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Early successional habitats and their associated species have been decreasing globally. In contrast, plantations have been expanding and their young stages (stand age ≤ 10 years) can serve as early successional habitats. The Gray Nightjar (Caprimulgus jotaka), a nocturnal bird species, breeds and forages in early successional habitats surrounded by forests; its populations have declined since the 1970s in Japan. Because nightjars are more abundant in warmer areas across Hokkaido, northern Japan, habitat creation through plantation harvesting was expected to promote nightjar abundance or occupancy in this region. To explore the effects of plantation harvesting on nightjar occupancy, we conducted an 8-year playback survey in a plantation landscape in central Hokkaido. We considered the effects of elevation as a surrogate for temperature. The results indicated that increasing young forest cover within 500 m of the centroid of each site enhanced nightjar occupancy, whereas elevation negatively affected occupancy. Therefore, at lower elevations, we predict a larger increase in occupancy probability with increasing young forest cover following plantation harvesting. Our results suggest that young forest creation in landscapes can contribute to Gray Nightjar conservation. To effectively create early successional species habitats through plantation harvesting, it is important to consider climate and elevation in the target area.

Reconciling timber production with biodiversity conservation is essential. Increasing the mixture of broadleaved (BL) trees into conifer plantations increases the abundance of species that prefer natural BL forests but can reduce conifer yields. Therefore, modeling of the relationships of the abundances of various taxa with conifer and BL trees is necessary for effective biodiversity conservation. Longhorn and carabid beetles are useful ecological indicators; however, their responses to the amount (e.g. basal area and coverage) of conifer and BL trees within stands remain unknown. We surveyed the abundances of longhorn and carabid beetles in plantations of Todo fir Abies sachalinensis and Sakhalin spruce Picea glehnii mixed with various amounts of BL trees and in natural BL forests. We analyzed the response of each taxon to the basal area of conifer trees (CBA) within stands. Unexpectedly, for longhorn beetles, no effect of CBA was detected for species using BL trees as larval host plants and the effect was positive for generalist species. For carabid beetles, the total abundance of forest-dependent species decreased almost linearly with increasing CBA. The species-level mean response was decreasing abundance with increasing CBA, which occurred more rapidly in the lower range of CBA. These results suggest large negative impacts of conifer trees, even in small amounts, for many carabid species. To reconcile timber production with carabid beetle conservation, it is essential to maintain remnant natural BL forests and revert unsuccessful conifer plantations containing abundant BL trees into BL forests.

The hominoid-specific endogenous retrovirus LTR5_Hs is transcriptionally activated in human primordial germ cell-like cells (hPGCLCs), a pluripotent stem cell-derived cell culture model of PGCs. Here, taking the unique advantage of our novel cell culture method to obtain large amounts of pure hPGCLCs, we performed proteomics profiling of hPGCLCs and detected various viral proteins produced from the LTR5_Hs RNA via ribosomal frameshifting. We also present transmission electron microscopy images of 100-nm diameter virus-like particles (VLPs) assembled at the surface of hPGCLCs. Compared to hPGCLCs, expression of LTR5_Hs RNA is far weaker in human seminomas, the germ cell tumors resembling PGCs. Re-analysis of published single cell RNA-seq data of human embryos revealed strong activation of LTR5_Hs in migrating PGCs but suppressed in PGCs upon they reach the gonadal anlagen. In the microfluidics-supported polarized embryoids mimicking peri-implantation stages of human embryos, LTR5_Hs RNA was detected by RNA in situ hybridization in NANOG+/TFAP2C+/SOX17+ cells resembling freshly emerged PGCs. These results support that human germ cells produce LTR5_Hs proteins and VLPs during their earliest stages of normal development until their settlement in the gonadal anlagen.SUMMARY STATEMENTThe hominoid-specific endogenous retrovirus LTR5_Hs is activated in a cell culture model resembling early-stage human primordial germ cells, producing not only viral RNA but also retrovirus proteins and virus-like particles.

