1,721 research outputs found
Bocavirus Infection in Hospitalized Children, South Korea
This study presents the first evidence of human bocavirus infection in South Korean children. The virus was detected in 27 (8.0%) of 336 tested specimens, including 17 (7.5%) of 225 virus-negative specimens, collected from children with acute lower respiratory tract infection
5-aminolevulinic acid-incorporated poly(vinyl alcohol) nanofiber-coated metal stent for application in photodynamic therapy
Additive Value of B-Type Natriuretic Peptide on Rest 201Tl-Dipyridamole Stress 99mTc-Sestamibi Gated Myocardial SPECT in Patients with Normal Left Ventricular Systolic Function
We evaluated whether BNP has additive value to SPECT in patients with normal left ventricular (LV) systolic function. Data from 224 consecutive patients who underwent rest 201Tl-dipyridamole stress 99mTc-sestamibi gated SPECT and coronary angiography due to chest pain were analyzed. Patients with true positive SPECT showed significant higher BNP level than those with false positive defect (38.5 (19.0–79.8) versus 19.0 (9.3–35.8), P = .01). Patients with true negative SPECT also showed significantly lower BNP level than those with false negative SPECT (39.0 (23.0–77.0) versus 22.0 (15.0–43.0), P = .002). In multivariate analyses, elevated BNP level (using a cut-off value of 23.0 pg/mL) was the strongest and independent predictor of CAD in overall patients (OR 2.75, 95% CI: 1.50–5.023, P = .001) and patients with positive SPECT (OR 3.34, 95% CI: 1.51–7.37, P = .003). The area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve for CAD in overall patients and patients with positive SPECT was 0.673 (95% CI: 0.603–0.743, P < .001) and 0.694 (95% CI: 0.602–0.786, P < .001), respectively. This study suggests that BNP level has additive diagnostic value to SPECT findings in predicting CAD in patients with normal LV systolic function
Limits of Binaries That Can Be Characterized by Gravitational Microlensing
Due to the high efficiency of planet detections, current microlensing planet
searches focus on high-magnification events. High-magnification events are
sensitive to remote binary companions as well and thus a sample of
wide-separation binaries are expected to be collected as a byproduct. In this
paper, we show that characterizing binaries for a portion of this sample will
be difficult due to the degeneracy of the binary-lensing parameters. This
degeneracy arises because the perturbation induced by the binary companion is
well approximated by the Chang-Refsdal lensing for binaries with separations
greater than a certain limit. For binaries composed of equal mass lenses, we
find that the lens binarity can be noticed up to the separations of
times of the Einstein radius corresponding to the mass of each lens. Among
these binaries, however, we find that the lensing parameters can be determined
only for a portion of binaries with separations less than times of
the Einstein radius.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl
Effects of fibrin-binding oligopeptide on osteopromotion in rabbit calvarial defects
Purpose: Fibronectin (FN) has been shown to stimulate bone regeneration in animal models. The aim of this study was to evaluate the capacity of bovine bone mineral coated with synthetic oligopeptides to enhance bone regeneration in rabbit calvarial defects. Methods: Oligopeptides including fibrin-binding sequences of FN repeats were synthesized on the basis of primary and tertiary human plasma FN structures. Peptide coated and uncoated bone minerals were implanted into 10 mm calvarial defects in New Zealand white rabbits, and the animals were sacrificed at 4 or 8 weeks after surgery. After specimens were prepared, histologic examination and histomorphometric analysis were performed. Results: At 4 weeks after surgery, the uncoated groups showed a limited amount of osteoid formation at the periphery of the defect and the oligopeptide coated groups showed more osteoid formation and new bone formation in the center of the defect as well as at the periphery. At 8 weeks, both sites showed increased new bone formation. However, the difference between the two sites had reduced. Conclusions: Fibrin-binding synthetic oligopeptide derived from FN on deproteinized bovine bone enhanced new bone formation in rabbit calvarial defects at the early healing stage. This result suggests that these oligopeptides can be beneficial in reconstructing oral and maxillofacial deformities or in regenerating osseous bone defects. ⓒ 2010 Korean Academy of Periodontology.
