Spinal Aspergillosis of the Thoracic Spine : Case Report

OBJECTIVE AND IMPORTANCE : Fungal infection of the spine is a rare entity, and is usually associated with opportunistic infection in immuno-compromised patients. The authors present a case of spinal aspergillosis in a diabetic patient. CLINICAL PRESENTATION : The subject was a 74-year-old man with a history of left lung tuberculosis who was diagnosed as having diabetes mellitus 20 years ago. His diabetes was controlled by diet and insulin therapy. On admission, he suffered from a moderate fever, paraparesis and sensory impairment of the bilateral lower extremities. A thoracic MRI showed a mass lesion was constricting the dural sac in the T6-9 thoracic spine region. INTERVENTION : A laminectomy was performed and antifungal agents (fluconazole and amphotericin B) were administered, but the treatment was ineffective, with the patient dying of multiple organ failure about three months after the operation. CONCLUSION : The outcome in cases of Aspergillus spinal infection is generally poor, in spite of the recent progress of medical treatment or surgical technique, so the importance of early diagnosis and initiation of treatment for this intractable disease are emphasized

Thin film write head field analysis using a benchmark problem

A benchmark problem has been proposed by the Storage Research Consortium (SRC) in Japan, for evaluating the applicability of computer codes to 3-D nonlinear eddy current analysis of thin film magnetic recording write head. Various codes using the finite element method are compared in terms of the write head field and the computational efficiency. The difficulty in 3-D mesh generation of thin film head is also discussed. The write head fields calculated by various codes using different meshes show fairly good agreement. The calculated write head fields are verified by measurement using a stroboscopic electron beam tomography. It is found that the calculation time strongly depends on unknown variables </p

Microarray-based global mapping of integration sites for the retrotransposon, intracisternal A-particle, in the mouse genome

Mammalian genomes contain numerous evolutionary harbored mobile elements, a part of which are still active and may cause genomic instability. Their movement and positional diversity occasionally result in phenotypic changes and variation by causing altered expression or disruption of neighboring host genes. Here, we describe a novel microarray-based method by which dispersed genomic locations of a type of retrotransposon in a mammalian genome can be identified. Using this method, we mapped the DNA elements for a mouse retrotransposon, intracisternal A-particle (IAP), within genomes of C3H/He and C57BL/6J inbred mouse strains; consequently we detected hundreds of probable IAP cDNA–integrated genomic regions, in which a considerable number of strain-specific putative insertions were included. In addition, by comparing genomic DNAs from radiation-induced myeloid leukemia cells and its reference normal tissue, we detected three genomic regions around which an IAP element was integrated. These results demonstrate the first successful genome-wide mapping of a retrotransposon type in a mammalian genome

Promoting effect of MgO addition to Pt/Ni/CeO2/Al2O3 in the steam gasification of biomass

Pt/Ni/CeO2/Al2O3 catalyst showed the high performance in the steam gasification of cedar wood at the initial stage, however, the catalyst was deactivated within 2 h. According to the catalyst characterization by means of XRD and Ni K-edge EXAFS, it is found that aggregation of Ni metal particles causes the deactivation. In contrast, the Pt/Ni/CeO2/MgO/Al2O3 showed the high catalytic activity and stability. The addition of MgO to Pt/Ni/CeO2/Al2O3 decreased the reduction degree of Ni, but increased the dispersion of the Ni metal particles. As a result, the activity of Pt/Ni/CeO2/MgO/Al2O3 was comparable to that of Pt/Ni/CeO2/Al2O3. The Pt/Ni/CeO2/MgO/Al2O3 had high resistance to the aggregation, which can be related to high stability. Another important point is that the aggregated Ni particles on the Pt/Ni/CeO2/MgO/Al2O3 became re-dispersed by the catalyst regeneration (oxidation and reduction). The re-dispersion can proceed via the formation of the NiO–MgO solid solution by oxidation and the reduction of the NiO–MgO from the results of XRD and Ni K-edge EXAFS

The Japanese space gravitational wave antenna; DECIGO

DECi-hertz Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (DECIGO) is the future Japanese space gravitational wave antenna. DECIGO is expected to open a new window of observation for gravitational wave astronomy especially between 0.1 Hz and 10 Hz, revealing various mysteries of the universe such as dark energy, formation mechanism of supermassive black holes, and inflation of the universe. The pre-conceptual design of DECIGO consists of three drag-free spacecraft, whose relative displacements are measured by a differential Fabry– Perot Michelson interferometer. We plan to launch two missions, DECIGO pathfinder and pre- DECIGO first and finally DECIGO in 2024

Coincidence analysis to search for inspiraling compact binaries using TAMA300 and LISM data

Japanese laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors, TAMA300 and LISM, performed a coincident observation during 2001. We perform a coincidence analysis to search for inspiraling compact binaries. The length of data used for the coincidence analysis is 275 hours when both TAMA300 and LISM detectors are operated simultaneously. TAMA300 and LISM data are analyzed by matched filtering, and candidates for gravitational wave events are obtained. If there is a true gravitational wave signal, it should appear in both data of detectors with consistent waveforms characterized by masses of stars, amplitude of the signal, the coalescence time and so on. We introduce a set of coincidence conditions of the parameters, and search for coincident events. This procedure reduces the number of fake events considerably, by a factor $\sim 10^{-4}$ compared with the number of fake events in single detector analysis. We find that the number of events after imposing the coincidence conditions is consistent with the number of accidental coincidences produced purely by noise. We thus find no evidence of gravitational wave signals. We obtain an upper limit of 0.046 /hours (CL $= 90$) to the Galactic event rate within 1kpc from the Earth. The method used in this paper can be applied straightforwardly to the case of coincidence observations with more than two detectors with arbitrary arm directions.Comment: 28 pages, 17 figures, Replaced with the version to be published in Physical Review

DECIGO pathfinder

DECIGO pathfinder (DPF) is a milestone satellite mission for DECIGO (DECi-hertz Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory) which is a future space gravitational wave antenna. DECIGO is expected to provide us fruitful insights into the universe, in particular about dark energy, a formation mechanism of supermassive black holes, and the inflation of the universe. Since DECIGO will be an extremely large mission which will formed by three drag-free spacecraft with 1000m separation, it is significant to gain the technical feasibility of DECIGO before its planned launch in 2024. Thus, we are planning to launch two milestone missions: DPF and pre-DECIGO. The conceptual design and current status of the first milestone mission, DPF, are reviewed in this article