STUDY QUESTION How is the localisation of ovarian follicles affected by ageing and chronic diseases? SUMMARY ANSWER Ovarian follicles shift deeper towards the medulla, due to thickening of the tunica albuginea (TA), with ageing and some major common chronic diseases. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY The ovary undergoes morphological and functional changes with ageing. The follicular pool follows these changes with alterations in the amount and distribution of residual follicles. Diseases causing a chronic inflammatory process are associated with morphological changes and impaired ovarian function. STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION We conducted a cross-sectional study, examining 90 ovaries from 90 female monkeys. The samples were collected from April 2018 to March 2019 at Tsukuba Primate Research Center in National Institutes of Biomedical Innovation, Health and Nutrition, Japan. PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS Ovarian samples were obtained from cynomolgus monkeys that died from natural causes or were euthanised. Ovarian sections were stained with haematoxylin and eosin (H&E) for histological analyses. In ovarian sections from 64 female macaques aged 0–25 years, a total of 13 743 follicles at different developmental stages (primordial, intermediary, primary, early secondary and late secondary) were assessed to determine the depth of each follicle from the outer surface of the ovarian cortex to the far end of the follicle, by using a digital imaging software. TA thickness was measured as sum of basal membrane and tunica collagen layer for each ovary under H&E staining. To explore the possibility of age-related trends in ovarian morphometric characteristics, samples were divided into four different age groups (0–3 years (pre-menarche), 4–9 years, 10–14 years and 15–20 years). To evaluate the effect of common chronic diseases on ovarian morphometric characteristics, macaques with diabetes mellitus (DM) (n = 10), endometriosis (n = 8) or inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) (n = 8) were compared to age-matched controls without chronic diseases. MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE Ovarian morphometric analysis revealed that the relative location of follicles became deeper in all age groups according to development of follicles (P LARGE SCALE DATA NA. LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION Two-dimensional histology was used to assess follicle localisation. The possibility of minimal variations between the measured distance to the actual distance in a spherical structure cannot be excluded. Additionally, the severity of disease was not assessed. WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS This study is the first step towards enhancing our understanding of how ageing and chronic diseases affect the relative localisation of dormant and developing follicles. These observations, combined with possible future human studies, may have managerial implications in the field of fertility preservation and other conditions involving ovarian tissue cryopreservation. STUDY FUNDING/COMPETING INTEREST(S) The present work was supported by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research B (19H03801) (to K.K.), Challenging Exploratory Research (18K19624), Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development, Mochida Memorial Foundation for Medical and Pharmaceutical Research, Takeda Science Foundation and Naito Foundation (to K.K.). All authors have no conflicts of interest directly relevant to the content of this article.

The combination of solid phase microextraction (SPME) and gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GC-MS) is frequently used for comprehensive analysis of aroma components in foods because it can be used to easily analyze volatile components, allowing saving of the amount of solvent used. In this study, SPME-GC-MS analysis of sake samples before and after sherry cask storage was performed to investigate the special flavor derived from sherry cask storage. A GC column with polyethylene glycol as the stationary phase, which is the first choice for volatile component analysis, was used. However, the peak of the acid having a carbonyl group was tailed due to its bond with the hydroxyl group of the stationary phase. In the analysis of sake samples, a large and tailing peak derived from the large amount of fatty acids in Japanese sake was observed. Additionally, it was not possible to analyze other co-eluting components. To overcome this problem, a novel extraction condition was examined using SPME and tris (hydroxymethyl) aminomethane (Tris). By adding Tris solution to sake, the fatty acid peak was removed successfully, thereby facilitating analysis of the peaks of compounds co-eluting with fatty acids and comprehensive analysis of the aroma components in sake. Furthermore, a comparative analysis of sake before and after storage in sherry cask showed that levels of fatty alcohols, organic acid esters, fatty acid esters, and terpenes increased significantly after storage in sherry cask, suggesting that these ingredients might constitute the special flavor of sherry cask-stored sake.

