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Background: Japan had a tuberculosis (TB) notification rate of 13.9 per 100 000 population in 2016. Objectives: To characterise TB-related enquiries received by the Research Institute of Tuberculosis, Tokyo, Japan, between January 2014 and December 2016. Design: A descriptive study of the time, place and other attributes of the enquiries. Results: A total of 1864 enquiries were listed for analysis. On average, 51.8 enquiries (range 30-77) were received per month. The enquiry rates were highest for Yamanashi (5.87/100 000) and Kochi (5.77) Prefectures, and lowest in Miyazaki (0.45) and Saga (0.48) Prefectures. Enquirers belonged mostly to local governments (n = 1212, 65%) and health care facilities (n = 386, 21%), and included medical doctors (n = 412, 22%), nurses (n = 926, 50%) and the general public (n = 150, 8.0%). Most enquiries concerned TB diagnosis and treatment (n = 475, 25%), including diagnosis in general (n = 38, 2.0%), laboratory diagnosis (n = 83, 4.5%), anti-tuberculosis treatment in general (n = 62, 3.3%) and the management of comorbidities or adverse events (n = 60, 3.2%), followed by contact investigations (n = 371, 20%). Conclusions: As most enquiries concerned the diagnosis and treatment of TB, the Ministry of Health of Japan should maintain a number of specialised TB institutions with TB clinicians to provide technical assistance.

In this paper, the design of symmetric bandpass filters with cross-coupled trisections is discussed. The analysis and synthesis is done by well-known matrix manipulation of the lumped element equivalent circuit. The susceptance of the admittance matrix is split up into two separate matrices for capacitive and inductive contributions, which gives more insight into the manipulation of the matrix. Emphasis is put on design of a three-pole bandpass filter with two transmission zeros at the lower side of the passband. Novel solutions for the symmetric topology are derived, having either resonant main coupling or resonant cross-coupling. The potential of the novel topology is demonstrated by a compact realization of a wireless local area network filter at 2450 MHz in low-temperature co-fired ceramic technology. Good agreement between measured and computed results is obtained.

The aims of this phase I/II study of docetaxel and S-1 were to determine the dose-limiting toxicity (DLT), maximum-tolerated dose (MTD), and recommended dose (RD) in the phase I part and to explore the tumour response, survival and safety in the phase II part. Patients with histologically- or cytologically confirmed unresectable or recurrent gastric cancer were eligible. Treatment consisted of intravenous docetaxel on day 1 (starting dose 50 mg m(-2)) and oral S-1 at a fixed dose of 40 mg m(-2) twice daily on days 1-14, every 4 weeks up to six cycles. Nine patients took part in the phase I portion of the study. The MTD of docetaxel was determined to be 50 mg m(-2), with the DLTs of grade 3 infection associated with grade 3 neutropenia and grade 4 neutropenia during S-1 administration. The RD of docetaxel was 40 mg m(-2) in combination with S-1 40 mg m(-2) b.i.d. The efficacy and safety of this regimen was therefore assessed in 46 patients with at least one measurable lesion. The overall response rate and estimated median overall survival were 46% (95% CI, 31-61%) and 14.0 months (8.3-17.3 months), respectively. The most common grade 3/4 toxicity was neutropenia (67% of patients), which was predictable and manageable. This regimen showed promising activity with moderate toxicities in advanced gastric cancer.

A novel glycoprotein, dysadherin, has an anti-cell - cell adhesion function through downregulating E-cadherin. In this study, we investigated the expressions of dysadherin and E-cadherin in 82 patients with stage II and III colorectal carcinomas to determine the correlation between the two molecules and the clinicopathologic features of each tumour. Dysadherin was not expressed in normal colorectal epithelium. Fifty-one per cent of tumours showed dysadherin immunopositivity in over 50% of cancer cells. Thirty-eight per cent of tumours showed reduced E-cadherin immunopositivity. The increased expression of dysadherin was significantly associated with lung metastasis (P=0.003). The increased expression of dysadherin had a significant impact on patient survival (P=0.0099 and 0.0036, log-rank test for overall and recurrence-free survival rate, respectively). Furthermore, tumour with increased expression of dysadherin and reduced expression of E-cadherin showed the worst prognosis (P=0.0043 and 0.0028, log-rank test for overall and recurrence-free survival rate, respectively). These results suggest that increased dysadherin expression is a significant indicator of poor prognosis for patients with advanced colorectal carcinoma.

