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The article offers information on the analysis of voice mismatches in verb phrase (VP) deletion and pseudogapping. It says that VP-deletion is still not sensitive to the identity of voice morphology among a deletion site and its antecedents but is best accounted for by an analysis centered on focus marking. Schematic representations of the VP-deletion and pseudogapping are offered.

Background: The presence of renal failure in patients with multiple myeloma (MM) has been considered an ominous prognostic factor associated with a significantly decreased life expectancy. The prognostic factors have seldom been analyzed to predict discontinuation of hemodialysis (HD) therapy in MM patients with renal failure after HD initiation. It is clinically very important to predict whether HD can be discontinued after introducing HD in such patients. Methods: All medical and HD records were reviewed in MM patients who underwent HD in the National Center for Global Health and Medicine Hospital between January 1995 and May 2009. Thirty-two patients with MM had undergone HD. The clinical features and the factors that might be associated with recovery of renal function leading to discontinuation of HD in MM patients with severe renal failure were examined. Results: The factors associated with recovery of renal function and discontinuation of HD were: low International Staging System (ISS) score (p = 0.0034); high response to chemotherapy (p = 0.036); low serum Ca (p = 0.006); low Cr (p = 0.019), and low serum β2-microglobulin (sβ2M) (p = 0.002). On multivariate analysis, low serum Ca and sβ2M were significantly associated with HD discontinuation. Moreover, discontinuing HD was the significant factor associated with improved overall survival in MM patients who required HD at least once. Conclusion: sβ2M and Ca were the laboratory parameters that were significant, independent prognostic factors for predicting the probability of recovery from severe renal failure and discontinuation of HD in MM patients who needed HD at least once. Copyright © 2010 S. Karger AG, Basel [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the manufacture of metal interconnects for semiconductor devices, trenches and vias in dielectric layers on the Si wafer are filled by copper electrodeposition. The acceleration of deposition at the bottom of trenches and vias is a key to the bottom-up filling of these high aspect ratio cavities. We report the detection of this acceleration effect by rotating ring disk electrode experiments. The Cu (I)-complex, which forms on the disk electrode, was captured as a current (Iring) on the ring electrode. Iring increased in periodic reverse pulse current mode, as compared to direct or pulse current. The periodic reverse pulse current produced the most bottom-up filling based on microscopic observations of via cross sections. Iring increased with the additions of Cl−, which also produced greater bottom-up filling. Iring increased with additions of SPS, which were also found to improve bottom-up filling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. It is difficult to diagnose tuberculosis (TB) in dialysis patients because of the high rate of extrapulmonary TB in these patients compared with the general population. Recently, a new diagnostic test called QuantiFERON (QFT) has been developed and shown promise as a diagnostic tool for active TB diseases and latent TB infection. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The case concerns a 55-year-old Japanese man with multiple pancreatic tumors that were incidentally detected by ultrasonography (US) in a routine medical examination. He consulted a doctor since either neuroendocrine tumors or metastases of small-cell lung carcinoma were suspected, because he had an abnormal shadow in the lung. Then he was transferred to our hospital. Imaging studies showed multiple pancreatic tumors of 3.0-cm diameter in the head, 1.0 cm in the body and 1.5 cm in the tail, respectively. Specimen by endoscopic ultrasonography fine-needle aspiration cytology (EUS–FNAC) revealed numerous B-cell lymphocytes, but a definite diagnosis of malignant lymphoma could not be obtained. Therefore, a segmental pancreatic body resection was performed to clarify the features of the tumor for appropriate therapy. Consequently, the final diagnosis was obtained as a low-grade B-cell lymphoma having a lymphoepithelial lesion, which indicated mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) lymphoma. Radiation therapy with 31 Gy successfully resulted in complete remission. We report here for the first time on primary pancreatic low-grade MALT lymphoma presenting with multiple pancreatic masses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hard drives featuring sliders with active flying-height (FH) control using thermal expansion of a heating element have been recently introduced in products. This approach allows to actively compensate for static FH variations and achieves sub-3-nm clearance during read/write operation. This paper describes a nonlinear numerical model of a perpendicular magnetic recording head for accurate simulation of pole-tip protrusions and their effect on FH change under various conditions, such as at an elevated drive temperature, with the heater activated or during write operation. The model integrates an electrical-therinomechanical finite-element model of slider and a full air-bearing solver, and includes lapped pole-tip recession and slider/disk deformation due to air-bearing pressure. We are able to predict key parameters that are not easily