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Background Spontaneous regression (SR) of cancer occurs in 1 in 60,000–100,000 patients. This phenomenon has been reported in almost all cancer types, most commonly neuroblastoma, renal cell carcinoma, malignant melanoma, and lymphoma/leukemia. However, SR in colorectal cancer (CRC) is extremely rare, particularly in advanced cases. Hence, this report describes a very rare case of spontaneous regression of advanced transverse colon cancer. Case presentation A 76-year-old female with anemia was diagnosed with a type II well-differentiated adenocarcinoma in the middle transverse colon. Two months later, a second colonoscopy examination was performed for preoperative marking, and it revealed tumor shrinkage and a shift to type 0–IIc morphology. Endoscopic tattooing was then performed, followed by a laparoscopic partial resection of the transverse colon with D3 lymph node dissection. However, the resected specimen contained no tumor, and colonoscopy showed no tumor remnants in the remaining colon. Histopathological examination revealed mucosal regeneration and a mucus nodule in between the submucosal and muscular layers, with no cancer cells detected. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed the loss of MutL homolog 1 (MLH1) and postmeiotic segregation increased 2 (PMS2) expression in the cancer cells of biopsied specimens, suggesting deficient mismatch repair (dMMR). The patient continues to be followed up until 6 years postoperatively, and no recurrence has been observed. In this study, we also reviewed similar reported cases of spontaneous regression of cancer involving dMMR. Conclusion This study presents a rare case of spontaneous regression of advanced transverse colon cancer wherein dMMR is strongly involved. However, further accumulation of similar cases is needed to elucidate this phenomenon and to develop new treatment strategies for CRC.

Background Cisplatin-induced acute kidney injury (AKI) is common during preoperative chemotherapy for esophageal cancer. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between AKI after preoperative chemotherapy and postoperative complications in patients with esophageal cancer. Methods In this retrospective cohort study, we included patients who had received preoperative chemotherapy with cisplatin and underwent surgical resection for esophageal cancer under general anesthesia from January 2017 to February 2022 at an education hospital. A predictor was stage 2 or higher cisplatin-induced AKI (c-AKI) defined by the KDIGO criteria within 10 days after chemotherapy. Outcomes were postoperative complications and length of hospital stays. Associations between c-AKI and outcomes including postoperative complications and length of hospital stays were examined with logistic regression models. Results Among 101 subjects, 22 developed c-AKI with full recovery of the estimated glomerular filtration (eGFR) before surgery. Demographics were not significantly different between patients with and without c-AKI. Patients with c-AKI had significantly longer hospital stays than those without c-AKI [mean (95% confidence interval (95%CI)) 27.6 days (23.3–31.9) and 43.8 days (26.5–61.2), respectively, mean difference (95%CI) 16.2 days (4.4–28.1)]. Those with c-AKI had higher C-reactive protein (CRP) levels and prolonged weight gain after surgery and before the events of interest despite having comparable eGFR trajectories after surgery. c-AKI was significantly associated with anastomotic leakage and postoperative pneumonia [odds ratios (95%CI) 4.14 (1.30–13.18) and 3.87 (1.35–11.0), respectively]. Propensity score adjustment and inverse probability weighing yielded similar results. Mediation analysis showed that a higher incidence of anastomotic leakage in patients with c-AKI was primarily mediated by CRP levels (mediation percentage 48%). Conclusion c-AKI after preoperative chemotherapy in esophageal cancer patients was significantly associated with the development of postoperative complications and led to a resultant longer hospital stay. Increased vascular permeability and tissue edema due to prolonged inflammation might explain the mechanisms for the higher incidence of postoperative complications.

Few studies have investigated or verified the pressure resistance of anastomosis with circular staplers. We conducted end-to-end anastomoses with circular staplers and compared the pressure resistance with or without bioabsorbable material (Neoveil NanoⓇ). We conducted end-to-end anastomosis with or without Neoveil NanoⓇ (NN). Fresh pig small intestines were used. An end-to-end anastomosis was performed between two intestinal specimens using a circular stapler. The burst pressure of the anastomosis was recorded. The group with the highest pressure resistance was the group in which NN was attached only to the anvil, which was higher than the group in which NN was attached to the shaft and anvil. In contrast, no increase in pressure resistance occurred in the group using NN only for the shaft. Clinically, this method was used for various anastomoses using a circular stapler. In the absence of NN, a portion of the staple was often exposed at the anastomosis. When NN was used, however, only a small amount of the staple was exposed. There were no complications that were associated with NN. The usefulness of NN for pressure resistance of anastomosis with a circular stapler was demonstrated. The pressure resistance was highest by attaching NN only to the anvil of the stapler. Use of a circular stapler significantly reduces the complication associated with an anastomosis.