Abandoned farmland area has been expanding globally for decades. Studies showed that conservation value of abandoned farmland has differed among studies and regions, and thus is difficult to predict. However, predicting the effects of farmland abandonment on biodiversity remains vital to the development of appropriate conservation strategies. Here, we compared the species-, community-, and functional group-level habitat suitability of abandoned farmland for birds by comparison with active farmland (pasture, cropland, and rice paddy) and natural wetland on Hokkaido, Japan, over a study area of 400 km × 500 km. Results differed markedly between functional groups. The abundance and species richness of grassland species in abandoned farmland were higher than that in active farmland, and comparable to that in wetland. In contrast, abundance and richness of bare-ground species was highest in active farmland. For most species, interactive effects between climate variables and abandoned farmland were not significant, suggesting a consistent habitat suitability of abandoned farmland irrespective of varied climatic conditions. Our results suggest that abandoned farmland plays an important role as habitat for grassland and forest species at large scales; farmland abandonment provides a valuable alternative habitat for species whose primary habitats have been lost to agricultural expansion. Especially, abandoned farmland in warmer areas in Hokkaido would represent a potential mitigation to the negative effects of wetland loss. A functional group approach synthesizes varied species-level responses and allows for a comprehensive understanding of the habitat suitability of abandoned farmland. Adopting this approach will contribute to establishing appropriate conservation strategies.

There have been many earlier studies of the biodiversity and ecosystem services of abandoned farmlands, but studies of abandoned villages are limited, particularly in Asian countries. The drastic aging and depopulation of Japanese society will likely lead to increased village abandonment in the future. To properly manage abandoned villages and build a comprehensive land-use plan, we need to know how natural succession will proceed after the abandonment of local towns and villages. We investigated forest structures and compositions at the sites of abandoned mining villages and compared them with ambient undisturbed natural forests. The environmental factors that determine plant succession are the distance from ambient forests, land-use period, and years since abandonment. The results showed that the sizes of tall trees and species diversity of understory vegetation recovered to the level of the control sites approximately 50–60 years after village abandonment. However, the species compositions of tall trees and understory vegetation were fairly different from those of the control sites. The distance from ambient natural forest, which regulates the seed supply for abandoned sites; land-use periods, which are surrogates for the durations of anthropogenic disturbance; and times since abandonment are strong drivers of the recovery of forest species compositions.

Advanced maternal age is associated with the natural oocyte depletion, leading to low oocyte yield, high infertility treatment cancellation rates, and eventual decreases in pregnancy rates. Various innovative interventions have been introduced to improve the outcome of infertility treatment for aging patients. Numerous published data demonstrated that early follicle development was regulated by intraovarian growth factors through autocrine or paracrine mechanisms. Platelet-rich plasma (PRP), a plasma fraction of peripheral blood with a high concentration of platelets, has been implemented in regenerative medicine in the last decade. The plasma contains a variety of growth factors that were suggested to be able to enhance angiogenesis regeneration and the cell proliferation process. The initial report showed that an intraovarian injection of PRP improved the hormonal profile and increased the number of retrieved oocytes in patients with diminished ovarian reserve. Subsequently, several studies with larger sample sizes have reported that this approach resulted in several healthy live births with no apparent complications. However, the use of ovarian PRP treatment needs to be fully investigated, because no randomized controlled trial has yet been performed to confirm its efficacy.

Objective This study aimed to identify specific RAS-GAPs involved in RAS activation squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) of the tongue, and to investigate the role of RAS signaling in tongue SCC progression. Subjects and methods We analyzed mutations in K-RAS, H-RAS, and N-RAS genes by PCR-single strand conformational polymorphism (PCR-SSCP), and relative levels of mRNA of three genes encoding RAS-GAPs (RASAL1, NF1, and DAB2IP) by real-time reverse transcriptional-PCR (RT-PCR) in 20 cases of tongue SCCs. To examine if the interaction between RAS-GAPs and phosphorylated ERK1/2 (p-ERK1/2) activated the RAS signaling pathway, we evaluated the expression of p-ERK1/2, a kinase located downstream of RAS, by immunohistochemistry. Finally, the association between p-ERK1/2 overexpression and clinicopathological factors was examined in 45 cases of tongue SCCs. Results No mutations were detected in K-RAS, H-RAS, and N-RAS genes in 20 cases of tongue SCC. The levels of mRNA of RASAL1, NF1 and DAB2IP were downregulated in 80.0 %, 31.6 % and 25.0 %, respectively. There was a statistically significant relationship between RASAL1 downregulation and p-ERK1/2 overexpression (p = 0.014), suggesting that RAS/ERK signaling pathway was controlled by RASAL1 in tongue SCC. Furthermore, we showed that p-ERK1/2 was overexpressed more frequently in advanced-staged tumors than in early-staged ones. Conclusions The findings of the present study suggest that activation of the RAS/ERK signaling pathway, which is triggered by RASAL1 downregulation, is involved in the progression of tongue SCC.

