X-ray Properties of the Weak Seyfert 1 Nucleus in NGC 4639

We obtained observations of NGC 4639 with ASCA in order to investigate its mildly active Seyfert 1 nucleus at hard X-ray energies. Koratkar et al. (1995) have previously shown that the nucleus is a pointlike source in the ROSAT soft X-ray band. We detected in the 2-10 keV band a compact central source with a luminosity of 8.3E+40 erg/s. Comparison of the ASCA data with archival data taken with the Einstein and ROSAT satellites shows that the nucleus varies on timescales of months to years. The variability could be intrinsic, or it could be caused by variable absorption. More rapid variability, on a timescale of \~10^4 s, may be present in the ASCA data. The spectrum from 0.5 to 10 keV is well described by a model consisting of a lightly absorbed (N_H = 7.3E+20 cm^-2) power law with a photon index of 1.68. We find no evidence for significant emission from a thermal plasma; if present, it can account for no more than 25% of the flux in the 0.5-2.0 keV band. The limited photon statistics of our data do not allow us to place significant limits on the presence of iron K emission. (abridged)Comment: To appear in The Astrophysical Journal. LaTex, 18 pages including embedded figures and table

二つの改良デシケータ装置のホルムアルデヒド除去効果の比較

The former desiccator system (Type I) and the new desiccator system (Type II) for the measurement of the dew condensation and the relative humidity were produced, and the formaldehyde (FA) removal rates were compared between the two desiccator systems. Those experiments were performed in the early morning in winter when the dew condensation tends to occur. The dew condensation was observed in the Type I. In the Type II, passage of FA gas through the hygroscopic bottle containing a desiccant resulted in the prevention of the dew condensation and maintenance of humidity at about 50%. The FA removal rates by coffee powders, black tea leaves, and green tea leaves were higher using the Type II than with the Type I. The FA removal rate using the Type II was higher for used-tea leaves or coffee powders than with unused ones. In particular with green tea leaves, the FA removal rates increased with the frequency and time of decoction. These results suggest the superiority of the Type II to the Type I in the measurement of the FA removal rates with various adsorbents

Comparison of rapid immunochromatographic assays using sputum and urine for Streptococcus pneumoniae detection in adult patients with respiratory tract infection

Aim: Streptococcus pneumoniae is the most frequently detected bacterium in pneumonia. RAPIRUN Streptococcus pneumoniae (RAPIRUN) using sputum and BinaxNow Streptococcus pneumoniae (BinaxNow) using urine have been used as rapid diagnostic methods for S. pneumoniae detection in Japan; however, their correlation with quantitative culture tests has not been well evaluated.Methods: A prospective study was conducted on adult patients with respiratory tract infections whose sputum and urine samples were available in six hospitals. Sputum and urine samples were tested at each site, and quantitative sputum cultures were performed. The performance of RAPIRUN and BinaxNow was compared in cases in which quantitative culture showed S. pneumoniae.Results: A total of 192 patients were analyzed. Of these, 167 were diagnosed with pneumonia (87.0%) including 161 of community-acquired pneumonia. Of the 192 cases, 86 (44.8%) were culture-proven for S. pneumoniae. There were 83 and 57 RAPIRUN- and BinaxNow-positive cases, respectively. The sensitivity and specificity of RAPIRUN were 84.9% and 90.6%, respectively, and those of BinaxNOW were 55.8% and 91.5%, respectively, indicating that RAPIRUN was significantly superior in sensitivity (p < 0.0001) with almost equal specificity (p = 0.317). Positive and negative percent agreements of both tests were 59.3% (κ, 0.114 [95% CI, 0.053–0.281]) and 99.1% (κ, 0.942 [95% CI, 0.830–1]), respectively, indicating they were well matched in specificity but not in sensitivity. The positivity rate of RAPIRUN increased with an increase in the number of bacteria (p< 0.0001) but not BinaxNow (p = 0.275).Conclusion: In adult patients with respiratory tract infections in whom sputum collection is feasible, RAPIRUN will increase the diagnostic efficacy of S. pneumoniae infection

ホルムアルデヒドの吸着剤による除去効果を測定するための改良デシケータの製作と測定

We developed a new desiccator system by improving the conventional desiccator method and measured the FA-removal effects of adsorbents using this system. The improved desiccator system consists of: 1) a pump, 2) a flow meter, 3) a FA gas generator, 4) five connected desiccators, and 5) an exhaust. A more stable concentration of FA in the desiccators was obtained when they were connected in series rather than in parallel. The FA removal rate for 3 days for red tea in used tea bags, green tea, oolong tea, or powdered coffee was more than 80%, and the removal rates for 1 day by activated carbon from palm nutshells and silica gel, as commercially available chemical agents, were 100% and 75%, respectively. This improved desiccator system allows direct collection of air in the desiccator, and may have wide applications

トクシマシ イシカイ ノ トウニョウビョウ タイサク

Tokushima City Medical Association has founded the committee for the means to prevent diabetesmellitus, because the mortality rate by diabetes mellitus in Tokushima Prefecture remainedranked first for 14 years from 1993 to 2006. It has enlightened a large number of people, such asdiabetic patients and candidates for diabetes, and also healthy citizens in Tokushima for preventingdiabetes mellitus. For this aim, Tokushima City Medical Association has made the home pagenamed Tokushima City Diabetic Network to show clearly the means to prevent diabetes mellitusfor the citizens. By this Web site, the citizens can get a correct knowledge about diabetes mellitus,a useful information about the treatments including exercises, diets and medications, and an informationabout medical institutions by utilizing the search page to receive a proper diabetic treatment.Tokushima City Medical Association held several events, such as Tokushima citizens’extension courses and diabetes forums for the citizens to understand diabetes mellitus clearly.Fortunately, in 2007, Tokushima got out of the first rank of diabetic mortality rate. TokushimaCity Medical Association will continue efforts to prevent diabetes mellitus by approaching the citizensof all ages from various aspects

Clinical Differentiation of Severe Fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome from Japanese Spotted Fever

Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) and Japanese spotted fever (JSF; a spotted fever group rickettsiosis) are tick-borne zoonoses that are becoming a significant public health threat in Japan and East Asia. Strategies for treatment and infection control differ between the two; therefore, initial differential diagnosis is important. We aimed to compare the clinical characteristics of SFTS and JSF based on symptomology, physical examination, laboratory data, and radiography findings at admission. This retrospective study included patients with SFTS and JSF treated at five hospitals in Nagasaki Prefecture, western Japan, between 2013 and 2020. Data from 23 patients with SFTS and 38 patients with JSF were examined for differentiating factors and were divided by 7:3 into a training cohort and a validation cohort. Decision tree analysis revealed leukopenia (white blood cell [WBC] < 4000/µL) and altered mental status as the best differentiating factors (AUC 1.000) with 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity. Using only physical examination factors, absence of skin rash and altered mental status resulted in the best differentiating factors with AUC 0.871, 71.4% sensitivity, and 90.0% specificity. When treating patients with suspected tick-borne infection, WBC < 4000/µL, absence of skin rash, and altered mental status are very useful to differentiate SFTS from JSF

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Effects of temperature, air movement and initial metabolic rate on thermal sensation during transient state in the tropics

10.1016/j.buildenv.2019.03.030BUILDING AND ENVIRONMENT15570-8