Weathering of the Granite Soils and Its Influence on the Stability of Slope

The cutting slopes in granite soil regions are exposed in air and subjected to temperature change and water infiltration immediately after cutting. Then the strength of the soil mass is lowered successively up to failure point. In order to clarify the cause of the phenomena, the authors tried to examine a slope selected in a granite soil region by means of physical, chemical and mineralogical analysis. According to the results obtained from the above experiments, it is concluded that the original ground before cutting can be classified into three zones with characteristic clay minerals and the more the ground is weathered initially, the more rapidly their strength decreases excepting for the severely weathered part. These results are considered to depend largely on the fact that the soil grains weathered originally in the long period of time are relatively sensitive or unstable to chemical and mechanical actions

Physical Relation of Source I to IRc2 in the Orion KL Region

We present mid-infrared narrow-band images of the Orion BN/KL region, and N-band low-resolution spectra of IRc2 and the nearby radio source "I." The distributions of the silicate absorption strength and the color temperature have been revealed with a sub-arcsecond resolution. The detailed structure of the 7.8 micron/12.4 micron color temperature distribution was resolved in the vicinity of IRc2. A mid-infrared counterpart to source I has been detected as a large color temperature peak. The color temperature distribution shows an increasing gradient from IRc2 toward source I, and no dominant temperature peak is seen at IRc2. The spectral energy distribution of IRc2 could be fitted by a two-temperature component model, and the "warmer component" of the infrared emission from IRc2 could be reproduced by scattering of radiation from source I. IRc2 itself is not self-luminous, but is illuminated and heated by an embedded luminous young stellar object located at source I.Comment: 20 pages, 11 figures. Minor corrections had been done in the ver.2. Accepted for publication in PAS

The Role of RANTES Promoter Polymorphism in Functional Dyspepsia

Altered inflammatory immune responses have been shown to be associated with functional gastro intestinal disorder. We aimed to clarify the effect of functional promoter polymorphism of RANTES, which is a potent chemoattractant peptide for memory T lymphocytes and eosinophils, on the risk of functional dyspepsia in a Japanese population. RANTES promoter C-28G polymorphism was genotyped in 246 subjects including 134 FD patients according to Roma III criteria and 112 non-symptomatic healthy controls. Although frequency of RANTES promoter polymorphisms in overall dyspeptic patients and non-symptomatic healthy controls did not show any significant differences, a significant association was found between G carrier and reduced risk of PDS according to Roma III criteria (age, sex, H. pylori infection adjusted OR  = 0.23, 95% CI = 0.06–0.80). We also found that the same genotype held a lower risk of PDS in H. pylori positive PDS subjects (age, sex adjusted OR = 0.11, 95% CI = 0.01–0.94). Our data suggest that RANTES promoter -28G carriers is associate with a reduced risk of PDS especially in H. pylori positive subjects

Pressure ulcer surgery SSI risk factors

Aims : The most common postoperative complication when treating a pressure ulcer with a flap or primary closure is early wound dehiscence. In this study, we aimed to investigate the cause of early wound dehiscence and its associated risk factors. Early wound dehiscence was defined as the wound dehiscence within the post operation period where no weight or tension is applied to the wound. Methods : We conducted a retrospective study of 40 patients with pressure ulcers (69 sites). We calculated the significant difference in the incidence of wound dehiscence between the groups for the following 15 factors : age, obesity, emaciation, diabetes mellitus, smoking, ulcer site, musculocutaneous flap, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, presence of two or more types of bacteria, albumin level, C-reactive protein level, white blood cell count, hemoglobin level, operative time, and ulcer size. Results : Bacteria were detected in all wounds with early dehiscence, which was found in 28 (40.6%) of the 69 cases. C-reactive protein level, albumin level, musculocutaneous flap, and operative time were found to be risk factors for early wound dehiscence using the χ2-test and t-test. (P = 0.011, 0.045, 0.018, and 0.003, respectively). Conclusion : The cause of dehiscence was considered to be surgical site infection. C-reactive protein level, albumin level, musculocutaneous flap, and operative time may be risk factors of the occurrence of early wound dehiscence

Characterizing Variability of Modular Brain Connectivity with Constrained Principal Component Analysis

Characterizing the variability of resting-state functional brain connectivity across subjects and/or over time has recently attracted much attention. Principal component analysis (PCA) serves as a fundamental statistical technique for such analyses. However, performing PCA on high-dimensional connectivity matrices yields complicated "eigenconnectivity" patterns, for which systematic interpretation is a challenging issue. Here, we overcome this issue with a novel constrained PCA method for connectivity matrices by extending the idea of the previously proposed orthogonal connectivity factorization method. Our new method, modular connectivity factorization (MCF), explicitly introduces the modularity of brain networks as a parametric constraint on eigenconnectivity matrices. In particular, MCF analyzes the variability in both intra-and inter-module connectivities, simultaneously finding network modules in a principled, data-driven manner. The parametric constraint provides a compact module based visualization scheme with which the result can be intuitively interpreted. We develop an optimization algorithm to solve the constrained PCA problem and validate our method in simulation studies and with a resting-state functional connectivity MRI dataset of 986 subjects. The results show that the proposed MCF method successfully reveals the underlying modular eigenconnectivity patterns in more general situations and is a promising alternative to existing methods.Peer reviewe