Inflammation and Oxidative Stress in Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease

The etiology of esophageal mucosal injury is complex, since it may involve the reflux of gastric acid, bile acid, and pancreatic juice, external factors such as drugs and alcohol, or functional factors such as esophagogastric motility. The mechanism of esophageal mucosal injury has gradually been understood at the molecular biological level. It is particularly important that pro-inflammatory factors, such as inflammatory cytokines (interleukin-6 and -8), leukocytes and oxidative stress, have been demonstrated to be involved in the development of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) including nonerosive reflux disease (NERD). In addition, nociceptors such as acid-sensitive vanilloid receptors, protease-activated receptors and substance P have also been implicated in the pathogenesis of neurogenic inflammation in NERD patients with esophageal hypersensitivity. The development of new therapy with anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant effects is expected to assist in the treatment of intractable NERD/GERD and the prevention of carcinogenesis

Automatic utterance segmentation in spontaneous speech

Thesis (M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 79-80).As applications incorporating speech recognition technology become widely used, it is desireable to have such systems interact naturally with its users. For such natural interaction to occur, recognition systems must be able to accurately detect when a speaker has finished speaking. This research presents an analysis combining lower and higher level cues to perform the utterance endpointing task. The analysis involves obtaining the optimal parameters for the signal level utterance segmenter, a component of the speech recognition system in the Cognitive Machines Group, and exploring the incorporation of pause duration and grammar information to the utterance segmentation task. As a result, we obtain an optimal set of parameters for the lower level utterance segmenter, and show that part-of-speech based N-gram language modeling of the spoken words in conjunction with pause duration can provide effective signals for utterance endpointing.b y Norimasa Yoshida.M.Eng

Transcriptome Analysis for Cytoprotective Actions of Rebamipide against Indomethacin-Induced Gastric Mucosal Injury in Rats

We have reported that rebamipide, a gastroprotective drug, suppresses indomethacin-induced gastric mucosal injury in humans and rats. However, the mechanisms of the cytoprotective actions of rebamipide have not been fully addressed. In the present study, we determined mRNA expression profile of the gastric mucosa treated with indomethacin in rats, and investigated the cytoprotective effects of rebamipide against indomethacin-induced injury with a high-density oligonucleotide array (Rat Toxicology U34 GeneChip array). Gastric epithelial cells were obtained by laser-assisted microdissection. Data analysis was performed with a GeneChip Operating Software, GeneSpring software 7.0, and Ingenuity Pathway Analysis. Among 1,031 probes, the expression of 160 probes (15.5%) showed at least 2.0-fold up-regulation (158 probes) and down-regulation (2 probes) 2 h after indomethacin administration in comparison with the vehicle-treated rats. The pathway analysis of the up-regulated 123 probes identified the network with a highly significant score, which consisted of known clusters of cell death, cancer, and endocrine system disorders. We succeeded in listing 10 genes that were up-regulated by the treatment with indomethacin and that were down-regulated by rebamipide, including growth arrest and DNA damage-induced 45α. In conclusion, we demonstrated that cell death, especially apoptosis, pathway is involved in the pathogenesis of indomethacin-induced gastric mucosal injury, and that inhibition of apoptosis-related genes is possibly important for the cytoprotective effect of rebamipide against this injury

Enhancement in Boiling Heat Transfer for Water Using a Polished Plate Surface

The thermal characteristic of a plate evaporator for boiling water have been experimentally investigated. Stainless-steel plates with five kinds of surface roughness (a mirror-polished surface and four kinds of polished plate surface, F2, F0, F-1, and F-2 polishing) were used for the investigation. The roughness order is F-2 > F-1 > F0 > F2 > mirror. The local boiling heat transfers were measured on the evaporator surface using ten thermocouples inside the evaporator. For a comparison of the heat transfer characteristic of the evaporator, the local boiling heat transfer coefficient was measured when the polishing direction was perpendicular or parallel to the water flow at a range of pressures (0.3–0.4 MPa) and flow rates (20–60 mL/min). The results indicate that the local heat transfer coefficient increased with increasing vapor quality at all surface conditions. For F0 polishing, the heat transfer coefficient on the surface with perpendicular polishing was much larger than that on the surfaces with parallel and mirror polishing. In particular, the heat transfer coefficient of the perpendicularly polished surface (F2 and F0 polishing) was increased six-fold in comparison with that of the mirror surface at a vapor quality of 0.35. However, for the F-1 and F-2 perpendicularly polishing plates, the heat transfer coefficients were smaller than those of the F0 and F2 perpendicularly polishing plates. For the F2 perpendicularly polished plate, heat transfer enhancement was confirmed, along with an increase in the number of bubbling points, on increasing the system pressure. For the polished surface, the heat transfer coefficient increased with increasing flow rate. This indicates that the bubble formation cycle was promoted by an increased flow rate

Multi-layered flyer accelerated by laser induced shock waves

Copyright 2000 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Physics of Plasmas, 7(2), 676-680, 2000 and may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.87385