Purpose. To evaluate the serial changes in clinical results and the intradural and extradural spaces on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) after bilateral fenestration in 48 patients with lumbar spinal canal stenosis (LSCS). Methods. A prospective interventional study was performed to study the clinical results, magnetic resonance imaging scans among patients who were followed up for more than 3 years. Results. All patients showed improvement in clinical symptoms after operation, but clinical results deteriorated in 9 (19%) patients. Postoperative MRI scans showed that poor dural tube expansion, grouping of the cauda equina, and decrease in the cross-sectional area of the dural tube were factors associated with poor outcomes. The cross-sectional area of the dural tube and images of the cauda equina observed by MRI, before and after fenestration and during follow-up, reflected changes in clinical symptoms involving decompressed segments. Conclusion. Serial changes in the cross-sectional area of the dural tube and images of the cauda equina observed preoperatively, postoperatively, and on follow-up by MRI may be useful when evaluating patients' condition before and after operation. It is also useful for predicting outcomes.

In this paper, we propose a modified version of the autocorrelation pitch extraction method well known to be robust against noise. Utilizing that the average magnitude difference function (AMDF) has similar characteristics with the autocorrelation function, the autocorrelation function is weighted by the reciprocal of the AMDF. By simulation experiments, it is shown that the proposed pitch extraction method is useful in noisy environments.

A quantum-dot-like positron state is demonstrated in the ``defect-free'' particles using coincidence Doppler broadening of positron annihilation radiation. The wave functions of all positrons are entirely confined spatially in all three directions within the embedded nanosize and subnanosize Cu particles in a dilute Fe-Cu alloy. With use of this probe, the ultrafine particles are revealed to have nearly the same electron momentum distribution as bulk Cu, to be free from Fe atoms and defects, three dimensional, and to have no open-volume defects at the interfaces which can trap the positron. These successes indicate that this positron state promises to be a powerful tool for the studies of mesoscopic systems in metals and semiconductors.

A high-power 1.3-mu m electroabsorption modulator integrated laser diode was developed for 100 - Gb/s Ethernet applications. The average output power exceeding 6.5 dBm and clear eye opening with dynamic extinction ratio over 7.6 dB were realized at 35 degC.

皮膚筋炎は癌腫の高危険群とされ, 種々の癌腫との合併が報告されているが, 癌手術後の皮膚筋炎の病勢は軽快するとの報告としないとする報告がある.今回著者らは, 皮膚筋炎に合併した大腸癌肝転移症例で, 大腸手術, 肝手術と段階をおって皮膚筋炎の症状が軽快した1例を経験した.その後再発し, 2年間の経過を観察したが, 癌の病勢とともに皮膚筋炎症状も推移する傾向があった.1990年以降の皮膚筋炎に合併した大腸癌手術症例の報告例は自験例を含め検索し得た限りでは17例で, 1例を除き, すべての症例でなんらかの術後皮膚筋炎症状の軽快が見られている.

To perform safer hepatic resection for hepatobiliary-pancreatic cancer, the possibility of preoperative prediction of postoperative reserve hepatic function was assessed using hepatobiliary scintigraphy. After intravenous administration of Tc-99m-pyridoxyl-5-methyltryptophan in 23 patients, the time-activity curves of region of interest over the heart and liver were generated, and peak and one-fourth clearance times were calculated, which were compared with biochemical data. The parameters were significantly related to protein syntheses (prothrombine time and hepaplastin test) and indocyanine-green dye excretion, but not to hepatobiliary enzymes. So we hypothesized 'when the curve left by subtracting the resected area from the whole liver was larger than one-third of the total liver curve, the surgery would be safe', which we applied to another eight patients, clarifying the hypothesis. Hepatobiliary scintigraphy can be a promising procedure in the assessment of partial liver function, and the study will contribute to a safer liver surgery.

