"In vivo cryotechnique" for paradigm shift to "living morphology" of animal organs

The morphological study has been one of the major approaches in medical and biological fields. For the last century, the conventional chemical fixation and alcohol dehydration were commonly used as an easy preparation method, but it was frequently pointed out that they usually yield many structural artifacts during their preparation processes. Although both conventional quick-freezing and high-pressure freezing methods, by which animal tissues are resected and frozen for physical fixation,can reduce such structural artifacts, the tissues have to be removed from living animal organs for the freezing. Therefore, such specimens are inevitably exposed to noxious stresses of anoxia and ischemia, exhibiting only dead morphological states of animal tissues without blood circulation. To the contrary, our "in vivo cryotechnique", by which all cells and tissues in animal bodies are cryofixed in vivo, can prevent such artifacts of resected specimens. By means of the cryotechnique, it is now possible to reveal the in vivo morphology of cells and tissues in living animal organs. Actually, it has been already applied to several animal organs, such as kidney, liver, intestine, cerebellum, eye ball, blood vessel, and joint cartilage, and brought new morphological findings, reflecting their physiological significance, which had been difficult to demonstrate by the conventional preparation methods. Moreover, its application to immunohistochemistry has also revealed more precise immunolocalizations of dynamically changing molecules in living animal organs, easily translocated by ischemic stresses and anoxia caused during the tissue resection. The "in vivo cryotechnique" allows us to perform novel morphological investigations of "living" morphological states, and develops new medical and biological fields with "living morphology" during this 21st century.Biomedical Reviews 2004; 15: 1-19

The Transformation of the Labor Relations in the North American Automobile Industry : The Impact of the Japanese Transplants and Lean Production System

From 1948 to 1979, the labor relations in the North American automobile industry have unchanged. Its basic characters were (1) the wages, the fringe benefits, the work rules, and the working conditions were negotiated and set mainly through collective bargaining, (2) a pattern bargaining which set agreements on common standards within and across industries, (3) job control unionism which included the detailed job classification system, (4) the quasi−juridical grievance procedures which included the third party arbitration. In the late 1960s and the early 1970s, GM pursued the southern strategy that the company opened the new plants in the right−to−work states and did not recognize the UAW. In the early 1970s, big 3, especially GM, started QWL (Quality of Work Life) program. They challenged the basic characters of the labor relations in the North American automobile industry but could not change them. Since 1979, however, the North American automobile industry has experienced the drastic changes of the labor relations. The Japanese transplants and lean production system have affected it. First, they brought the workers participating system or the employee involvement system including the QC circle and the team concept. Second, the increase of the Japanese car sales made the UAW negotiate the concession bargaining that deviated from the pattern bargaining. Third, they weakened the job control unionism. Finally, they did away with the detailed work rule and made it difficult to file the grievances

The Globalization and the Transformation of Auto Parts Suppliers in the Chugoku Region : The Effects of Global Sourcing and the Module Manufacturing System

In the age of intense global competition, many Japanese auto makers have overhauled the Keiretsu, the long−term and strong tie between an auto maker and its parts suppliers. In the process, many companies have adapted global sourcing and the module manufacturing system. This paper shows what impacts they have had on auto parts suppliers in the Chugoku region, based on interviews conducted at two auto makers and one auto parts supplier in 2002. There are two types of outsourced parts. One are parts designed by auto makers themselves, and the other are parts designed by part suppliers and approved by the auto makers. The former type of parts are often simple but hard to transport because of their weight or size. The latter type of parts are often high in value and easy to transport. As for global sourcing, auto makers have made more progress in sourcing the latter type. As a result, many high value parts have been manufactured outside the region. The module manufacturing system involves the assembly of a group of parts by the part supplier. These core suppliers, which assemble parts sent from other suppliers, are required to have a higher capacity of technological development than ever before. As a result of this, Tier 1 suppliers, which supply their parts to auto makers directly, are dividing into core suppliers and Tier 2 suppliers, which supply their parts to Tier 1 suppliers. Thus, the module manufacturing system has modified the vertical relation among local parts suppliers. Finally, it is often said that the intense competition in auto industry promotes mergers, but this is not the case in the Chugoku region. Many local suppliers are owned by the founding family, and they often lack the mutual trust which is crucial to mergers

Dose-Dependent Change in Elimination Kinetics of Ethanol due to Shift of Dominant Metabolizing Enzyme from ADH 1 (Class I) to ADH 3 (Class III) in Mouse

