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In this study, we studied the effects of cortisol and cortisone on the age-related decrease in locomotion in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and on the tolerance to heat stress at 35 °C and to oxidative stress induced by the exposure to 0.1% H2O2. Changes in mRNA expression levels of C. elegans genes related to stress tolerance were also analyzed. Cortisol treatment restored nematode movement following heat stress and increased viability under oxidative stress, but also shortened worm lifespan. Cortisone, a cortisol precursor, also restored movement after heat stress. Additionally, cortisol treatment increased mRNA expression of the hsp-12.6 and sod-3 genes. Furthermore, cortisol treatment failed to restore movement of daf-16-deficient mutants after heat stress, whereas cortisone failed to restore the movement of dhs-30-deficient mutants after heat stress. In conclusion, the results suggested that cortisol promoted stress tolerance via DAF-16 but shortened the lifespan, whereas cortisone promoted stress tolerance via DHS-30., Graphical abstract Image 1, Highlights • Cortisol promoted anti-aging, heat and oxidative stress tolerance but shorten life span •Cortisone promoted anti-aging and heat stress tolerance •Heat and oxidative stress tolerance induced by cortisol depended on DAF-16 and SKN-1, respectively. •Cortisone was converted to cortisol via DHS-30

We herein report the 14-year-follow-up of a patient with tracheal agenesis (TA) after reconstruction of the airway and alimentary tract. A 2536-g female infant was diagnosed with TA of Floyd’-s type 1. Her condition was stabilized by the direct insertion of a ready-made endotracheal tube into a tracheo-esophageal fistula, after birth. At seven days old, she underwent esophageal transection, gastrostomy, and cervical esophageal division, and distal cervical esophagostomy was created as a neo-trachealized esophagus. During early infancy, a ready-made endotracheal tube had been used as an internal esophageal stent. At 7 months old, a custom-made long tracheostomy tube was substituted, which was revised according to her growth, and her respiratory condition became stable thereafter. At 7 years old, her alimentary tract was reconstructed using a gastric tube, and the post-operative course was uneventful; she eventually achieved oral intake 5 years after this surgery. She is now 14 years and 5 months old, and shows a substandard height and weight, with a slower-than-normal neurologic and physiologic development for her age. As a result, she currently attends a special-needs school. We also reviewed six other long-term survival cases to date. The present report seems to describe the longest-term outcome of a patient with TA.

Integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) and marine spatial planning (MSP) have been proposed for sustainable development of coastal zones. To implement ICZM and MSP, there is a need to establish ...

On 11 March 2011, a catastrophic earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the Pacific coast of northern Japan, devastating many of the towns, villages and coastal ecosystems located along the shoreline. To assess the impacts of the disaster, we investigated temporal dynamics of fish and epibenthic megafaunal community structure in relation to changes in a range of physical, biological and anthropogenic variables between 2007 and 2018 in Onagawa Bay. Commercially important fish such as greenlings, Japanese anchovy, flatfishes, rockfishes were consistently abundant in both larval and adult fish assemblages. While abundance, species richness, and Shannon index H' for adult fish and epibenthic megafaunal assemblages increased significantly soon after the disaster to peak values towards the end of the study period, the same metrics did not change accordingly for larval fish assemblages. Temporal dynamics of larval fish community clearly demonstrated significant seasonal variation along with changes in large-scale environmental conditions such as temperature and nutrients. However, anthropogenic components such as decline in human population, reduction in fishing pressure and the recovery of aquaculture operations significantly explained the observed post-disaster change in adult fish and epibenthic megafaunal communities. The pelagic and benthic components of Onagawa Bay appeared to have responded to the 2011 disaster very differently, and this study suggests the post-disaster recovery and dynamics of the coastal ecosystems may be regulated by how human societies respond to the impacts of a tsunami catastrophe through their influences on benthic habitat of ecosystems.

