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Both genetic and environmental factors have been considered causative agents for schizophrenia (SZ). However, no single gene has been shown responsible for the development of SZ. Furthermore, the pathophysiological roles of environmental factors including psychological stress, autoimmunity, and microbial infection have not been fully understood. Previous studies have suggested the involvement of one of the human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs), HERV-W, in SZ. In this study, prevalence of antibodies against the HERV-W Syncytin-1 protein was examined using a newly developed ELISA test. Fifty percent of patients with SZ (24 out of 48 cases) were antibody-positive, with a specificity of greater than 95% (less than 5% of control cases, 3 out of 79). No significant effect of medication was evident, nor did any SZ cases become seropositive after diagnosis. These findings indicate a possible involvement of HERV-W expression in the development of SZ and support its applicability to laboratory diagnoses.

Aims: The purposes of this study were to clarify the changes in smoothness of each phase by making use of the angular jerk cost for the smoothness of the knee joint motion at the stance phase in patients with osteoarthritis, to verify the relationship between the kinetics variables and the smoothness, and to clarify the dynamics in osteoarthritis by comparison with healthy subjects using the angular jerk cost of knee flexion or extension. Methods: The osteoarthritis group comprised 19 knees of 12 subjects with a Kellgren– Lawrence grade of 1 in at least one knee. The control group comprised 10 healthy adults. The subjects walked barefoot along a 10-m walkway at their self-selected habitual speeds. The stance phase of gait was defined as four periods To calculate the smoothness of the knee joint movement, the angular jerk cost of the knee joint angle during the stance phase was calculated by differentiation three times using the knee joint angle data. Results: The angular jerk cost was increased in the early stance phase in both groups. Only the osteoarthritis group showed a large angular jerk cost in the late stance phase. The ground reaction force in the osteoarthritis group showed a small value in the stance Original Research Article British Journal of Medicine & Medical Research, 4(6): 1345-1354, 2014 1346 phase compared with the control group. Conclusion: The movement of the knee joint at the initial stance phase had a strategy to ensure the smoothness of the movement by decreasing the change in the angular acceleration in accordance with the impairment disorder. In addition, the smoothness of the knee joint movement was decreased at the late stance phase compared from the loading response to mid-stance period in the osteoarthritis group, and the propulsion for forward movement of the body was exerted by a change involving a large angular acceleration with a large force.

The pathogenesis of thrombocytopenia during the neonatal period in Down's syndrome (DS) infants remains unclear.To elucidate kinetic changes of serum thrombopoietin (TPO) level and platelet count, and their correlation in DS neonates.Twelve DS infants (male/female: 7/5, term/late preterm: 10/2) born between 1997 and 2007 were included. Blood samples were serially collected during the neonatal period and serum TPO levels were determined in 44 sera using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.Thrombocytopenia150 x 10(9) per liter was observed in seven (58%) patients. In 12 DS patients, the median TPO value showed 2.86 fmol ml(-1) on day 0, rose to 4.64 fmol ml(-1) on day 2, and thereafter decreased to 4.30 fmol ml(-1) on day 5, 2.40 fmol ml(-1) on days 11-15, and 1.75 fmol ml(-1) on days 28-30. This kinetics parallels that in historical non-DS controls. In 35 pair sample analysis from 11 patients without transient myeloproliferative disease, TPO level inversely correlated with platelet count (r=-0.38, P=0.023). However, there was no significant difference in TPO concentrations between thrombocytopenic and non-thrombocytopenic DS individuals.This is the first study to describe the relationship between TPO level and platelet count in neonates with DS. Median TPO levels and their kinetic changes in DS neonates are comparable to those in non-DS controls. In contrast to earlier findings in several studies showing higher TPO concentrations in thrombocytopenic non-DS newborns than those in non-thrombocytopenic counterparts, the response of the TPO system to thrombocytopenia in DS during the neonatal period seems suboptimal.

Thermal nano-phase change of an Antimony (Sb) thin film sandwiched by dielectric layers were investigated, and the application for super-density optical data storage by optical near-field was described.

