A simple and sensitive high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was developed to quantitate imatinib in human plasma. Imatinib and the internal standard dasatinib were separated using a ...mobile phase of 0.5% KH2PO4 (pH3.5)-acetonitrile-methanol (55:25:20, v/v/v) on a CAPCELL PAK C18 MG II column (250 mm × 4.6 mm) at a flow rate of 0.5 mL/min and measurement at UV 265 nm. Analysis required 100 µL of plasma and involved a solid phase extraction with an Oasis HLB cartridge, which gave recoveries of imatinib from 73% to 76%. The lower limit of quantification for imatinib was 10 ng/mL. The linear range of this assay was between 10 and 5000 ng/mL (regression line r
2 > 0.9992). Inter- and intra-day coefficients of variation were less than 11.9% and accuracies were within 8.3% over the linear range. The plasma concentrations of imatinib obtained by our present method were almost the same as those assayed by an LC-MS-MS method at the Toray Research Center, Inc. This method can be applied effectively to measure imatinib concentrations in clinical samples.
Japan National Centralized Tokamak (NCT) is a superconducting tokamak proposed as a modification to JT-60U. As part of the R&D for the National Centralized Tokamak, a two-turn, approximately 2m tall, ...D-shaped Nb3Al coil was wound and tested using a full-size cable-in-conduit conductor (CICC). The Nb3Al cable-in-conductor was bent following the heat treatment reaction with a maximum bending strain of 0.4% to simulate the react-and-wind fabrication.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Optical fibers are made of glass with different refractive indices in the (inner) core and the (outer) cladding regions. The difference in refractive indices arises due to a rapid transition in the ...concentration of a dopant across the boundary between these two regions. Fibers are normally drawn from a heated glass preform, and the different dopant concentrations in the two regions will change due to dopant diffusion and convective transport induced by the flow. In this paper, we analyze a mathematical model for the dynamics of dopant concentration changes during the fiber drawing process. Using a long-wave approximation, we show that the governing equations can be reduced to a simple diffusion equation. As a result, we are able to identify key dimension less parameters that contribute to the diffusion process. We also derive asymptotic solutions for the temperature, crosssectional area, and effective diffusion coefficient when there are strong temperature dependencies in the viscosity and the diffusion coefficient. Our simplified model and asymptotic solutions reduce the need for extensive numerical simulations and can be used to devise control strategies to limit excess dopant diffusion.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, CEKLJ, DOBA, INZLJ, IZUM, KILJ, NMLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
The effect of strain-driven alloying on sizes, shape and the photoluminescence (PL) properties of Ge(Si)/Si(001) self-assembled islands was investigated for temperatures of Ge deposition above 550
°C ...using atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray analysis, Raman spectroscopy. We found out that strain-driven Si diffusion into Ge/Si(001) self-assembled islands causes formation of an alloy in islands at these growth temperatures. An increase in the Ge content in the islands with a lower growth temperature results in a decrease of the pyramid-islands volume at which they transform to dome-islands. The energy of the optical transition in the free-standing islands was calculated using the observed values of the islands composition and elastic strain. The discrepancy between the calculated energy and the data observed from photoluminescence spectra is related to the changes of composition and height of the islands during Si overgrowth.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
In this study, the in vitro effects of amodiaquine (AQ) monotherapy on the egg output of paired adult Schistosoma mansoni worms and their survival during in vitro culture were assessed. In addition, ...the gross morphological alterations of male and female worms caused by AQ were visually observed under a dissecting microscope. AQ significantly reduced the daily egg output of paired adult S. mansoni worms following incubation for 14 days at 1-5 mu g/mL, but not at 0.5 mu g/mL, compared with the control group. AQ also reduced the survival of male and female worms at concentrations of 2 and 5 mu g/mL, respectively. Moreover, exposure to 5 mu g/mL AQ caused severe swelling and/or localisation of black content in the body of all male and female worms within one or two days of incubation; subsequently, shrinkage in the male worms and elongation in the female worms were observed. The initial morphological alterations caused by AQ occurred along the intestinal tract of the male and female worms. To our knowledge, this is the first study to report not only the efficacy of AQ at concentrations lower than 5 mu g/mL on paired adult S. mansoni worms, but also the effects of AQ on the intestinal tracts of worms in in vitro culture.
