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We herein report a case of peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT) from EDTA-induced pseudothrombocytopenia (PTCP). The apheresis product was inspected for 24 hours and there was no platelet clumping or thrombocytopenia. In the first 10 months after PBSCT, there has been no transfer symptom of PTCP.

The characteristics of desmoid tumors(DTs)associated with familial adenomatous polyposis(FAP)and relationships between the development of DTs and the sites of APC germline mutation have not closely been examined Japan.This retrospective study was performed to address these issues by examining patients with FAP who underwent proctocolectomy between 1981 and 2015.The cumulative 2-year incidence of DT development was 50%. The DTs developed in the abdominal wall only in 2, in the abdominal wall plus intra-abdominally in 4, and intra-abdominally in 2. Clinical stages according to the Church's classification included Stage I in 3, Stage II in 2, Stage III in 1, and Stage IV in 2. Among 31 patients with a confirmed pathogenic germline APC mutation, patients with mutation in 3' site of codon 1400 (n=7)tended to develop DTs more frequently than those with mutation in 5' site of codon 1400(n=24)(p=0.08). The cumulative 5-year survival rate in patients with DT development was 73.3%. Including 2 patients undergoing initial colectomy at other institutions, the therapeutic efficacy in 4 patients with severe intraabdominal DTs(Stage III /Stage IV )who were given chemotherapy comprising doxorubicin plus dacarbazine(DOX plus DTIC)revealed partial response in 3 and complete response in 1. Febrile neutropenia was recorded in 2 of these patients.The frequency of DTs development and genotype-phenotype relationship of FAP patients seems to concur with those reported from Western countries. Since the DOX plus DTIC therapy for severe DTs is valid but toxicity is high, the development of less toxic regimens are warranted.

Introduction The International Myeloma Working Group (IMWG)-frailty index (IMWG-FI) and revised myeloma comorbidity index (R-MCI) are multiple myeloma (MM)-specific frailty scoring systems, which the European Myeloma Network advocates to assess patient frailty, and to select goals and treatments including autologous stem cell therapy (ASCT). In Japan, patients In our institute, 17 MM patients ≥65 years old received ASCT and their frailty at the time of ASCT was retrospectively analyzed. Methods We performed 51 ASCTs on 43 MM patients between April 2017 and June 2019. Seventeen patients were elderly, and 34 were younger. The conditioning regimens were melphalan 200 mg/m2 for younger and 140 mg/m2 for the elderly patients. Both groups received the same supportive therapy. Frailty was compared using the IMWG-FI, R-MCI, and Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation-Comorbidity Index (HCT-CI), and the toxicity and efficacy of ASCT were retrospectively analyzed. Results The patients' ages at the time of ASCT were statistically different between groups (67.8 vs 57.8 years old, p The median scores (ranges) of HCT-CI were 1 (0-5) in the elderly group, and 1.5 (0-5) in the younger group (p=0.93). The number of CD34 positive cells harvested from peripheral blood was lower in the elderly than in the younger group (3.8 vs 5.4×106/kg, p=0.0027). For the elderly and younger groups, the infused CD34 positive cell count (2.4×106 vs 2.4×106/kg, p=0.87), days for neutrophil (11 vs 11 days, p=0.87) and platelet engraftments (15 vs 15 days, p=0.7), and the hospitalization periods (26 vs 27 days, p=0.27) were not statistically different. Both groups had no transplantation-related deaths, similar rates of the non-hematologic adverse events (grade ≥3), an improvement in response (≥very good partial response (VGPR); 49% vs 74%, p=0.003) before vs after ASCT. Post-ASCT ≥VGPR rates were similar between the elderly and younger groups (73% vs 75%, p=1.0). Discussion We safely performed ASCT for elderly MM patients. The frailty status of the younger and elderly groups were the same, as evaluated by the IMWG-FI, R-MCI, and HCT-CI. Our eligibility criteria for MM patients for ASCT was by biological and not chronological age. Thus, the prospective assessment of elderly MM patients by these tools may enable us to evaluate the risks of elderly ASCT, through which elderly ASCT-eligible cases can be selected. Eleven of the 17 elderly patients were termed fit by the IMWG-FI and R-MCI, and scored 0-3 by HCT-CI, 6 of whom were 0-1. Five patients were intermediate-fit by either IMWG-FI or R-MCI, with 0-3 by HCT-CI. Only 1 patient was intermediate-Fit by both IMWG-FI and R-CMI, and was 5 by HCT-CI (Table 1). Based on our data, we propose a stratification system that can determine ASCT eligibility in elderly MM patients. The elderly patients regarded fit by IMWG-FI and R-MCI with 0-1 by HCT-CI could be stratified as Low Risk for elderly ASCT. In addition, the frail patients by IMWG-FI or R-MCI or >3 by HCT-CI could be stratified as High Risk ineligible for elderly ASCT. Other patients could be Intermediate-Risk for elderly ASCT. Further studies are needed to determine the adequate melphalan dosage such as 200 mg/m2 for 65-69 year-old patients, and 140 mg/m2 for 70- Conclusion We retrospectively analyzed the elderly patients receiving ASCT using two MM-specific frailty indices and HCT-CI. We propose a new stratification system to select elderly patients eligible for ASCT. ASCT issues for the elderly MM patients should be examined prospectively. Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