A demarcated fishery right is set on a sea area for aquaculture designated by a governor of a prefecture in Japan. Around Japan, this right area broadly covers open-type inner bays, where oyster culture is one of the most active types of aquaculture. It is necessary to develop a coastal management approach for realizing sustainable aquaculture in a sound marine environment in the open-type inner bay through understanding suspended and benthic material circulation as well as aquaculture impact on the marine environment. We have therefore conducted the monitoring of the marine environment and aquaculture and made studies on material circulation and ecosystem modeling of Shizugawa Bay, a typical rias-type bay as an open-type inner bay since 2014. We have established a council for sharing data obtained from the studies and discussing on marine environment in the bay based on scientific data with stakeholders from Shizugawa Bay since 2015. After the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, Shizugawa Branch of Miyagi Prefecture Fishery Cooperative succeeded in reducing oyster culture rafts to 55 and 23% to those before the tsunami event in the sea areas of Shizugawa and Tokura areas, respectively, both located in the head area of Shizugawa Bay. The result of the reduction lead to an increase in the growth rate of oysters, consequently shortening the oysters’ culture period. In situ experiments showed that feces and pseudofeces of young oysters contained less percentage of organic matter than in the case of the old ones, leading to less organic matter on the sea bottom. Nitrogen is a limiting nutrient in Shizugawa Bay. Dissolved iron was insufficient for boosting phytoplankton (diatom) in the surface layer of the center part of the bay in summer. These nutrients were mainly exported from the offshore waters compared to little inflow from the rivers due to their narrow watersheds like as many rias-type bays. The physical–biological coupling ecosystem model of Shizugawa Bay predicted marine environment and aquaculture production based on several scenarios co-produced by scientists and fishermen. Through the Council for the Future Marine Environment of Shizugawa Bay, the stakeholders, including the authors of the study, discussed how many aquaculture rafts and target species were optimal on the basis of the predicted results. The discussion was reflected in the renewal of the demarcated fishing right area in 2018. In Shizugawa Bay, the forestry activity, with a FSC international ecolabel, was linked to oyster culture with an ASC ecolabel through macrophyte beds registered as a Ramsar Site in 2018. These efforts and the reduction in the number of aquaculture rafts are activities called satoumi and satoyama, which enhance biodiversity and productivity through sustainable use of the coastal waters and mountains and will become a new universal coastal area management tool.

Novel optical time domain reflectometry with two light sources which are frequency swept synchronously is proposed. Experimental results have shown that the method makes it possible to measure the backscattered light continuously in time domain.

The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami wiped out over 1200 shellfish and ascidian culture long-lines and ~120 salmon farm cages that comprised the entire aquaculture installations in Onagawa Bay, Japan, and severely altered the associated ecosystem. A year later, we launched a coordinated monitoring programme to measure the extent of the damage caused by the disaster and monitor the change in the state of the marine ecosystem. As part of this effort, we conducted multi-seasonal sampling to characterise spatio-temporal variation in benthic macrofaunal community and a range of environmental parameters across Onagawa Bay between March 2012 and January 2018. The 492 total macrofaunal species recorded included Polychaeta (38.8 %), Bivalvia (13.2 %), Amphipoda (10.8 %), Decapoda (9.6 %), Gastropoda (9.3 %) and Echinodermata (4.3 %). At the outermost reference site, macrofaunal abundance, biomass, and species diversity were all consistently high throughout the study period. Inside Onagawa Bay, macrofauna metrics increased steadily from the lowest values at the beginning of the study to the highest over time. During the same period, the spatial extent of aquaculture facilities for long-lines and fish cages recovered steadily to within 60.8 % and 74.8 % of the original state, respectively. The significant variables identified by multivariate analysis to explain spatio-temporal variability in benthic macrofaunal communities were: (1) proximity to the nearest aquaculture facilities; (2) wind fetch length (exposure); (3) sediment grain size; (4) the total area of aquaculture facilities. This study suggests that coastal aquaculture operations may strongly influence the occurrence and distribution of benthic macrofaunal communities and thereby influence the recovery of seafloor biota at ecosystem scales following a catastrophic natural disaster.

