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遠藤周作は1950年から1953年までフランスに留学しました。『フランスの大学生』は1953年に出版されましたが、この本はフランスに留学した経験に基づいて書かれています。遠藤は特に、フランス人が日本人に対して持つ固定観念にいらだちました。こうした固定観念は日本文学だけでなく、日本映画に対しても現れました。この作品は筆者の留学体験を基に、異国の文化に対応できないまま、そこで暮らさなければならないことの問題を深く考察しています。

Diagnostic outcome for adequately screenedâ individuals with a definitive abnormal result*. (DOCX 16Â kb)

Organisation and schedule of the national trial. (PDF 107Â kb)

Background: The NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme in England offers biennial guaiac faecal occult blood testing (gFOBt). There is a socioeconomic gradient in participation and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups have worse colorectal cancer survival than more advantaged groups. We compared the effectiveness and cost of an enhanced reminder letter with the usual reminder letter on overall uptake of gFOBt and the socioeconomic gradient in uptake. Methods: We enhanced the usual reminder by including a heading ‘A reminder to you’ and a short paragraph restating the offer of screening in simple language. We undertook a cluster-randomised trial of all 168 480 individuals who were due to receive a reminder over 20 days in 2013. Randomisation was based on the day of invitation. Blinding of individuals was not possible, but the possibility of bias was minimal owing to the lack of direct contact with participants. The enhanced reminder was sent to 78 067 individuals and 90 413 received the usual reminder. The primary outcome was the proportion of people adequately screened and its variation by quintile of Index of Multiple Deprivation. Data were analysed by logistic regression with conservative variance estimates to take account of cluster randomisation. Results: There was a small but statistically significant (P=0.001) increase in participation with the enhanced reminder (25.8% vs 25.1%). There was significant (P=0.005) heterogeneity of the effect by socioeconomic status with an 11% increase in the odds of participation in the most deprived quintile (from 13.3 to 14.1%) and no increase in the least deprived. We estimated that implementing the enhanced reminder nationally could result in up to 80 more people with high or intermediate risk colorectal adenomas and up to 30 more cancers detected each year if it were implemented nationally. The intervention incurred a small one-off cost of £78 000 to modify the reminder letter. Conclusions: The enhanced reminder increases overall uptake and reduces the socioeconomic gradient in bowel cancer screening participation at little additional cost.

G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) form the largest class of membrane proteins and are an important target for therapeutic drugs. These receptors are highly dynamic proteins sampling a range of conformational states in order to fulfil their complex signalling roles. In order to fully understand GPCR signalling mechanisms it is necessary to extract the receptor protein out of the plasma membrane. Historically this has universally required detergents which inadvertently strip away the annulus of lipid in close association with the receptor and disrupt lateral pressure exerted by the bilayer. Detergent-solubilized GPCRs are very unstable which presents a serious hurdle to characterization by biophysical methods. A range of strategies have been developed to ameliorate the detrimental effect of removing the receptor from the membrane including amphipols and reconstitution into nanodics stabilized by membrane scaffolding proteins (MSPs) but they all require exposure to detergent. Poly(styrene-co-maleic acid) (SMA) incorporates into membranes and spontaneously forms nanoscale poly(styrene-co-maleic acid) lipid particles (SMALPs), effectively acting like a 'molecular pastry cutter' to 'solubilize' GPCRs in the complete absence of detergent at any stage and with preservation of the native annular lipid throughout the process. GPCR-SMALPs have similar pharmacological properties to membrane-bound receptor, exhibit enhanced stability compared with detergent-solubilized receptors and being non-proteinaceous in nature, are fully compatible with downstream biophysical analysis of the encapsulated GPCR.

遠藤周作は1950年から1953年にかけてフランス留学した。彼の短編小説であるジュールダン病院は1956年に出版されるが、その本はパリで結核のため入院した日本人留学生の記憶について書かれたものである。主人公は日本人とヨーロッパ人の文化的・人種的相違や、同じ日本人留学生仲間との疎外感に対応できないことを悩んでいた。この作品は留学経験をもとに筆者が異文化に対応できず海外で暮らすことの問題点を深く洞察している。

Endo Shusaku's first work of fiction was published in 1954 and describes a journey by ship from the French port Marseilles to Aden on the Arabian Peninsula. The main character muses on his inability to bridge the racial and cultural gap between Japanese and Europeans.

OBJECTIVE Craniospinal irradiation damages the white matter in children treated for medulloblastoma, but the treatment-intensity effects are unclear. In a cross-sectional retrospective study, the effects of treatment with the least intensive radiation protocol versus protocols that delivered more radiation to the brain, in addition to the effects of continuous radiation dose, on white matter architecture were evaluated. METHODS Diffusion tensor imaging was used to assess fractional anisotropy, mean diffusivity, radial diffusivity, and axial diffusivity. First, regional white matter analyses and tract-based spatial statistics were conducted in 34 medulloblastoma patients and 38 healthy controls. Patients were stratified according to those treated with 1) the least intensive radiation protocol, specifically reduced-dose craniospinal irradiation plus a boost to the tumor bed only (n = 17), or 2) any other dose and boost combination that delivered more radiation to the brain, which was also termed the “all-other-treatments” group (n = 17), and comprised patients treated with standard-dose craniospinal irradiation plus a posterior fossa boost, standard-dose craniospinal irradiation plus a tumor bed boost, or reduced-dose craniospinal irradiation plus a posterior fossa boost. Second, voxel-wise dose-distribution analyses were conducted on a separate cohort of medulloblastoma patients (n = 15). RESULTS The all-other-treatments group, but not the reduced-dose craniospinal irradiation plus tumor bed group, had lower fractional anisotropy and higher radial diffusivity than controls in all brain regions (all p < 0.05). The reduced-dose craniospinal irradiation plus tumor bed boost group had higher fractional anisotropy (p = 0.05) and lower radial diffusivity (p = 0.04) in the temporal region, and higher fractional anisotropy in the frontal region (p = 0.04), than the all-other-treatments group. Linear mixed-effects modeling revealed that the dose and age at diagnosis together 1) better predicted fractional anisotropy in the temporal region than models with either alone (p < 0.005), but 2) did not better predict fractional anisotropy in comparison with dose alone in the occipital region (p > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS Together, the results show that white matter damage has a clear association with increasing radiation dose, and that treatment with reduced-dose craniospinal irradiation plus tumor bed boost appears to preserve white matter in some brain regions.

In this short story published in 1955, Endo Shusaku explored the ambivalence he felt as one of the first foreign students from Japan to study in France after the Second World War. Endo's fictional student obsesses over his inability to connect with the other students, and blames it on the fact that he, as a Japanese cannot deal with people as fellow human beings, but sees them as members of another race different from his own.

Walter Russell was a New Age philosopher and founder of the University of Science and Philosophy. He developed his ideas about the true nature of the universe and God, which he named the Russell Cosmogony. His followers continue to run the school with a home course and a selection of books and pamphlets written by Russell. Adherents of other New Age philosophies have found much in Russell's work to admire and use for their own purposes.