This paper reports a stable electrostatic comb-driven scanner detecting electrostatic capacitance between the comb-shaped electrodes of mirror and the detecting electrodes, and feeding it back to the drive signals applied to the driving electrodes.

This paper considers educational performance of economics graduate programs in East and Southeast Asia by examining the highest educational origins of the regional contributors in the top five journals between January 1995 and July 2005. Evidence proves that East and Southeast Asian graduates represent 13% of the contributors, have a 10% share of the regional aggregate AER-equivalent-length pages, and American doctors are dominant. Educational productivity of East and Southeast Asian economics graduate programs is thought to be equal, at best, to that of the middle-ranked ones in the United States top-50 schools.

We investigated the microstructure and mechanical properties of (Zr0:5Cu0:4Al0:1)100� xTax (x ¼ 0{12) bulk metallic glass composites containing dispersed Ta-rich dendrites prepared by copper mold casting. With increasing Ta content, the volume fraction of the dendrite particle increases, while other crystalline phases are precipitated in the Ta content range of over 9 at%. The compressive fracture strength and plastic strain of the composites significantly increase from 1890 MPa and 0.7%, respectively, for the x ¼ 0 alloy to 2180 MPa and 15.9%, respectively, for x ¼ 9 alloy, and then significantly decrease with further increasing Ta content. The improvement of plasticity is attributed to an increase in the density of shear bands before final fracture resulting from the increase of the fracture strength. [doi:10.2320/matertrans.47.2571]

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The optical micro scanner is used for various applications, but its scanning performance is affected by temperature. In this paper, we report the temperature dependence of the optical scan angle and the way to control it. It was found that the optical scan angle became small when the temperature rose. However, it was possible to make the optical scan angle constant by regulating the DC voltage that was applied between two comb-electrodes of the optical micro scanner.

Especially for open pit mining, one can not always develop every ore deposit distributed on the surface and so, one usually tries to excavate down to greater depth in order to get larger volume of the material from the deposit which is already begun to develop. Since slope stability decreases with increase of height of the rock slope, it is important to know how to excavate in order to stabilize the rock slope and how deep one can mine down.As the properties of the rocks of which the slope consists can not completely be determined from observation of a section of the slope because those are greatly different if the positions are different. It suggests that prediction of stabilility of rock slope is difficult in comparison with case of soil slope.However, recent rapid progress in higher performance and larger capacity of computer enables to deal with the problems which are complicated to some degree, that is, it is possible to do approximate prediction for a problem through numerical simulation by putting some assumed conditions into calculation and it is mostly effective measure.The authors carried out three dimensional elastic analysis by the boundary element system developed by them, in which soft layer is modeled as the joint elements, making an existent limestone quarry an object of study. They carried out numerical simulation of behavior of rock slope and showed the predicted results on the stability of the slope currently remained and on the stability decreases for the cases that rock slope becomes higher with progress of mining in future.