Background In gastrectomies, especially subtotal gastrectomies and operations on the gastroesophageal junction, identifying the exact location of the tumor and establishing the appropriate resection line is very important. Accurate resection lines have a major impact on the preservation of organ function and curability. Preservation of as much as possible of the remaining stomach, including the fornix, may be an important surgical goal for maintaining an adequate postoperative quality of life. In adenocarcinoma of the gastroesophageal junction, the height of the esophageal dissection may affect reconstruction of the transhiatal approach. Methods We perform a new technique, near infrared ray-guided surgery, for the accurate localization of a tumor using the Firefly technology of the daVinci Xi system and intra-operative upper gastrointestinal endoscopy. We used this new technique for cases of upper gastric cancer or adenocarcinoma of the gastroesophageal junction. In this retrospective study, we examined to determine the extent (mm) of the tumor invasion of the esophagus, visualization of near infrared ray contained within endoscopic light, and distance from the proximal margin of the tumor to the surgical cut line on rapid histopathology and in the permanent preparation, including the operative videos and extracted specimens. Results We performed near infrared ray-guided surgery for 12 patients with gastric cancer or adenocarcinoma of the gastroesophageal junction, and the near infrared ray was clearly seen as green light with Firefly mode in all the patients. Near infrared ray-guided surgery was useful for obtaining localization of the tumor. In addition, it was possible to resect organ with adequate margins from tumor. Rapid intraoperative histopathological examinations confirmed that the resected specimens had negative margins. None of the patients required additional resection. Conclusions We believe that because near infrared ray-guided surgery can provide an accurate resection line, it will be useful for the resection of upper gastric cancer and adenocarcinoma of the gastroesophageal junction. It will also provide patients with a good postoperative quality of life after surgery.

We address a problem of efficiently estimating the influence of a node in information diffusion over a social network. Since the information diffusion is a stochastic process, the influence degree of a node is quantified by the expectation, which is usually obtained by very time-consuming many runs of simulation. Our contribution is that we proposed a framework for predictive simulation based on the leave-N-out cross-validation technique that well approximates the error from the unknown ground truth for two target problems: one to estimate the influence degree of each node, and the other to identify top-K influential nodes. The method we proposed for the first problem estimates the approximation error of the influence degree of each node, and the method for the second problem estimates the precision of the derived top-K nodes, both without knowing the true influence degree. We experimentally evaluate the proposed methods using the three real-world networks and show that they can serve as a good measure to solve the target problems with far fewer runs of simulation ensuring the accuracy when the leave-half-out cross-validation, i.e., N is the half of the number of runs, is used, which means that one can identify the influential nodes without knowing exactly their influence degree in good accuracy.

We propose a general framework of opening and closing shops in group competitive environment, i.e., shops in the same group work cooperatively and those in different groups competitively, based on stochastic utility which is given by a function of shop distance and attractiveness with an explicit traveling time-bound imposed. The framework allows to derive a specific prediction model by choosing a specific function form of utility, including the one we propose, its variants and the conventional state-of-the-art gravity model which we chose as a reference. We compute a marginal gain of the market share which is derived from the utility function and the consumers buying power as a measure to rank the candidate location. Using the real dataset of three convenience store groups in four cities in Japan, we analyzed how the derived models behave with respect to the time-bound and the other parameters and how each model compare with others. We confirm that, despite the simplification we made in the model, inferred rankings of the shops newly opened in the real data are shown to be high implying that our prediction model and other variants are reasonable. We show that our model gives much more realistic results than the gravity model, which indicates that our group competitive mechanism with the time-bounded stochastic utility is vital and promising. Inclusion of the time-bound constraint is crucially important. Analyses of the dynamics of opening and closing shops indicate that competition indeed affects the market share of each group over time, and the total share eventually increases although small, and the difference of the share within each group gradually becomes smaller, revealing that the spatial distribution of the shops in each group becomes more uniform.