Desmoplastic fibroma of bone (DFB), a bone tumor, is considered to be an osseous counterpart of desmoid-type fibromatosis (DF). Herein, we report a case of DFB with CTNNB1 point mutation. The 5-year-old male patient had complained of trismus and pain in the jaw. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed a mass in the left mandible. Radical treatment involved surgical resection. Microscopically, the lesion consisted of a bundle-like proliferation of uniform spindle-shaped cells with abundant collagenous stroma, which resembled DF. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed intranuclear accumulation of β-catenin in the tumor cells. Based on clinical and histologic analysis, we diagnosed the patient as having DFB. We examined the CTNNB1 and APC sequence and found an A-to-G transition at codon 41 of CTNNB1; i.e., Thr was substituted by Ala. Our findings suggest that the dysregulation of Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway is related to the tumorigenesis of some cases of DFB. This hypothesis indicates that there are some cases of DFB in which nuclear positive expression of β-catenin is useful for diagnosis.

In in vitro fertilization treatment, the therapeutic effects of intrauterine platelet-rich plasma (PRP) infusion with increasing rate of successful pregnancy have been reported; however, the mechanisms that support embryo implantation remain unclear. To analyze transcriptomic profiles in endometria treated with PRP, blood and endometrial samples were collected from four infertile women. Human endometrial stromal cells (HESCs) were cultured and passaged equally into four cell culture dishes in each patient. Two were treated with PRP twice and the other two were not treated with PRP. Subsequently, two cultures with and without PRP were decidualized with 8-bromoadenosine 3',5'-cyclic AMP and progesterone for 5 days. The gene expression in undifferentiated or decidualized HESCs with and without PRP was compared. In the microarray analysis, 381 and 63 differentially expressed genes were detected in undifferentiated and decidualized HESCs, respectively. In the undifferentiated HESCs, PRP was found to strongly promote the gene expression associated with cell growth, tissue regeneration, proinflammatory response, and antibiotic effects. In decidualized HESCs, PRP was found to attenuate the gene expression involved in cell proliferation and inflammation by inhibiting the expression of PI3K signaling. PRP regulates the reprogramming of cell proliferation and inflammation depending on pre- and post-decidualization in an appropriate manner, suggesting that PRP has the potential to increase endometrial thickness in the proliferative phase and improve immune tolerance in the secretory phase.

Salivary gland cancers (SGCs) are diagnosed using histopathological examination, which significantly contributes to their progression, including lymph node/distant metastasis or local recurrence. In the current World Health Organization (WHO) Classification of Head and Neck Tumors: Salivary Glands (5th edition), malignant and benign epithelial tumors are classified into 21 and 15 tumor types, respectively. All malignant tumors have the potential for lymph node/distant metastasis or local recurrence. In particular, mucoepidermoid carcinoma (MEC), adenoid cystic carcinoma (AdCC), salivary duct carcinoma, salivary carcinoma, not otherwise specified (NOS, formerly known as adenocarcinoma, NOS), myoepithelial carcinoma, epithelial–myoepithelial carcinoma, and carcinoma ex pleomorphic adenoma (PA) are relatively prevalent. High-grade transformation is an important aspect of tumor progression in SGCs. MEC, AdCC, salivary carcinoma, and NOS have a distinct grading system; however, a universal histological grading system for SGCs has not yet been recommended. Conversely, PA is considered benign; nonetheless, it should be cautiously treated to avoid the development of metastasizing/recurrent PA. The aim of this review is to describe the current histopathological aspects of the prognostic factors for SGCs and discuss the genes or molecules used as diagnostic tools that might have treatment target potential in the future.

