Resonances in Left-Handed Waves Developed in Nonlinear Electrical Lattices

We investigate resonant interactions in a specific electrical lattice that supports left-handed (LH) waves. The impact of LH waves on the three-wave mixing process, which is the most fundamental resonant interaction, is illustrated. In contrast to the ordinary right-handed (RH) waves, the phase of the LH wave moves to the different direction from its power. This exotic property together with the lattice’s dispersive features results in the resonant phenomena that are effectively utilized for practical electrical engineering, including the significant harmonic wave generation via head-on collisions, harmonic resonance, and short pulse generation driven by soliton decay. These resonances are quantified by the asymptotic expansion and characterized by numerical and/or experimental methods, together with several design criteria for their practical utilization. To cope with dissipation, a field-effect transistor (FET) is introduced in each cell. In particular, we characterize the stationary pulse resulting from the balance between dissipation and FET gain

Pattern Recognition via the Toll-Like Receptor System in the Human Female Genital Tract

The mucosal surface of the female genital tract is a complex biosystem, which provides a barrier against the outside world and participates in both innate and acquired immune defense systems. This mucosal compartment has adapted to a dynamic, non-sterile environment challenged by a variety of antigenic/inflammatory stimuli associated with sexual intercourse and endogenous vaginal microbiota. Rapid innate immune defenses against microbial infection usually involve the recognition of invading pathogens by specific pattern-recognition receptors recently attributed to the family of Toll-like receptors (TLRs). TLRs recognize conserved pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) synthesized by microorganisms including bacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses as well as endogenous ligands associated with cell damage. Members of the TLR family, which includes 10 human TLRs identified to date, recognize distinct PAMPs produced by various bacterial, fungal, and viral pathogens. The available literature regarding the innate immune system of the female genital tract during human reproductive processes was reviewed in order to identify studies specifically related to the expression and function of TLRs under normal as well as pathological conditions. Increased understanding of these molecules may provide insight into site-specific immunoregulatory mechanisms in the female reproductive tract

Histone Deacetylase Inhibitor Therapy in Epithelial Ovarian Cancer

Since epigenetic alterations are believed to be involved in the repression of tumor suppressor genes and promotion of tumorigenesis in ovarian cancers, novel compounds endowed with a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitory activity are an attractive therapeutic approach. In this review, we discuss the biologic and therapeutic effects of HDAC inhibitors (HDACIs) in treating ovarian cancer. HDACIs were able to mediate inhibition of cell growth, cell cycle arrest, apoptosis, and expression of genes related to the malignant phenotype in a variety of ovarian cancer cell lines. Furthermore, HDACIs were able to induce the accumulation of acetylated histones in the chromatin of the p21WAF1 gene in human ovarian carcinoma cells. In xenograft models, some of HDACIs have demonstrated antitumor activity with only few side effects. Some clinical trials demonstrate that HDACI drugs provide an important class of new mechanism-based therapeutics for ovarian cancer. In this review, we discuss the biologic and therapeutic effects of HDACIs in treating ovarian cancer, especially focusing on preclinical studies and clinical trials

Application of permanents of square matrices for DNA identification in multiple-fatality cases.

[Background]DNA profiling is essential for individual identification. In forensic medicine, the likelihood ratio (LR) is commonly used to identify individuals. The LR is calculated by comparing two hypotheses for the sample DNA: that the sample DNA is identical or related to a reference DNA, and that it is randomly sampled from a population. For multiple-fatality cases, however, identification should be considered as an assignment problem, and a particular sample and reference pair should therefore be compared with other possibilities conditional on the entire dataset. [Results]We developed a new method to compute the probability via permanents of square matrices of nonnegative entries. As the exact permanent is known as a #P-complete problem, we applied the Huber–Law algorithm to approximate the permanents. We performed a computer simulation to evaluate the performance of our method via receiver operating characteristic curve analysis compared with LR under the assumption of a closed incident. Differences between the two methods were well demonstrated when references provided neither obligate alleles nor impossible alleles. The new method exhibited higher sensitivity (0.188 vs. 0.055) at a threshold value of 0.999, at which specificity was 1, and it exhibited higher area under a receiver operating characteristic curve (0.990 vs. 0.959, P = 9.6E-15). [Conclusions]Our method therefore offers a solution for a computationally intensive assignment problem and may be a viable alternative to LR-based identification for closed-incident multiple-fatality cases

A cytogenetic study of nonpolymalformed patients with mental retardation of clinically undefined etiology: application of a high resolution banding technique.

