A method for quantitative determination of four harmful metals, Cd, Cu, Mn, and Pb in water by means of coprecipitation with zirconium hydroxide, Zr (OH)4, followed by flame atomic absorption spectrometry has been developed. Because no extraction process of the metal chelates with organic solvents is required, and because Zr shows low toxicity to mammals, this procedure is free from hazard to the health of laboratory workers engaging in metal analysis. The results of recovery tests indicated that the recoveries of the metals by the above procedure are satisfactory (more than 98%).
KIKUCHI, H., SAGAMI, I., FUJII, H., OHMACHI, T. and WATANABE, M. Complementary DNA Sequence of 3-Methylcholanthrene-Inducible P-450 from the Rat Lung. Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 1990, 160 (4), 323-332-Cytochrome P-450MC was induced in pulmonary microsomes of 3-methylcholanthrene-treated rats and also at low level in that of isosafrole-treated rats. Cytochrome P-450d was not detected in the lungs of 3-methylcholanthrene- or isosafrole-treated rats by the method of Western blot analysis with a polyclonal antibody raised against cytochrome P-450c which is equally effective against P-450d, nor by the method of Northern hybridization probed with pcP450mc3 (P-450d probe). Complementary DNA of P-450MC was isolated from rat pulmonary cDNA library and the nucleotide sequence of pulmonary cDNA was compared with that of hepatic P-450c cDNA reported by Yabusaki et al. There was no gross change in nucleotide sequences of cDNA between pulmonary P-450MC and hepatic P-450c.
In this paper, prosody-based attitude recognition and its application to a spoken dialog system are proposed. Paralinguistic information plays a important role in the human communication. We aimed to recognize the user’s attitude by prosody, and apply it to a spoken dialog system as para-linguistic information. In order to find important features to recognize the attitude from automatically extracted features, we applied some feature selection methods. Experimental results show the stepwise method, a combination of the forward selection method and the backward selection method, achieved the best recognition rate. Finally, the dialog system using the recognition results as para-linguistic information is shown.
2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) is a common environmental pollutant causing public concern. Its toxic effects include disruption of the immune, endocrine, and reproductive systems, impairment of fetal development, carcinogenicity, and lethality in rodents. Here, we report that TCDD induces apoptosis in two cultured human leukemic lymphoblastic T cell lines. This cell death was found not to be dependent on an aryl hydrocarbon receptor and to be inhibited by the inhibitor of tyrosine kinases and caspases. Apoptosis-linked c-Jun N-terminal kinase is rapidly activated in these cells by the treatment with TCDD. A dominant-negative mutant of c-Jun N-terminal kinase prevented cell death in the treatment with TCDD. Furthermore, TCDD decreases the Bcl-2 protein level in these cell lines. These findings will help in the understanding of the molecular mechanism underlying TCDD-mediated immunotoxicity.