The Great East Japan Earthquake produced a huge tsunami, which struck and changed the coastal ecosystems along the Sanriku Coast in front of the epicenter. It is important to monitor changes in the ecosystems caused by this huge tsunami and their succession due to natural processes and human impacts, because tsunami events occur at intervals of less than 100 years in Japan. We have monitored the seaweed beds in Shizugawa Bay on the Sanriku Coast since October 2011. Our observations showed that the tsunami didn’t seriously damaged the seaweed beds on the rocky substrate. The sea urchins on the rocky coast were also not affected by the tsunami. These sea urchins were able to spawn in the summer of 2011, because the sea urchin fishery suspended work in 2011 and 2012 due to a lack of fishing boats and a possibility that sea urchins fed corpses of victims of tsunami on the sea bottom. In 2014, the sea urchins born in summer of 2011 started to feed on the kelp forests, particularly from the deeper Eisenia bicyclis beds. In 2015, they consumed most of the E. bicyclis beds, which have disappeared from the head of the bay. The kelp forests in the Pacific involve a trophic cascade consisting of sea otters, sea urchins, and kelp. The sea urchin fishery corresponds to sea otters, which maintain healthy giant kelp beds along the west coast of the USA. Therefore, the sea urchin fishery is a satoumi activity defined as the human management of coastal seas that results in high biological productivity and biodiversity. It is necessary to maintain kelp beds through the sea urchin fishery for realizing sustainable fisheries and a healthy coastal ecosystem.

Coastal waters forming an ecotoone between land and the sea include important habitats that provide many ecosystem services for human beings. Pressure brought by human activities has accumulated, however, and is beyond the capacity of coastal waters, as noted by the concept of the planetary boundary. No studies have been done about the impact of the open ocean and land-based loads from rivers and aquacultures on the environmental conditions in an open-type enclosed bay. These characteristics are different from those of a typical enclosed bay, which is influenced mainly by human activities. Few studies have been about the management methods of coastal waters, realizing that human beings can live connected with nature. Yanagi defined Satoumi as coastal waters whose productivity and biodiversity are increased by human interventions that generate fat, long, and smooth material flows. According to Yanagi, material flows can be accomplished through management of the environments in the watersheds from the mountains to the sea and the management of marine bioresources, including human consumers, who are top predators in a marine food chain. Matsuda noted that sound coastal fisheries are indispensable for maintaining healthy material flows and a sound marine environment. These two objectives form Satoumi activities, but no studies can present how to accomplish these objectives in an open-type enclosed bay. When we obtain an answer, we will be able to put them into practice for realizing a sound, prosperous, and sustainable open-type enclosed bay.

Network control systems have been attracting attention to manage sophisticated task at a remote place where people cannot enter. However, jitter which is a fluctuation in time delay for an information to be transmitted, is a serious problem in network control systems because it deteriorates the performance of the system. Therefore, designing control system considering jitter is extremely important. Thus, this paper proposes a novel method to reduce the effect of jitter to the system under time delayed conditions. This is done by utilizing two filters that have inverse relationships and an error corrector when information is transmitted via network. The validity of the proposed system is confirmed experimentally by implementing the proposed filter to a one way information transmission and a network control system. Also, the experimental results of the proposed method is compared with conventional methods to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