Adaptive thermogenesis is essential for survival, and therefore is tightly regulated by a central neural circuit. Here, we show that microRNA (miR)-33 in the brain is indispensable for adaptive thermogenesis. Cold stress increases miR-33 levels in the hypothalamus and miR-33−/− mice are unable to maintain body temperature in cold environments due to reduced sympathetic nerve activity and impaired brown adipose tissue (BAT) thermogenesis. Analysis of miR-33f/f dopamine-β-hydroxylase (DBH)-Cre mice indicates the importance of miR-33 in Dbh-positive cells. Mechanistically, miR-33 deficiency upregulates gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)A receptor subunit genes such as Gabrb2 and Gabra4. Knock-down of these genes in Dbh-positive neurons rescues the impaired cold-induced thermogenesis in miR-33f/f DBH-Cre mice. Conversely, increased gene dosage of miR-33 in mice enhances thermogenesis. Thus, miR-33 in the brain contributes to maintenance of BAT thermogenesis and whole-body metabolism via enhanced sympathetic nerve tone through suppressing GABAergic inhibitory neurotransmission. This miR-33-mediated neural mechanism may serve as a physiological adaptive defense mechanism for several stresses including cold stress., 褐色脂肪細胞の燃焼を促す新たなメカニズムを解明 --体の熱産生にマイクロRNA-33が関与--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2021-02-17.

Chitinases are generally composed of multiple domains; a catalytic domain and one or more additional domains that are not absolutely required but may modify the chitinolytic activity. The LinChi78 chitinase from Listeria innocua has a catalytic domain (CatD), a fibronectin type III-like (FnIII) domain, a chitin-binding domain (ChBD), and an unknown-function region (UFR) located between the CatD and FnIII domains. The UFR is 146 amino acid residues in length and does not have a homologous domain in the Conserved Domain Database. We performed a functional analysis of these domains and the UFR using several C-terminally and internally deleted mutants of LinChi78. Hydrolysis of an artificial substrate was almost unaffected by deletion of the ChBD and/or the FnIII domain, although the ChBD-deleted enzymes were approximately 30% less active toward colloidal chitin than LinChi78. On the other hand, deletion of the UFR led to an extensive loss of chitinase activity toward an artificial substrate as well as polymeric substrates. Upon further analysis, we found that the GKQTI stretch, between the 567th (G) and 571th (I) amino acid residues, in the UFR is critical for LinChi78 activity and demonstrated that Gln569 and Ile571 play central roles in eliciting this activity. Taken together, these results indicated that LinChi78 has a unique catalytic region composed of a typical CatD and an additional region that is essential for activity. Characterization of the unique catalytic region of LinChi78 will improve our understanding of GH18 chitinases.

The vulnerability of the crotch on a side-to-side anastomosis to leak has been widely recognized. However, countermeasures to prevent leaks from the crotch have not proven to be sufficient. A side-to-side anastomosis was performed between two intestinal specimens using a linear stapler. We analyzed the burst pressures of anastomoses. Comparison was made in five groups, with different staple heights, presence of Neoveil® (Gunze, Japan), with or without crotch buttressed with nylon. Using an endoscope inserted into the intestinal lumen, we observed the burst process. We observed a significant difference in the resistance of the crotch to leak between the two types of reinforcement. In all experimental groups, the leak was observed not only on the serosal surface but also from within the lumen. Neoveil® significantly increased the burst pressure (41.4 ± 3.6 vs. 88.8 ± 14.6 mm Hg; p

We address the problem of efficiently detecting critical links in a large network. Critical links are such links that their deletion exerts substantial effects on the network performance such as the average node reachability. We tackle this problem by proposing a new method which consists of three acceleration techniques: redundant-link skipping (RLS), marginal-node pruning (MNP) and burn-out following (BOF). All of them are designed to avoid unnecessary computation and work both in combination and in isolation. We tested the effectiveness of the proposed method using two real-world large networks and two synthetic large networks. In particular, we showed that the proposed method can estimate the performance degradation by link removal without introducing any approximation within a computation time comparable to that needed by the bottom-k sketch which is a summary of dataset and can efficiently process approximate queries, i.e., reachable nodes, on the original dataset, i.e., the given network. Further, we confirmed that the measures easily composed by the well known existing centralities, e.g. in/out-degree, betweenness, PageRank, authority/hub, are not able to detect critical links. Links detected by these measures do not reduce the average reachability at all, i.e., not critical at all.

