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Introduction Paraphimosis is a urologic emergency in which the foreskin of the penis becomes trapped behind the coronal sulcus and forms a tight band of constricting tissue. Surgical or conservative release of this constriction is required for the treatment. Delayed treatment will cause devastating outcomes, such as penile glans necrosis. A few studies have reported penile glans necrosis/gangrene, but long‐term follow‐up of the recovery from glans necrosis due to paraphimosis has not been previously reported. Case presentation A 25‐year‐old man who experienced glans necrosis following paraphimosis was not treated promptly with circumcision. The patient underwent conservative treatment with debridement of necrotic tissue and cystostomy for urethral meatal necrosis. We were able to prevent partial penectomy. His penile glans was covered with healthy epithelium and retained its natural shape and voiding and erectile functions were normal 2 years after the treatment. Conclusion We report successful conservative management of penile glans necrosis.

Abstract Osteosarcoma is rare but is the most common bone tumor. Diagnostic tools such as magnetic resonance imaging development of chemotherapeutic agents have increased the survival rate in osteosarcoma patients, although 5-year survival has plateaued at 70%. Thus, development of new treatment approaches is needed. Here, we report that IL-17, a proinflammatory cytokine, increases osteosarcoma mortality in a mouse model with AX osteosarcoma cells. AX cell transplantation into wild-type mice resulted in 100% mortality due to ectopic ossification and multi-organ metastasis. However, AX cell transplantation into IL-17-deficient mice significantly prolonged survival relative to controls. CD4-positive cells adjacent to osteosarcoma cells express IL-17, while osteosarcoma cells express the IL-17 receptor IL-17RA. Although AX cells can undergo osteoblast differentiation, as can patient osteosarcoma cells, IL-17 significantly inhibited that differentiation, indicating that IL-17 maintains AX cells in the undifferentiated state seen in malignant tumors. By contrast, IL-17RA-deficient mice transplanted with AX cells showed survival comparable to wild-type mice transplanted with AX cells. Biopsy specimens collected from osteosarcoma patients showed higher expression of IL-17RA compared to IL-17. These findings suggest that IL-17 is essential to maintain osteosarcoma cells in an undifferentiated state and could be a therapeutic target for suppressing tumorigenesis.

Abstract Lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) is a degenerative disease characterized by intermittent claudication and numbness in the lower extremities. These symptoms are caused by the compression of nerve tissue in the lumbar spinal canal. Ligamentum flavum (LF) hypertrophy and spinal epidural lipomatosis in the spinal canal are known to contribute to stenosis of the spinal canal: however, detailed mechanisms underlying LSS are still not fully understood. Here, we show that surgically harvested LFs from LSS patients exhibited significantly increased thickness when transthyretin (TTR), the protein responsible for amyloidosis, was deposited in LFs, compared to those without TTR deposition. Multiple regression analysis, which considered age and BMI, revealed a significant association between LF hypertrophy and TTR deposition in LFs. Moreover, TTR deposition in LF was also significantly correlated with epidural fat (EF) thickness based on multiple regression analyses. Mesenchymal cell differentiation into adipocytes was significantly stimulated by TTR in vitro. These results suggest that TTR deposition in LFs is significantly associated with increased LF hypertrophy and EF thickness, and that TTR promotes adipogenesis of mesenchymal cells. Therapeutic agents to prevent TTR deposition in tissues are currently available or under development, and targeting TTR could be a potential therapeutic approach to inhibit LSS development and progression.

Abstract Detailed observations of animal reactions to a collapsed individual in wild are rare but essential to debates about the perception of death by nonhuman animals, including chimpanzees. A male juvenile chimpanzee named Volta, a member of the M group in the Mahale Mountains National Park, fell from a tall tree and was temporarily incapacitated, suffering a severe concussion and nasal bone fracture. However, Volta showed signs of gradual recovery. We compared the behavior of other chimpanzees towards Volta with the previous reports on the behavior towards collapsed or recently dead group members. We found that behaviors towards Volta were similar to those observed towards collapsed or dead members. These included other-regarding behaviors and aggressive behaviors, and notably, licking of Volta’s blood, which has not been previously reported. Adult males tended to be in close proximity to Volta for longer periods than adult females. The social situation with adult males including alpha male, surrounding Volta likely influenced the behavior of other individuals. Exploring the state of recovery of the injured individual, by closely approaching, directing various behaviors, and observing the reactions of the victim, and demonstrate tolerance and consideration towards the victim.

Strigolactones (SLs) regulate angiosperm development and promote symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizae. Here the authors show that bryosymbiol, an SL present in bryophytes and angiosperms, promotes AM symbiosis in Marchantia paleacea suggesting an ancestral function of SLs as rhizosphere signals.