A facile avenue to fabricate micrometer-sized chiral (L-, D-) and meso-like (dl-) SiO2 materials with unique structures by using crystalline complexes (cPEI/tart), composed of comblike polyethyleneimine (cPEI) and L-, D-, or dl-tartaric acid, respectively, as catalytic templates is reported. Interestingly, both chiral crystalline complexes appeared as regularly left- and right-twisted bundle structures about 10 μm in length and about 5 μm in diameter, whereas the dl-form occurred as circular structures with about 10 μm diameter. Subsequently, SiO2 @cPEI/tart hybrids with high silica content (>55.0 wt %) were prepared by stirring a mixture containing tetramethoxysilane (TMOS) and the aggregates of the crystalline complexes in water. The chiral SiO2 hybrids and calcined chiral SiO2 showed very strong CD signals and a nanofiber-based morphology on their surface, whereas dl-SiO2 showed no CD activity and a nanosheet-packed disklike shape. Furthermore, metallic silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) were encapsulated in each silica hybrid to obtain chiral (D and L forms) and meso-like (dl form) Ag@SiO2 composites. Also, the reaction between L-cysteine (Lcys) and these Ag@SiO2 composites was preliminarily investigated. Only chiral L- and D-Ag@SiO2 composites promoted the reaction between Lcys and Ag NPs to produce a molecular [Ag-Lcys]n complex with remarkable exciton chirality, whereas the reaction hardly occurred in the case of meso-like (dl-) Ag@SiO2 composite.

Rikkunshi-to (TJ-43), a gastroprotective herbal medicine, has been used for the symptomatic relief of adult patients with dyspepsia. However, its mechanism has yet to be fully elucidated. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of TJ-43 on the gastric myoelectric activity in post-operative dyspeptic patients, whose symptoms persisted for over 1 year after gastrointestinal surgery. Electrogastrography (EGG) recordings were performed to calculate the biomechanical parameters on the dominant peak frequency (DPF). Eight pediatric patients with dyspeptic symptoms after gastrointestinal surgery were examined and six age-matched children without any dyspeptic symptoms were used as controls, and they were compared with nine age-matched children without any dyspeptic symptoms after gastrointestinal surgery as subcontrols. All patients exhibited symptomatic relief after the administration of TJ-43, and the mean symptom score decreased significantly after the treatment of TJ-43 over a 1-month period ( P0.0001). The variability index (VI) and the percentage of normal waves (PNW) were calculated as irregularity parameters of DPF. The power ratio (PR) was calculated as a parameter of the gastric contractile activity. There were no significant differences in the VI and PNW between the controls and patients during the postprandial state after therapy, even though significant differences existed regarding those parameters between the controls and patients before the therapy. There were no significant differences in the DPF, VI, and PNW between the controls and subcontrols. Furthermore, PR exhibited a significant increase after therapy ( P0.05). However, there was a significant difference in the PR between the controls and subcontrols ( P0.05). Postprandial dip was observed in all control subjects, eight patients in the subcontrols, and two patients after administration of TJ-43, respectively. An abnormal gastric electrical activity therefore seems to be an important factor in the pathophysiology of post-operative dyspeptic children. The coordinating and stimulating effect of TJ-43 on the gastric myoelectric activity therefore seems to play an important role in the reduction of dyspeptic symptoms.

Scale-out programs run on multiple processes in a cluster. In scale-out systems, processes can fail. Computations using traditional libraries such as MPI fail when any component process fails. The advent of Map Reduce, Resilient Data Sets and MillWheel has shown dramatic improvements in productivity are possible when a high-level programming framework handles scale-out and resilience automatically. We are concerned with the development of general-purpose languages that support resilient programming. In this paper we show how the X10 language and implementation can be extended to support resilience. In Resilient X10, places may fail asynchronously, causing loss of the data and tasks at the failed place. Failure is exposed through exceptions. We identify a {\em Happens Before Invariance Principle} and require the runtime to automatically repair the global control structure of the program to maintain this principle. We show this reduces much of the burden of resilient programming. The programmer is only responsible for continuing execution with fewer computational resources and the loss of part of the heap, and can do so while taking advantage of domain knowledge. We build a complete implementation of the language, capable of executing benchmark applications on hundreds of nodes. We describe the algorithms required to make the language runtime resilient. We then give three applications, each with a different approach to fault tolerance (replay, decimation, and domain-level checkpointing). These can be executed at scale and survive node failure. We show that for these programs the overhead of resilience is a small fraction of overall runtime by comparing to equivalent non-resilient X10 programs. On one program we show end-to-end performance of Resilient X10 is ~100x faster than Hadoop.

