Mechanism for the Increased Permeability in Endothelial Monolayers Induced by Elastase

The aim of this study was to investigate the mechanism for the increase in endothelial permeability induced by human neutrophil elastase (HNE). Pretreatment of bovine pulmonary artery endothelial cells (BPAEC) with HNE(0-30 μg/ml) for 1 h produced a concentration dependent increase in 125I-albumin clearance. The effect was reversible and was not due to cytolysis. Pretreatment of BPAEC with sodium tungstate, which depletes xanthine oxidase, or with oxypurinol, did not prevent HNE induced increased permeability. Heparin, which neutralizes the cationic charge of HNE, also had no protective effect. Pretreatment with heat inactivated HNE, which still had positive charge sites, did not result in increased endothelial permeability. Also, ONO-5046, a novel specific inhibitor of HNE, did prevent increased permeability. These results suggest that elastase increases endothelial permeability mainly through its proteolytic effects

A new ultra high energy gamma ray telescope at Ohya mine

The search for ultra high energy gamma rays coming from point sources is one of the main experimental aims. A fast air shower timing system was constructed at ICRR for the study of the angular resolution of the system and operated approximately half a year. The characteristics of the surface array of Ohya air shower telescope is described

Ideologies inside textbooks: Vietnamization and re-khmerization of political education in Cambodia during the 1980s

This chapter analyzes school textbooks in Cambodia during the 1980s when the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) was in power. Our paper focuses on the portrayal inside textbooks of Democratic Kampuchea (DK), which was the regime that preceded the PRK and is commonly known as the Khmer Rouge. Education during this period attempted to unify survivors of the auto/genocide that occurred during the DK period (1975–1979) and was used as a political tool to create favorable public sentiment for the ruling power in the capital, Phnom Penh (Okada, 1998)

Met/HGF receptor modulates bcl-w expression and inhibits apoptosis in human colorectal cancers

The met proto-oncogene is the tyrosine kinase growth factor receptor for hepatocyte growth factor. In the present study, we investigated the role of met expression on the modulation of apoptosis in colorectal tumours. The gene expressions of c- met and the anti-apoptotic bcl -2 family, including bcl -2, bcl -x L and bcl-w, were analysed in human colorectal adenomas and adenocarcinomas by using a quantitative polymerase chain-reaction combined with reverse transcription. In seven of 12 adenomas and seven of 11 carcinomas, the c- met gene was overexpressed. The bcl -w, bcl -2 and bcl -x L genes were over-expressed in nine, five and six of 12 adenomas and in five, two and seven of 11 carcinomas, respectively. The c- met mRNA level in human colorectal adenomas and carcinomas was correlated with bcl -w but not with bcl -2 or with bcl -x L mRNA level. The administration of c- met -antisense oligonucleotides decreased Met protein levels in the LoVo human colon cancer cell line. In the case of c- met -antisense-treated cells, apoptotic cell death induced by serum deprivation was more prominent, compared to control or c- met -nonsense-treated cells. Treatment with c- met -antisense oligonucleotides inhibits the gene expression of bcl -w in LoVo cells. On the other hand, the gene expression of bcl -2 or bcl -x L was not affected by treatment with c- met -antisense oligonucleotides. These findings suggest that Met expression modulates apoptosis through bcl -w expression in colorectal tumours. © 2000 Cancer Research Campaig

Hydraulic study on scouring downstream of Funagira Dam spillway apron (Japan)

Funagira Dam is a concrete gravity dam having a height of 24.50 m and a dam crest length of 220.00 m, and is located approximately 30 km upstream from the mouth of the Tenryu River. The Funagira Dam is owned by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Shizuoka Prefecture, and Electric Power Development Co., Ltd. (J-POWER), and its objectives include power generation and supply of agricultural water, public water, and industrial water. For energy dissipation, the downstream area of the dam was designed as a hydraulic jump-type dissipater using bed protection blocks. The dam has experienced several large storm events in the 40 years after its completion. The protection blocks were damaged and the scouring downstream of the dam began soon after completion. About 6,300 tetrapods were added stage by stage to the bottom. In recent times (2011), however, flood events have been more intense and of longer duration, with maximum spillway releases of up to approximately 6,396 m3/s. This resulted in increased scouring at the foot of the dam. Emergency measures were taken just downstream of the dam apron from 2011 to 2013. The scouring process is a function of several variables, such as water discharge, water level downstream, bed protection, bed materials, transport, morphological riverbed conditions, and gate operations. Experimental studies with field observations, mathematical model tests, and vertical 2-dimensional and fully 3-dimensional hydraulic scale model tests have been carried out to examine the scouring processes and to determine long-term measures. These studies indicate that scouring was caused by a horizontal secondary flow with non-uniform discharge releases, and by changing the types of hydraulic jump because of long-term morphological riverbed changes. The study especially indicates that severe scouring would occur not only for extreme planned discharge but also for small discharges, because of the downstream water level of the dam