The complete chloroplast (cp) genome sequence of Petasites japonicus (Asteraceae) was determined. The cp genome is 150,445 bp and consists of a large single-copy region (82,910 bp), a small single-copy region (17,907 bp), and a pair of inverted repeats (24,814 bp). It encodes a set of 114 genes, consisting of 80 protein-coding genes, 30 tRNA genes, and four rRNA genes. Phylogenetic inference confirmed that P. japonicus is sister to the genus Ligularia in the tribe Senecioneae of Asteraceae.

Recurrence of oestrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer rarely occurs postoperatively after a long period. Breast cancer cells survive and settle in distant organs in a dormant state, a phenomenon known as “tumour dormancy.” Here, we present a 66-year-old woman with recurrence of ER-positive breast cancer in the left lung 23 years after surgery accompanied with non-tuberculous mycobacterium infection (NTM). At the age of 43 years, the patient underwent a right mastectomy and adjuvant hormonotherapy to completely cure breast cancer. Twenty-three years after the operation, when the patient was 66 years old, computed tomography presented nodular shadows in the lower lobes bilaterally with bronchiectasis and ill-defined satellite tree-in-bud nodules. Mycobacterium intracellulare was detected in cultured bronchoalveolar lavage fluid obtained from the left lower lobe by bronchoscopy. Rifampicin, ethambutol, and clarithromycin were started, which resulted in shrinkage of the nodule in the right lower lobe and satellite nodules; however, the nodule in the left lower lobe increased in size gradually. Wedge resection of the left lower lobe containing the nodule by video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery was performed, which demonstrated that the nodule was adenocarcinoma in intraoperative pathological diagnosis; therefore, a left lower lobectomy and mediastinal lymph node dissection were performed. The tumour was revealed to be consistent with recurrence of previous breast cancer according to its morphology and immunohistochemical staining. Furthermore, caseous epithelioid cell granulomas existed in the periphery of the tumour. It is reported that inflammatory cytokines induce reawakening of dormant oestrogen-dependent breast cancer and, in our case, NTM infection might have stimulated the dormant tumour cells in the lower lobe.

Drawings have been widely used as a window to the mind; as such, they can reveal some aspects of the cognitive and emotional worlds of other animals that can produce them. The study of non-human drawings, however, is limited by human perception, which can bias the methodology and interpretation of the results. Artificial intelligence can circumvent this issue by allowing automated, objective selection of features used to analyze drawings. In this study, we use artificial intelligence to investigate seasonal variations in drawings made by Molly, a female orangutan who produced more than 1299 drawings between 2006 and 2011 at the Tama Zoological Park in Japan. We train the VGG19 model to first classify the drawings according to the season in which they are produced. The results show that deep learning is able to identify subtle but significant seasonal variations in Molly’s drawings, with a classification accuracy of 41.6%. We use VGG19 to investigate the features that influence this seasonal variation. We analyze separate features, both simple and complex, related to color and patterning, and to drawing content and style. Content and style classification show maximum performance for moderately complex, highly complex, and holistic features, respectively. We also show that both color and patterning drive seasonal variation, with the latter being more important than the former. This study demonstrates how deep learning can be used to objectively analyze non-figurative drawings and calls for applications to non-primate species and scribbles made by human toddlers.

Energy management in industrial plants requires measurements of the steam flow rates at each usage location. A clamp-on ultrasonic flowmeter can be used to effectively measure the steam flow rates in existing pipes. An ultrasonic flowmeter is used to calculate the transit time of ultrasonic signals between the downstream and upstream sensors, which is affected by the line-averaged velocity along the ultrasonic beam. The intensity of the transmitted ultrasonic signal is crucial for measuring the steam flow rate using the clamp-on ultrasonic flowmeter. The authors focused on the effects of the ultrasonic incident angle on the transmitted ultrasonic signal intensity in steam flow. Ultrasonic transmission experiments were carried out on three pipes (SGP 25A, SGP 50A and SGP 80A) filled with stationary nitrogen, and the transit time in steam flow was measured on SGP 80A pipe by changing the ultrasonic incident angle. The pipes are made of carbon steel and generally used for the steam flow. The results indicate that the appropriate incident angle that allowed the maximum transmitted signal intensity differed depending on the thickness of the pipe wall. Furthermore, a good agreement with the critical angles of the zero-order of symmetric mode in Lamb waves was noted. Thus, the propagated ultrasonic waves can be considered Lamb waves, which increase signal intensity. The transmitted signal intensity decreases because of the turbulent dissipation as the steam velocity increases. Appropriately setting the incident angle depending on the wall thickness, particularly for higher steam flow rates, is essential for evaluating the transit time difference between upstream and downstream transducers.

The evolutionary mechanisms leading to the development of sperm are poorly understood. Here, the authors infer that neofunctionalisation and expression changes of the orthologue of DUO1 in algal ancestors of land plants were key events for sperm differentiation and sexual reproduction in this lineage.