A new 8 kbps speech coding algorithm called TC-MQ (time domain compression ADPCM-MQ) is proposed. It is based on time scale modification and sub-band coding with the aid of ADPCM with a multiquantizer. For time scale modification, the decimation/interpolation technique is introduced for the unvoiced period. Furthermore, in order to get computational accuracy of the pitch extraction for the voiced period, a method using the normalized autocovariance function is proposed. The algorithm was confirmed by computer simulations. The segmental SNR was about 13-16 dB for Japanese short sentences. A good mean opinion score value was also obtained by means of a subjective evaluation test. >

Several encoders perform a local decoding of a speech signal and extract excitation information and vocal tract information from a speech signal for an encoding operation. The transmission rate ratio between the excitation information and the vocal tract information are different for each encoder. An evaluation/selection unit evaluates the quality of decoded signals subjected to a local decoding in each of the encoders, determines the most suitable encoders from among the several encoders based on the result of the evaluation, and selects the most suitable encoder, thereby outputting the selection result as selection information. The decoder decodes a speech signal based on selection information, vocal tract information and excitation information. The evaluation/selection unit selects the output from the encoder in which the quality of a locally decoded signal is the most preferable. When vocal tract information changes little, the vocal tract information is not output, thereby allowing for increased quality of information. As much of the surplus of unused vocal tract information as possible is assigned to a residual signal. Thus, the quality of a decoded speech signal is improved.

Disclosed is a voice coding/decoding system having a transmitting part for transmitting a coded signal of an input voice signal at a bit rate lower than a predetermined transmission bit rate and a receiving part for receiving and decoding the coded signal transmitted from the transmission part. To enable the coding and transmitting of an input voice signal in an optimum state without passing through a buffer memory and without having a negative influence on the coder, the transmitting part provides coders for coding the input voice signal and groups of entropy coders. The inputs of the entropy coders in each group are connected to the output of one of the plurality of coders. The transmitting part further provides an evaluation part for evaluating the characteristics of the outputs of the coders and the entropy coders. The evaluation part extracts those entropy coders having output bit rates lower than the transmission bit rate and extracts, from the coders connected to the extracted entropy coders, a coder having the best output characteristic. Then, the evaluation part outputs a selecting signal indicating the combination of the selected coder and an entropy coder from the extracted entropy coders. The transmitting part further provides a selecting part for selecting, in response to the selecting signal, the codeword passed through the combination of the coder and the entropy coder to be transmitted.

VOICE CODING APPARATUS ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE A voice coding apparatus includes a pitch detecting circuit which detects a pitch period of a voice signal; a pitch waveform generating circuit which samples the voice signal for a plurality of pitches based on the pitch period detected by the pitch detecting circuit and which generates a waveform of one pitch from the waveform of the plurality of pitches; a band restriction circuit which restricts the frequency band of the one pitch waveform generated in the pitch waveform generating circuit; and a coding circuit for coding the voice waveform which is band restricted in the band restriction circuit. The sampling number of the waveform for a plurality of pitches and the restricted bandwidth can be changed in accordance with the amount of the pitch period extracted in the pitch detecting circuit. Further, the pitch detecting circuit is able to correctly detect the pitch period even when the pitch period is not a multiple of the sampling period.

The authors discuss Ryodoraku electric acupuncture therapy in detail in Part I. The results of the treatment of migraine headache (20 cases) by Ryodoraku therapy were investigated in part II. In present study of 15 out of 20 patients achieved good to excellent responses to this type of therapy.