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Takanobu Okamoto,1 Ryota Kobayashi,1 Midori Natsume,2 Koichi Nakazato1 1Department of Exercise Physiology, Nippon Sport Science University, Tokyo, Japan; 2Food Sciences Research Laboratories, Meiji Co Ltd, Kanagawa, Japan Abstract: Arterial stiffness is substantially higher in postmenopausal than in premenopausal women. Daily cocoa intake has been shown to reduce central arterial stiffness in health adults, regardless of age; however, the effect of cocoa-intake frequency on arterial stiffness in postmenopausal women remains unclear. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of cocoa-intake frequency on arterial stiffness in postmenopausal women. A total of 26 postmenopausal women (mean age ± standard deviation 64±12 years) were randomly assigned to two groups with different cocoa-intake frequencies: one group ingested 17 g of cocoa once daily except on Sundays (every-day group, n=13), and the other ingested 17 g of cocoa twice daily every other day (every-other-day group, n=13). These intake regimens were maintained in both groups for 12 weeks. Carotid–femoral pulse-wave velocity and femoral–ankle pulse-wave velocity were measured in both groups at baseline and again at the end of the 12-week study period. Compared to baseline, both pulse-wave velocities had significantly decreased after the 12-week study period in both groups (P

Yoshiaki Tsuboko,1 Shinhiro Takeda,1,2 Seiji Mii,1 Keiko Nakazato,1 Keiji Tanaka,2 Eiji Uchida,3 Atsuhiro Sakamoto11Department of Anesthesiology, Nippon Medical School, 2Intensive Care Unit and Cardiac Care Unit, Nippon Medical School Hospital, 3Department of Surgery, Nippon Medical School, Tokyo, JapanBackground: The efficacy of sivelestat in the treatment of acute lung injury/acute respiratory distress syndrome (ALI/ARDS) has not been established. In part, this is due to the wide variety of factors involved in the etiology of ALI/ARDS. In this study, we examined the efficacy of sivelestat in patients with ALI/ARDS associated with abdominal sepsis.Methods: The subjects were 49 patients with ALI/ARDS after surgery for abdominal sepsis. The efficacy of sivelestat was retrospectively assessed in two treatment groups, ie, a sivelestat group (n = 34) and a non-sivelestat group (n = 15).Results: The sivelestat group showed significant improvements in oxygenation, thrombocytopenia, and multiple organ dysfunction score. The number of ventilator days (6.6 ± 6.1 versus 11.1 ± 8.4 days; P = 0.034) and length of stay in the intensive care unit (8.5 ± 6.2 versus 13.3 ± 9.5 days; P = 0.036) were significantly lower in the sivelestat group. The hospital mortality rate decreased by half in the sivelestat group, but was not significantly different between the two groups.Conclusion: Administration of sivelestat to patients with ALI/ARDS following surgery for abdominal sepsis resulted in early improvements of oxygenation and multiple organ dysfunction score, early ventilator weaning, and early discharge from the intensive care unit.Keywords: sivelestat, acute lung injury, acute respiratory distress syndrome, abdominal sepsis

We report the current status of our project to construct a new nuclear equation of state (EOS) with the variational method for core-collapse supernova (SN) simulations. Starting from the realistic nuclear Hamiltonian, the EOS for uniform nuclear matter is constructed with the cluster variational method: For non-uniform nuclear matter, the EOS is calculated with the Thomas-Fermi method. The obtained thermodynamic quantities of uniform matter are in good agreement with those with more sophisticated Fermi Hypernetted Chain variational calculations, and phase diagrams constructed so far are close to those of the Shen-EOS. The structure of neutron stars calculated with this EOS at zero temperature is consistent with recent observational data, and the maximum mass of the neutron star is slightly larger than that with the Shen-EOS. Using the present EOS of uniform nuclear matter, we also perform the 1D simulation of the core-collapse supernovae by a simplified prescription of adiabatic hydrodynamics. The stellar core with the present EOS is more compact than that with the Shen-EOS, and correspondingly, the explosion energy in this simulation with the present EOS is larger than that with the Shen-EOS.

Side-gated structures in a delta-doped layer facilitate the description of a single-electron memory cell. The employment of a semiclassical model is explains the characteristics of this device. The memory operates only at very low temperatures and can be made to operate at room temperatures by forming islands at a scale of less than 1 nanometer. Multiple-tunnel junction is the key component of a single-electron memory.

Electron transport in silicon nanopillars has been studied for pillars with zero, one, or two silicon nitride barrier layers of 2 nm thickness. Evidence of Coulomb blockade is presented and the role of the silicon nitride layers is discussed. Wide zero current regions are observed for some devices with two silicon nitride tunnel barriers and these are attributed to the formation of fully depleted quantum dots. © 2001 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]