散乱ごみの分布特性や蓄積要因について定量的に検討された事例は少なく, モラルの向上といった意識問題以外には有効な散乱防止施策に結びつくような検討もあまりなされていない。本研究では, 散乱飲料容器ごみの分布特性を空間的かつ時系列的に分析することにより, 散乱ごみの発生と集積に影響する様々な要因について定量的に検討した。調査対象地域に滋賀県草津市の駅前通りの歩道 (総延長約1.52km) を選定し, デジタルカメラを使用した精細な計数方法により3カ月間に毎週2回で計25回の散乱飲料容器増減数調査を行った。調査地域を16区画に分類して分析した結果から, 空き地・駐車場前における散乱ごみ現存数が一般住宅や店舗の前と比較して3倍程度になること, 週末の散乱ごみ新規発生数が平日の値の2倍近いこと, 現場に残留している飲料容器ごみの数量が散乱飲料容器ごみの新規発生と集積に有意に寄与していることがわかった。

The rotational dynamics of the hexafluorophosphate anion (PF(6)(-)) in the crystalline and liquid states of the archetypal room temperature ionic liquid (RTIL) 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate ([C(4)mim]PF(6)) are investigated using (31)P NMR spectroscopy line shape analyses and spin-lattice relaxation time measurements. The PF(6)(-) anion performs isotropic rotation in all three polymorphic crystals phases α, β, and γ as well as in the liquid state with a characteristic time scale that ranges from a few ps to a few hundred ps over a temperature range of 180-280 K. The rotational correlation time τ(c) for PF(6)(-) rotation follows the sequence γ-phaseα-phase ≈ liquidβ-phase. On the other hand, in the liquid state, all local motions in the cation as well as its global rotational reorientation are characterized by time scales that are slower compared to that for the PF(6)(-) anion rotation. The time scale τ(c) and the activation energy of PF(6)(-) rotation in this RTIL are found to be comparable with those observed in ordinary alkali and ammonium salts despite the large counterion size and low melting point of the former. The high sphericity of the PF(6)(-) ion is hypothesized to play an important role in the decoupling of its rotational dynamics that appear to be practically independent of the averaged cation-anion interaction.

Multicore processors are becoming dominant in the high performance computing (HPC) area, so multithread programming with OpenMP is becoming a key to good performance on such processors, though debugging problems remain. In particular, it is difficult to detect data races among threads with nondeterministic results, thus calling for tools to detect data races. Because HPC programs tend to run for long periods, detection tools that do not need to run the target programs are strongly preferred. We developed a static program analysis tool to detect data races in OpenMP loops in FORTRAN programs. Programmers can quickly use the tool at compile time without executing the target program. Because static analysis tools tend to report many false positives, we counted the false positives in some large applications to assess the utility and limits of static analysis tools. We have devised a new approach to detect data races. Our approach combines existing program analysis methods with a new analysis. We experimented with NAS parallel benchmarks and two real applications, GTC for plasma physics and GFMC for nuclear physics. Our new analysis method also reduces number of reported candidates from totally 97 to 33 in these applications. We found 13 previously unknown bugs out of 33 candidates reported by our prototype. Our analysis is fast enough for practical use, since the analysis time for the NAS parallel benchmark was shorter than the compilation time (18.5 seconds compared to 33.0 seconds).

