Concealed WPW Syndrome with Longitudinal Dissociation in the His Bundle Exhibiting Five Different Electrocardiographic Waveforms During Tachycardia

We examined a patient with concealed WPW syndrome who exhibited five different electrocardiographic waveforms during tachycardia.With the intracardiac electrogram, all tachycardia were artrioventricular reciprocating tachycardia with retrograde conduction through only the accessory pathway where each artrioventricular conduction form varied: i.e., one with anterograde conduction through the fast pathway, one with anterograde conduction through the slow pathway, one with anterograde conduction through the fast pathway and slow pathway alternately, and an irregular R-R interval, one with anterograde conduction through the fast pathway and wide QRS tachycardia with the right bundle branch block type, and one with anterograde conduction through the fast pathway and wide QRS tachycardia with left bundle branch block.His bundle electrogram might be split and H, H′ was recorded at the time of sinus rhythm. Furthermore, the right and left bundle branches exhibited a different refractory period because of longitudinal dissociation in the His bundle. Therefore wide QRS tachycardia with both right and left bundle branch block might appear without complete atrioventricular block.In addition to the association between fast pathway and slow pathway, right and left bundle branch block patterns appeared

SHED-CM for ALS Treatment

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disorder, characterized by the loss of upper and lower motor neurons, for which an effective treatment has yet to be developed. Previous reports have shown that excessive oxidative stress, related to mitochondrial dysfunction and the accumulation of misfolding protein, contributes to ALS pathology. In terms of treatment, it remains necessary to identify effective medicines for multiple therapeutic targets and have additive effects against several disorders. In this study, we investigated stem cells from human exfoliated deciduous teeth (SHED), which release many factors, such as neurotrophic factors and cytokines, and are applied to treat neurological diseases. Specifically, we examined whether SHED-conditioned medium (CM), i.e., the serum-free culture supernatant of SHED, reduced mutant SOD1-induced intracellular aggregates and neurotoxicity. We found that SHED-CM significantly suppressed the mutant SOD1-induced intracellular aggregates and neurotoxicity. The neuroprotective effects of SHED-CM are partly related to heat shock protein and the activation of insulin-like growth factor-1 receptor. SHED-CM also had a protective effect on induced pluripotent stem cell-derived motor neurons. Moreover, SHED-CM was effective against not only familial ALS but also sporadic ALS. Overall, these results suggest that SHED-CM could be a promising treatment for slowing the progression of ALS

Rectovaginal Fistula after Low Anterior Resection for Rectal Cancer Using a Double Stapling Technique

A 55-year-old female underwent low anterior resection for rectal cancer using a double stapling technique. She developed a rectovaginal fistula on the 9th postoperative day. She was discharged from hospital after undergoing transverse colostomy, and 5 months later she underwent transvaginal repair of the rectovaginal fistula. She subsequently had an uneventful recovery. The leading cause of this complication is involvement of the posterior wall of the vagina in the staple line when firing the circular stapler. Transvaginal repair with a diverting stoma for rectovaginal fistula is a safe, minimally invasive and effective method

Biometric Identity Verification Using Intra-Body Propagation Signal

We propose to utilize an electromagnetic wave through a human body as biometrics. The electromagnetic wave (intrabody propagation signal) is generated at a relatively shallow depth in the human body through a pair of electrodes pasted on the human skin. The biological tissue of each individual human being is different from that of others, so that the transfer characteristic of the intra-body propagation signal is also different mutually. By using such a difference, it is expected to authenticate personal identification. In addition, liveness detection can be realized simultaneously using the intra-body propagation signal. It is effective on the detection of spoofing using artificial bodies. In this paper, we examine the individual feature in the intra-body propagation signal based on the spectrum analysis. As a result, the verification rate of 58% is obtained using the similarity of the power spectrum especially in the 30-60 MHz sub-band

Cholesterol uptake of isolated rat hepatocytes is accelerated by several kinds of phosphatidylcholine

AbstractUptake of cholesterol by isolated rat hepatocytes in a serum-free medium was remarkably enchanced by dispersion with several kinds of phosphatidylcholine. Of the various phosphatidylcholines tested, dilinoylphosphatidylcholine had the strongest accelerating effect, while dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine was the weakest. The abilities to accelerate cholesterol uptake were in proportion to the content of unsaturated fatty acid in the phosphatidylcholine used. It was confirmed by electron microscopy that there is no relation between the size of the cholesterol-phosphatidylcholine complex and uptake. These data suggest that recognition of unsaturated fatty acids in phosphatidylcholine by isolated cells enhances uptake of cholesterol.Cholesterol uptake(Isolated rat hepatocyte)PhosphatidylcholineUnsaturated fatty acidDioleoylphosphatidylcholineDipalmitoylphosphatidylcholin

Effect of nitrogen, phosphorus and calcium fertilizations on the yield and quality of Fj-hybrid tomato seed

The effect of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and calcium (Ca) fertilizations on the seed yield and quality of F ^hybrid tomato seed grown by NFT were investigated. Higher N application (8 me/I) at the onset of flowering increased seed yield. Increasing N level at later growth stage increased seed yield of upper cluster, therefore total seed per plant also high. Four me/I ofCa level combined with 8 me/I ofP level increased in the weight of fruit and seed. However, at the case of 8 me/I ofCa, increasing P level declined fruit and seed yield severely. Especially when both P and Ca level were high (8 me/I), fruit and seed yield markedly decreased into about 60 %. Effect ofN content in the seed will reflect to the N compounds constituent there and consequently may influence seed germination. Keywords: F-hybrid tomato seed production - nutrient film technique (NFT) - nitrogen - phosphorus - calcium â

Threshold Equalization for On-Line Signature Verification

In on-line signature verification, complexity of signature shape can influence the value of the optimal threshold for individual signatures. Writer-dependent threshold selection has been proposed but it requires forgery data. It is not easy to collect such forgery data in practical applications. Therefore, some threshold equalization method using only genuine data is needed. In this letter, we propose three different threshold equalization methods based on the complexity of signature. Their effectiveness is confirmed in experiments using a multi-matcher DWT on-line signature verification system

Multi-matcher on-line signature verification system in DWT domain

This paper presents a multi-matcher on-line signature verification system which fuses the verification scores in pen-position parameter and pen-movement angle parameter at decision level. Features of pen-position and pen-movement angle are extracted by the sub-band decomposition using the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). In the pen-position, high frequency sub-band signals are considered as individual features to enhance the difference between a genuine signature and its forgery. On the other hand, low frequency sub-band signals are utilized as the features for suppressing the intra-class variation in the pen-movement angle. Verification is achieved by the adaptive signal processing using the extracted features. Verification scores in the pen-position and the pen-movement angle are integrated by using a weighted sum rule to make total decision. Experimental results show that fusion of pen-position and pen-movement angle can improve verification performance