Recent advances in early detection and oncological therapies have ameliorated the survival rate of young cancer patients. Yet, ovarian impairment induced by chemotherapy and radiotherapy is still a challenging issue. This review, based on clinical and lab-based studies, summarizes the evidence of gonadotoxicity of chemoradiotherapy, the recent approaches, ongoing controversies, and future perspectives of fertility preservation (FP) in female patients who have experienced chemo- or radio-therapy. Existing data indicate that chemotherapeutic agents induce DNA alterations and massive follicle activation via the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt signaling pathway. Meanwhile, the radiation causes ionizing damage, leading to germ cell loss. In addition to the well-established methods, numerous therapeutic approaches have been suggested, including minimizing the follicle loss in cryopreserved ovarian grafts after transplantation, in vitro activation or in vitro growing of follicles, artificial ovarian development, or fertoprotective adjuvant to prevent ovarian damage from chemotherapy. Some reports have revealed positive outcomes from these therapies, whereas others have demonstrated conflictions. Future perspectives are improving the live birth rate of FP, especially in patients with adverse ovarian reserve, eliminating the risk of malignancy reintroducing, and increasing society’s awareness of FP importance.

Purpose To determine the potentials of Hochuekkito (HET) treatment for aging infertility. Methods Mice at 36 weeks of age were fed without (control, n = 40) or with low (100 mg/kg/day, n = 24) and high (1000 mg/kg/day, n = 38) doses of HET for 12 weeks. Aging animals at 48 weeks of age were used for in vitro fertilization‐embryo transfer (IVF‐ET), and their ovaries were subjected to histological and quantitative inflammation analyses. Results HET administration decreased transcript levels of ovarian inflammatory markers, interleukin 6 (IL‐6), IL‐1β, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)‐α, and interferon‐gamma (IFN‐γ) but suppressed ovulation rates and the number of ovulated oocytes in aging mice. Furthermore, HET treatment decreased the rates of oocytes maturation and fertilization and the cumulus‐cell expression of TNF‐α‐induced protein 6 and epidermal growth factor receptor. After IVF‐ET, no improvement of declined live offspring rate by aging was achieved by HET administration, although there were no adverse effects on embryo development and implantation as well as gross morphology and bodyweight of pups. Conclusion Present study indicated HET treatment interfered with ovulation and fertilization in aging mice without affecting ovarian follicle development. No improvement on the age‐associated decline of live offspring rate and follicle development was achieved after HET treatment.

The quality of oocytes declines by aging, resulting in their low competences for fertility. Here, resveratrol treatment showed increases in the rates of implantation and live offspring as well as decreases in the abortion rate as short as one week after treatment, although the number of ovulated oocytes and the rates of fertilization and blastocyst formation were not changed following resveratrol treatment. Resveratrol treatment did not cause abnormalities mouse estrous cycles and body weights. No abnormality was detected in both fetuses and placentas after 22 weeks of resveratrol treatment and the fetuses had normal fertility. Positive correlations were found between serum resveratrol levels and pregnancy and live offspring rates as well as ovarian expression levels of

To analyze patient safety in laparoscopic ovarian tissue transplantation surgery by tracking the rate of postoperative complications and the learning curves of the surgeons by statistical process control analysis.A retrospective study.A university-affiliated hospital.A total of 100 patients with premature ovarian insufficiency who underwent ovarian tissue cryopreservation by vitrification and then autologous transplantation of frozen-thawed ovarian tissues with in vitro activation.Ovarian tissue cryopreservation, in vitro activation, and transplantation.We assessed the surgery complications, differences in total surgery time, transplantation time, and transplantation time per ovarian sheet in operations performed by 3 experienced laparoscopic surgeons. Surgeon A performed 80 operations; surgeon B, 29 operations; and surgeon C, 20 operations. Complications occurred in 1.55% of the procedures. Although all 3 surgeons' performance never fell below the unacceptable failure limit, only surgeon A became competent after 66 cases.The laparoscopic ovarian tissue transplantation surgery was generally safe given that the postoperative complications were infrequent (1.55%). Although the performance of all 3 surgeons was acceptable, only surgeon A attained the level of competency after 66 cases. The transplantation method may not be the key factor for reducing surgery time in this surgery. An efficient ovarian tissue transplantation team is more important in reducing the surgery time than the surgeon's surgical technique alone.