ADH 1 and ADH 3 are major two ADH isozymes in the liver, which participate in systemic alcohol metabolism, mainly distributing in parenchymal and in sinusoidal endothelial cells of the liver, respectively. We investigated how these two ADHs contribute to the elimination kinetics of blood ethanol by administering ethanol to mice at various doses, and by measuring liver ADH activity and liver contents of both ADHs. The normalized AUC (AUC/dose) showed a concave increase with an increase in ethanol dose, inversely correlating with β. CLT (dose/AUC) linearly correlated with liver ADH activity and also with both the ADH-1 and -3 contents (mg/kg B.W.). When ADH-1 activity was calculated by multiplying ADH-1 content by its Vmax⁡/mg (4.0) and normalized by the ratio of liver ADH activity of each ethanol dose to that of the control, the theoretical ADH-1 activity decreased dose-dependently, correlating with β. On the other hand, the theoretical ADH-3 activity, which was calculated by subtracting ADH-1 activity from liver ADH activity and normalized, increased dose-dependently, correlating with the normalized AUC. These results suggested that the elimination kinetics of blood ethanol in mice was dose-dependently changed, accompanied by a shift of the dominant metabolizing enzyme from ADH 1 to ADH 3

Predicted Number, Multiplicity, and Orbital Dynamics of TESS M Dwarf Exoplanets

We present a study of the M dwarf exoplanetary systems forthcoming from NASA's TESS mission. While the mission's footprint is too complex to be characterized by a single detection completeness, we extract an ensemble completeness function that recovers the M dwarf planet detections from previous work. We employ this completeness function, together with a dual-population planet occurrence model that includes compact multiple planetary systems, to infer anew the planet yield. We predict both the number of M dwarf planets likely from TESS and their system architectures. We report four main findings: first, that TESS will likely detect more planets orbiting M dwarfs that previously predicted. Around stars with spectral types between M1V--M4V, we predict TESS will find 990$\pm$350 planets orbiting 715$\pm$255 stars, a 1.5-fold increase over previous predictions. Secondly, TESS will find two or more transiting planets around 20% of these host stars, a number similar to the multiplicity yield of NASA's Kepler mission. Thirdly, TESS light curves in which one or more planets are detected will often contain transits of additional planets below the detection threshold of TESS. Among a typical set of 200 TESS hosts to one or more detected planets, 116$\pm$28 transiting planets will be missed. Transit follow-up efforts with the photometric sensitivity to detect an Earth or larger around a mid-M dwarf, even with very modest period completeness, will readily result in additional planet discoveries. And fourth, the strong preference of TESS for systems of compact multiples indicates that TESS planets will be dynamically cooler on average than Kepler planets, with 90% of TESS-detected planets residing in orbits with $e<0.15$.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures, submitted to Ap

Extension of absolute weak topologies and Riesz homomorphisms

Let L be a Riesz space and I an ideal of L^～. In this paper we show that if I ⊂ L^～_n and I separates the points of L, then there exists a unique "largest" Riesz dual system , called the largest enlargement of , which satisfies the statement given in [3, 5.2], and at the same time we give a sequential version of its result. From this, given in [1] theorem 23.33 extends to the argument on σ-laterally complete Riesz spaces and example 24.15 is generalized

σ-Extension of locally solid topologies

Let L be an almost σ-Dedekind complete Riesz space. In [9] I. Labuda has shown that if (L, τ) has the σ-Fatou property, then there exists the largest σ-enlargement (L^^～, τ～) of (L, τ) that is a unique σ-Nakano space. In this paper we give a sequential version of Theorem 3.7 given in [2] ([1, 24.3]), and the results tell us what Hausdorff locally solid σ-Lebesgue topologies on L extend to a σ-Lebesgue topology on L^s

Combined Gastrectomy with Adjacent Organs in T4 Gastric Cancer : Therapeutic Results and Indication

The postoperative morbidity, mortality and survival of 244 T4 gastric cancer patients were examined to assess the therapeutic results and to clarify the indication for combined gastrectomy with adjacent (T4) organs. A total of 190 combined and 54 simple gastrectomies were performed during the 25-year period between 1969 and 1994. Fourteen (7.4%) and 7 (13.0%) patients died of the complications after combined and simple gastrectomies respectively. No statistical significant difference was found in the mortality rates between the gastrectomies. The histological examination of 190 resected specimens by the combined gastrectomy with T4 organs revealed that gastric resections with conclusive curability A, B and C were performed in 33 (17.4%), 84 (44.2%) and 73 (38.4%) cases respectively. Significant differences (P < 0.01) among 3 survival curves of the patients with curability A, B and C were found, and the 5-year survival rates were 65.5%, 35.4% and 9.2% respectively. The survival curve of 176 patients with combined gastrectomy was significantly (P < 0.01) higher than that of 47 patients with simple gastrectomy, and the 5-year survival rates were 31.3% and 4.3%. However, the survival curve and the 5-year survival rate of the patients with simple gastrectomy were not statistically different from those of the patients with curability C. These results suggest that combined gastrectomy with T4 organs in T4 gastric cancer may be indicated for the patients with surgical curability B, but not surgical curability C