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In an aging society in the world, dementia that leads to pain in patients and their families has become a common disease in our lives. Among dementia, Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most commonly shown disease. Various causes of the disease have been proposed and amyloid hypothesis insists that the toxic amyloid‐β (Aβ) species could be the major risk factor of the onset and progression of AD. In this perspective, clearance of Aβ species from the brain by regulating the activity of amyloid degrading enzymes (ADE), including neprilysin and matrix metalloproteinases, could be a potent treatment for AD. Therefore, the structures and functions of these enzymes along with biological molecules in the brain would be important to understand the pathogenesis of AD and develop an effective medication for the disease. In this review, multiple ADE with biological molecules which could affect the activities and/or expression of the enzymes are summarized. The amyloid degrading enzymes (ADE) could control the levels of amyloidogenic proteins in brain consequently affect the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Therefore, understanding the expression and activity of ADE along with other biological molecules in the brain is essential to develop therapeutic agents to treat AD.

LOIS JOVANOVIC [1] ROBERT H. KNOPP [2] ZANE BROWN [3] MARY R. CONLEY [4] EUNSIK PARK [4] JAMES L. MILLS [4] BOYD E. METZGER [5] JEROME H. AARONS [6] LEWIS [...]

A "2-step Rapid Thermal Annealing (RTA)" treatment in NH3 and Ar gas is capable of producing a high density (6-8x109/cm3) of precipitates in a remarkably uniform profile in the 300mm silicon wafers, independently of thermal cycle, oxygen content and pre-thermal history. The profile sharply transitions from a shallow denuded zone to the fixed and uniform density in the bulk. Such a feature would guarantee a sufficient amount of gettering sinks to be retained in the extremely thinned wafers. The shape of the depth profile evolves in proportion to the thermal budget, following well the model of VO2 nucleation and growth reported previously.

Abstract: We study the best linear combination of markers in terms of the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, since no single marker is perfect for classification purposes. The sequential fixed-width confidence interval estimate method is applied. We show that the proposed procedure is efficient in terms of the total sample size, with an optimal ratio of cases to controls, and is asymptotically consistent. The performance of our method is illustrated by synthesized data and a real example. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Often in medical studies, study subjects become a natural block of observations repeated over a time period. Some subjects miss observations, thus becoming incomplete blocks of observations. We are interested in testing an ordered alternative (or time trend), and propose a non-parametric method to detect a trend in incomplete blocks. Our approach is to estimate the trend by the linear regression method within each block and apply the one-sample Wilcoxon test to the estimated linear trends. The one-sample Wilcoxon test will be sensitive to the trend if it exists. The proposed test statistic is asymptotically normal and consistent. We can also estimate the overall magnitude of the linear trend and its confidence interval by a proper non-parametric method. By Monte Carlo studies, we compare the performance of the proposed test against extended Page and Jonckheere tests. Published in 2000 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.