Swelling and Replicative DNA Synthesis of Detergent-treated Mouse Ascites Sarcoma Cells

Previous investigation showed that mouse ascites sarcoma cells permeabilized with appropriate concentrations of detergents (Triton X-100, Nonidet P-40 and Brij 58) had high replicative DNA synthesis in the presence of the four deoxyribonucleoside triphosphates, ATP, Mg2+ and proper ionic environment. The present study showed the optimum detergent concentration for DNA synthesis coincided closely with the minimum detergent concentration for inducing cell swelling. Phase contrast microscopy and electron microscopy of Triton-permeabilized cells showed the characteristic swollen cytoplasms and nucleus. Autoradiographic study showed that the DNA synthesis in permeable cells was confined to the nucleus. Cell viability and [3H] deoxythymidine uptake were impaired at much lower concentrations of Triton X-100 than the optimum concentration for in vitro DNA synthesis. In Triton-permeabilized cells, the minimum Triton concentration that produced cell swelling also seemed to produce high repliative DNA synthesis, which reflects the in vivo state of DNA synthesis.</p

Diffusion-based Holistic Texture Rectification and Synthesis

We present a novel framework for rectifying occlusions and distortions in degraded texture samples from natural images. Traditional texture synthesis approaches focus on generating textures from pristine samples, which necessitate meticulous preparation by humans and are often unattainable in most natural images. These challenges stem from the frequent occlusions and distortions of texture samples in natural images due to obstructions and variations in object surface geometry. To address these issues, we propose a framework that synthesizes holistic textures from degraded samples in natural images, extending the applicability of exemplar-based texture synthesis techniques. Our framework utilizes a conditional Latent Diffusion Model (LDM) with a novel occlusion-aware latent transformer. This latent transformer not only effectively encodes texture features from partially-observed samples necessary for the generation process of the LDM, but also explicitly captures long-range dependencies in samples with large occlusions. To train our model, we introduce a method for generating synthetic data by applying geometric transformations and free-form mask generation to clean textures. Experimental results demonstrate that our framework significantly outperforms existing methods both quantitatively and quantitatively. Furthermore, we conduct comprehensive ablation studies to validate the different components of our proposed framework. Results are corroborated by a perceptual user study which highlights the efficiency of our proposed approach.Comment: SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 Conference Pape

日本の精神科病院に勤務する看護師のストレングス志向の実態

Japanese psychiatric mental health systems are being steadily improved. Psychiatric nurses’ attitude towards strengths of persons with mental disability is critical in order to promote de-institutionalization of patients. However, nurses’ attitudes, particularly their Strengths-Oriented Attitude (SOA) has not been well studied and explained. The purpose of this study was to clarify the SOA of nurses working in psychiatric hospitals in Japan. There were 1148 Psychiatric Registered Nurses (PRN) and Psychiatric Practical Nurses (PPN) employed at 17 psychiatric hospitals in Japan who consented to participate in the study. The self-administered questionnaire was mailed and returned between October 2013 and January 2014. The subjects’ SOA was evaluated using the Strengths-Oriented Attitude Inventory (SOAI) developed by the authors based on the work by Rapp and Goscha. The actual SOA and its relationship to individual characteristics were also analyzed to clarify the SOAI. Factor analysis revealed four components of the SOAI: Factor 1 = “Nursing practice based on the assessment which focused on social resources”; Factor 2 = “Nursing practice based on the holistic assessment of person with mental disability”; Factor 3 = “Support in community which respected the person’s way of living”; and Factor 4 = “Emphasize of the strengths of individual with mental disability.” Results indicated a high orientation toward Factors 2 and 4, but a low orientation toward Factors 1 and 3. There were no significant differences between age, years of psychiatric nursing experience, academic background, and subjects’ SOA. However, differences were observed in gender, current workplace, work position, type of license, and work experience. The subjects showed low orientation toward social resources and respected the patient’s way of life. Nurses working in psychiatric mental health institutions should receive continuing education courses designed to increase their orientation toward Factors 1 and 3

CLINICAL PREDICTORS FOR ATHEROMA PROGRESSION DESPITE OPTIMAL GLYCEMIC CONTROL IN EARLY-STAGE DIABETIC PATIENTS: SUB-ANALYSIS FROM DIANA STUDY

Data de realització de les fotografies del Mercat aproximada (1994

Measuring the Broad-band X-Ray Spectrum from 400 eV to 40 keV in the Southwest Part of the Supernova Remnant RX J1713.7-3946

We report on results from Suzaku broadband X-ray observations of the southwest part of the Galactic supernova remnant (SNR) RX J1713.7-3946 with an energy coverage of 0.4-40 keV. The X-ray spectrum, presumably of synchrotron origin, is known to be completely lineless, making this SNR ideally suited for a detailed study of the X-ray spectral shape formed through efficient particle acceleration at high speed shocks. With a sensitive hard X-ray measurement from the HXD PIN on board Suzaku, we determine the hard X-ray spectrum in the 12--40 keV range to be described by a power law with photon index Gamma = 3.2+/- 0.2, significantly steeper than the soft X-ray index of Gamma = 2.4+/- 0.05 measured previously with ASCA and other missions. We find that a simple power law fails to describe the full spectral range of 0.4-40 keV and instead a power-law with an exponential cutoff with hard index Gamma = 1.50+/- 0.09 and high-energy cutoff epsilon_c = 1.2+/- 0.3 keV formally provides an excellent fit over the full bandpass. If we use the so-called SRCUT model, as an alternative model, it gives the best-fit rolloff energy of epsilon_{roll} = 0.95+/- 0.04 keV. Together with the TeV gamma-ray spectrum ranging from 0.3 to 100 TeV obtained recently by HESS observations, our Suzaku observations of RX J1713.7-3946 provide stringent constraints on the highest energy particles accelerated in a supernova shock.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan (PASJ