indicated that if varied directly with the level of 20∶3ω9, 18∶1 and 16∶1 and was inhibited by arachidonic acid. The activity of the 6-desaturase enzyme system was lowest in the liver microsomal fraction obtained from the animals fed the CME diets and appeared to be suppressed by the high levels of 20∶5 and 22∶6 that accumulated in the microsomal lipid. Accordingly, the levels of arachidonic acid were lower in the microsomal lipid of these groups than those of the corresponding CO groups in spite of a greater abundance of linoleic acid in the diet. The data suggest that the activity of the 6-desaturase-chain elongation system is regulated by the fatty acid composition of the microsomal lipid as influenced by the composition of the dietary fat.     

Refined mapping of a gene responsible for Fukuyama-type congenital muscular dystrophy: evidence for strong linkage disequilibrium

Fukuyama-type congenital muscular dystrophy (FCMD), the second most common form of childhood muscular dystrophy in Japan, is an autosomal recessive severe muscular dystrophy associated with an anomaly of the brain. After our initial mapping of the FCMD locus to chromosome 9q31-33, we further defined the locus within a region of approximately 5 cM between loci D9S127 and CA246, by homozygosity mapping in patients born to consanguineous marriages and by recombination analyses in other families. We also found evidence for strong linkage disequilibrium between FCMD and a polymorphic microsatellite marker, mfd220, which showed no recombination and a lod score of (Z) 17.49. A "111-bp" allele for the mfd220 locus was observed in 22 (34%) of 64 FCMD chromosomes, but it was present in only 1 of 120 normal chromosomes. This allelic association with FCMD was highly significant (chi 2 = 50.7; P < .0001). Hence, we suspect that the FCMD gene could lie within a few hundred kilobases of the mfd220 locus.     

Sensor Fusion System Using Recurrent Fuzzy Inference

In robotic and manufacturing systems, it is difficult to measure the state of systems accurately because of many uncertain factors and noise, and it is very important to estimate the state of systems. We must measure the phenomena of systems by multiple sensors and estimate the state of systems by acquiring information of sensors. However, we can not acquire all of sensor information synchronically, because each sensor has particular sensor information and measuring time. For estimating the state of systems by multiple sensors, a multi-sensor fusion system fusing various sensory information is needed. In this paper, we propose a Recurrent Fuzzy Inference (RFI) with recurrent inputs and apply it to a multi-sensor fusion system for estimating the state of systems. The membership functions of RFI are expressed by Radial Basis Function (RBF) with insensitive ranges. The shape of the membership functions can be adjusted by a learning algorithm. The learning algorithm is based on the steepest descent method and incremental learning which can add new fuzzy rules. The effectiveness of the multi-sensor fusion system using RFI will be shown through a numerical experiment of moving robot and estimation of surface roughness in grinding process.