Objective To demonstrate our procedures of drug-free in vitro activation (IVA) for treating patients with premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) or diminished ovarian reserve (DOR), as well as the laparoscopic ovarian incision (LOI) procedure for treating patients with resistant ovary syndrome (ROS). Design Step-by-step video demonstration of the surgical procedures. Setting Fertility clinic and reproductive medicine department. Patients Women were diagnosed with POI based on recent amenorrhea before 40 years of age or with DOR according to the Bologna criteria, showing growth of a few antral follicles after ovarian stimulation. ROS patients were diagnosed based on amenorrhea with hypergonadotropic hypoestrogenism but showing age-appropriate number of antral follicles under transvaginal ultrasound. Interventions The drug-free IVA consists of the following 4 steps: removing a part of the cortex from one or both ovaries; cutting ovarian cortical pieces into small cubes in vitro; making pockets for ovarian tissue grafting; and grafting ovarian cortical cubes. The LOI procedure consisted of only one step: cutting ovarian cortex in situ. Both procedures were followed by ovarian hyperstimulation for at least 1 year. Informed consent was obtained from patients and approval was granted by the Biomedical Ethics Committee of the International University School of Medicine and the Rose Ladies Clinic. The present clinical trial was carried out in accordance with The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki). Main Outcome Measure Follicle growth. Results These procedures can be completed within 1 hour under laparoscopic surgery. There were no complications. In 13 of 15 patients treated with drug-free IVA, increases in antral follicle numbers were found, followed by a higher number of retrieved oocytes for in vitro fertilization. In addition to one spontaneous pregnancy, embryo transfer allowed four live births and one ongoing pregnancy. Five additional patients and one miscarriage patient have cryopreserved embryos for future transfer. We also found follicle growth to the preovulatory stage in seven of 11 ROS patients who have not responded to any endogenous and exogenous follicle-stimulating hormone stimulations for follicle growth prior to LOI treatment, allowing the retrieval of mature oocytes for in vitro fertilization. Four ROS patients became pregnant, followed by the delivery of three healthy infants and one ongoing pregnancy. Conclusion A drug-free IVA approach provided an infertility treatment for recent POI or DOR patients. This procedure promoted growth of residual ovarian follicles following ovarian tissue fragmentation in vitro, leading to Hippo signaling disruption. Although ROS patients exhibited symptoms of hypergonadotropic hypoestrogenism similar to that of POI patients, they still had multiple secondary follicles. Hippo signaling disruption in vivo based on cutting ovarian cortex using LOI could promote follicle growth. UMIN Clinical Trials Registration Number UMIN000029807.

Research question The recently developed in-vitro activation (IVA) approach provides a promising infertility treatment for patients with premature ovarian insufficiency. The IVA method promotes growth of residual ovarian follicles following ovarian tissue fragmentation leading to Hippo signalling disruption, together with in-vitro incubation with Akt stimulators. As poor ovarian response (POR) patients with decreased ovarian reserve (DOR) have multiple secondary follicles, this study tested whether Hippo signalling disruption alone using in-vitro ovarian cortical fragmentation, followed by autologous grafting, was sufficient to promote follicle growth. Design A case series study. Results In 9 out of 11 POR patients with DOR treated with a simplified IVA procedure, increases in antral follicle numbers in multiple growth waves were detected following FSH treatment. Subsequent injection with human chorionic gonadotrophin allowed retrieval of more mature oocytes for IVF (median antral follicle counts before and after IVA per ovarian stimulation: 1.0 versus 2.6) with 68.7% fertilization rates and 56.9% showing high-quality embryonic development. One natural conception and 16 embryo transfers in five patients resulted in one live birth, two ongoing pregnancies and one miscarriage. Three additional patients and the miscarriage patient have cryopreserved embryos for future transfer. Conclusions The present drug-free IVA approach may be suitable for POR patients with DOR, as it increased the number of antral follicles. The procedure also eliminated the need for 2-day incubation with drugs and required only one surgery. This approach could allow the retrieval of more oocytes in middle-aged women to achieve higher pregnancy rates and deserves proper evaluation in future randomized controlled trials.

We study mean dimension of shifts of finite type defined on compact metric spaces and give its lower bound when the shift possesses a certain "periodic block" of arbitrarily large length. The result is applied to shift maps on generalized inverse limits with upper semi-continuous closed set-valued functions. In particular we obtain a refinement of some results due to Banic [ 1 ] and Erceg and Kennedy [ 5 ] on the dimension of the inverse limit spaces and topological entropy of their shifts.