We have been developing wireless communication technologies for industrial applications. In industrial plants, there are many radio obstacles such as metal pipes and walls. Even in the severe environment, wireless communication has to be reliable and time has to be scheduled to maintain plant stability. For easy-to-use management, features of ad-hoc construction and low power management are also required. Our research is to develop architecture and technologies that satisfy these features. In this demonstration, we will explain core technologies and industrial applications that we developed.

This paper describes prototyping of a form processingsystem employing dot texture for printing input frames ofthe form. The dot texture is the texture composed of smalldots. It eases the separation of handwritings from theinput frames even under monochrome printing/readingenvironments and makes the system to process thehandwritings according to the information embedded inthe dot texture of the frames. The embedded informationin the form dictates how to process the form so that wecall the form "active form" being opposite to the passiveform processed by the program stored in a documentreader. This method can also be used to embed otherinformation such as attribute of handwriting and so on.This paper presents the design, prototyping and somepreliminary evaluation.

A 1.6Gb/s 16-level superposed APSK MODEM using newly developed baseband signal processing coherent demodulator is described. The MODEM has much improved performance characteristics while having much simplified configuration comparing with the already reported one. Jitter power of the recovered carrier is less than -36dB and required C1/N for BER of 10/sup -9/ is better than 25.4dB through the MODEM loop back test (BT = 1.35).

Bone conduction is useful as a tool to accomplish speech enhancement in noisy environments. In this paper, we design a linear phase impulse response filter to reconstruct the quality of the bone-conducted speech signal obtained from a speaker. The bone-conducted speech observation as well as the normal speech information is effectively utilized to design the filter. From experimental results, the properties of the reconstruction filter are investigated.

A system of Kyushu Electric Power Company Inc. or KEPCO (about 19 GW) belongs to the Western Japan system (110GW) and has 500-kV and 220-kV transmission lines in a loop configuration. Considering a risk of blackout, KEPCO has been conducting studies on system restoration. A power system, when it recovers from a blackout, is very small in scale, incomparable to that of a normally operational system. Hence, in a system undergoing a restoration process, overvoltages of a magnitude not conceivable in normal power systems may occur causing damages to power system equipment. This work discusses a mechanism of an overvoltage phenomenon during a power system restoration, in which after the transformer is first energized, a repetition of saturated and unsaturated states of transformer core flux causes a transformer terminal voltage to increase excessively. The work also describes countermeasures for this phenomenon.

A system of Kyushu Electric Power Company Inc. or KEPCO (about 19 GW) belongs to the western Japan system (110 GW) and has a 500-kV and 220-kV transmission line in a loop configuration. Japan's power system has high reliability and experienced no blackout for the past several decades. However, there is a possibility, though very slight, of a blackout in the event of a big earthquake or unforeseen accident. Considering the risk of blackout, KEPCO has been conducting studies on system restoration. This paper discusses a mechanism of an overvoltage phenomenon during a restoration period in which, about 0.2 seconds or more after a transformer is energized, a voltage becomes maximum in excess of 200% of the rated voltage. The paper also discusses countermeasures against this phenomenon.

A differential ED-CMOS/SOI circuit combines both zero V/sub T/ CMOS/SOI and ED-MOS/SOI circuits and operates at supply voltages as low as 0.3V. An experimental frequency divider, fabricated in a 0.25/spl mu/m fully-depleted SOI process, achieves a maximum operating frequency of 3.6GHz at 0.3V and 5.4GHz at 0.5V while reducing power dissipation to less than 1 mW.