Microlensing Detections of Planets in Binary Stellar Systems
We demonstrate that microlensing can be used for detecting planets in binary
stellar systems. This is possible because in the geometry of planetary binary
systems where the planet orbits one of the binary component and the other
binary star is located at a large distance, both planet and secondary companion
produce perturbations at a common region around the planet-hosting binary star
and thus the signatures of both planet and binary companion can be detected in
the light curves of high-magnification lensing events. We find that identifying
planets in binary systems is optimized when the secondary is located in a
certain range which depends on the type of the planet. The proposed method can
detect planets with masses down to one tenth of the Jupiter mass in binaries
with separations <~ 100 AU. These ranges of planet mass and binary separation
are not covered by other methods and thus microlensing would be able to make
the planetary binary sample richer.Comment: 5 pages, two figures in JPG forma
Semantically enabled and statistically supported biological hypothesis testing with tissue microarray databases
Effect of 5-aminolevulinic acid-based photodynamic therapy via reactive oxygen species in human cholangiocarcinoma cells
Cancer cells have been reported to exhibit an enhanced capacity for protoporphyrin IX (PpIX) synthesis facilitated by the administration of 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA). We investigated the effect of ALA-based photodynamic therapy (PDT) on human cholangiocarcinoma cells (HuCC-T1). Since protoporphyrin IX (PpIX), a metabolite of ALA, can produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) under irradiation and then induce phototoxicity, ALA-based PDT is a promising candidate for the treatment of cholangiocarcinoma. When various concentrations of ALA (0.05–2 mM) were used to treat HuCC-T1 cells for 6 or 24 hours, the intracellular PpIX level increased according to the ALA concentration and treatment time. Furthermore, an increased amount of PpIX in HuCC-T1 cells induced increased production of ROS by irradiation, resulting in increased phototoxicity
Doxorubicin-incorporated polymeric micelles composed of dextran-b-poly(DL-lactide-co-glycolide) copolymer
Young-Il Jeong1,*, Do Hyung Kim1,2,*, Chung-Wook Chung1, Jin-Ju Yoo1, Kyung Ha Choi1, Cy Hyun Kim1,2, Seung Hee Ha1, Dae Hwan Kang1,2 1National Research and Development Center for Hepatobiliary Cancer, Pusan National University Yangsan Hospital, Yangsan, Republic of Korea, Research Institute for Convergence of Biomedical Science and Technology, 2School of Medicine, Pusan National University, Yangsan, Republic of Korea*These authors contributed equally to this work.Background: Polymeric micelles using amphiphilic macromolecules are promising vehicles for antitumor targeting. In this study, we prepared anticancer agent-incorporated polymeric micelles using novel block copolymer.Methods: We synthesized a block copolymer composed of dextran and poly (DL-lactide-co-glycolide) (DexbLG) for antitumor drug delivery. Doxorubicin was selected as the anticancer drug, and was incorporated into polymeric micelles by dialysis. Polymeric micelles were observed by transmission electron microscopy to be spherical and smaller than 100 nm, with a narrow size distribution. The particle size of doxorubicin-incorporated polymeric micelles increased with increasing drug content. Higher initial drug feeding also increased the drug content. Results: During the drug-release study, an initial burst release of doxorubicin was observed for 10 hours, and doxorubicin was continuously released over 4 days. To investigate the in vitro anticancer effects of the polymeric micelles, doxorubicin-resistant HuCC-T1 cells were treated with a very high concentration of doxorubicin. In an antiproliferation study, the polymeric micelles showed higher cytotoxicity to doxorubicin-resistant HuCC-T1 cells than free doxorubicin, indicating that the polymeric micelles were effectively engulfed by tumor cells, while free doxorubicin hardly penetrated the tumor cell membrane. On confocal laser scanning microscopy, free doxorubicin expressed very weak fluorescence intensity, while the polymeric micelles expressed strong red fluorescence. Furthermore, in flow cytometric analysis, fluorescence intensity of polymeric micelles was almost twice as high than with free doxorubicin.Conclusion: DexbLG polymeric micelles incorporating doxorubicin are promising vehicles for antitumor drug targeting.Keywords: dextran, polymeric micelle, block copolymer, poly(DL-lactide-co-glycolide
Electric field control of nonvolatile four-state magnetization at room temperature
We find the realization of large converse magnetoelectric (ME) effects at
room temperature in a multiferroic hexaferrite
BaSrCoFeO single crystal, in which rapid
change of electric polarization in low magnetic fields (about 5 mT) is coined
to a large ME susceptibility of 3200 ps/m. The modulation of magnetization then
reaches up to 0.62 /f.u. in an electric field of 1.14 MV/m. We find
further that four ME states induced by different ME poling exhibit unique,
nonvolatile magnetization versus electric field curves, which can be
approximately described by an effective free energy with a distinct set of ME
coefficients
- …