Reverse osmosis (RO) membranes are becoming popular as energy saving and environmentally friendly materials for the desalination of water. Toward the rational design of RO membranes, we performed contrast-variation neutron scattering measurements and atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) simulations on polyamide/water systems with various water contents and deuteration ratios. The experimental and computational structure factors showed good agreement for all the systems examined. The structure of the water-rich polyamide/water system obtained from MD calculation showed that the water clusters are well connected to each other, and a relatively large number of water molecules are present at a distance over 3 A from the polyamide. The partial radial distribution functions were calculated, and strong interactions were observed between water and the carboxyl group in polyamide. Thus, the water permeability of the RO membrane can be expected to improve when more carboxyl groups are introduced. In addition, the polyamide–polyamide interaction was found to be equal to or smaller than the polyamide–water interactions and relatively weak in the water-rich system. Reverse osmosis membranes have been playing a main role for the desalination of water in the world. Hydration structure of polyamide functional layer of the membrane was studied via neutron scattering and atomistic molecular dynamics simulations. Experimental and computational structure factors, S(Q), of the polyamide/water system showed good agreement. Water clusters in water-rich system were well connected to each other and formed channel-like structure. Polyamide–water interactions and polyamide-polyamide interactions, which are thought to be important to enhance the performance of the membranes, were examined in detail.

Side-to-side anastomoses are more frequently performed. This method is relatively simple, timesaving, and can be applied in a variety of settings where anastomoses are necessary. Despite some advances, stapled anastomoses have inherent weak points. With any type of side-to-side anastomosis, the crotch is formed at the tip portion of the stapler; this crotch area is the weak point. We describe a novel surgical technique for side-to-side anastomosis using a reinforced crotch. After distal gastrectomy, a small incision was made on the greater curvature of the remnant stomach and the posterior side of the duodenum. We use a 60-mm linear stapler, namely, the Endo GIATM Reinforce Reload (Covidien Japan). Therefore, the stapler length inserted into the stomach and duodenum is 45 mm. The reinforce reloads have a preloaded reinforcement material on the both anvil and cartridge. One or two supporting sutures were added to the center of the common enterotomy. Pulling up on the two pieces of Neoveil® and the sutures, the common enterotomy was closed with a linear stapler. Delta-shaped anastomosis is then accomplished. We also use a reinforced reload in a side-to-side anastomosis between two segments of jejunum. Neoveil® is thin and soft; we found no problem using either a hand thrown suture or stapler to close the entry hole. In fact, we found that the excess Neoveil® is very useful. Neoveil® can be a substitute for the sutures. Only one or two hand thrown sutures were then necessary to close the common enterotomy. And we do not add the reinforce suture of the crotch at all. This novel method is a simple and useful method and can be used in side-to-side anastomoses in a variety of settings.

Patients with unresectable esophageal cancer suffer from dysphagia, causing severe malnutrition and reduced quality of life (QOL). We elect to perform bypass because patients can have greater long-term survival with chemoradiation following this operation. We sought to compare complications in cases of bypass without thoracotomy versus those with thoracotomy. Thirty-four locally advanced esophageal cancer patients between 2007 and 2014 were studied. Eighteen patients underwent thoracotomy, and 16 patients did not have a thoracotomy. CT was obtained to check the anastomosis and the oral stump of the esophagus and to measure the diameter of the intrathoracic esophagus. In the thoracotomy group, the rate of postoperative pulmonary complications was high. On the other hand, in the non-thoracotomy group, the rates of anastomotic leak and recurrent nerve paralysis were high. The stump of the esophagus was 2 cm lower in the T group than in the nT group. As the esophagus shortens after division, the final difference in esophageal height between the groups was only around 1 cm. We concluded that a viable gastric tube with a good blood supply as well as a careful cervical operation are the most important aspects of the esophageal bypass operation.