Deploying an application onto a target platform for high performance oftentimes demands manual tuning by experts. As machine architecture gets increasingly complex, tuning becomes even more challenging and calls for systematic approaches. In our earlier work we presented a prototype that combines efficiently expert knowledge, static analysis, and runtime observation for bottleneck detection, and employs refactoring and compiler feedback for mitigation. In this study, we develop a software tool that facilitates \emph{fast} searching of bottlenecks and effective mitigation of problems from major dimensions of computing (e.g., computation, communication, and I/O). The impact of our approach is demonstrated by the tuning of the LBMHD code and a Poisson solver code, representing traditional scientific codes, and a graph analysis code in UPC, representing emerging programming paradigms. In the experiments, our framework detects with a single run of the application intricate bottlenecks of memory access, I/O, and communication. Moreover, the automated solution implementation yields significant overall performance improvement on the target platforms. The improvement for LBMHD is up to 45\%, and the speedup for the UPC code is up to 5. These results suggest that our approach is a concrete step towards systematic tuning of high performance computing applications.

We investigate the cation rotational dynamics of a room temperature ionic liquid (RTIL) 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate ([C(4)mim]PF(6)) in its three crystalline states by (1)H NMR spectroscopy. Spin-lattice and spin-spin relaxation time (T(1) and T(2), respectively) measurements as a function of temperature confirm the presence of three polymorphic crystals of [C(4)mim]PF(6): crystals α, β, and γ, which we previously discovered using Raman spectroscopy and calorimetry. Second moment calculations of (1)H NMR spectra reveal that certain segmental motions of the butyl group in addition to the rapid rotation of the two methyl groups in the cation occur in all the crystals. The trend in the mobility of the segmental motions is γβ ≤ α, which is consistent with the strength of cation-anion interactions (or crystal packing density) estimated from high-frequency Raman scattering experiments. T(1) measurements demonstrate two types of rotational motions on the nanosecond time scale in all three crystals: fast and slow motions. The three crystals have similar activation energies of 12.5-15.1 kJ mol(-1) for the fast motion, which is assigned to the rotation of the methyl group at the terminal of the butyl group. These observed activation energies were consistent with that estimated by quantum chemical calculations in the gas phase (11.9 kJ mol(-1)). In contrast, the slow motions of crystals α and γ are attributed to different segmental motions of the butyl group and that of crystal β to either a little segmental motion or a certain PF(6)(-) rotational motion. These nanosecond rotational motions obtained from the T(1) measurements do not appear to be affected by crystal packing density because local interactions in the crystalline state rather than packing density govern such nanosecond motions. With respect to the segmental motions, the mobility is likely to change significantly with the conformation of the butyl group. On the basis of these findings, crystal γ, which is the only crystalline phase previously determined using single-crystal X-ray diffraction, is considered to be the most stable phase because of the slowest segmental motions and the strongest cation-anion interactions.

To fully utilize the power of current high performance computing systems, high productivity to the end user is critical. It is a challenge to map an application to the target architecture efficiently. Tuning an application for high performance remains a daunting task, and frequently involves manual changes to the program. Recently refactoring techniques are proposed to rewrite or reorganize programs for various software engineering purposes. In our research we explore combining performance analysis with refactoring techniques for automated tuning that we expect to greatly improve the productivity of application deployment. We seek to build a system that can apply appropriate refactoring according to the bottleneck discovered. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach through the tuning of several scientific applications and kernels.

To optimize various high performance computing (HPC) programs on complex supercomputer architectures source-to-source optimization tools are becoming important to support network-architecture-specific and application-specific performance optimization in addition to compiler optimizations. Because of try-and-error nature of performance optimization work and complex relationships among optimizations, programmers often need to evaluate effectiveness of many combinations of their optimizations on the target architecture.When programmers optimize their program by both source-to-source optimization tool and manual editing, an issue, called, "reapplication conflicts," can occur. To optimize HPC programs, a programmer modifies some code to apply optimizations by manual editing and automatic conversion by source-to-source tool and, compiles it, and executes it to confirm the effects of the optimizations. If it is found that an earlier optimization is ineffective, the code should return to the point before the ineffective optimization, the optimization should be removed or replaced, and any succeeding operations that were confirmed to be effective should be reapplied. This can cause the "reapplication conflicts," because the succeeding operations were performed on different source code. Current version management systems support this conflict only for manual code optimizations, but do not support it for automatic conversions by source-to-source optimization tools.We propose an algorithm to resolve reapplication conflicts, and a new user interface to show the status and necessity of the reapplications. A user can select and modify any earlier operation, and the succeeding operations are automatically reapplied as needed to produce a new version without using explicit branch and merge operations by using the proposed algorithm. We also report our prototype developed on the Eclipse framework.