We performed a cytogenetic study on 140 nonpolymalformed patients with mental retardation of clinically undefined origin, using a high resolution banding technique, to determine how much chromosome abnormalities contribute to the etiology of this condition. A total of 15 patients (10.7%) were found to have autosomal or sex chromosomal abnormalities. Autosomal abnormalities included partial monosomy (5 cases), reciprocal translocation (one case), 13/14 robertsonian translocation (3 cases), unbalanced translocation (one case), inverted duplication of 15q (one case) and mosaic trisomy 21 (one case). Sex chromosomal abnormalities comprised structural rearrangement of the short arm of the X chromosome (one case) and 47, XXY in a pure or mosaic form (two cases). It should be noted that four out of the 5 cases of partial monosomy had subtle interstitial deletions, which might have been unidentified by the conventional G-banding method alone. In one case of the robertsonian translocation 46,XY,t(13;14)/45,XY,t(13;14), a small deletion was thought to have occurred in the cells with a chromosome number of 45. Comparison of clinical features of the 15 chromosomally abnormal patients with those of patients with normal karyotypes did not show any clinical parameter indicative of chromosome imbalance. These results suggest that a subtle chromosomal deletion is specific to mental retardation associated with few malformations. We believe that diagnostic evaluation of mentally retarded patients, even if nonmalformed, should include chromosome analysis using a high resolution banding technique.</p

Comparative effects of flurbiprofen and fentanyl on natural killer cell cytotoxicity, lymphocyte subsets and cytokine concentrations in post-surgical intensive care unit patients: prospective, randomized study

学位記番号：医博甲147

ニワトリ胚のファブリシウス嚢におけるＢリンパ球の発達に対する sIgM 誘導因子の役割

　The bursa of Fabricius plays essential roles in the establishment of immune functions of avian species as a primary site for differentiation and proliferation of B lymphocytes. The bursa of chick embryos is colonized by lymphoid cell precursors only between the days 7th of embryogenesis (E7) and E14. Susceptibility to the sIgM-inducing factor may fluctuate in bursal lymphoid cells during the lymphoid precursor cell-receptive period. In the present study, the dynamic changes in the sIgM-positive ratio and responsiveness to sIgM-inducing factor were examined in lymphoid cells sampled from the bursa during the B precursor cell-receptive period (E10 to E13) and findings suggest that responsiveness to sIgM-inducing factor varies with the development of the chick embryos. E11 is suggested to be a critical stage of B-lymphocytegenesis in the bursa of chick embryos.ファブリシウス嚢はＢリンパ球分化と増殖のための中枢リンパ組織として鳥類の免疫機能の発達において重要な役割を演じている．培養ファブリシウス嚢上皮細胞は胚のファブリシウス嚢リンパ球に膜の IgM 分子（sIgM）の発 現を誘導する因子を産生することが報告されている．ファブリシウス嚢リンパ球の sIgM 発現誘導因子に対する感受性はファブリシウス嚢における分化の時期において変動する可能性が考えられる．ニワトリの胚では，リンパ球系の前駆細胞は胚発達の７日目から14日目の間においてのみファブリシウス嚢に進入・定着することが知られている．そこで本研究では，リンパ球系前駆細胞がファブリシウス嚢に定着するこの時期（10日胚から13日胚）におけるファブリシウス嚢リンパ球の sIgM 発現の変動を調べるとともに，これらの細胞における sIgM 発現誘導因子に対する感受性の変動について測定した．sIgM 陽性細胞の割合は11日胚で有意に上昇した．sIgM 発現誘導因子に対する反応性はこの時期の胚発達に伴って変動し，11日胚で高い傾向を示した．これらの結果から，11日胚齢はニワトリ胚のファブリシウス嚢におけるＢリンパ球の発達に関して重要な時期であることが示唆された