For a compact metric space (M, d), $${\mathrm {Lip}}M$$ denotes the Banach algebra of all complex-valued Lipschitz functions on (M, d). Motivated by a classical result of de Leeuw, we give a canonical construction of a compact Hausdorff space $${\hat{M}}$$ and a continuous surjection $$\pi :{\hat{M}} \rightarrow M$$ which may viewed as a metric analogue of the unit sphere bundle over a Riemannian manifold. It is shown that, for each $$n \ge 1$$ the continuous Hochschild cohomology $${\mathrm {H}}^{n}({\mathrm {Lip}}M, C({\hat{M}}))$$ has the infinite rank as a $${\mathrm {Lip}}M$$-module, if the metric space (M, d) admits a local geodesic structure, for example, if M is a compact Riemannian manifold or a non-positively curved metric space. Here $$C({\hat{M}})$$ denotes the algebra of all complex-valued continuous functions on $${\hat{M}}$$. On the other hand, if the coefficient $$C({\hat{M}})$$ is replaced with C(M), then it is shown that $${\mathrm {H}}^{1}({\mathrm {Lip}}M,C(M)) = 0$$ for each compact Lipschitz manifold M.

For a compact metric space (K, d), LipK denotes the Banach algebra of all complex-valued Lipschitz functions on (K, d). We show that the continuous Hochschild cohomology Hn(LipK, (LipK)*) and Hn(LipK, ℂe) are both infinite-dimensional vector spaces for each n ≥ 1 if the space K contains a certain infinite sequence which converges to a point e ∈ K. Here (LipK)* is the dual module of LipK and ℂe denotes the complex numbers with a LipK-bimodule structure defined by evaluations of LipK-functions at e. Examples of such metric spaces include all compact Riemannian manifolds, compact geodesic metric spaces and infinite compact subsets of ℝ. In particular, the (small) global homological dimension of LipK is infinite for every such space. Our proof uses the description of point derivations by Sherbert [‘The structure of ideals and point derivations in Banach algebras of Lipschitz functions’, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc.111 (1964), 240–272] and directly constructs non-trivial cocycles with the help of alternating cocycles of Johnson [‘Higher-dimensional weak amenability’, Studia Math.123 (1997), 117–134]. An alternating construction of cocycles on the basis of the idea of Kleshchev [‘Homological dimension of Banach algebras of smooth functions is equal to infinity’, Vest. Math. Mosk. Univ. Ser. 1. Mat. Mech.6 (1988), 57–60] is also discussed.

We describe the general form of a Hermitian operator on the injective tensor product of a uniform algebra and a complex Banach space. As an application, we characterize a surjective unital isometry between the injective tensor product of a uniform algebra and a unital factor C ⁎ -algebra. In particular, we give a simple proof that a unital factor C ⁎ -algebra has the Banach–Stone property.

Background: Micronodular thymic carcinoma (MTC) with lymphoid hyperplasia is believed to be the malignant counterpart of micronodular thymoma (MT) with lymphoid hyperplasia. Since MT and MTC share a similar morphology, MTC is considered a malignant form of MT; there have been a few cases of malignant transformation from MT to MTC. We report a case of MTC with lymphoid hyperplasia.Case presentation: Our 53-year-old patient presented with an incidental tumor on chest X-ray. The resected tumor consisted of nodular epithelial nests and lymphoid tissue within a surrounding germinal center. Some epithelial nests showed apparent malignant morphology. Atypical epithelial cells with large vesicular nuclei formed nests, some of which showed comedo necrosis. These cells showed transition continuously to benign type B thymoma-like cells, demonstrating cord-like arrangements. Carcinomatous elements, showing a high Ki67 index, expressed Glut1, CD5, CD117, and BCL2; conversely, benign nests displayed attenuated expression of these markers and a low Ki67 labeling index. GTF2I point mutation and Langerhans/dendritic cells, which are indicators of favorable thymoma prognosis, were not detected. Due to pleural metastasis, the patient was treated with lenvatinib 27 months postoperatively. Conclusions: This is the first report of a partially benign, GTF2I-negative MTC. Histological and genetic findings might be predictive of patient prognosis.