In this paper, we propose a pitch synchronous addition method for LPC analysis by making use of the periodicity of speech. It is shown that the solution overcomes the difficulty involved with the technique of noise reduction compatible with the stability of the LPC filter obtained by subtracting the noise part from the autocorrelation function of speech. The relation between the pitch period of speech and the improvement in signal-to-noise ratio accomplished by the method is investigated. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method especially for high-pitched speech.

The knees of 72 patients with unilateral anterior-cruciate-ligament (ACL) injury were analyzed before ACL reconstruction as well as by follow-up arthroscopy on the day of staple removal. At ACL reconstruction 31 lateral menisci and 40 medial menisci were found to be normal. 28 lateral menisci and 24 medial menisci were treated surgically, while 13 lateral menisci and 8 medial menisci with small or incomplete meniscal tearing were not treated.At follow-up arthroscopy there were 3 new cases of lateral meniscal tearing and 3 new cases of medial meniscal tearing in the groups diagnosed as normal prior to surgery. Two of the 13 cases with small or incomplete lateral meniscal tearing required resection, 8 healed and the other 3 demonstrated no progressive change. Four of the 8 cases with small or incomplete medial meniscal tears healed, 3 exhibited no progressive change and one required surgical treatment. There was no correlation between meniscal tearing and knee instability as indicated by a positive Lachman test or a positive pivot shift sign.The results of the present study indicate that ACL reconstruction prevents progressive changes in meniscal tears and will prevent secondary osteoarthritis, and that some small tears of the lateral meniscus require no surgical treatment.

In this paper, we propose a new method for pitch extraction in noisy environments. The point of our method is to get a clear harmonics structure by removing unnecessary frequency components. Simulation experiments suggest that the gross pitch error is lower for the proposed method than for the conventional one.

In this paper a new method for formant frequency estimation of noisy speech is proposed based on linear prediction analysis. Usually the linear prediction analysis based algorithms can extract the formant frequencies effectively for clean speech. When speech is corrupted by noise, however, their performance degrades seriously. It is well known that the autocorrelation function has the property of concentrating the energy of the white noise in the vicinity of the zero lag. Utilizing this property of the autocorrelation function, the proposed method extracts the formant frequencies from the autocorrelation function of the speech instead of the speech itself. The experimental results show that the proposed method is much more robust to noise than the conventional linear prediction based algorithms.

The current source self-commutated converter has been developed for use in motor drive systems. However it has technical problems such as L-C series resonance, the requirement of transformers for multiple converter connections and DC current unbalance in the converters. This paper presents a new control method to solve these problems for converters connected directly in parallel. The control method consists of a multiple space vector control including resonance suppression control. Results of a mini-model experiment confirming the control method is also presented.

For the purpose of tackling the problem of equalisation in a time variant environment, a novel approach is developed which uses two finite impulse response filters; one is a channel estimator and the other is an equalisation filter. The gradient algorithm with degree 1 least-square fading memory prediction is adopted for the channel estimator. Using the results produced by the channel estimator, the coefficients of the equalisation filter are indirectly updated. Computer simulation results show that the channel estimation based adaptive equaliser provides significant improvement in the case of a second order Markov communication channel model.

Various speech analysis methods are compared from the points of view of robustness against noise. Computer simulations reveal that the most robust method is the instrumental variable method involving an input estimation technique based on thresholding the amplitude of a modified prediction error sequence.