measurable (e.g., minimum/reader/writer FH, different protrusion profiles for ambient temperature, heater actuation, and during writing). We also present novel experimental methods for measuring protrusion and clearance delta profiles with angstrom-level resolution. The modeling results are compared to experimental data under various test conditions showing excellent agreement. From this method, we are able to quickly evaluate and optimize different heater, head, and ABS designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have found that an HIV-1 accessory gene product Vpr enhanced HIV-1 reproduction in U1 cells chiefly by the induction of TNF, a proinflammatory cytokine, which was also known to be an activator of HIV-1 reproduction. We have generated the functional HIV-1 accessory gene product Vpr in bacterial cells. Vpr was generated in an Escherichia coli system (rVpr), purified with antibodies (Ab) to the 16 C-terminal amino acids of Vpr. The purified rVpr of 15 kDa was examined for its ability to upregulate HIV-1 reproduction in U1 cells, which is a reported function of the authentic Vpr. rVpr upregulated HIV-1 reproduction in U1 cells in a dose-dependent manner and induced the secretion of TNF. The upregulation of HIV-1 by rVpr was completely inhibited not only by anti-Vpr antibodies but also by anti-TNF antibody. These findings suggested that Vpr caused an HIV-1 reproduction in U1 cells through the induction of TNF. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Since the CCD can handle analog signals directly, it is used widely for delay lines, filters, imaging elements and imaging memories. This paper considers the multilevel storage memory of an SPS (serial-parallel-serial)-CCD applied to field memories of image signals. First, a charge transfer model for an SPS-CCD is created. By means of the transfer function derived from this model, it is clarified that the transfer losses of the serial register and the parallel register degrade the frequency characteristics of the amplitude and phase. It is pointed out that this degradation can be improved significantly by compensation of the transfer losses of the two serial registers and the parallel register. Since realization of a circuit for rigorous compensation of the transfer loss is extremely difficult, a simple transfer loss compensation method is also studied in which the SPS-CCD is considered as a cascade connection of two serial registers. It is found that the difference in the effect of simple and rigorous compensations is at most 0.6 percent in the case of 50 percent eye degradation. Hence, the effectiveness of the simple compensation is confirmed. Also, by using a commercially available CCD, an experiment for eight-level storage memory is carried out in which a simple transfer loss compensation is applied. It is confirmed that agreement of the calculated and measured signal error tales is excellent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A multiwindow system is one in which several rectangular regions called windows are defined on the screen of CRT or other display devices, and the user can handle each of the windows as if they were separate display devices. The features of such a system are that it has the virtual function and multiwindow image synthesis function. One of the important requirements is to reduce the overhead due to those added functions. Among the virtual functions required to realize the high-performance window system, this paper considers the high-speed synthesis of the window image. Among the window image synthesis functions, the multiwindow memory management unit (MMMU) with the following functions was developed: (1) Address translation; (2) Bit addressable memory access; (3) Region monitoring and write-inhibit (clipping) control; (4) Rectangular region transfer, These functions can handle the regions storing the display images for each window as independent two-dimensional bit map memory. The processing format is fixed independently of the drawn object, and a high-speed operation can be expected by a hardware implementation. A multiwindow display device based on the proposed unit was constructed experimentally and the performance was evaluated. The improvement of the speed is by a factor of 2.5 in drawing a straight line and by a factor of 13 to 36 in drawing a text, compared with the display device without the proposed unit. Thus, the usefulness of the proposed method for speed Improvement is demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A hardware-controlled multiwindow display is one multiwindow display scheme which makes high-speed display possible. However, the locations of the windows for an overlapping display are restricted due to limits on the access speed of the window buffer which is storing the window Image. In order to deal with this problem, this paper considers a system with a buffer for speed adjustment. A display device was constructed based on the proposed concept, and its performance was evaluated. As a result, for the cases of one and nine windows, 21 times and 147 times faster manipulation rates, respectively, were realized in manipulations such as window shifting, as compared with a software-controlled window display. In order to examine the effect of window manipulation on drawing performance, the drawing tine was measures for cases with window manipulation and without it. As a result, it was shown that there is no significant difference in the processing time, and it was verified that the drawing performance is not degraded by window manipulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