AKARI Far-Infrared All Sky Survey

We demonstrate the capability of AKARI for mapping diffuse far-infrared emission and achieved reliability of all-sky diffuse map. We have conducted an all-sky survey for more than 94 % of the whole sky during cold phase of AKARI observation in 2006 Feb. -- 2007 Aug. The survey in far-infrared waveband covers 50 um -- 180 um with four bands centered at 65 um, 90 um, 140 um, and 160 um and spatial resolution of 3000 -- 4000 (FWHM).This survey has allowed us to make a revolutionary improvement compared to the IRAS survey that was conducted in 1983 in both spatial resolution and sensitivity after more than a quarter of a century. Additionally, it will provide us the first all-sky survey data with high-spatial resolution beyond 100 um. Considering its extreme importance of the AKARI far-infrared diffuse emission map, we are now investigating carefully the quality of the data for possible release of the archival data. Critical subjects in making image of diffuse emission from detected signal are the transient response and long-term stability of the far-infrared detectors. Quantitative evaluation of these characteristics is the key to achieve sensitivity comparable to or better than that for point sources (< 20 -- 95 [MJy/sr]). We describe current activities and progress that are focused on making high quality all-sky survey images of the diffuse far-infrared emission.Comment: To appear in Proc. Workshop "The Space Infrared Telescope for Cosmology & Astrophysics: Revealing the Origins of Planets and Galaxies". Eds. A.M. Heras, B. Swinyard, K. Isaak, and J.R. Goicoeche

Unbiased Shape Compactness for Segmentation

We propose to constrain segmentation functionals with a dimensionless, unbiased and position-independent shape compactness prior, which we solve efficiently with an alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). Involving a squared sum of pairwise potentials, our prior results in a challenging high-order optimization problem, which involves dense (fully connected) graphs. We split the problem into a sequence of easier sub-problems, each performed efficiently at each iteration: (i) a sparse-matrix inversion based on Woodbury identity, (ii) a closed-form solution of a cubic equation and (iii) a graph-cut update of a sub-modular pairwise sub-problem with a sparse graph. We deploy our prior in an energy minimization, in conjunction with a supervised classifier term based on CNNs and standard regularization constraints. We demonstrate the usefulness of our energy in several medical applications. In particular, we report comprehensive evaluations of our fully automated algorithm over 40 subjects, showing a competitive performance for the challenging task of abdominal aorta segmentation in MRI.Comment: Accepted at MICCAI 201

Identification problems of muon and electron events in the Super-Kamiokande detector

In the measurement of atmospheric nu_e and nu_mu fluxes, the calculations of the Super Kamiokande group for the distinction between muon-like and electronlike events observed in the water Cerenkov detector have initially assumed a misidentification probability of less than 1 % and later 2 % for the sub-GeV range. In the multi-GeV range, they compared only the observed behaviors of ring patterns of muon and electron events, and claimed a 3 % mis-identification. However, the expressions and the calculation method do not include the fluctuation properties due to the stochastic nature of the processes which determine the expected number of photoelectrons (p.e.) produced by muons and electrons. Our full Monte Carlo (MC) simulations including the fluctuations of photoelectron production show that the total mis-identification rate for electrons and muons should be larger than or equal to 20 % for sub-GeV region. Even in the multi-GeV region we expect a mis-identification rate of several % based on our MC simulations taking into account the ring patterns. The mis-identified events are mostly of muonic origin.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figure

Empirical likelihood estimation of the spatial quantile regression

The spatial quantile regression model is a useful and flexible model for analysis of empirical problems with spatial dimension. This paper introduces an alternative estimator for this model. The properties of the proposed estimator are discussed in a comparative perspective with regard to the other available estimators. Simulation evidence on the small sample properties of the proposed estimator is provided. The proposed estimator is feasible and preferable when the model contains multiple spatial weighting matrices. Furthermore, a version of the proposed estimator based on the exponentially tilted empirical likelihood could be beneficial if model misspecification is suspect

Integrated Land Use-Transport Model System with Dynamic Time-Dependent Activity-Travel Microsimulation

The development of integrated land use-transport model systems has long been of interest because of the complex interrelationships between land use, transport demand, and network supply. This paper describes the design and prototype implementation of an integrated model system that involves the microsimulation of location choices in the land use domain, activity-travel choices in the travel demand domain, and individual vehicles on networks in the network supply modeling domain. Although many previous applications of integrated transport demand-supply models have relied on a sequential coupling of the models, the system presented in this paper involves a dynamic integration of the activity-travel demand model and the dynamic traffic assignment and simulation model with appropriate feedback to the land use model system. The system has been fully implemented, and initial results of model system runs in a case study test application suggest that the proposed model design provides a robust behavioral framework for simulation of human activity-travel behavior in space, time, and networks. The paper provides a detailed description of the design, together with results from initial test runs