We address the problem of efficiently estimating the influence degree for all the nodes simultaneously in the network under the SIR setting. The proposed approach is a further improvement over the existing work of the bond percolation process which was demonstrated to be very effective, i.e., three orders of magnitude faster than direct Monte Carlo simulation, in approximately solving the influence maximization problem. We introduce two pruning techniques which improve computational efficiency by an order of magnitude. This approach is generic and can be instantiated to any specific diffusion model. It does not require any approximations or assumptions to the model that were needed in the existing approaches. We demonstrate its effectiveness by extensive experiments on two large real social networks. Main finding includes that different network structures have different epidemic thresholds and the node influence can identify influential nodes that the existing centrality measures cannot. We analyze how the performance changes when the network structure is systematically changed using synthetically generated networks and identify important factors that affect the performance.

We propose a method of detecting the period in which a burst of information diffusion took place from an observed diffusion sequence data over a social network and report the results obtained by applying it to the real Twitter data. We assume a generic information diffusion model in which time delay associated with the diffusion follows the exponential distribution and the burst is directly reflected to the changes in the time delay parameter of the distribution. The shape of the parameter's change is approximated by a step function and the problem of detecting the change points and finding the values of the parameter is formulated as an optimization problem of maximizing the likelihood of generating the observed diffusion sequence. Time complexity of the search is almost proportional to the number of observed data points and has been shown to be very efficient. We first demonstrated that the proposed method can detect the burst using a synthetic data and showed that it performs better than one of the representative state-of-the-art methods, confirming that the proposed method covers a wider range of change patterns. Then, we extended our evaluation on synthetic data to show that it is efficient and effective comparing it with a naive exhaustive search and a simple greedy method. We then apply the method to the real Twitter data of the 2011 To-hoku earthquake and tsunami, and reconfirmed its efficiency and effectiveness. Two interesting discoveries are that a burst period detected by the proposed method tends to contain massive homogeneous tweets on a specific topic even if the observed diffusion sequence consists of heterogeneous tweets on various topics, and that assuming the information diffusion path to be a line shape tree can give a good approximation of the maximum likelihood estimator when the actual diffusion path is not known.

We address the problem of detecting anti-majority opinionists using the value-weighted mixture voter (VwMV) model. This problem is motivated by the fact that 1) each opinion has its own value and an opinion with a higher value propagates more easily/rapidly and 2) there are always people who have a tendency to disagree with any opinion expressed by the majority. We extend the basic voter model to include these two factors with the value of each opinion and the anti-majoritarian tendency of each node as new parameters, and learn these parameters from a sequence of observed opinion data over a social network. We experimentally show that it is possible to learn the opinion values correctly using a short observed opinion propagation data and to predict the opinion share in the near future correctly even in the presence of anti-majoritarians, and also show that it is possible to learn the anti-majoritarian tendency of each node if longer observation data is available. Indeed, the learned model can predict the future opinion share much more accurately than a simple polynomial extrapolation can do. Ignoring these two factors substantially degrade the performance of share prediction. We also show theoretically that, in a situation where the local opinion share can be approximated by the average opinion share, 1) when there are no anti-majoritarians, the opinion with the highest value eventually takes over, but 2) when there are a certain fraction of anti-majoritarians, it is not necessarily the case that the opinion with the highest value prevails and wins, and further, 3) in both cases, when the opinion values are uniform, the opinion share prediction problem becomes ill-defined and any opinion can win. The simulation results support that this holds for typical real world social networks. These theoretical results help understand the long term behavior of opinion propagation.

We address the problem of discovering the influential nodes in a social network under the susceptible/infected/susceptible model that allows multiple activation of the same node, by defining two influence maximization problems: final-time and integral-time. We solve this problem by constructing a layered graph from the original network with each layer added on top as the time proceeds and applying the bond percolation with two effective control strategies: pruning and burnout. We experimentally demonstrate that the proposed method gives much better solutions than the conventional methods that are based solely on the notion of centrality using two real-world networks. The pruning is most effective when searching for a single influential node, but burnout is more powerful in searching for multiple nodes which together are influential. We further show that the computational complexity is much smaller than the naive probabilistic simulation both by theory and experiment. The influential nodes discovered are substantially different from those identified by the centrality measures. We further note that the solutions of the two optimization problems are also substantially different, indicating the importance of distinguishing these two problem characteristics and using the right objective function that best suits the task in hand.