Program refactoring is a technique to enhance the maintainability of a program. Although the concept itself is considered to be effective, there are few quantitative evaluation of its impact to the software maintainability. It is sometimes difficult to judge whether the refactoring in question should be applied or not without knowing the effect accurately. We propose a quantitative evaluation method to measure the maintainability enhancement effect of program refactoring. We focused on the coupling metrics to evaluate the refactoring effect. By comparing the coupling before and after the refactoring, we could evaluate the degree of maintainability enhancement. We applied our method to a certain program and showed that our method was really effective to quantify the refactoring effect and helped us to choose appropriate refactorings.

Source code copying for reuse (code cloning) is often observed in software implementations. Such code cloning causes difficulty when software functionalities are modified: i.e, cloned codes increase the maintenance cost of software. We aim to estimate the maintenance cost caused by clones. We propose a novel approach, which evaluates influence of cloned codes over the maintenance cost. The basic idea is to measure functional redundancy (FR): a degree of propagation of clone-potential functions. FR is measured as follows: first, we cluster functions in the software according to similarities between them. Second, we make an n-ary weighted tree(FR tree) based on the cluster. Finally, we measure FR by weight of each node in FR-tree. In this paper, we describe the details of our proposal. We also apply the approach to 17K-ELOC C code to demonstrate its effectiveness.

We propose a verification method for software specification. In order to avoid software faults, our method derives safety assertions using FTA, computes the behavioral graph of specification and analyzes statically whether this graph satisfies safety assertions. Moreover, when there exists an assertion which can not hold, our method localizes software design faults. >

The paper describes a quality assurance approach for source code to assure source code quality with less effort than conventional method. The paper introduces the data relation tracking method (DRTM) as a practical instance of data oriented program analysis, a key factor of our new quality assurance approach. DRTM helps comprehension of the source code by extracting the internal logic of the source code in declarative notation. An example and evaluation of DRTM for the C language is also described. The example shows that DRTM can deal in data structures and inter-data relations of any control structure. The evaluation shows that DRTM can extract the internal logic of the source code uniquely and that the extracted internal logic is useful for quality assurance of the source code.

MOSFETs scaling-down is an effective way to attain high-performance CMOS operating with lower power and leakage current. However, short channel effects have become a serious problem due to the shortening of channel length. One of the promising methods to suppress this problem is by forming a shallow, highly doped and activated source/drain extension region. Fabricating ultra shallow p+/n junction is difficult due to the channeling of boron ions and anomalous boron diffusion during fabrication processes. A combination of Ge pre-amorphization implantation, low-energy boron implantation and two-step annealing, involving low-temperature solid phase epitaxy preannealing followed by non-melt laser annealing was used for forming ultra shallow p+/n junction in silicon. The physical relationship among the regrowth of implanted layer, boron activation and diffusion, and leakage current is investigated. We have succeeded in forming ultra shallow p+/n junction with junction depth of 8 nm and sheet resistance of 920 Ω/□.

During recording of spinal cord evoked potentials, a monophasic positive potential is observed when a nerve impulse approaches but does not pass beyond the recording site. This type of potential has been termed a killedend evoked potential (KP). While this potential is useful for localizing the injured site clinically, no other clinical value has yet been reported for it. The KP is usually higher in amplitude than the positive wave of normal evoked potentials. The higher amplitude has been attributed to background injury currents resulting from a low transmembrane resistance at the damage site of axons. The amplitude of the KP may therefore represent a clinically available indicator of injury currents, which have been implicated in secondary processes of axonal degeneration.

