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.     

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.     

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     

A case of severe Becker muscular dystrophy diagnosed in early childhood--correlation between clinical severity and dystrophin testing

Cutaneous lesions caused by M. ulcerans were shown to bear only a superficial resemblance to those produced by certain spider species. M. ulcerans was not found in either the venoms or the midguts of several Australian spiders, and deliberate contamination by inoculation of the fangs and digestive system of the wolf spider, Lycosa godeffroyi, did not result in permanent colonization. M. ulcerans was successfully introduced into the skin of mice through a small trauma site similar to that caused by a spider bite. However, because M. ulcerans was shown to survive on exposed surfaces for only a short period, a successful inoculation is likely only if the skin is contaminated with this organism after, or at the same time as, the skin suffers damage. The claim by other workers that M. ulcerans produces cutaneous ulcers by release of an exotoxin could not be confirmed. The authors conclude that M. ulcerans is not involved in most cases of necrotic arachnidism and hence there is no justification for prescribing anti-mycobacterial antibiotics to resolve alleged spider bite lesions unless the presence of M. ulcerans has been demonstrated by appropriate laboratory tests.     

A novel therapeutic approach for rectal varices: a case report of rectal varices treated with double balloon-occluded embolotherapy

We present a patient with continuous melena, diagnosed as rectal varices bleeding. She had a history of esophageal varices, which was treated by endoscopic ligation therapy. Eight years after the treatment of esophageal varices, the continuous melena began. Colonoscopic examination showed that the melena was caused by rectal varices, which were so severe that they could not be treated by either endoscopic sclerotherapy or surgical devascularization. Taking into considering the overall risk of treating rectal varices, we chose the approach of double balloon-occluded embolotherapy (DBOE) with 5% ethanolamine oleate with iopamodol as a liquid embolic material. DBOE is one of the interventional radiology techniques (Morita et al., Acta Hepatol Jpn 1994;35:109-120), but in this case was a completely new and novel clinical procedure for rectal varices. After the DBOE therapy, the condition of rectal varices was markedly improved. Thus, DBOE might be a new tool for treating inoperable rectal varices.     

Strength and ductility under dynamic loading in fine- grained IN905XL aluminum alloy

Three IN905XL aluminum alloys with fine grain (1 μm), intermediate grain (3 μm), and coarse grain (5 μm) have been developed by a combination of mechanical alloying (MA) and conventional extrusion in order to investigate their mechanical properties at dynamic strain rates of 1 × 10³ and 2 × 10³ s⁻¹ and a quasi-static strain rate of 10^-3 s⁻¹. Flow stresses are found to increase with decreasing grain size for all the strain rates tested. Negative strain-rate sensitivity of flow stress is observed up to 1 × 10³ s⁻¹ in both intermediate- and coarse-grained IN905XL. At the highest strain rate of 2 × 10³ s⁻¹ however, all samples showed a positive strain-rate sensitivity of strength. Total elongation at high strain rates is generally larger than that at low strain rates. Total elongation also decreases with grain size for all the strain rates. This decrease in elongation results from an initiation of microcracks at interfaces between the matrix and particles finely dispersed near grain boundary regions, introduced during MA processing; then, this initiation leads elongation of alloys to small limited values. Formerly with the Department of Mechanical Systems Engineering, University of Osaka Prefecture. This article is based on a presentation made in the symposium “Dynamic Behavior of Materials,” presented at the 1994 Fall Meeting of TMS/ASM in Rosemont, Illinois, October 3-5, 1994, under the auspices of the TMS-SMD Mechanical Metallurgy Committee and the ASM-MSD Flow and Fracture Committee.     

Electrotunable Non‐reciprocal Laser Emission from a Liquid‐Crystal Photonic Device

A liquid crystal (LC) photonic device with an anisotropic optical heterojunction structure has been fabricated. The device has a phase‐retarding nematic LC (NLC) layer sandwiched between two polymer cholesteric LC films with right‐handed helices of different pitches. Electrotunable non‐reciprocal light transmittance and unidirectional circularly polarized (CP) lasing emission have been successfully demonstrated for this device structure. Two left CP (LCP) lasing emission peaks are observed at the edges of the overlapping region between the two photonic bands in the structure and are shifted upon the application of a voltage. In contrast, a non‐reciprocal right CP (RCP) lasing emission peak emerges at one of the band edges and diminishes upon the application of a voltage. These phenomena are interpreted based on the selective reflection of RCP light and the reorientation of the NLC molecules by the application of a voltage.     

TRVs and fault clearing stresses in extra-high-voltage radial networks

To cope with the high rate of increase of power demand in the main industrialized districts in Japan, 550-kV transmission systems covering the districts have been reinforced, with most of the main power plants connected directly to these systems. Through 550-/300-kV substations, the majority of power to the districts is supplied by 300-kV systems. To limit the excess short-circuit capacity in the 300-kV systems, they tend to be reconstructed as so-called radial networks. In radial networks with high short-circuit capacity and relatively small number of transmission lines connected to the substation busbars, the rate of rise of TRV can be far higher than standard value. This paper analyzes the transient recovery voltages (TRV) in such extra-high-voltage radial networks in Japan, together with the relevant stresses to circuit-breakers during fault clearings. Future system conditions have also been introduced. As the typical rate of rise of the TRV values, more than twice that of today's standard ones are probable.