α-Synuclein is a major component of Lewy bodies in the brains of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) as well as of neuronal/glial inclusions in a subset of neurodegenerative disorders collectively ...termed synucleinopathies. Here we studied by immunohistochemistry the accumulation of α-synuclein in transgenic (TG)
Drosophila overexpressing wild-type (WT) or familial PD-linked mutant (i.e. A30P and A53T) α-synuclein in neurons, with special reference to the phosphorylation at Ser129, that is characteristic of human synucleinopathy lesions. Progressive accumulation of human α-synuclein was widely observed in the cell bodies and neurites of major neuronal nuclei in TG
Drosophila brains, and phosphorylation of α-synuclein at Ser129 was detected in a limited subset of neurons ∼1 week after α-synuclein immunoreactivity was first detected. Phosphorylated α-synuclein was most abundant in A53T mutant, followed by A30P and WT
Drosophila. These results suggest that accumulation and phosphorylation of α-synuclein is recapitulated in neurons of α-synuclein transgenic
Drosophila, that underscores the relevance of this model to human synucleinopatheis.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Samuel Johnson once praised The Anatomy of Melancholy as ‘the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise’.¹ By his own admission, Johnson had ‘inherited a vile ...melancholy’, but it seems that sheer delight much more than a desire for antiquated medical advice drove him in the early mornings to reach for Robert Burton’s three-part tome.² In our own time, admirers of the Anatomy have included writers like the American novelist William H. Gass, who dubbed the work ‘a great celebrational comedy’, and Jorge Luis Borges, who found in Burton both
We report here 7 new mutations in the ADAMTS13 gene responsible for Upshaw-Schulman syndrome (USS), a catastrophic phenotype of congenital thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, by analyzing 5 Japanese ...families. There were 3 mutations that occurred at exon-intron boundaries: 414+1G>A at intron 4, 686+1G>A at intron 6, and 1244+2T>G at intron 10 (numbered from the A of the initiation Met codon), and we confirmed that 2 of these mutations produced aberrantly spliced messenger RNAs (mRNAs). The remaining 4 mutations were missense mutations: R193W, I673F, C908Y, and R1123C. In expression experiments using HeLa cells, all mutants showed no or a marginal secretion of ADAMTS13. Taken together with the findings in our recent report we determined the responsible mutations in a total of 7 Japanese patients with USS with a uniform clinical picture of severe neonatal hyperbilirubinemia, and in their family members, based on ADAMTS13 gene analysis. Of these patients, 2 were homozygotes and 5 were compound heterozygotes. The parents of one homozygote were related (cousins), while those of the other were not. Molecular models of the metalloprotease, fifth domain of thrombospondin 1 (Tsp1-5), and Tsp1-8 domains of ADAMTS13 suggest that the missense mutations could cause structural defects in the mutants.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The movements of trace elements and the level of oxidative stress in the soleus, a typical slow red muscle which, atrophied by immobilization, were investigated in designated intervals. Male Wistar ...rats (14 wk old) whose one ankle joints were immobilized in the extended position were killed after 4, 8, and 12 days. Fe, Zn, Mn, and Cu concentrations and the levels of thiobarbituric acid-reactive substance (TBARS) and glutathione were measured. The rate of atrophy increased rapidly until the 8th day and slowly after that. In whole muscle, Fe concentration kept increasing, and Zn and Mn increased temporarily. Their subcellular distributions also changed; especially, the Fe level of the microsomal fraction kept increasing and reached threefold at 12 days. Increased TBARS and glutathione disulfide and decreased total glutathione indicated the increased oxidative stress in atrophy, which might result from an increased Fe level, especially that of the microsomal fraction. Vitamin E injection lessened the rate of atrophy, which showed that oxidative stress accelerated muscle atrophy. This might be mediated by increased intracellular Ca. Also metallothionein was induced in muscle atrophy.
PDF
