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Aim The oral health status of elderly adults has implications for general health problems. Polypharmacy for elderly adults is associated with an increased risk of potentially inappropriate medicines and many adverse drug events; however, no report has shown that polypharmacy itself is associated with complex oral problems. This study aimed to determine the association between polypharmacy and oral health status in patients admitted to the recovery and rehabilitation ward. Methods This cross-sectional study included 471 patients (age: 81.9 ± 7.7 years, women: n = 346). Oral health status was measured using the Oral Health Assessment Tool and poor oral health status was defined as a score of ≥3. Cases of patients taking six or more medications were defined as polypharmacy. Logistic regression analysis was performed to examine the relationship between polypharmacy and oral health status. Age, sex, body mass index, number of comorbidities, cognitive and motor functions, and potentially inappropriate medicines were set as confounding factors. Results Using the Oral Health Assessment Tool, 51.0% (n = 240) of patients scored ≥3. The prevalence of patients with polypharmacy was 56.9% (n = 268). Polypharmacy was significantly associated with poor oral health status (odds ratio = 1.65, 95% confidence interval = 1.14-2.39, P = 0.007; adjusted odds ratio = 1.65, 95% confidence interval = 1.12-2.43, P = 0.011). Conclusions This study showed that polypharmacy was associated with poor oral health status. Focusing on the number of medications may be helpful in detecting oral problems. Geriatr Gerontol Int 2021; 21: 66-70.

A distributed system consisting of a huge number of computational entities is prone to faults, because faults in a few nodes cause the entire system to fail. Consequently, fault tolerance of distributed systems is a critical issue. Checkpoint-rollback recovery is a universal and representative technique for fault tolerance; it periodically records the entire system state (configuration) to non-volatile storage, and the system restores itself using the recorded configuration when the system fails. To record a configuration of a distributed system, a specific algorithm known as a snapshot algorithm is required. However, many snapshot algorithms require coordination among all nodes in the system; thus, frequent executions of snapshot algorithms require unacceptable communication cost, especially if the systems are large. As a sophisticated snapshot algorithm, a partial snapshot algorithm has been introduced that takes a partial snapshot (instead of a global snapshot). However, if two or more partial snapshot algorithms are concurrently executed, and their snapshot domains overlap, they should coordinate, so that the partial snapshots (taken by the algorithms) are consistent. In this paper, we propose a new efficient partial snapshot algorithm with the aim of reducing communication for the coordination. In a simulation, we show that the proposed algorithm drastically outperforms the existing partial snapshot algorithm, in terms of message and time complexity.

A conflict between accommodation and vergence is one possible cause of visual fatigue and discomfort while viewing conventional three-dimensional displays. Previous studies have proposed the super multi-view (SMV) display technique to solve the vergence–accommodation conflict, in which two or more parallax images enter the pupil of the eye with highly directional rays. We simultaneously measured accommodative, vergence, and pupillary responses to SMV three-dimensional displays to examine whether they can reduce the conflict. For comparison, responses to two-view stereo images and real objects were also measured. The results show that the range of the accommodative response was increased by the SMV images compared with the two-view images. The slope of the accommodation–vergence response function for the SMV images was similar to that for the real objects rather than the two-view images. We also found that enhancement of the accommodative range by the SMV images is noticeable with binocular viewing, indicating that vergence-induced accommodation plays an important role in viewing SMV displays. These results suggest that SMV displays induced a more natural accommodative response than did conventional, two-view stereo displays. As a result, SMV displays reduced the vergence–accommodation conflict.

High temperatures during rice grain ripening reduced yield and grain quality. The proportion of milky white grains was 43.6 % at 30 °C but only 6.5 % at 25 °C. Grain filling was initially faster at 30 °C and finished earlier, and the final dry matter content was less, than at 25 °C. High temperature strongly suppressed the expression of the sucrose transporter gene OsSUT1 and starch synthesis-related genes SuSy2, AGPS2b, BEIIb and Granule-bound starch synthase in grains during early grain filling; the transcription levels of OsSUT1 at 14 days after flowering (DAF) were about 60 % lower in grains, flag leaf blade, flag leaf sheath and first leaf sheath. These facts are possibly involved in the earlier termination of grain filling at 21 DAF, following the rapid rise of grain dry weight from 0 to 7 DAF, due to possible reduction in assimilate supply via OsSUT1 under the high temperature. When panicles were partly clipped, the resultant increase in assimilate supply to the remaining grains significantly upregulated the expression of OsSUT1 and the starch synthesis-related genes at 14 DAF, which consequently accelerated starch accumulation in the grains and ultimately increased the grain weight of remaining grains at 30 °C. These results indicate that high temperature during grain filling reduces grain yield and quality by changing the expression of OsSUT1 and starch synthase-related genes, resulting in earlier ripening due to hastened or premature assimilate supply to grains.

There are urgent needs to develop methods for early detection of nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC) because of its increasing incidence and poor prognosis. Here, we analyzed the production of IgG antibody (WT1 Ab) against WT1 (Wilms' tumor gene) protein that was overexpressed in the majority of NSCLC. Enzyme-linked immuno-sorbent assay showed that WT1 Ab was produced in all of 91 NSCLC patients and 70 healthy individuals and that WT1 Ab titers were significantly higher in NSCLC patients compared with healthy individuals. When the cut-off level of WT1 Ab titers were fixed at mean + 3SD of those in healthy individuals, 26.4% of NSCLC patients had WT1 Ab titers over the cut-off level, and positive rates of WT1 Ab at each clinical stage were 25.0, 30.8 and 38.4% in stage I, II and III NSCLC, respectively. When WT1 Ab was combined with CEA or CYFRA for detection of NSCLC, positive detection rates increased from 25.0 to 34.1 and 31.8%, respectively, in stage I and from 38.4 to 69.2 and 46.1%, respectively, in stage III, but not changed in stage II. Western blot analysis showed that dominant subclass of WT1 Ab was Th1-type IgG2. Interestingly, elevation of WT1 Ab titers was significantly associated with longer disease-free survival in patients with stages I-III NSCLC. These results showed that WT1 Ab could be a useful marker for early detection of NSCLC and its prognostic prediction. These results also suggested that WT1-specific immune responses played an important role in anti-cancer immunity in NSCLC.