Reading Slavery in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

departmental bulletin pape

Adverse effects of advanced glycation end products on embryonal development

We studied the effects of advanced glycation end products (AGEs), which are known to accumulate in patients with diabetes, autoimmune diseases, or those who smoke, on embryonal development. Pronuclear (PN) embryos were obtained by flushing the fallopian tubes of rats after superovulation and mating. The cleavage rate and blastocyst yield were evaluated at 24, 72, 96, and 120 h of culture. Glyoxal, an AGE-forming aldehyde, suppressed embryonal development at every stage from PN to blastocyst in a concentration-dependent manner. The cleavage rate of the embryo was also signifi cantly decreased by treatment with glyoxal at concentrations of 1 mM or higher. The blastocyst yield was significantly decreased by treatment with glyoxal at concentrations of 0.5 mM or higher. N-acetyl-L-cysteine (L-NAC) at 1 mM significantly suppressed the glyoxal-induced embryonal toxicity. BSA-AGEs at 5 microg/ml or higher concentration signifi cantly reduced the cleavage rate and blastocyst yield compared to those for BSA-treated embryos. L-NAC at 1 mM significantly suppressed BSAAGE-induced embryonal toxicity. Because AGEs are embryo-toxic, AGE contamination may influence the pregnancy rate of in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer. AGEs, which are increased in women under pathological conditions, may also be involved in their infertility.</p

The dilemma of nurses in the field of lifesaving：Literature review

The purpose of this study was to clarify the dilemmas that nurses have in the field of lifesaving through a literature review in Japan. As a result of analysis and discussion, it was found that there are four aspects to the dilemma that nurses have: “dilemma of giving priority to lifesaving,” “dilemma of performing the role as a nurse in a team,” “dilemma of the difficulty of practicing nursing under severe conditions,” and “dilemma of confronting oneself. It was inferred that these four aspects were related to each other. In addition, these dilemmas have two characteristics: social conflicts felt in the organization and intra-individual conflicts felt in oneself. Dilemmas are not necessarily harmful, even moderate dilemmas have positive aspects of functioning. By examining and managing dilemmas embraced by nurses, it is suggested that dilemmas can lead to their technical and spiritual growth, their improvement in the quality of nursing, and ultimately their organizational development

Rapid diagnosis of drug intoxication using novel NAGINATA TM gas chromatography/mass spectrometry software

In Japan, not only the classical stimulant, methamphetamine, but also a wide variety of illicit drugs and designer drugs are abused by juveniles. It is, however, difficult to screen these drugs in human urine due to the poor availability of high-quality standards. Therefore, it is important to develop a screening method that does not require the use of standard compounds. Furthermore, if we can obtain approximate drug concentrations in biological fluids by the first screening procedure, the subsequent treatment of the patient and forensic diagnosis can be carried out more rapidly and exact quantitative analysis performed more efficiently. We have devised a rapid screening method for the simultaneous semi-quantitative analysis of 30 abused drugs using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) with a retention time locking technique. Based on this method, an &apos;abused drugs database&apos; was constructed including retention time (RT), qualifier ion/target ion (QT) percentage and calibration curve (values of slope and intercept) using the novel GC/MS software, NAGINATA TM . We compared the analytical results obtained by this method using the constructed database with those from conventional methods in six forensic cases. The number of confirmed drugs and concentrations obtained by the established method was comparable with that obtained by conventional methods. We found a significant improvement in the time for data analysis, and qualitative and quantitative information about each drug was obtained without using standards. Therefore, this new screening procedure using NAGINATA TM has potential for the rapid identification of poisoning and should be useful in clinical and forensic toxicological analyses