Purpose: To test the hypothesis that the simple assessment of signal intensity on T2-weighted MR images is predictive of the effect of hormonal treatment with gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) analogue. Material and Methods: The correlation between T2-weighted MR imaging of uterine leiomyomas and histologic findings was evaluated using 85 leiomyomas from 62 females who underwent myomectomy or hysterectomy. We also correlated the pretreatment MR images features obtained in 110 women with 143 leiomyomas with the effect of GnRH analogue treatment. The size (length×width×depth) of the leiomyoma was evaluated before and at 6 months after treatment by ultrasound. Results: The proportion of leiomyoma cell fascicles and that of extracellular matrix affected signal intensities of uterine leiomyomas on T2-weighted MR images. The amount of extracellular matrix was predominant in hypointense leiomyomas on T2-weighted images, while diffuse intermediate signal leiomyomas were predominantly composed of leiomyoma cell fascicles. Marked degenerative changes were noted in leiomyomas with heterogenous hyperintensity. The homogeneously intermediate signal intensity leiomyomas showed significant size reduction after treatment (size ratio; posttreatment volume/pretreatment volume 0.29±0.11). The size ratio for the hypointense tumors was 0.82±0.14, and 0.82±0.18 for the heterogeneously hyperintense tumors. There was a significant difference in the response to treatment between the homogeneously intermediate signal intensity leiomyomas and the hypointense or heterogeneously hyperintense leiomyomas (both p Conclusion: Signal intensity on T2-weighted MR images depends on the amount of leiomyoma cell fascicles and extracellular matrix. Simple assessment of the MR signal intensity is useful in predicting the effect of GnRH analogue on uterine leiomyomas.

This study examined radiographically the prevalence of arthritis mutilans hand deformities in an inception cohort of 68 rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. Hand deformities of 103 RF-positive RA patients were evaluated after 8 years, 83 patients after 15 years and 68 patients 20 years after entry. The grade of destruction in the hand joints was assessed by the Larsen method and Larsen scores of 0-50 were determined for both PIP (+IP) and MCP joints. At the end point, 3 patients had Larsen scores > or =40 for both PIP and MCP joints. These three patients had severe resorption in most of the finger joints, but did not demonstrate classical opera-glass hand. The prevalence of mutilans-like hand deformities with RA was 3/68 (4.4%) in a prospective 20-year study.

We report here a paradoxical motion in unstable spondylolytic spondylolisthesis: a more forward displacement of the L5 vertebral body on the sacrum on the standing extension view than on the standing flexion view. An axial loading through the inferior articular process of the posteriorly displaced L4 on extension appears to be the cause, while the instability in the two contiguous segments may be an important contributing factor.

Purpose Panitumumab is one of standard treatments for patients with advanced colorectal cancer. Panitumumab is administered bi-weekly, but there are a few profiles of safety and efficacy for tri-weekly treatment of panitumumab. Nowadays, oxaliplatin or irinotecan with fluoropyrimidines is widely used as tri-weekly treatment like XELOX. So a clinical trial for tri-weekly panitumumab regimen is warranted, because of to develop of tri-weekly regimen like XELOX with panitumumab. Therefore, we conduct a phase II study of tri-weekly panitumumab for patients with advenced colorectal cancer. Methods Patients who had received prior oxaliplatin, irinotecan and fluoropyrimidines treatment were eligible. Panitumumab at a dose of 9mg/kg was administered as 60-min infusion on day 1 every 3 weeks until progression or severe toxicity. Results This trial is still continued, and 5 patients were enrolled until January 2012. Age (range) is 57–74. Two patients were male. All patiens are ECOG PS 1 at a registration. All patients received over 4 cycles. None of patients was discontinued by adverse events. There was no treatment related death. Grade 3/4 fatigue, hypomagnesemia and anemia were observed in each one patient. Grade 2 skin disorder was observed in one patient. There was no severe diarrhea. One patient had partial response, and two patients had stable disease. The range of the duration of response time was 62–198 days. We will add the latest report on the meeting.