This study analyses 749 drawings by five female Bornean orang-utans (Pongo pygmaeus) at Tama Zoological Park in Japan. We searched for differences between individuals but also tried to identify possible temporal changes among the drawings of one individual, Molly, who drew almost 1300 drawings from 2006 to 2011. An analysis of the drawings was carried out after collecting quantitative and qualitative variables. Our findings reveal evidence of differences in the drawing style of the five individuals as well as creative changes in Molly’s drawing style throughout her lifetime. Individuals differed in terms of the colours used, the space they filled, and the shapes (fan patterns, circles, or loops) they drew. Molly drew less and less as she grew older, and we found a significant difference between drawings produced in winter, when orang-utans were kept inside and had less activity, and those produced during other seasons. Our results suggest that the drawing behaviour of these five orang-utans is not random and that differences among individuals might reflect differences of styles, states of mind, and motivation to draw.

Land plant shoot structures evolved a diversity of lateral organs as morphological adaptations to the terrestrial environment, with lateral organs arising independently in different lineages. Vascular plants and bryophytes (basally diverging land plants) develop lateral organs from meristems of sporophytes and gametophytes, respectively. Understanding the mechanisms of lateral organ development among divergent plant lineages is crucial for understanding the evolutionary process of morphological diversification of land plants. However, our current knowledge of lateral organ differentiation mechanisms comes almost entirely from studies of seed plants, and thus, it remains unclear how these lateral structures evolved and whether common regulatory mechanisms control the development of analogous lateral organs. Here, we performed a mutant screen in the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha, a bryophyte, which produces gametophyte axes with nonphotosynthetic scalelike lateral organs. We found that an Arabidopsis LIGHT-DEPENDENT SHORT HYPOCOTYLS 1 and Oryza G1 (ALOG) family protein, named M. polymorpha LATERAL ORGAN SUPRESSOR 1 (MpLOS1), regulates meristem maintenance and lateral organ development in Marchantia. A mutation in MpLOS1, preferentially expressed in lateral organs, induces lateral organs with misspecified identity and increased cell number and, furthermore, causes defects in apical meristem maintenance. Remarkably, MpLOS1 expression rescued the elongated spikelet phenotype of a MpLOS1 homolog in rice. This suggests that ALOG genes regulate the development of lateral organs in both gametophyte and sporophyte shoots by repressing cell divisions. We propose that the recruitment of ALOG-mediated growth repression was in part responsible for the convergent evolution of independently evolved lateral organs among highly divergent plant lineages, contributing to the morphological diversification of land plants.

Although herd size, structure, stability, and social rank among Misaki feral horses have been reported, no studies have been conducted on the affiliative relationships and interactions among members in a Misaki horse herd. The validity of three hypotheses regarding the function of social grooming, the affiliative relationship strengthening hypothesis, the worsened relationship restoring hypothesis, and the grooming parasite removal hypothesis, were tested in a Misaki feral horse (Equus caballus) herd in Cape Toi, Japan. All the nine horses in the “6m” herd were investigated in terms of kinship, grooming, aggression, proximity, social rank, and social network. Mutual grooming occurred only in pairs and was almost perfectly symmetrical. For each member, there was a significant negative correlation between total grooming received from other individuals and self-grooming. Controlling for kinship, there were significant positive partial correlations between mutual grooming and proximity and between aggression and proximity. No correlation was observed between aggression and mutual grooming. The results suggest that mutual grooming symmetry may contribute that both participants simultaneously benefit from parasite removal and strengthen affiliative relationships between seasonally changing herd members; however, mutual grooming did not foster restoring the worsened relationship following aggression promoted by physical proximity. The findings of this study may elucidate the mechanisms by which interactions between herd members are maintained or strengthened.

Chimpanzees in zoos with sufficient and appropriate environmental enrichment devices are expected to exhibit behaviors, interactions, and societies similar to those in the wild. In this study, we compared the activity budgets of each observed behavior, characteristics of social grooming, and social networks of captive chimpanzees at Tama Zoological Park (Tama) with those of wild chimpanzees at Mahale Mountains National Park, Tanzania (Mahale), and tested our predictions. We surveyed 16 chimpanzees in both Tama and Mahale and recorded the behaviors and individuals in proximity of each focal individual and social grooming the focal individuals participated in. The proportion of time spent collecting foraging was significantly lower in Tama than in Mahale. Additionally, the percentage of mutual grooming was much higher in Tama than in Mahale. All focal individuals in Mahale performed mutual grooming interactions, including grooming handclasp (GHC) but this was not observed in Tama. The result of a high rate of mutual grooming in chimpanzees in Tama without GHC and the finding that individuals forming the core of their social network are sex independent suggest that chimpanzees placed in an appropriate environmental enrichment have idiosyncratic grooming or social features, even in captivity.