To study the asymmetry in signal intensity of the sigmoid sinuses, internal jugular veins (IJVs), or both sets of structures on magnetic resonance (MR) images, the authors reviewed 226 serial sets of routine MR imaging studies. Cerebral digital subtraction angiography was performed in 20 patients with a markedly higher intensity and/or enhancement on the left; 15 of them also underwent venography. With every sequence, the left sigmoid sinus, IJV, or both were higher in signal intensity significantly more often than the right (range, P = .0001 to .0129). Angiography revealed hemostasis in the left IJV in 16 patients that disappeared during full inspiration in 14. In 13, venography revealed that the left brachiocephalic vein was compressed to occlusion between the aortic arch and the sternum during tidal volume ventilation. The occlusion disappeared at full inspiration, when the distance between the aortic arch and the sternum increased. This hemostasis could be the major cause of the frequent increased signal intensity of the left sigmoid sinus and IJV on MR images.

A novel type of high pressure microwave discharge has been investigated to feed the microwave power at the centre of the compact high pressure discharge lamps using the antenna effect. This method of microwave discharge is named as the antenna excited microwave discharge (AEMD). The 2.45 GHz microwave of around 50 W from the solid state microwave generator can sustain a stable plasma column in the small gap between a couple of antennas fitted on the compact lamp filled with discharge gases at a pressure higher than atmosphere. The AEMD has been applied to a compact metal halide lamp and an extremely high pressure mercury discharge lamp. As a result, the metal halide lamp showed high luminous efficacy of around 130 lm W−1. The excellent lamp properties obtained here can be explained by the low heating loss at the antennas and the lamp wall. The profiles of the microwave electric field in the lamp and the microwave launcher have been numerically calculated to consider the microwave power supply into the lamp.

Third-order nonlinear optical properties of d 8 transition metal complexes with dimethylglyoxime, which have one-dimensional structure, have been investigated by third harmonic generation. They showed large absorption bands due to the d-p transition in the visible region. Third-order nonlinear susceptibility was enhanced by a three photon resonance effect at the band. Wavelength tunability of the d-p transition band was also demonstrated by alloying the linear metal chains.

Third order optical nonlinearities of linear metal chains, which are formed in crystals and vacuum evaporated thin films of metal-dioxime complexes, are analyzed by using CNDO/SD-CI calculations. Intermolecular exicitonic states are revealed to act very important rolls to the excellent nonlinearities of the linear metal chains. The molecular hyperpolarizabilities γ increase with seventh power of the metal chain length.

We measured the plasma β-endorphin (β-EP) levels in 11 normal pregnant women at term, 5 severe pregnancy induced hypertension (PIH) patients at term, 11 normal and 5 severe PIH mothers at labor, 11 fetuses who were delivered from normal mothers and 5 fetuses who were delivered from severe PIH mothers. There was a significant(p

Speckle patterns are produced by random interference when coherent lights scattered by a diffuse surface pass through an optical system, and their statistical properties are controlled with the change of the optical system. Using this property, a speckle random pattern with some desired statistical characteristics can be obtained, and applied to now optical techniques.

A new type of photosensitive material using a chalcogenide-metal system can be used for recording holograms. This hologram is thin, recorded by amplitude and/or phase variations; a relief hologram is also available. It is shown that this material does not require development and fixation procedures and can be used for real-time holographic interferometry.

In Hyōgo prefectural schools, there were 42 cardiac sudden death cases (CSD) on campus in the years 1973–1983 (Figure 1). (“On campus” is defined as meaning any time between the student leaving home in the morning and returning in the evening.) On the basis of these figures, the mathematically expected number of CSD in Kobe would be more than 10 cases, because the city has 26% of the total Hyōgo prefectural population. However, there were only two cases of CSD in our city during those years. This result might be the effect of our cardiovascular survey of all 6-year-old pupils and well-planned long-term management of those with heart problems after the survey—which is carried out thoroughly in Kobe, but is alone so incompletely in the other areas of Hyōgo prefecture.

The analysis of systolic time intervals (STI) has provided an indirect method of assessing left ventricular performance in man (1–4). These intervals are conveniently derived from the simultaneous recording of the electrocardiogram, the indirect carotid pulse tracing, and the phonocardiogram. Noninvasive measurement of right ventricular STI, however, has not been possible because of the inability to define the onset of right ventricular ejection. Recently echocardiography has been used to determine right as well as left ventricular STI (5–7).