Current Status of Autoimmune Hepatitis in Japan

Autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) is a chronic and progressive disease characterized by histological interface hepatitis, hypergammaglobulinemia, and circulating autoantibodies. Multiple factors, including molecular mimicry, a genetic background including major histocompatibility complex class II, and defective function of regulatory T-cells, are involved in the pathogenesis. The diagnosis is made based on the scoring system of the International Autoimmune Hepatitis Group, the sensitivity and specificity of which are90%, respectively. AIH is classified into 3 sub-types based on the profiles of circulating autoantibodies: anti-nuclear antibody and/or smooth muscle antibody-positive (type 1), anti-liver-kidney microsomal antibody-positive (type 2), and anti-soluble liver antigen/liver-pancreas antigen antibody- positive (type 3). Recently, however, the number of atypical cases lacking the usual features has increased-for example, patients with acute-onset or fulminant-type AIH, autoantibody-negative patients, male patients, and patients with bile duct injury-and thus the clinical features of AIH have been diversified. AIH is responsive to immunosuppressive treatment in most cases; however, relapse occurs in more than 80% of patients within 1 year after immunosuppressive treatment withdrawal. The 10-year survival rate and the 10-year hepatocellular carcinoma-free rate are90%, respectively, indicating that some patients reach liver failure or develop hepatocellular carcinoma. To improve the prognosis of these patients, persistent normalization of transaminase is required.</p

Trade impacts on skill formation: welfare improvements accompanied by rises in inequality

In this paper, we focus on the skill formation when considering the trade impacts on labor markets. Although workers are identical as unskilled labor, they differ in their productivity as skilled. Workers become skilled by incurring the training costs. Introducing the above settings into a trade model with monopolistic competition, we show that trade opening enhances skill formation. This is because trade enriches the varieties of differentiated goods and raises the utility of a worker for a given income. This effect works stronger for the skilled than for the unskilled although it makes all agents better off, leading to higher skill formation. However, it may be accompanied by rises in the real wage disparity between skilled and unskilled workers and by rises in the skilled wage inequality. Finally, we examine the possible effects of foreign direct investment on the labor market structure as well.trade, skill formation, monopolistic competition, wage inequality, FDI

Structure of dimension-six derivative interactions in pseudo Nambu-Goldstone N Higgs doublet models

We derive the general structure of dimension-six derivative interactions in the N Higgs doublet models, where Higgs fields arise as pseudo Nambu-Goldstone modes of a strongly interacting sector. We show that there are several relations among the dimension-six operators, and therefore the number of independent operators decreases compared with models on which only SU(2)_L x U(1)_Y invariance is imposed. As an explicit example, we derive scattering amplitudes of longitudinal gauge bosons and Higgs bosons at high energy on models involving two Higgs doublets, and compare them with the amplitudes in the case of one Higgs doublet.Comment: 49 pages, 10 figure

3次元的トーラスプラズマにおける電子サイクロトロン加熱のトロイダル流への影響

京都大学新制・課程博士博士(工学)甲第23194号工博第4838号新制||工||1756(附属図書館)京都大学大学院工学研究科原子核工学専攻(主査)教授 村上 定義, 教授 高木 郁二, 教授 横峯 健彦学位規則第4条第1項該当Doctor of Philosophy (Engineering)Kyoto UniversityDFA