Pulmonary vascular disease and operative indications in complete atrioventricular canal defect in early infancy

Pulmonary vascular disease was morphometrically analyzed in 67 patients (mean age, 19 months) with isolated complete atrioventricular canal defect. Complete obstruction of the small pulmonary arterial lumen resulting from acute fibrous proliferation and atrophy of the peripheral arterial media, which were considered absolute operative contraindications, were characteristic in six patients with Down's syndrome. Morphometric analysis of medial thickness revealed that thinning of the media of the small pulmonary arteries is generally observed at around 6 months of age in patients with complete atrioventricular canal defect and that the media in patients who have complete atrioventricular canal defect and Down's syndrome was thinner than that in such patients without Down's syndrome. These results suggest that thinning of the media as a result of two factors--Down's syndrome and aging--facilitates the rapid occurrence of fibrous intimal proliferation. Therefore intracardiac repair is desirable within 6 months of life, before medial thinning, in patients with complete atrioventricular canal defect and Down's syndrome. Excluding patients with absolute operative contraindications, the scores of the index of pulmonary vascular disease in operative survivors were below 2.0 and death occurred when scores were more than 2.2. The pulmonary vascular resistances measured in room air and by the oxygen inhalation and tolazoline tests in patients with operative contraindications were more than 7.3, 3.8, and 6.6 units.m2, respectively. We thus conclude that lung biopsy should be undertaken for patients in whom pulmonary vascular resistance is beyond these values to determine the appropriateness of surgical intervention.     

Westernized food habits and concentrations of serum lipids in the Japanese

It has recently been reported that there exists a new 'RING-finger' protein family among the zinc-finger (Zf) proteins. Previously, we had isolated the mouse Mel-18 cDNA (mMel-18) encoding the nuclear RING-finger protein that exhibits an ability to bind to a nonspecific DNA column. Here, we have isolated and characterized the human Mel-18 cDNA (hMel-18) using the mMel-18 cDNA as a probe. The deduced hMel-18 protein contains 344 amino acids (38 kDa) with a RING-finger motif, a helix-loop-helix (HLH)-like structure and a Pro/Ser-rich region. The hMel-18 gene is conserved among vertebrates. Its mRNA is highly expressed in placenta, lung and kidney, but the level is low in liver, pancreas and skeletal muscle. Using in situ hybridization, we mapped hMel-18 to band q22 of chromosome 12. It is possible that the Mel-18/bmi-1 gene family represents a mammalian homologue of the Drosophila polycomb gene group.     

Hot-carrier-injected oxide region in front and back interfaces inultra-thin (50 nm), fully depleted, deep-submicron NMOS andPMOSFET's/SIMOX and their hot-carrier immunity

The hot-carrier-injected oxide region in the front and back interfaces is systematically clarified for fully depleted surface-channel nMOSFET's and surface-channel and buried-channel pMOSFET's fabricated on an ultra-thin (50 nm)-film SIMOX wafer. Based on these results, the influence of these injected carriers on front-channel properties is investigated. NMOSFET degradation is shown to be caused by hot-carriers injected into the drain side of the front oxide and pMOSFET degradation by hot-electrons injected into the drain side of both the front oxide and the back oxide. Additionally, it is shown experimentally that these fully depleted devices with effective channel lengths between 0.1-0.2 μm have fairly high hot-carrier immunity, even for single-drain structures     

NiCoFe/C cathode electrocatalysts for direct ethanol fuel cells

A direct ethanol fuel cell (DEFC), which is less prone to ethanol crossover, is reported. The cell consists of PtRu/C catalyst as the anode, Nafion^® 117 membrane, and Ni–Co–Fe (NCF) composite catalyst as the cathode. The NCF catalyst was synthesized by mixing Ni, Co, and Fe complexes into a polymer matrix (melamine-formaldehyde resins), followed by heating the mixture at 800 °C under inert atmosphere. TEM and EDX experiments suggest that the NCF catalyst has alloy structures of Ni, Co and Fe. The catalytic activity of the NCF catalyst for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) was compared with that of commercially available Pt/C (CAP) catalyst at different ethanol concentrations. The decrease in open circuit voltage (V_oc) of the DEFC equipped with the NCF catalysts was less than that of CAP catalyst at higher ethanol concentrations. The NCF catalyst was less prone to ethanol oxidation at cathode even when ethanol crossover occurred through the Nafion^®117 film, which prevents voltage drop at the cathode. However, the CAP catalyst did oxidize ethanol at the cathode and caused a decrease in voltage at higher ethanol concentrations.     

Correction to: Development of a behavioral trajectory measurement system (Bucket-ANTAM) for organisms moving in a two-dimensional plane

Artificial Life and Robotics -     

Performance of SOR methods on modern vector and scalar processors

The building-cube method (BCM) is a new generation algorithm for CFD simulations. The basic idea of BCM is to simplify the algorithm in all stages of flow computation to achieve large-scale simulations. Calculation of a pressure field using the Successive Over Relaxation (SOR) method consumes most of the total execution time required for BCM. In this paper, effective implementations on modern vector and scalar processors are investigated. NEC SX-9 and Intel Nehalem-EX are the latest vector and scalar processors. Those processors have much higher peak performances than their previous-generation processors. However, their memory bandwidth improvement cannot catch up with the performance improvement of processors. This is the so-called memory wall problem. In our paper, we discuss optimization techniques for implementation of the SOR method based on architectural characteristics of these modern processors, and evaluate their effects on the sustained performances of these processors for BCM.     

Demonstration of a fully spatial coherent X-ray laser at 13.9 nm

We have recently reported the successful development of a fully coherent X-ray laser (XRL) at 13.9 nm by an oscillator-amplifier configuration with two targets. In the experiment, a seed XRL beam from the first target is injected into a plasma amplifier at the second target. The observed XRL beam has full spatial coherence and 0.2 mrad of nearly diffraction-limited divergence. In order to improve the output fluence, the amplification properties of the XRL beam have been investigated using various plasma lengths of the second amplifier target. The output energy has been improved by a factor of ten, increasing the length of the gain region to 10 mm, resulting in about 0.2 /spl mu/J of output energy.     

Antioxidant property of polyhydroxylated naphthoquinone pigments from shells of purple sea urchin Anthocidaris crassispina

Sea urchin gonads are highly priced sushi foodstuff “Uni” in Japanese traditional food, but after removal of them the residual shells with spines are dumped as waste. However, sea urchin shells contain naphthoquinone pigments with several phenolic hydroxyl groups, which were expected to act as potent antioxidant substances by donating hydrogens. Our previous study has evaluated their antioxidant ability to depress lipid peroxidation. This study examined other antioxidant property of the pigments from purple sea urchin shells, which possess larger amount of pigments than those of red and green sea urchins. The pigments as well as known antioxidant, α-tocopherol, exhibited 1,1-diphenyl 2-picryhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging ability. Superoxide anion radical and hydrogen peroxide were also scavenged while hydroxyl radical, one of the most reactive oxygen species, was not significantly inhibited. However, because the pigments had significant activity to scavenge hydrogen peroxide and superoxide anion radical that could be in vivo precursors of hydroxyl radical, sea urchin pigments would be able to depress the generation of its related active oxygen radical species. These results suggested that sea urchin shells, which are still regarded as food waste, would be a new bio-resource for obtaining natural antioxidant.