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Background: In this study, we investigated the potential acceleration of fracture healing and the bone mineral density-increasing effects of the combination therapy of romosozumab and active vitamin D3 on fractures in ovariectomized rats.Methods: Ovariectomy was performed on forty 24-week-old female Sprague–Dawley rats. After 8 weeks, the rats underwent removal of the periosteum and osteotomy of the femoral shaft followed by osteosynthesis with intramedullary nailing to create fracture models. After surgery, the 40 rats were divided into four groups: the C group (control), the R group (romosozumab, 25 mg/kg, once a month via subcutaneous injection), the VD group (active vitamin D3, 0.2 µg/kg, twice a week via subcutaneous injection), and the R + VD group. A further 10 rats were prepared as the sham group. Ten weeks postintervention, both femurs were removed from all rats, and blood was collected. Soft X‑ray imaging was used to evaluate bone union, and microcomputed tomography (micro-CT) was used for bone morphometric evaluation. Toluidine blue staining of undecalcified specimens was used for histopathological evaluation, and bone turnover marker levels were measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.Results: Bone morphometry analysis by micro-CT revealed increased mineral density of the trabecular bone in rat femurs from the R + VD group, demonstrating the effectiveness of combination therapy with romosozumab plus active vitamin D3. However, no differences in bone union evaluated using soft X-ray imaging were observed, demonstrating no acceleration of fracture healing.Conclusions: Although combination therapy with romosozumab and active vitamin D3 increased the trabecular bone volume, there was no evidence that it could accelerate fracture healing.

Toward the aim of realizing high-bandwidth, large-capacity nand flash memory-based storage systems, this paper presents a novel daisy-chain downlink interface (I/F) between a controller and a large number of nand packages. The daisy-chain I/F employs a tapered-bandwidth architecture with bridge-by-bridge data extraction based on a proposed spectrally compressed multi-band multiplexing (SCM2) technique to achieve low power consumption. By using the proposed downlink I/F, a nand controller can handle 32 low-cost nand packages while achieving 12.8-Gb/s throughput using two data wires. The fabricated prototype downlink I/F achieved a bit error rate (BER) of 10−12 with power consumption of 252.1 mW for the transmitter and 375.7 mW for all four receivers together.

In this paper, measured high-frequency responses of differential transmission lines on FR-4 based printed circuit boards (PCBs) and their analyzed results are shown. In high-bandwidth and high-frequency communication systems, characterizing the components on PCBs becomes more and more important. Assuming transmission lines for 64-Gb/s PAM-4 signaling, the measurements are carried out up to 67 GHz using 150-μm pitch GSGSG differential probes. A via-stub effect, line-direction/location dependence on electrical characteristics of transmission lines, and relation between line dimensions and higher order mode that limits line bandwidth are analyzed based on measured results.

High-bandwidth (BW) and large-capacity storage systems with NAND Flash memory (hereinafter referred to as “NAND”) have been increasingly required for big data applications, such as the field of advanced biomedical science [1]. However, a conventional NAND interface (I/F), e.g., Toggle DDR, with multi-drop bus topology has a tradeoff between BW and capacity due to the large load capacitance of NAND packages (PKGs). Although increasing the number of parallelized lanes of Toggle DDR improves both BW and capacity, it costs a large number of pins/wires on a controller/PCB. In order to overcome these problems, a daisy-chained serial I/F has been proposed [2]. In the I/F, bridge chips mask large load capacitance of NAND PKGs seen from a controller’s transmitter (TX) so that a 12.8Gb/s downlink is realized. However, the multi-band multiplexing technique employed in [2] has a drawback in the difficulty in implementing an uplink because severe timing control is required for cumulatively multiplexing multiple bands (i.e., channels) in each bridge chip. In order to realize both a downlink and an uplink with lower power consumption, this paper presents a newly developed serial I/F with three key techniques: (1) PAM-4-based 4-channel (4-ch) multiplexing, (2) cascaded CDR circuits in (3) ring topology. The fabricated transceiver (TRX) for the proposed I/F achieves 3.69pJ/b with a BER lower than 10-15 at 25.Gb/s with PRBS31 through 1.84dB of channel loss at 6.4GHz. The proposed I/F can achieve a state-of-the-art FoM (defined as “# of packages × Data Rate / power consumption”) of 1.80PKG.Gb/s/mW.

This paper proposes a prototype downlink I/F employing a tapered-BW daisy-chained topology enabled by a proposed SCM2 technique to exploit the low throughput of NAND I/O, which allows a NAND controller to handle 32 NAND PKGs on a single I/F channel. The fabricated I/F achieved 12.8 Gb/s with BER of 10−12 while consuming 252.1 mW for a TX and 375.7 mW for four RXs. The FoM is 409.6 PKG·Gb/s.

Background Delay in fracture healing or non-union can be devastating complication. Recent studies have reported that teriparatide (TP) demonstrated effectively on callus formation and mechanical strength and zoledronate (ZA) increased the callus size and resistance at the fracture site in rat fracture model. In this study, the effects of combination therapy with low dose TP and ZA on fracture healing was evaluated. Methods From 1 week post-operation, TP (5 times a week administration) and ZA (0.1 mg/kg single administration) were administered by dividing the rats into the following five groups: TP 1 μg group {T(1): TP 1 μg/kg}, ZA group (ZA:0.1 mg/kg), TP1 μg+ZA group {T(1)+ZA: TP 1 μg/kg+ZA}, TP 10 μg+ZA group {T(10)+ZA: TP 10 μg/kg + ZA}, and control group (C: administered saline). Rt femurs were excised 7 weeks after the surgery; bone fusions were evaluated with soft X-ray images on a 4-point scale. And the histopathological examination was performed in demineralized and non-demineralized specimens. Furthermore, the Radiographic Union Scale was conducted in all specimens. Results About the bone fusions rates, C, T(1), ZA, T(1)+ZA, and T(10)+ZA groups demonstrated 20.0%, 55.6%, 70.0%, 70.0%, and 80.0%, respectively, and with 4-point scale, each group was 0.50, 1.56, 2.00, 2.60, and 2.80 points, respectively. The callus volume was significantly increased to 16.66 mm2 and 17.75 mm2 in the T(1)+ZA and T(10)+ZA groups, respectively, while 10.65 mm2 (p

This paper presents a fully integrated CMOS 60-GHz transceiver chipset for short-range and high-speed wireless communication. The target application of the short-range communication is less than 5-cm communication distance and more than 2-Gb/s throughput for file transfer. In order to achieve file transfer, physical (PHY) layers with error packet correction and media access control (MAC) layer with frame-exchanging function are implemented. The MAC is designed to have a high-efficiency feature due to short interval DATA/Acknowledgement (ACK) frame exchange. It is realized by fast transmitter (TX)/receiver (RX) switching. A bonding wire-based in-package antenna is adopted using a standard BGA package without any off-chip 60-GHz components. The proposed chipset is composed of two chips, an RF chip with in-package antenna, and a baseband chip including PHY and MAC layer. The fabricated chipset achieves 2.62-Gb/s PHY data rate, 2.07-Gb/s MAC throughput, and energy consumption of 651 pJ/bit in 3-cm distance.

The authors made an error in Fig. 19 in the above-named article [ibid., vol. 47, no. 12, pp. 3160–3171, Dec. 2012]. The figure is the same as Fig. 13 by mistake. The correct figure "Data rate/throughput measurement setup" is shown here. The authors apologize for any confusion.