High productivity to the end user is critical in harnessing the power of high performance computing systems to solve science and engineering problems. It is a challenge to bridge the gap between the hardware complexity and the software limitations. Despite significant progress in language, compiler, and performance tools, tuning an application remains largely a manual task, and is done mostly by experts. In this paper we propose a holistic approach towards automated performance analysis and tuning that we expect to greatly improve the productivity of performance debugging. Our approach seeks to build a framework that facilitates the combination of expert knowledge, compiler techniques, and performance research for performance diagnosis and solution discovery. With our framework, once a diagnosis and tuning strategy has been developed, it can be stored in an open and extensible database and thus be reused in the future. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through the automated performance analysis and tuning of two scientific applications. We show that the tuning process is highly automated, and the performance improvement is significant.

The objective of this study is to evaluate the anorectal function from the viewpoint of fecoflowmetry in postoperative patients with Hirschsprung's disease (HD).This study evaluated 23 long-term follow-up patients who had undergone a radical operation for HD. Their mean age was 11 years. The types of HD included rectosigmoid colon type, 18 cases, and entire colon type, 5 cases. An anorectal manometric study was performed before fecoflowmetry. After normal saline solution was administrated as an imitation stool into the rectal cavity under pressure monitoring, the patients defecated on a fecoflowmeter. After discussing the maximum defecation flow (Flow-max), fecoflow pattern (FFP), tolerance rate (TR), anal canal pressure (AP), and Kelly's clinical scores (Kelly-Scores), the significant parameters were identified to elucidate the anorectal activity.(1) A close relationship was observed between the FFP and Kelly-Scores (P = .0027). (2) Flow-max, TR, and AP in patients with good Kelly-Scores were significantly higher than those in patients with fair Kelly-Scores (P.05). (3) The Flow-max accurately reflected the TR, Kelly-Scores, and AP. Flow-max45 mL per second, TR70%, or AP30 mm Hg was statistically regarded as a borderline level of fecal continence (P.002).The Flow-max and FFP are considered to be useful parameters for postoperative patients with HD.

This study was performed to clarify developmental changes in the structure of the myenteric nerve plexus in the rat small intestine. The small intestines of fetal and neonatal rats were examined by light microscopic immunohistochemistry for protein gene product 9.5 (PGP-9.5) and alpha-smooth muscle actin (alpha-SMA). Direct observation of the three-dimensional structure of the neuronal and muscular elements was accomplished by scanning electron microscopy of tissues after KOH treatment. At the embryonic day 14 (E14), PGP-9.5 immunopositive (neuronal) cells first appeared in the mesenchymal tissue outside an alpha-SMA positive (muscle) cell layer. These cells increased in number to form a thin and continuous sheet, which was sandwiched between the inner and outer muscular layers at E17. This neuronal layer consisted of immature ganglion cells associated with supportive (enteroglial) cells, and was gradually segregated into groups by incomplete separation through slit-like interruptions at E18. With the widening of these slits at E19, the neuronal sheet was observed as a ladder composed of transversely elongated ganglia and their connecting nerve strands, resulting in the typical structure of the myenteric nerve plexus. Fibroblastic cells of a peculiar shape appeared on the outer surface of the myenteric plexus at E19. These cells (presumably interstitial cells) interconnected their long branching projections to form a cellular network on the myenteric plexus until birth.