We address the combinatorial optimization problem of finding the most influential nodes on a large-scale social network for two widely-used fundamental stochastic diffusion models. The past study showed that a greedy strategy can give a good approximate solution to the problem. However, a conventional greedy method faces a computational problem. We propose a method of efficiently finding a good approximate solution to the problem under the greedy algorithm on the basis of bond percolation and graph theory, and compare the proposed method with the conventional method in terms of computational complexity in order to theoretically evaluate its effectiveness. The results show that the proposed method is expected to achieve a great reduction in computational cost. We further experimentally demonstrate that the proposed method is much more efficient than the conventional method using large-scale real-world networks including blog networks.

Background The prognosis of esophageal cancer patients is poor. Cisplatin (CDDP) is most often used for advanced esophageal cancer; however, the emergence of drug resistance has prevented successful treatment in many cases.

To develop novel therapeutic and diagnostic methods for esophageal cancer, it is important to understand the precise biological mechanism. Micro-RNAs (miRNAs) seem to be crucial factors in diverse regulation pathways. In this study, we analyzed the expression of mature miRNAs in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). The expression of 73 miRNAs was quantified by qRT-PCR in 30 primary ESCC specimens. We examined the correlation between miRNA expressions and the clinicopathological factors and prognosis of ESCC. The Kaplan-Meier survival curves showed that the high expression levels of 6 of the 72 miRNAs correlated with significantly lower patient survival rates. The overexpression of miR-129 was identified as a significant and independent prognostic factor (P = 0.031) in surgically treated ESCC patients. The hazard ratio for the prediction of early death was 18.11 for high versus low expression levels of miR-129. Similar results were obtained from an analysis performed on an additional 19 patients (test cohort) (P = 0.0057, for training cohort; P = 0.011, for test cohort; log-rank test). This experiment supports the notion that the high miR-129 expression levels, as observed in this study, might play a important role in the development of esophageal cancer.

The measurement of soft X-ray spectra, Ti Kα1,2, Lα1,2 and O Kα, of Ti in several titanium oxide compounds was carried out by FE-WD-EPMA (wavelength dispersive – electron probe micro-analyzer with field emission type electron gun) and HRXRF (high-resolution X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy). From the results of measurements, it was found that the valence state of Ti in FeTiO3 (ilmenite) was at least partially TiIII, might be the mixed state of TiIV and TiIII. And, Ti in MgTiO3 (ilmenite system) was confirmed as TiIV. From the discussion, it can be presumed that the effective charge of the oxygen should be not-uniform and should be different subtlety by the cationic difference, Fe or Mg, even if it had equal crystal structure of the ilmenite system, and that this subtlety difference gave any effects on the valence state of Ti.

We have obtained a partial cDNA and three BAC clones for the porcine insulin-like growth factor binding protein 1 gene (IGFBP-1). Results of fluorescence in situ and radiation hybrid (RH) mapping assigned this gene to porcine chromosome (SSC) 18q24-qter. We found two types of polymerase chain reaction-restriction-fragment-length polymorphisms (PCR-RFLP) in intron 2 by using FokI and AluI.

An extremely rare case of metachronous primary hyperparathyroidism (PHP) due to a parathyroid adenoma and subsequent carcinoma with local lymphatic spread is presented herein. A 55-year-old woman was operated on for a parathyroid adenoma in the right inferior gland. Thirteen years after the first operation, she was again hospitalized for hypercalcemia and the presence of a hard mass in the right anterior neck region. Exploratory surgery and a histological examination of the resected tumor provided evidence of a parathyroid neoplasm in the right superior gland but the malignancy was equivocal. Postoperatively, her serum parathyroid hormone (PTH) level remained at 1.5-fold the upper limit of the normal range, and hypercalcemia again gradually developed. The results of higher positive rates by Ki-67 immunohistochemical staining and an aneuploid pattern by a flow cytometric analysis of the second neoplasm were consistent with a histological diagnosis of carcinoma, and she therefore underwent further surgery. A radical neck dissection revealed two lymph node metastases which were both successfully removed. The postoperative serum PTH and calcium levels then returned to within the normal ranges. These findings indicate the usefulness of Ki-67 immunohistochemical staining and a flow cytometric analysis for differentiating malignant lesions from benign parathyroid lesions, and the importance of surgically treating cases limited to local regions without distant metastasis.