SRPX2 (Sushi repeat-containing protein, X-linked 2) has recently emerged as a multifunctional protein that is involved in seizure disorders, angiogenesis and cellular adhesion. Here, we analyzed this protein biochemically. SRPX2 protein was secreted with a highly post-translational modification. Chondroitinase ABC treatment completely decreased the molecular mass of purified SRPX2 protein to its predicted size, whereas heparitinase, keratanase and hyaluroinidase did not. Secreted SRPX2 protein was also detected using an anti-chondroitin sulfate antibody. These results indicate that SRPX2 is a novel chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan (CSPG). Furthermore, a binding assay revealed that hepatocyte growth factor dose-dependently binds to SRPX2 protein, and a ligand–glycosaminoglycans interaction was speculated to be likely in proteoglycans. Regarding its molecular architecture, SRPX2 has sushi repeat modules similar to four other CSPGs/lecticans; however, the molecular architecture of SRPX2 seems to be quite different from that of the lecticans. Taken together, we found that SRPX2 is a novel CSPG that is overexpressed in gastrointestinal cancer cells. Our findings provide key glycobiological insight into SRPX2 in cancer cells and demonstrate that SRPX2 is a new member of the cancer-related proteoglycan family.

Among 231 patients with cervical injuries treated over 12 years, 15 had cervical spinal cord injury associated with ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament. All of them were male and most had injuries due to a relatively weak external force. Four of them underwent surgery. There was little difference in improvement of paralysis between the conservatively and the surgically treated group.

Continually, we determined vitamin contents of the breads for school lunch of 28 schools in Kita-ku, Tokyo. The results are shown in the table.

Long-term patency of infrarenal vena caval Teflon replacement prostheses was maintained in four of nine dogs by creating femoral arteriovenous fistulas and placing supporting metallic rings around the prostheses. The neointima of the long-term successful cases was studied by light and electron microscopy. The caval wall adjacent to the graft was used as a control for morphologic comparison. Despite the well-formed appearance of the neointima by gross and light microscopic examination, there was electron microscopic evidence of minimal progressive alterations in the neointima. Only minor ultrastructural differences between the endothelium of the graft and that of the control were noted.

The effects of magnetic properties and thickness of single-layer Co-Cr film media on perpendicular recording with a ring head are investigated. The effects of the reproducing head gap length and the reproducing head-to-medium spacing on reproduction are also discussed. Experiments are performed using ring heads for recording and reproducing and using single layer Co-Cr film media whose effective perpendicular anisotropy field Hk,eff from the in-plane hysteresis curve is greater than 5 kOe. The following results are obtained: (I) The reproduced voltage Ep at long wavelength is nearly proportional to the thickness δ of the medium and to the coercive force H_{c}(\perp) in the normal direction of the film. (2) E p is independent of the saturation magnetization M s . (3) The -6dB wavelength λ 50 is independent of δ. (4) λ 50 gradually increases as H_{c}(\perp) or M s increases. These results are well explained by a model of perpendicularly-recorded magnetization which assumes zero transition width and self-demagnetization in the medium. Calculations based on our model predict that the wavelength response of the reproduced voltage strongly depends on the reproducing head gap length and the reproducing head-to-medium spacing rather than on H_{c}(\perp) , M s and δ. An excellent high recording density (λ 50 of 0.45 μm or 113 kBPI) can be obtained by a medium and a head-to-medium interface suitable for high-density recording.

A description is given of the architecture of the token-ring LAN controller (TRC) compatible with IEEE 802.5 media access control (MAC) protocol, which integrates a frame transmit/receive hardware, a high-speed protocol processor, a three-channel DMA controller (DMAC) and large-capacity dual-port RAMs. The performance analysis of the frame transmit/receive shows that the TRC is suitable not only for small computers, but also for high-performance applications

A lightweight, low-power-consuming, differentially-coherent four-phase-shift-keyed (DQPSK) on-board waveform regenerator (OBWR) was developed for communications satellites in the 6 GHz up-link frequency band to process 120 Mb/s time-division multiple access (TDMA) signals. The most critical element in the design of the 6 GHz DQPSK-OBWR is the one-bit (16.67 nsec) delay line which was fabricated in a lightweight MIC configuration using barium-tetratitanate substrates to provide an RF-phase stability of less than ±l.5° over operating temperature variations of at least ±15°C. Using a ±35 MHz bandpass filter (see section 4) and for OBWR temperatures ranging from 10°C to 40°C, all the measured bit-error-rate performance characteristics are within 0.7 dB from theory.