L4948 --> Objectives: Carbon dioxide(CO2) is one of the factors that affect the constriction and dilatation of smooth muscle cells. Cyclooxigenase(COX) catalyzes have important roles in inducing inflammatory responses and prostanoids, generated from arachidonic acid by COX‐1 and COX‐2, are involved in modulating of vascular tone. This study aimed to clarify the role of CO2 in regulating COX expression in vascular smooth muscle cells and elucidate its effects for vascular endothelial function. Methods: A7r5 rat smooth muscle cells were maintained in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium, supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum, at 37ºC in a 5% CO2 incubator. The cells were exposed to 10% and 20% CO2 for 24 h. The expression of COX‐1 and COX‐2 was subsequently evaluated by real time PCR, and cell viability was analyzed following exposure to 10% and 20% CO2. Results: The expression levels of COX‐2 were significantly reduced by concentration dependence in the vascular smooth muscle cells following exposure to 10% and 20% CO2, while no significant difference was found in those of COX‐1 before and after exposure. Cell viability also decreased on the depending on the concentration of CO2. Conclusions: These results suggested that exposure to CO2 may suppress the vasodilatation via the downregulation of COX‐2 expression in vascular smooth muscle cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP) has widespread physiological/pathophysiological actions and there is increased interest for its use therapeutically, especially in the CNS (neuroprotection). Unfortunately, no selective PACAP-analogs exist for PACAP-preferring PAC1-receptors, primarily because of its high sequence identity to VIP and particularly, because of the inability of structure–function studies to separate the pharmacophore of PAC1-R from VPAC1-R, which has high affinity for PACAP and VIP. The present study attempted to develop PAC1-R-selective agonists primarily by making conformationally restricted PACAP-analogs in positions important for receptor-selectivity/affinity. Forty-six PACAP-related-analogs were synthesized with substitutions in positions 1–4, 14–17, 20–22, 28, 34, 38 and receptor-selectivity determined in PAC1-R,VPAC1-R,VPAC2-R-transfected or native cells from binding or cAMP-generation experiments. Fifteen PACAP-analogs had 6–78-fold higher affinities for PAC1-R than VPAC1-R and 13 were agonists. Although binding-affinities correlated significantly with agonist potency, the degree of receptor-spareness varied markedly for the different PACAP-analogs, resulting in selective potencies for activating the PAC1 receptor over the VPAC1 receptor from 0- to 103-fold. In addition, a number of PACAP-analogs were identified that had high selectivity for PAC1-R over VPAC2-R as well as PACAP-analogs that could prove more useful therapeutically because of substitutions known to extend their half-lives (substitutions at potential sites of proteolysis and attachment of long-chain fatty acids). This study provides for the first time a separation of the pharmacophores for PAC1-R and VPAC1-R, resulting in PACAP-related analogs that are PAC1-R-preferring. Some of these analogs, or their modifications, could prove useful as therapeutic agents for various diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Crosstalk reactions greatly influence capacity fading of lithium-ion batteries. • A four-electrode cell with Al 2 O 3 electrodes was built to study crosstalk reactions. • Constant-current electrolysis and cyclic voltammetry were used in this regard. • A kinetic model was setup to quantitatively elucidate the changes in electricity. • The model provided adequate fits to the crosstalk-reaction-induced electricity. Crosstalk reactions in Li-ion batteries play an important role in the capacity fading caused by imbalance of the states-of-charge between positive and negative electrodes. A quantitative understanding of these reactions can enable estimation of battery life. Because crosstalk reactions are complex phenomena in which chemical species produced by a side reaction at one electrode react at the other electrode, a generator–collector-type electrochemical cell is required to investigate these reactions. Therefore, a new four-electrode cell was constructed in this study, in which oxidative decomposition of an electrolyte was achieved by constant-current electrolysis at one Al 2 O 3 electrode, and the reduction of the generated oxidants was detected by cyclic voltammetry (CV) at the other Al 2 O 3 electrode. CV indicated that the cathodic current due to the crosstalk reaction increased during electrolysis, and that two cathodic peaks appeared at 1.3 and 1.8 V. The cathodic current eventually stabilized and decreased to zero after electrolysis. A kinetic equation that expressed the crosstalk-reaction-induced cathodic current provided a decent fit to the observed current via kinetic parameters. This kinetic equation is remarkably useful for quantitatively understanding the electrochemical nature of crosstalk reactions and can help predict the side-reaction currents in actual batteries through the derived kinetic parameters, which can determine battery life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Patients with mild-to-moderate plaque psoriasis often experience reduced quality of life and increased disease burden due to itch or involvement of psoriasis in special areas such as the scalp and nails. Systemic therapy may be used concurrently with topical therapy in patients with active disease not controlled by topical therapy alone. The objective of PROMINENT