Moon Park: A research and educational facility

Moon Park has been proposed as an International Space Year (ISY) event for international cooperative efforts. Moon Park will serve as a terrestrial demonstration of a prototype lunar base and provide research and educational opportunities. The kind of data that can be obtained in the Moon Park facilities is examined taking the minimum number of lunar base residents as an example

Glucose or Sucrose Intakes and Plasma Levels of Essential and Nonessential Amino Acids

It is not known whether the administration of glucose or sucrose influences plasma levels of amino acids. We want to know whether plasma levels of amino acids and if the administration of glucose or sucrose are different in young and old men and are influenced by the administration of glucose or sucrose. We found that the levels of most amino acids in plasma are lower in old men than young men. When sucrose was administered to old men, levels of total amino acids decreased significantly in old men. In both old and young men plasma levels of total nonessential amino acids significantly decreased at 120 min. after the administration of glucose but not sucrose. On the other hand, total essential and branched amino acids levels decreased significantly after the administration of both glucose and sucrose in young and old men. From these results, responses to the administration of glucose were different from the response to sucrose between young and old men. Also glucose was more effective in decreasing plasma levels of various amino acids. These results seem to suggest that glucose was more effective in stimulating insulin release and young men were more responsive to sugar than old men in stimulating insulin release

Intra-Abdominal Venous Pressure During Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy

Superior vena cava (SVC) and inferior vena cava (IVC) pressures were measured serially during laparoscopic cholecystectomy in which the intra-abdominal pressure was maintained at 12mmHg. The influences of alteration of position from 15 degrees head-down to 15 degrees head-up and of the operative procedure of holding the gallbladder up to the right subphrenic space on SVC and IVC pressures were mild. IVC pressure was maintained almost equal to the intra-abdominal pressure during prolonged continuous pneumoperitoneum lasting longer than 60min, while SVC pressure did not change significantly during operation. The discrepancy between SVC and IVC pressures underwent no change during continuous pneumoperitoneum

Attempt to Generate Uniform Magnetic Field by Face-to-Face Magnet System Containing HTS Bulk Magnets

In order to develop small-scale nuclear magnetic resonance devices, the authors have been developing uniform magnetic fields in the space between the face-to-face settled magnetic poles which contain HTS bulk magnets. Since the NMR magnets in general require highly uniform field, it was expected to be difficult to form such homogeneous magnetic-field distribution with use of HTS bulk magnet, because the bulk magnets is characterized by its inhomogeneous magnetic field showing steep gradient. The authors modified the shape of the field distribution from convex to concave by attaching an iron plate on the pole surface. Then, the magnets were then settled face-to-face with various gaps, and the magnetic-field uniformity was estimated in the space. In order to detect the NMR signals, the field uniformity less than 1,500 ppm should be required after the former results on the hollow-type magnets. When we combined the concave and convex field distributions to compensate the uneven field distributions, the best uniformity reached 358 ppm in the 30 mm gaps, which exceeded the target value. In addition, we numerically simulated the feasible performance in this configuration, which resulted in obtaining the best uniformity of 30 ppm at 1.1 T at 7 mm distant from the pole surface in the gap of 30 mm. This result suggested that the concave and convex magnetic field distributions compensate the field uniformity with each other with keeping the magnetic field strength in the gap

Attempt to Generate a Strong and Uniform Magnetic Field by Face-to-face HTS Bulk Elements in a Magnet System

AbstractA unique experimental attempt aiming to obtain a uniform magnetic field space as required for NMR has been carried out with use of HTS bulk magnets. The magnetic poles were activated as 1.8 T (North) and 1.4 T (South) at 30K by applyinga pulsed magnetic field up to 7 T, and positioned face-to-face with gaps less than 70mm. The uniformity of the magnetic field required for detecting the NMR signals isless than 1,500ppm at more than 0.3 T in the cross sectional plane of 2 x 2 mm2. After thepreliminary trials whichrevealed auniformity of 5,421ppm at 0.44 T in a70mm gap, we attached a ferromagnetic iron plate to a magnetic pole surface to change the magnetic field distribution to be concave. The best uniformity of 358ppm at 1.11 T was obtained at 9mm distance from the iron plate surface in a gap of 30mm. It is stated that the concave magnetic field distribution was compensated by the counter conical-shape field, resulting in the uniform field plane

Autoimmune responses as assessed by hypergammaglobulinemia and the presence of autoantibodies in patients with chronic hepatitis C.

We investigated autoimmunity, as assessed by hypergammaglobulinemia and the presence of autoantibodies including anti-nuclear antibodies (ANA) and anti-liver membrane antibodies (LMA), in 149 patients with chronic hepatitis C, 55 patients with chronic hepatitis B and 11 patients with autoimmune hepatitis. There was no significant difference in the incidence of these autoantibodies between chronic hepatitis C and chronic hepatitis B. Nine patients with chronic hepatitis C satisfied the serological criteria of autoimmune hepatitis (ANA positive and gammaglobulin or serum IgG greater than 2500 mg/dl), but none of the patients with chronic hepatitis B met the criteria. This suggests that autoimmunity is greater in chronic hepatitis C than in chronic hepatitis B. Of the 9 patients with chronic hepatitis C, all 4 patients tested for human leukocyte antigen (HLA) phenotype had HLA-DR4, which is known to be associated with autoimmune hepatitis in Japanese patients. We believe that hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection enhances the initiation and perpetuation of autoimmunity in susceptible individuals

Specificities and Clinical Significance of Anti-Cytoskeleton Antibodies in Anti-Smooth Muscle Antibody-Positive Patients with Chronic Liver Disease C

We investigated the specificities and characteristics of anti-cytoskeleton antibodies in 13 anti-smooth muscle antibody (ASMA)-positive patients with chronic liver disease C (CLD-C), and compared them with those in 7 ASMA-positive patients with autoimmune hepatitis (AIH), and 6 ASMA-positive patients with chronic liver disease B (CLD-B). Anti-microfilaments (anti-MF) were found not only in 6/7 AIH patients (85.7%), but also in 8/13 CLD-C patients (61.5%) with a relatively high incidence, when compared with 1/6 CLD-B patients (16.7%), while, there was no significant difference in the incidence of anti-intermediate filaments (anti-IMF), especially anti-IMF IgM, among these patient groups. Among the patients with CLD-C, the mean levels of serum gammaglobulin and IgG in the anti-MF-positive patients were 2.46 +/- 1.03 g/dl and 3277 +/- 1089 mg/dl, respectively, which were higher than those in the anti-MF-negative patients (1.60 +/- 0.53 g/dl, 2245 +/- 610 mg/dl) and those in the patients with CLD-B (1.60 +/- 0.57 g/dl, 2192 +/- 339 mg/dl). Furthermore, 4 of the 8 anti-MF-positive patients with CLD-C satisfied the serological criteria for the diagnosis of AIH. These findings suggest that autoimmune mechanisms might be involved in the pathogenesis of anti-MF-positive CLD-C, and that anti-MF might be used as a marker