Aspergillus fumigatus is one of the major fungal pathogens which cause pulmonary aspergillosis [1]. Its conidia are taken into human airway from the environment, and adhere to lung epithelial cells in the first process of infection. Some virulence factors should be produced by A. fumigatus and facilitate the infection, but such substances have not confirmed yet. Gliotoxin, one of the secondary metabolites of this fungus, has been recognized as a candidate of virulence factor and has been investigated thoroughly. This molecule has been shown to have cytotoxicity to various cell lines such as human alveolar epithelial cells [2] and human neutrophils [3]. But the impact of gliotoxin in the first phase of the infection remains unclear. This study aimes to investigate cytotoxic effect of gliotoxin on epithelial cells and elucidate the effect of gliotoxin to the adhesion of conidia to them. We observed the surface of A549 lung epithelial cells by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and evaluated the adhesion rate of conidia of A. fumigatus Af293 to A549 cells, after exposure of gliotoxin. One hour exposure of gliotoxin led to cell shrinking. By the observation with SEM, microvilli decreasing or shortening were seen on the surface of A549 cells by gliotoxin. The adhesion rate of Af293 conidia to A549 cells tended to increase after exposure of gliotoxin at a concentration of 100 ng/ml, compared with control. From these results, we found that gliotoxin gives morphologic changes of lung epithelial cells and increases the adhesion of conidia to them. This may open a new approach to unravel the infection mechanism.
A case of gastric carcinoma associated with dermatomyositis is reported. Total gastrectomy was performed and subsequently excision of hepatic metastasis. Although the cause-effect relationship between dermatomyositis and internal malignancy remains controversial, the obvious dependence of the clinical course of dermatomyositis on that of the gastric carcinoma in this case suggests a causal involvement.
Seventy-six cases of primary cancer of the breast were studied by clinicopathological examination and immunohistological examination using monoclonal antibodies. They were composed of 40 cases positive for estrogen receptor (ER) and 36 cases negative for ER, the ER-positive rate being 52.6%. ER was detected more frequently in the postmenopausal group than in the premenopausal group, though the ER-positive rate was not significantly different between the two groups. The disease was advanced with a large tumor (greater than t3) and high-grade lymph node metastasis in ER-negative cases compared with ER-positive cases. The carbohydrate antigens specific to SPan-1, CA 19-9 and SLEX were found in 34.2%, 39.5% and 68.4% of the cases studied, respectively. These antigens were detected more often, if not significantly, in cases with a large mass and high-grade metastasis than in those with a small mass and without metastasis or with low-grade metastasis. The SPan-1-positive rate was significantly higher in ER-negative cases graded t1 or t2 than in ER-positive cases falling under the same category of tumor size. Significant differences were also noticed between the ER-negative and ER-positive groups with respect to CA 19-9-positive rate (t2 category) and SLEX-positive rate (t3 category). Similar data were obtained when our cases were classified by the degree of lymph node metastasis. In consequence, the present observations suggested that the expression of carbohydrate antigens in primary breast cancer and disease progress might be correlated with ER status.
The purpose of this paper is to construct an impression evaluation model for button sounds generated when users press the buttons on car audio systems using a neural network. The dynamic characteristics of 11 kinds of button sounds obtained by their wavelet transform frequencies. Their sound pressure values are fed into the neural network model inputs. The model then corresponds with three factor scores, "esthetic", "force" and "metallic", and an evaluation value of "offensive - pleasant" as the outputs. By analyzing the internal functions of the neural network model after learning, we confirmed the model achieved a mechanism that produced four impression evaluation values from the sound characteristics. Thus demonstrating the model could attain automation of button sound design.
Molecular genetic analyses are effective in revealing the origin, kinship, and genetic diversity of zoo animals. In this study, we carried out the genetic characterization of captive founder individuals of the South American fur seal (Arctocephalus australis) in Japanese zoos and aquariums based on analyses of mitochondrial sequences and nuclear microsatellite loci. In mitochondrial DNA analysis, the haplotype diversity and nucleotide diversity of the overall population were 0.8949 and 0.0119, respectively. Microsatellite DNA analysis revealed that the observed heterozygosity within the overall population was 0.722. In addition, we did not detect genetic bottlenecks. The results from two kinds of DNA analyses indicated that the genetic diversity in this captive population was equivalent to that previously reported in wild populations. The detected mitochondrial haplotypes were the same as or phylogenetically close to those previously reported in wild populations in southern Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and southern Chile but diverged from those previously reported in a wild population in Peru. Genetic clustering analyses using microsatellite genotypes revealed that no clear genetic structures in this captive population.
In recent years, a lot of attention has been directed at designing various sounds that are treated as noise, such as automobile acceleration sounds and cleaner sounds. The idea of sound being a normal part of product operation has permeated society. We focused on sound design and evaluated it with 11 kinds of button sounds for car audio main units. At present psychoacoustics metrics (loudness, sharpness, etc.) which took the frequency characteristic of the complicated human auditory system into consideration, has come to be used for evaluation of the various sounds. However, button sounds are not steady and continuous. In order to accurately represent button sounds, it is necessary to analyze time characteristics as well as frequency characteristics; this is known as time-frequency (t - f ) representation. In this study, an impression was extracted by the semantic differential (SD) method, and the relevance of that impression was investigated by the wavelet transform (WT). The t - f resolution features of WT are similar to an auditory t - f resolution feature. As a result, the button sound impressions were classified into an esthetic factor, metallic / clarified factor and powerful / massive factor on the basis of these results, and these impressions could be visualized by the WT distribution. Next, we confirmed whether or not the impression changed when a sound that generated a bad impression was processed using an adaptive control into a sound that generated a good impression.
