A Correlation between Low Back Pain and Associated Factors: A Study Involving 772 Patients who Had Undergone General Physical Examination

Many factors are associated with the development of low back pain. Among them, exercise, obesity, smoking, age, educational level and stress are the most common. This study examined the association of these factors with low back pain. An additional aim was to determine a procedure for preventing low back pain. This study analyzed the responses to a questionnaire sent to 772 individuals who had undergone a medical examination at this hospital in 2003 and excluded the individuals who had shown symptoms or their test results indicated a particular disease. Assuming that there were no variables, individuals who exercised regularly 3-4 times per week would have a lower chance of having low back pain than those who did not exercise regularly. The analysis revealed that individuals with a college degree or higher education have a lower chance of experiencing low back pain than those with only a high school education or even college drop-outs. When the other variables were constant, age, extent of obesity (body mass index), smoking and level of stress were not found to affect the development of low back pain. The level of education was associated with the development of low back pain. However, regular exercise 3-4 times per week or more would be most effective in reducing the incidence and duration of low back pain

Transforming growth factor-β1 rapidly activates phosphorylase in a calcium-dependent manner in rat hepatocytes

AbstractTransforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) rapidly activated phosphorylase in isolated rat hepatocytes (half-maximal rate of activation with approximately 0.1 ng/ml). Removal of Ca2+ from the external medium just before TGF-β1 addition markedly attenuated phosphorylase activation. TGF-β1 (1 ng/ml) produced a small increase in [Ca2+]i (approximately 10% increase after 30 s), which appears sufficient to account for phosphorylase activation. These observations indicate that activation of the TGF-β1 signal transduction system in hepatocytes is linked with a small increase in [Ca2+]i, and external Ca2+ may contribute in part to this increase

Comparative Glycopeptide Analysis for Protein Glycosylation by Liquid Chromatography and Tandem Mass Spectrometry: Variation in Glycosylation Patterns of Site-Directed Mutagenized Glycoprotein

Glycosylation is one of the most important posttranslational modifications for proteins, including therapeutic antibodies, and greatly influences protein physiochemical properties. In this study, glycopeptide mapping of a reference and biosimilar recombinant antibodies (rAbs) was performed using liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (LC-ESI-MS/MS) and an automated Glycoproteome Analyzer (GPA) algorithm. The tandem mass analyses for the reference and biosimilar samples indicate that this approach proves to be highly efficient in reproducing consistent analytical results and discovering the implications of different rAb production methods on glycosylation patterns. Furthermore, the comparative analysis of a mutagenized rAb glycoprotein proved that a single amino acid mutation in the Fc portion of the antibody molecule caused increased variations in glycosylation patterns. These variations were also detected by the mass spectrometry method efficiently. This mapping method, focusing on precise glycopeptide identification and comparison for the identified glycoforms, can be useful in differentiating aberrant glycosylation in biosimilar rAb products

A Schottky-Type Metal-Semiconductor-Metal Al0.24Ga0.76N UV Sensor Prepared by Using Selective Annealing

Asymmetric metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) aluminum gallium nitride (AlGaN) UV sensors with 24% Al were fabricated using a selective annealing technique that dramatically reduced the dark current density and improved the ohmic behavior and performance compared to a non-annealed sensor. Its dark current density at a bias of −2.0 V and UV-to-visible rejection ratio (UVRR) at a bias of −7.0 V were 8.5 × 10−10 A/cm2 and 672, respectively, which are significant improvements over a non-annealed sensor with a dark current density of 1.3 × 10−7 A/cm2 and UVRR of 84, respectively. The results of a transmission electron microscopy analysis demonstrate that the annealing process caused interdiffusion between the metal layers; the contact behavior between Ti/Al/Ni/Au and AlGaN changed from rectifying to ohmic behavior. The findings from an X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis revealed that the O 1s binding energy peak intensity associated with Ga oxide, which causes current leakage from the AlGaN surface, decreased from around 846 to 598 counts/s after selective annealing

Selectively Enhanced UV-A Photoresponsivity of a GaN MSM UV Photodetector with a Step-Graded AlxGa1−xN Buffer Layer

The UV-to-visible rejection ratio is one of the important figure of merits of GaN-based UV photodetectors. For cost-effectiveness and large-scale fabrication of GaN devices, we tried to grow a GaN epitaxial layer on silicon substrate with complicated buffer layers for a stress-release. It is known that the structure of the buffer layers affects the performance of devices fabricated on the GaN epitaxial layers. In this study, we show that the design of a buffer layer structure can make effect on the UV-to-visible rejection ratio of GaN UV photodetectors. The GaN photodetector fabricated on GaN-on-silicon substrate with a step-graded AlxGa−xN buffer layer has a highly-selective photoresponse at 365-nm wavelength. The UV-to-visible rejection ratio of the GaN UV photodetector with the step-graded AlxGa1−xN buffer layer was an order-of-magnitude higher than that of a photodetector with a conventional GaN/AlN multi buffer layer. The maximum photoresponsivity was as high as 5 × 10−2 A/W. This result implies that the design of buffer layer is important for photoresponse characteristics of GaN UV photodetectors as well as the crystal quality of the GaN epitaxial layers