Regulation of Beta-Adrenergic Adenylate Cyclase Responsiveness of Pig Skin Epidermis by Suboptimal Concentrations of Epinephrine

Although receptor-specific refractoriness has been suggested to be one of the regulatory mechanisms of epidermal adenylate cyclase systems, its physiologic significance has been a subject of controversy because of the requirement of unusually high concentrations of agonists to induce refractoriness. In order to determine whether the epidermal adenylate cyclase system is regulated through a refractoriness mechanism by suboptimal concentrations of receptor agonists, this study was undertaken using pig skin epidermal adenylate cyclase systems.Pretreatment of pig skin with 0.1-1 μM epinephrine in vitro resulted in the reduction of the maximal epinephrine response (epinephrine-induced cyclic AMP accumulations) to various degrees without alterations in either low or high Km, cyclic AMP phosphodiesterase activities. Repeated pretreatments were shown to be more effective in inducing refractoriness than a single pretreatment. Apparently there was no change in the Km value for epinephrine, suggesting that the decrease in epinephrine response represents a reduction in the number but not in the affinity of functional beta-adrenergic adenylate cyclase receptor sites. This refractoriness by low concentrations of catecholamine pretreatment was specific to the beta-adrenergic system, since there was no reduction in histamine response after the epinephrine pretreatment.These results indicate that the epidermal beta-adrenergic adenylate cyclase system is regulated by much lower concentrations of catecholamine than were previously described. It was suggested that physiologic fluctuations of plasma catecholamine levels might have a profound effect on epidermal beta-adrenergic adenylate cyclase responsiveness, resulting in the alteration of the minimal catecholamine level required for the successive activation of cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase, which is the predominant target of cyclic AMP in epidermis

Stochastic Speculative Computation Method and its Application to Monte Carlo Molecular Simulation

Monte Carlo (MC) molecular simulation has significant computational complexity, and parallel processing is considered effective for computation of problems with large complexity. In recent years, multicore or many-core processors have gained significant attention as they enable computation with a large degree of parallelism on desktop computers. However, in conventional parallel processing, processes must be synchronized frequently; thus, parallel computing is not necessarily efficient. In this study, we evaluate the effect of applying MultiStart-based speculative parallel computation to MC simulations. Using probability theory, we performed theoretical verification to determine if speculative computation is more effective than conventional parallel computation methods. The parameters obtained from the theoretical calculations were observed in experiments wherein the speculative method was applied to an MC molecular simulation. In this paper, we report the results of the theoretical verification and experiments, and we show that speculative computation can accelerate MC molecular simulations

An Adult Case of Kawasaki Disease in a Pregnant Japanese Woman: A Case Report

Kawasaki disease is an acute febrile disease predominantly seen in young children. We report a case of Kawasaki disease in a 32-year-old pregnant woman. She developed a generalized erythematous skin rash accompanied by high fever. Bilateral conjunctival congestion, tender cervical lymphadenopathy, an edematous lower lip and peripheral edema followed by desquamation were observed. She was successfully treated with aspirin and intravenous gammaglobulin (1 g/kg/day). Her course was not complicated by coronary artery aneurysm and she delivered a healthy baby. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case of Kawasaki disease in a pregnant woman. We suggest that Kawasaki disease should be included in the differential diagnosis of a generalized, erythematous skin rash accompanied by high fever in adults

Gravelly Soil Properties by Field and Laboratory Tests

The basic policy in Japan is to build nuclear reactor buildings on rock. But, in order to cope with the middle and long term siting problems it has become necessary to develop new siting technology from the standpoint of expanding the available range of site selections and effective utilization of lands. The gravelly soil layer in the Quaternary deposits has high possibility of becoming the bearing soil stratum when constructing a nuclear power plant. In order to verify the seismic stability of such gravelly soil layers, a series of field dynamic and static torsional loading tests for large scale in-situ soil columns were performed. In addition, a series of laboratory tests using a large scale triaxial test apparatus on high quality undisturbed gravel samples obtained by in-situ freezing method were performed. Herein reported are the sampling method of high quality undisturbed samples, laboratory test results and the large in-situ soil column test results