Cuckoo Search Algorithm with Lévy Flights for Global-Support Parametric Surface Approximation in Reverse Engineering

This paper concerns several important topics of the Symmetry journal, namely, computer-aided design, computational geometry, computer graphics, visualization, and pattern recognition. We also take advantage of the symmetric structure of the tensor-product surfaces, where the parametric variables u and v play a symmetric role in shape reconstruction. In this paper we address the general problem of global-support parametric surface approximation from clouds of data points for reverse engineering applications. Given a set of measured data points, the approximation is formulated as a nonlinear continuous least-squares optimization problem. Then, a recent metaheuristics called Cuckoo Search Algorithm (CSA) is applied to compute all relevant free variables of this minimization problem (namely, the data parameters and the surface poles). The method includes the iterative generation of new solutions by using the Lévy flights to promote the diversity of solutions and prevent stagnation. A critical advantage of this method is its simplicity: the CSA requires only two parameters, many fewer than any other metaheuristic approach, so the parameter tuning becomes a very easy task. The method is also simple to understand and easy to implement. Our approach has been applied to a benchmark of three illustrative sets of noisy data points corresponding to surfaces exhibiting several challenging features. Our experimental results show that the method performs very well even for the cases of noisy and unorganized data points. Therefore, the method can be directly used for real-world applications for reverse engineering without further pre/post-processing. Comparative work with the most classical mathematical techniques for this problem as well as a recent modification of the CSA called Improved CSA (ICSA) is also reported. Two nonparametric statistical tests show that our method outperforms the classical mathematical techniques and provides equivalent results to ICSA for all instances in our benchmark.This research work has received funding from the project PDE-GIR (Partial Differential Equations for Geometric modelling, Image processing, and shape Reconstruction) of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant agreement No. 778035, the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Computer Science National Program) under Grant #TIN2017-89275-R of the Agencia Estatal de Investigación and European Funds FEDER (AEI/FEDER, UE), and the project #JU12, jointly supported by public body SODERCAN of the Regional Government of Cantabria and European Funds FEDER (SODERCAN/FEDER UE). We also thank Toho University, Nihon University, and the Symmetry 2018, 10, 58 23 of 25 University of Cantabria for their support to conduct this research wor

Successful Endoscopic Injection Sclerotherapy of High-Risk Gastroesophageal Varices in a Cirrhotic Patient with Hemophilia A

A 68-year-old man with hemophilia A and liver cirrhosis caused by hepatitis C virus was referred to our hospital to receive prophylactic endoscopic treatment for gastroesophageal varices (GOV). He had large, tense, and winding esophageal varices (EV) with cherry red spots extending down to lesser curve, predicting the likelihood of bleeding. Esophageal endoscopic injection sclerotherapy (EIS) was performed with a total 15 mL of 5% ethanolamine oleate with iopamidol (EOI). Radiographic imaging during EIS demonstrated that 5% EOI reached the afferent vein of the varices. He was administered sufficient factor VIII concentrate before and after EIS to prevent massive bleeding from the varices. Seven days after EIS, upper gastrointestinal endoscopy (UGIE) showed that the varices were eradicated almost completely. Eighteen months after EIS, the varices continued to diminish. We report a successful case of safe and effective EIS for GOV in a high-risk cirrhotic patient with hemophilia A

Clinicopathological characteristics and treatment strategies in early gastric cancer: a retrospective cohort study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Both endoscopic and surgical approaches are employed in the treatment of early gastric cancer (EGC). The aim of this study was to establish appropriate treatment strategies for early gastric cancer.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We retrospectively examined clinicopathological data of EGC patients who had undergone surgery.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 327 patients (204 males and 123 females, mean age 63.2 years) were eligible for inclusion in the study. The median follow-up period was 31 months. Of 161 mucosal (pT1a) tumors, 87 were mainly undifferentiated and 110 had an undifferentiated component. Four patients with pT1a tumors had lymph node metastases; all these tumors were signet-ring cell carcinomas and were macroscopic type 0-IIc with ulceration, and only one of them had lymphatic invasion. Among patients with submucosal tumors, four of 43 patients with pT1b1 tumors and 37 of 123 patients with pT1b2 tumors had nodal metastases. Lymph node metastases were significantly higher in mixed undifferentiated type group than differentiated type group for both groups, pT1a-pT1b1 (p = 0.0251) and pT1b2 (p = 0.0430) subgroups. Only four of 45 patients with nodal metastases were diagnosed preoperatively by computed tomography (sensitivity 8.9%, specificity 96.2%). Nine patients with pT1b tumors had recurrence after surgery, and died. The sites of initial recurrence were liver, bone, peritoneum, distant nodes, and the surgical anastomosis.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The incidence of nodal metastases was approximately 5% in undifferentiated type mucosal (pT1a) tumors, and higher in submucosal (pT1b) tumors. The sensitivity of preoperative diagnosis of nodal metastases in EGC using computed tomography was relatively low in this study. Therefore at present surgery with adequate lymphadenectomy should be performed as curative treatment for undifferentiated type EGC.</p