Scanning Electron Microscopic Study of the Collagen Sheath of the Human Thyroid Gland and Its Disorders

A cell-maceration/scanning electron microscope (SEM) method was employed to demonstrate the collagen sheath around follicles (perifollicular sheath) of the human thyroid gland and its disorders. In the normal thyroid gland, the follicles were surrounded by spherical collagen sheaths composed of a framework of thick collagen bands 1-5 μm in width and fine solitary collagen fibrils 50-70 nm in diameter. In benign thyroid diseases (Graves\u27 disease, Hashimoto\u27s thyroiditis and adenomatous goiter), the perifollicular sheaths differed in size and in shape according to the disease, but they were always composed of thick collagen bands and fine fibrils as in the normal thyroid. On the other hand, the spaces surrounded by the perifollicular sheaths varied markedly in size in follicular adenoma, were small in oxyphilic adenoma, and irregularly shaped in embryonal adenoma. In all these adenomas, the perifollicular sheaths were mainly composed of fine fibrils 35-45 nm in diameter. In follicular carcinoma, the size and shape of the space surrounded by the perifollicular sheaths were irregular. In papillary adenocarcinoma, the collagen sheaths showed a papillary pattern. In medullary carcinoma, tumor nests were surrounded by well developed collagen sheaths. In all these carcinomas, the collagen sheaths were mainly composed of fine collagen fibrils 32-45 nm in diameter. In adenomas and follicular carcinoma, the perifollicular sheaths frequently had large holes through which the spaces surrounded by the collagen sheaths connected to each other. Such holes were, however, rare in the normal thyroid and benign non-neoplastic thyroid diseases

Studies on the Wear Resisting Properties of the Spheroidal Graphite Cast Steel

The mechanical properties of the spheroidal graphite cast steel were already reported by the authors. This investigation has been made to compare the wear resisting properties of the spheroidal graphite cast steel with those of other cast irons. The surface hardness of the wear test pieces before and after the wear testing was measured. The results of this investigation can be summarized as follows : (1) In the dry abrasion between specimens of the same quality, the spheroidal cast steel is remarkably improved its wear resisting properties by oil quenching and tempering treatment. (2) In the dry abrasion and oil abrasion between specimens of the different qualities, in the pearlitic type, this cast steel is superior to the ductile cast iron. (3) In the case of dry abrasion, the difference between the surface hardness of the wear test pieces before and after wearing, became larger with an ordering of ferrite, pearlite, quenching and tempering matrix, and bainite. These differences have no relations to graphite shapes or wearing amounts

A Pilot-Plant Test of a Membrane Bioreactor with a Novel Membrane Made from Chlorinated Poly (Vinyl Chloride) (CPVC) and Hydroxy-Propyl Cellulose

A pilot-plant test that can treat an amount of 30 ton per day of wastewater is performed. The purpose of this test is to prove the usefulness and applicability of newly developed microfiltration membranes made from chlorinated poly (vinyl chloride) and polyester nonwoven. Here, the hydrophilicity of membranes is important and hydroxyl-propyl cellulose is used to mitigate their hydrophobicity. The membrane consists of the novel structure in which small particles made from hydroxyl-propyl cellulose gel are homogeneously dispersed and attached on the surface of micro fibrils in the structure. The result of the pilot-plant test shows that the newly developed membrane has anti-fouling properties better than that of a conventional membrane made from chlorinated poly (vinyl chloride) by another company. It still shows high hydrophilicity after the use of one year, while the conventional one loses such properties. Saving electricity in producing water is one of important issues in developing membrane bioreactor systems and the case in use of newly-developed membranes is revealed to need 2.0 kWh of electricity to produce 1 m3 of filtered water. This amount is fairly good and reasonable when the pilot-plant test is considered to belong to a medium-size facility

Nanofiltration Hollow Fiber Membranes Made from Sulfonated Polysulfone having a Cyanophenylene Group

A nanofiltration hollow fiber membrane made from sulfonated polysulfone was proposed in this work to meet the demands of having tolerance against chemicals. The sulfonate group in the molecule is a source of highly hydrophilic properties and may increase the inter-molecular force acting between molecules on which it is attached. It also contributes to forming a tight structure in the membrane. The membrane may produce higher water flux than those of commercially available nanofiltration membranes made from polyamides. The state of water in the wet membrane was examined with a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer. The bonding force to confine water molecules in the membrane may be considered to control the water flux and salt rejection of membranes. It is revealed that there were two kinds of water in the membrane and the salt rejection was raised when the interaction to the water molecules from sulfonate groups in the sulfonated polysulfone molecule was increased. The salt rejection and water flux is highly correlated with the chemical shift of constrained water