A segment of the transverse colon can be used for gastric reconstruction after a total gastrectomy. This report presents the case of a 68-year-old woman with primary adenocarcinoma of the colon in a segment used for reconstruction after a total gastrectomy. The interposed colon developed colon carcinoma 9 years after the gastric reconstruction. The possibility of a primary carcinoma arising in a gastric colon interposition must be considered when employing the transverse colon as a gastric substitute.

Background The diagnosis of lymph node metastasis in esophageal cancer by the presence and number of metastatic lymph nodes is an extremely important prognostic factor. In addition, the indication of non-surgical therapy is gaining more attention. Vascular endothelial growth factor C (VEGF-C) is potentially lymphangiogenic and selectively induces hyperplasia of the lymphatic vasculature. In this study, we investigated the expression of VEGF-C and whether it correlated with various clinico-pathologic findings. Methods KYSE series of esophageal cancer cell lines and 106 patients with primary esophageal squamous cell carcinomas who had undergone radical esophagectomy were analyzed. VEGF-C mRNA expression was determined by quantitative RT-PCR. Results High expression of VEGF-C was detected in most of the KYSE cell lines, especially KYSE410, yet, in an esophageal normal epithelium cell line, Het-1A, VEGF-C was not detected. In the clinical specimen, the expression of VEGF-C in the cancerous tissue was higher than in the corresponding noncancerous esophageal mucosa (p = 0.026). The expression of VEGF-C was found to be higher in Stage2B-4A tumors than in Stage0-2A tumors (p = 0.049). When the patients were divided into two groups according to their expression levels of VEGF-C (a group of 53 cases with high expression and a group of 53 cases with low expression), the patients with high VEGF-C expression had significantly shorter survival after surgery than the patients with low expression (p = 0.0065). Although univariate analysis showed that high expression of VEGF-C was a statistically significant prognostic factor, this was not shown in multivariate analysis. In the subgroup of patients with Tis and T1 tumors, the expression of VEGF-C was higher in N1 tumors than in N0 tumors (p = 0.029). The survival rate of patients from the high expression group (n = 10) was lower than that in the low expression group (n = 11), and all the patients in the low VEGF-C expression group survived. Conclusions The expression of VEGF-C correlates with lymph node metastasis and poor prognosis. In patients with Tis and T1 esophageal tumors, the expression of VEGF-C may be a good diagnostic factor for determining metastasis of the lymph node.

Solution properties of water-soluble synthetic polymer, 3,3-ionene and 6,6-ionene chloride and bromide disolved in water-acetone mixtures up to acetone content 50 wt% were investigated. Their partial molar volumes V2o and partial molar adiabatic compressibilities Kso were determined. Ionic additivity of V2o with respect to the cation of backbone polymer chain and the counter-anion was confirmed quantitatively. The ionic additivity of V2o is discussed along with the Kso in their relation to the counterion binding of ionene polymers. Effects of ionic sites on the ionene are strong but they don't break the solvation layer.

Integration of 21/2D sketches obtained at different observation stations into a consistent world (or object) representation is one of the central issues in computer vision and robotics. The resolution and accuracy of 21/2D sketches may be different from one view point to another, and inconsistent data between different observations may occur. This article presents an approach to building a spatiotemporal representation of dynamic scenes including moving objects from a sequence of range images taken by a moving observer. A range image is transformed into a height-map representation, which is segmented into the ground plane and objects on it. In order to capture the resolution and accuracy of the range information and the consistency of the height information between different height maps, we define a reliability measure of the height information for each bucket on the height map. Using this reliability, the system finds the correspondences of both static and moving objects between different observations, and successively refines the height information and its reliability with newly acquired data, dealing with inconsistent data. Final representation of the integrated height map consists of the time stamp of the last observation, region labels of static and moving objects and their spatiotemporal properties such as height information, its reliability, and the velocities of both the observer and independently moving objects. We applied the method to road scenes physically simulated by landscape toy models and show the experimental results.

The STM system constructed for tunnelling spectroscopy was used to observe graphite and organic molecule 7CB. An image with periodic structure of 20 A spacing, corresponding to the length of 7CB molecule, was observed. By contrast enhancement the structure corresponding to biphenyl and alkyl groups of 7CB molecule could be distinguished. At different measuring condition, the underlying graphite surface instead of 7CB was observed