was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of apremilast in combination with topical therapy in patients with mild-to-moderate psoriasis in Japan. Methods: PROMINENT, a phase 3b, open-label, single-arm study in Japan, enrolled adults ≥ 20 years of age with plaque psoriasis [static Physician Global Assessment (sPGA) 2 (mild) or 3 (moderate)] not adequately controlled by topical therapy. Patients received apremilast 30 mg twice daily for 16 weeks in addition to their existing topical therapy, with the option of topical therapy reduction at the discretion of their physician while continuing apremilast treatment from weeks 16 to 32. Results: Of the 152 patients enrolled in the study, 136 completed week 32. The primary endpoint of sPGA response [score 0 (clear) or 1 (almost clear)] was achieved by 43.7% of patients at week 16, and 40.8% maintained response at week 32. Clinically meaningful improvements in skin, scalp, and nails were observed in > 40% of patients at weeks 16 and 32. Similarly, improvements in pruritus, quality of life, and treatment satisfaction were observed at week 16 and maintained at week 32. Common treatment-emergent adverse events through week 32 included gastrointestinal events, nasopharyngitis, and headache. Conclusions: Apremilast in combination with topical therapy resulted in clinically meaningful and sustained efficacy in physician- and patient-reported outcomes at weeks 16 and 32 in Japanese patients with mild-to-moderate psoriasis. Tolerability was consistent with available prior safety data for apremilast. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier, NCT03930186. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Hydrogel was prepared from crosslinking of β-cyclodextrin and carboxymethylcellulose. [•] The hydrogel showed water-swelling capacity of the 200–70mL/g-polymer. [•] Prepared hydrogels retain adsorption ability toward bisphenol A. [•] The hydrogel is expect to be a soft material useful for removal organic pollutants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The yeast Cyc8p-Tup1p protein complex is a general transcriptional corepressor of genes involved in many different physiological processes. Herein, we present the crystal structure of the Tup1p N-terminal domain (residues 1-92), essential for Tup1p self-assembly and interaction with Cyc8p. This domain tetramerizes to form a novel antiparallel four-helix bundle. Coiled coil interactions near the helical ends hold each dimer together, whereas interdimeric association involves only two sets of two residues located toward the chain centers. A mutagenesis study confirmed that the nonpolar residues responsible for the association of the protomers as dimers are also required for transcriptional repression. An additional structural study demonstrated that the domain containing an Leu62→Arg mutation that had been shown not to bind Cyc8p exhibits an altered structure, distinct from the wild type. This altered structure explains why the mutant cannot bind Cyc8p. The data presented herein highlight the importance of the architecture of the Tup1p N-terminal domain for self-association. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Biologic agents are used in patients with severe psoriasis who have not adequately responded to existing conventional systemic therapies. However, only a limited number of medical institutions in Japan are approved to use them, and their relatively high cost represents a substantial burden to patients. Apremilast is an oral phosphodiesterase-4 inhibitor approved in Japan for the treatment of psoriasis vulgaris in adult patients with an inadequate response to topical therapies and psoriatic arthritis in adult patients with active disease. To date, a large-scale real-world study of treatment patterns and costs associated with apremilast in Japan has not been conducted. The objective of this study was to assess whether apremilast can prolong time to first biologic therapy use and decrease total medical cost. Methods: Using the Medical Data Vision hospital-based claims database, 506 psoriasis patients were propensity score matched and analyzed (apremilast: n = 253; non-apremilast: n = 253). Results: The incidence rate of first biologic therapy use per 1000 patient-years was significantly lower in the apremilast group than in the non-apremilast group (30.3 vs. 107.6; P < 0.001), and the total medical costs per month were significantly lower in the apremilast group than in the non-apremilast group (76,594 yen/month vs. 102,411 yen/month, P < 0.001). In a sensitivity analysis of a propensity-score-matched subset of eligible patients prescribed biologics during the follow-up period (apremilast: n = 14; non-apremilast: n = 14), the incidence of first biologic therapy use was 2,797.6 per 1000 patient-years (95% CI: 1,656.9, 4,723.6) in the non-apremilast group and 856.1 per 1000 patient-years (95% CI: 507.0, 1,445.5) in the apremilast group. Conclusion: These results suggest that apremilast prolongs the time to first biologic therapy use in patients with psoriasis, thereby reducing the total medical cost and decreasing the economic burden on patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: An amorphous carbon (a-C) film was coated on the bipolar plate of a fuel cell. This bipolar plate has a low contact resistance between its surface and the membrane electrode assay (MEA) which causes the inner resistance in the fuel cell to be decreased. Therefore, the output power of the fuel cell was increased from 1.3 W to 1.8 W as a result of the a-C film coating on the bipolar plates. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]