Involvement of Hepatic Innate Immunity in Alcoholic Liver Disease

Excessive alcohol consumption is one of the critical causative factors leading to alcoholic liver disease (ALD). ALD is characterized by a wide spectrum of liver damage, ranging from simple uncomplicated liver steatosis (fatty liver) to steatohepatitis and liver fibrosis/cirrhosis. It has been believed that the obvious underlying cause for ALD is due to hepatocyte death induced by alcohol itself. However, recent sparkling studies have shown that diverse immune responses contribute to ALD because liver is enriched with numerous immune cells. Especially, a line of evidence has suggested that innate immune cells such as Kupffer cells and natural killer (NK)/NKT cells are significantly involved in the pathogenesis of ALD via production of pro-inflammatory cytokines and other mediators. Indeed, more interestingly, hepatic stellate cells (HSCs), known as a major cell inducing liver steatosis and fibrosis, can be killed by liver NK cells, which could be suppressed by chronic alcohol consumption. In this review, with the view of liver as predominant innate immune organ, we describe the pathogenesis of ALD in which what roles of innate immune cells are and how they are interacting with HSCs

[7] フェロセノファン ユウドウタイ ノ ゴウセイ

Abstracts　The internal Michael addition reaction of 1,1\u27-dicinnamoyl-ferrocene with active methylene compound such as diethyl malonate proceeded to the formation of 3,5-diphenyl-4,4-diethoxycarbonyl-1,7-dioxo[7]ferrocenophane.　　ｔ－ブタノール中，塩基の存在での1，1\u27－ジシンナモイルフェロセンとマロン酸エチルとの反応は分子間マイケル付加反応を起し，4，4\u27－ジエトオキシカルボニル－3，5－ジフェニル－1，7－ジオキソ[7]フェロセノファンを高収率で生じた。アセト酢酸エチル，シアノ酢酸エチルの様な活性メチレン化合物でも，同じようなマイケル反応を起し[7]フェロセノファソ誘導体を生じた

A Fuzzy Switching Filter for Removing Impulse Noise

There are many works on the restoration of images corrupted by impulse noise. In[1], Stefan Schulte introduced a fuzzy method to detect the impulse noise. This method has impressive quantitative results for removing the noise.However , when applied to images in which many pixels have the same intensity of the noise, it produces many false-hits. In this paper, we introduce a fuzzy-switching filter based[1] can be applied to more images.NCSP\u270

Total Performance of Magneto-Optical Ceramics with a Bixbyite Structure

High-quality magneto-optical ceramics (TbxY1−x)2O3 (x = 0.5⁻1.0) with a Bixbyite structure were extensively investigated for the first time. The total performances of these ceramics were far superior to those of commercial TGG (Tb3Ga5O12) crystal, which is regarded as the highest class of Faraday rotator material. In particular, the Verdet constant of Tb2O3 (when x = 1.0) ceramic was the largest—495 to 154 rad·T−1·m−1 in the wavelength range of 633 to 1064 nm, respectively. It was possible to further minimize the Faraday isolator device. The insertion loss of this ceramic was equivalent to that of the commercial TGG single crystal (0.04 dB), and its extinction ratio reached more than 42 dB, which is higher than the value for TGG crystal (35 dB). The thermal lens effect (1/f) was as small as 0.40 m−1 as measured by a 50 W fiber laser. The laser damage threshold of this ceramic was 18 J/cm2, which is 1.8 times larger than that of TGG, and it was not damaged during a power handling test using a pulsed laser (pulse width 50 ps, power density 78 MW/cm2) irradiated at 2 MHz for 7000 h

Influence of Dissolved Ions on the Water Purification Performance of TiO2-Impregnated Porous Silica Tubes

TiO2-coated porous silica glass tubes containing macropores were fabricated and evaluated for their water-purification capacity using aqueous solutions of methylene blue. From the results of photocatalytic degradation tests at different initial methylene blue concentrations, the equilibrium adsorption constant (K) was determined to be 4.6 × 10−2 L µmol−1, and the Langmuir-Hinshelwood rate constant (kLH) was calculated as 2.6 µM min−1. To determine the influence of ions on the efficiency of methylene blue degradation, we examined both Milli-Q water (soft water) and Contrex water (hard water) as solvents, and confirmed the reduced purification for the Contrex solution. It was, therefore, considered that the presence of inorganic salts decreased the photocatalytic efficiency. Furthermore, variations in the methylene blue decomposition ability were observed between anion-free and cation-free Contrex. Finally, we concluded that the efficiency of photocatalytic decomposition of TiO2 was influenced by multiple parameters, including the presence of anions and cations, as well as the solution pH