Femtosecond laser pulses are employed to coherently control the LO phonon strength and lifetime of LO phonon-plasmon coupled modes in a highly doped p-GaAs. The change in lifetime might be due to ...Landau damping.
The case of a 20-year-old Japanese man, diagnosed as having autosomal recessive chronic granulomatous disease (CGD), who was being treated with corticosteroids for intractable unclassified colitis, ...is described. He died from multiple organ failure following disseminated intravascular coagulation secondary to disseminated varicella-zoster virus (VZV) infection. He was diagnosed as an index case of CGD when 2 years old, was inoculated against VZV at the age of 5 years and had had an unremarkable course for 19 years. He was admitted to hospital because of a third episode of recurrent bloody diarrhoea. Clinical remission for each episode was achieved by intravenous corticosteroid therapy. Unclassified colitis associated with CGD was diagnosed based on a colonic biopsy demonstrating characteristic macrophages with lipofuscin deposits. From a treatment viewpoint, idiopathic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) should be differentiated from secondary IBD occurring in CGD, in which immunosuppressive drugs including corticosteroids, still the mainstay of IBD treatment, should be avoided.
The effects of oestrogens on action potential and membrane currents were examined in single guinea‐pig atrial myocytes.
17β‐estradiol (3–10 μM) shortened the action potential duration without ...significant changes in the resting membrane potential. E‐4031 (1 μM) markedly prolonged the action potential duration and induced early afterdepolarization, and 17β‐estradiol (10 μM) abolished it.
When cells were perfused in isoproterenol‐containing solution, action potentials due to abnormal automaticity caused by membrane depolarization developed, and were also inhibited by 17β‐estradiol.
Under voltage clamp conditions, the voltage‐dependent Ca2+ currents consisted of both T‐(ICa.T) and L‐type (ICa.L). 17β‐estradiol reduced ICa.L concentration‐dependently, while it (10 μM) suppressed ICa.T only by approximately 10%. 17β‐estradiol did not affect time courses of ICa.L inactivation, but it shifted the steady‐state inactivation curve to more negative potentials.
17β‐estradiol (10 μM) did not affect the time‐dependent K+ current (IK), referred to as IKr and IKs, and inwardly rectifying K+ current. However, 17β‐estradiol (30 μM) or diethylstilbestrol (10 μM) inhibited K+ currents.
DES and ethinylestradiol (EES) also suppressed ICa.L, but testosterone and progesterone failed to inhibit ICa.L. The potency of the inhibitory effect on ICa.L was DES>EES>17β‐estradiol.
17β‐estradiol and DES also inhibited the cyclic AMP‐enhanced ICa.L, but cyclic GMP in the pipette or pretreatment of L‐NAME could not block the effects of oestrogen on ICa.L.
These results suggest that oestrogen specifically has antiarrhythmic effects, possibly by acting the L‐type Ca2+ channels. The antiarrhythmic effects of oestrogens may contribute to the cardioprotective actions of oestrogens.
British Journal of Pharmacology (1999) 127, 429–440; doi:10.1038/sj.bjp.0702576
Positron moderators made with stacks of electro-polished tungsten meshes have been tested. The wires of the meshes were thinned to about 10
μm in diameter by an electro-polishing treatment. The ...moderation efficiency was measured to be 7.5×10
−4 for 12 overlapping meshes.
We report a 15-month-old female infant who had recurrent tongue biting due to hypnic myoclonia. She began to bite her tongue and bleed when she was 9 months old. The tongue biting was accompanied by ...generalized myoclonus and was seen only during drowsiness. On admission at 15 months of age, she was observed by video-EEG monitoring. There were hypnic jerks with powerful closure of the mouth and severe screaming, but no accompanying evidence of epileptic discharges. The tongue biting with hypnic myoclonia disappeared spontaneously at 22 months of age, and was considered to be an age-dependent phenomenon related to the maturation of the brain and to the development of oral functions.
Ontogenic change patterns in otolith Sr:Ca ratios in the threespine stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus, collected from Japanese brackish waters and freshwater, were examined by wavelength dispersive ...X-ray spectrometry on an electron microprobe. Two-dimensional images of the Sr concentration in the otoliths showed a variety of patterns of Sr concentration relative to salinity of habitat in all specimens collected in Hokkaido Island. Otolith Sr:Ca ratios in line analysis of all specimens collected in Hokkaido Island fluctuated strongly during the life history transect in accordance with the migration (habitat) pattern from sea to freshwater, via brackish water. In contrast, the Sr concentration or the Sr:Ca ratios of the Otsuchi River stickleback remained at consistently low levels throughout the otolith (1·5×10−3 in the Sr:Ca ratios). The higher ratios (3·2–6·3×10−3) in sticklebacks collected in Hokkaido Island probably reflect the ambient salinity or the seawater–freshwater gradient in Sr concentration. The findings clearly indicated that otolith Sr:Ca ratios reflected individual life histories, and that the stickleback had a flexible migration strategy in the ambient water.
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