Development and practical application of unhairing method without using sulfide

Content: Leather manufacturing industry uses a lot of water and chemicals, and it discharges large amounts of wastewater. The processing a large amounts of wastewater requires a huge cost. Therefore, reduction of amount of a pollution load in wastewater is a theme in many countries around the world. During the leather process, a lot of pollutants occur in the unhairing process. Some estimate that the amount of pollution generated in the unhairing process accounts for 70% of the entire leather manufacturing process. In this unhairing process, usually a large amount of sulfide is used. Sulfide is known to generate hydrogen sulfide and cause damage to the drain pipe. In Tokyo, strict criteria are set for draining sulfide to sewers. Therefore, reducing the amount of sulfide used is an important task for tanner. In addition, since sulfide has no degreasing effect, a large amount of surfactant is required in the unhairing process. However, to reduce the cost and the load of the wastewater, it is also required to reduce the amount of the surfactant used. Furthermore, in recent years, the types of usable surfactants have also been limited. Therefore, development of a method of effectively removing hair loss and degreasing without using a sulfide is urgent for the leather manufacturing industry. On the other hand, pelts are widely used as raw materials for foods such as gelatin and collagen casing, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. However, sulfides are not originally recognized as food additives. Therefore, some companies are concerned about using pelts as a raw material for food using sulfide in the unhairing process. Also from this point of view, it is necessary to develop an unhairing method without using sulfides. The method using sodium hydroxide has been studied for a long time. However, this method is hard in handling, and is difficult to set conditions such as concentration and temperature. That is, while successful at the experimental level, it has not been put to practical use. Therefore, we studied a method to solve the above problem using sodium hydroxide. The method developed this time can reduce the pollutant in waste water, and the amount of water used in the unhairing process to 1/10 or less of the conventional one. Moreover, since it is not influenced by water temperature, it made it possible to stably remove hair irrespective of the season. The finished leather kept sufficient strength. In addition, sodium hydroxide reacts with fat in the skin and turns it into soap, so it shows the degreasing effect and contributes to reduce the dosage of degreasing agent. Take-Away: development of unhairing method without using sulfide contributes to reduce the dosage of degreasing agent reduce the pollutant in waste wate

Nature of collective decision-making by simple yes/no decision units Eisuke Hasegawa

The study of collective decision-making spans various fields such as brain and behavioural sciences, economics, management sciences, and artificial intelligence. Despite these interdisciplinary applications, little is known regarding how a group of simple 'yes/no' units, such as neurons in the brain, can select the best option among multiple options. One prerequisite for achieving such correct choices by the brain is correct evaluation of relative option quality, which enables a collective decision maker to efficiently choose the best option. Here, we applied a sensory discrimination mechanism using yes/no units with differential thresholds to a model for making a collective choice among multiple options. The performance corresponding to the correct choice was shown to be affected by various parameters. High performance can be achieved by tuning the threshold distribution with the options' quality distribution. The number of yes/no units allocated to each option and its variability profoundly affects performance. When this variability is large, a quorum decision becomes superior to a majority decision under some conditions. The general features of this collective decision-making by a group of simple yes/no units revealed in this study suggest that this mechanism may be useful in applications across various fields

Cyclin-dependent kinase-specific activity predicts the prognosis of stage I and stage II non-small cell lung cancer

BACKGROUND: Lung cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer death worldwide. Even with complete resection, the prognosis of early-stage non-small cell lung cancer is poor due to local and distant recurrence, and it remains unclear which biomarkers are clinically useful for predicting recurrence or for determining the efficacy of chemotherapy. Recently, several lines of evidence have indicated that the enzymatic activity of cyclin-dependent kinases could be a clinically relevant prognostic marker for some cancers. We investigated whether the specific activity of cyclin-dependent kinases 1 and 2 could predict recurrence or death in early non-small cell lung cancer patients. METHODS: Patients with newly diagnosed, pathologically confirmed non-small cell lung cancer were entered into this blinded cohort study. The activity of cyclin-dependent kinases was determined in 171 samples by the C2P® assay, and the results were subjected to statistical analysis with recurrence or death as a clinical outcome. RESULTS: The Cox proportional hazards model revealed that the activity of cyclin-dependent kinase 1, but not 2, was a predictor of recurrence, independent of sex, age, and stage. By contrast, cyclin-dependent kinase 2 activity was a predictor of death, independent of sex and stage. CONCLUSION: This study suggested the possible clinical use of cyclin-dependent kinase 1 as a predictor of recurrence and cyclin-dependent kinase 2 as a predictor of overall survival in early-stage non-small cell lung cancer. Thus, a combination of activity of cyclin-dependent kinases 1 and 2 is useful in decision-making regarding treatment strategies for non-small cell lung cancer after surgery. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2407-14-755) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

The Effect of Cranial Change on Oropharyngeal Airway and Breathing During Sleep

Mandibular micrognathia is one of the characteristics of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of bimaxillary surgery without maxillary advancement on the upper airway using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) results of comparing pre- and post-operative finite element model. Seven female patients with jaw deformity, who underwent two-jaw surgery (Le Fort1 osteotomy and bilateral sagittal split ramus osteotomy; BSSRO) were enrolled. Maxillary was moved for correcting occlusal plane and mandibular was moved to advancement. Pharyngeal airway space and breathing during sleep were evaluated, comparing the periods of 2 days before and 6 months after the operation. The cross-sectional area of the level of the hard palate (HP) and the level of the tip of the uvula (TU), and airway volume of total, HP-TU, and TP- the level of the base of the epiglottis (BE) were increased. AI and AHI in 2 days before and 6 months after were decreased. As the result of nasal ventilation condition, velocity of HP and TU in 2 days before and 6 months after were decreased. We think that it was revealed that movement of the maxilla without advancement did not affect to the morphology and function of airway

Development and validation of prediction model for incident overactive bladder: The Nagahama study.

OBJECTIVES We aimed to develop models to predict new-onset overactive bladder in 5 years using a large prospective cohort of the general population. METHODS This is a secondary analysis of a longitudinal cohort study in Japan. The baseline characteristics were measured between 2008 and 2010, with follow-ups every 5 years. We included subjects without overactive bladder at baseline and with follow-up data 5 years later. Overactive bladder was assessed using the overactive bladder symptom score. Baseline characteristics (demographics, health behaviors, comorbidities, and overactive bladder symptom scores) and blood test data were included as predictors. We developed two competing prediction models for each sex based on logistic regression with penalized likelihood (LASSO). We chose the best model separately for men and women after evaluating models' performance in terms of discrimination and calibration using an internal validation via 200 bootstrap resamples and a temporal validation. RESULTS We analyzed 7218 participants (male: 2238, female: 4980). The median age was 60 and 55 years, and the number of new-onset overactive bladder was 223 (10.0%) and 288 (5.8%) per 5 years in males and females, respectively. The in-sample estimates for C-statistic, calibration intercept, and slope for the best performing models were 0.77 (95% confidence interval 0.74-0.80), 0.28 and 1.15 for males, and 0.77 (95% confidence interval 0.74-0.80), 0.20 and 1.08 for females. Internal and temporal validation gave broadly similar estimates of performance, indicating low optimism. CONCLUSION We developed risk prediction models for new-onset overactive bladder among men and women with good predictive ability

Distributed Sensing Via Inductively Coupled Single-Transistor Chaotic Oscillators: A New Approach and Its Experimental Proof-of-Concept

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