Welding by Single Bead Test, and Rapid Heating and Cooling Structures of 13% Chromium Stainless Steel

The metallographic studies have been performed on the structures of weld metal and heat-affected zone of 13% chromium martensitic stainless steel. The heat-affected zone was obtained by single bead welding, in which a single bead 10～12cm long was put on 13% chromium stainless steel plate 200×75×20mm^3. The isothermal austenitization diagrams (T-T-A diagram. Time-Temperature-Austenitization diagram) were determined for two specimens differently preheat-treated. The specimen was heated in a salt bath, followed by rapid quenching in water, and then T-T-A diagram was obtained from changes in hardness (Hv) and in matrix structure

Efficient String Dictionary Compression Using String Dictionaries

文字列集合を保管するためのデータ構造である文字列辞書に関して，近年，多くの用途でコンパクト性が求められるという実例が報告されている．また，その背景に応じて，Trie や Front-Coding などの辞書を実現するための優れた技法に，Re-Pair などの強力な文書圧縮技法を組み合わせた圧縮文字列辞書が提案されている．本稿では，既存の圧縮文字列辞書の改良を目的とし，文字列辞書の圧縮に文字列辞書を用いるという方策に基づいた辞書構造を提案する．実データを用いた実験より，提案による文字列辞書はRe-Pair により圧縮した辞書と比べ，メモリ効率や検索・復元速度のトレードオフに関して同等の性能を示しつつ，短い時間で構築できることを示した．A string dictionary is a data structure to store a set of strings. Recently, instances have emerged in practice where the size of string dictionaries has become a critical problem in many applications. Consequently, compressed string dictionaries have been proposed by leveraging efficient implementation techniques, such as Trie and Front-Coding, and powerful text compression techniques, such as Re-Pair. In this paper, we propose new dictionary structures based on a strategy using string dictionaries for the compression in order to improve existing compressed ones. We show that our string dictionaries can be constructed in a shorter time compared to the Re-Pair versions with competitive space usage and operation speed, through experiments on real-world datasets

Behaviours of the Precipitates of 17-4 PH Stainless Steel by the Arc Welding Heat

Behaviours of the precipitates and hardness in the heat-affected zone of 17-4 PH stainless steel were investigated. The heat-affected zone was obtained by single bead welding using a TIG arc method, in which a single bead 10 cm in length was placed on the 17-4 PH stainless steel plate of 20×50×200 mm^3. To analyze the precipitates and the hardness distribution in heat-affected zone, the specimen, 15 mm in length and 5 mm in diameter, was rapidly heated and cooled by the reproducing weld thermal cycle apparatus using a high-frequency induction heating. The hardness of the specimen subjected to the thermal cycle by the reproducing weld thermal cycle apparatus was compared with the hardness in the heat-affected zone subjected to the weld thermal cycle under TIG arc welding. The results may be surmmarized as follows : (1) In the heat-affected zone of 17-4 PH stainless steel solution treated, the maximum hardness was obtained at about 600℃, and this temperature was about 100℃ higher than that of ordinary precipitation treatment. The higher the precipitation temperature, the lower became the maximum hardness with increasing precipitation time. (2) In the base metals subjected to the reproducing weld thermal cycle at a peak temperature of 650℃ prior to the precipitation treatment, there appeared some parts which were not hardened by the precipitation treatment. The softening temperature by the weld thermal cycles in the heat-affected zone of the base metal subjected to the precipitation treatment ranged from 650°to 900℃, and the solid solutioning was fully accomplished at a temperature above 900℃

An Efficient Method of Summarizing Documents Using Impression Measurements

Automatic generic document summarization based on unsupervised schemes is a very useful approach because it does not require training data. Although techniques using latent semantic analysis (LSA) and non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) have been applied to determine topics of documents, there are no researches on reduction of matrix and speeding up of computation of the NMF method. In order to achieve this scheme, this paper utilizes the generic impressive expressions from newspapers to extract important sentences as summary. Therefore, it has no stemming processes and no filtering of stop words. Generally, novels are typical documents providing sentimental impression for readers. However, newspapers deliver different impressions for new knowledge because they inform readers about current events, informative articles and diverse features. The proposed method introduces impressive expressions for newspapers and their measurements are applied to the NMF method. From 100 KB text data of experimental results by the proposed method, it turns out that the matrix size reduces by 80 % and the computation of the NMF method becomes 7 times faster than with the original method, without degrading the relevancy of extracted sentences