Abstract  After treatment with antimicrobial chemotherapy for the elimination of urinary multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa (MDRP), a 48-year-old man with recurrence of bladder cancer complained of acute onset of dyspnea, and computed tomography revealed multiple nodular lesions in the lung. Candida albicans was isolated from both urinary and blood samples. He was diagnosed as having a septic pulmonary embolism caused by C. albicans. Fungal septic pulmonary embolism is a rare condition; however, we must be cautious about superinfection as a consequence of strong antimicrobial chemotherapy, and understand that the treatment for urinary MDRP is likely to be difficult. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human rotavirus (RV) infection is a leading cause of dehydrating diarrhea in infants and young children worldwide. Since therapeutic approaches to RV gastroenteritis are limited to alleviation of dehydration with oral rehydration solutions, more direct approaches to palliate symptoms of RV gastroenteritis are required. Treatments with probiotics have been increasingly recognized as alternative safe and low cost treatments for moderate infectious diarrhea. In this study, Bifidobacterium bifidum G9-1 (BBG9-1), which has been used as an intestinal drug for several decades, was shown to have a remarkable protective effect against RV gastroenteritis in a suckling mice model. As well as prophylactic oral administration of BBG9-1 from 2 days before RV infection, therapeutic oral administration of BBG9-1 from 1 day after RV infection significantly alleviated RV-induced diarrhea. Therapeutic administration of BBG9-1 reduced various types of damage in the small intestine, such as epithelial vacuolization and villous shortening, and significantly diminished the infectious RV titer in mixtures of cecal contents and feces. It was also shown that therapeutic administration of BBG9-1 significantly increased the number of acidic mucin-positive goblet cells and the gene expression of mucosal protective factors including MUC2, MUC3, MUC4, TGFβ1 and TFF3 in the small intestine. This led to alleviation of low gut permeability shown as decreased gene expression levels of occludin, claudin-1 and villin-1 after RV infection. Furthermore, in the small intestine, therapeutic administration of BBG9-1 significantly palliated the decreased gene expression of SGLT-1, which plays an important role in water absorption. In the large intestine, administered BBG9-1 was shown to replicate to assimilate undigested nutrients, resulting in normalization of the abnormally high osmotic pressure. These results suggested that water malabsorption caused by RV infection was alleviated in mice administered BBG9-1. Thus, the present study showed that oral administration of BBG9-1 palliated diarrhea partly through protection against RV-induced lesions by inducing mucosal protective factors. Oral administration of BBG9-1 is thought to be an efficient method for management of an RV epidemic for both prophylactic and therapeutic purposes.

A series of disilane-linked donor‒acceptor‒donor triads (D‒Si‒Si‒A‒Si‒Si‒D) was synthesized to investigate the effects of substituents on the photophysical properties. The triads were prepared by metal-catalyzed diiodosilylation of aryl iodides using a Pd(P(t-Bu)3)2/(i-Pr)2EtN/toluene system that we previously developed. Optical measurements, X-ray diffraction analysis, and density functional theory calculations revealed relationships between the photophysical properties and molecular structures of these triads in solution and in the solid state. The compounds emitted blue to green fluorescence in CH2Cl2 solution and in the solid state. Notably, compound 2 showed fluorescence with an absolute quantum yield of 0.17 in the solid state but showed no fluorescence in CH2Cl2. Our findings confirmed that the substituent adjacent to the disilane moiety affects the conformations and emission efficiencies of compounds in solution and in the solid state.

Aromatic groups were incorporated into 9H-9-silafluorene units at the 9-position (mono-9H-silafluorenes) and 9,9′-positions (di-9H-9-silafluorenes). The aryl substituents showed weak conjugation to the 9H-9-silafluorene for 9-aryl substituted ones 1–7 and a 9,9′-phenylene substituted one (compound 8) and they exhibited similar absorption and emission spectra. The 9H-9-silafluorene 10 containing a 5,5′-(2,2′-bithiophenyl) group showed a significantly red-shifted absorption and fluorescence maxima in the solid-state. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction studies found J-type aggregated structures formed by intermolecular CH–π interactions (ca. 2.6–2.7 Å). Density functional theory (DFT), time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT), and configuration interaction single (CIS) calculations were conducted to explain the observed optical properties.

We have been producing the bifacial module, the HIT® Double, since 2000. This module was the first to be released in the world.1) We have since been developing high efficiency bifacial modules. We released a new bifacial photovoltaic (PV) module in 2013. It has a conversion efficiency of 16.0% in spite of having a light-through area of 8% within the total module area, and the temperature coefficient of the output power is quite good at −0.29%/°C. It passed various environmental tests that are much stricter than the industrial standard. Our field test showed the effectiveness of vertically installing the bifacial module, especially when installed on ground that highly reflects light such as snow or white limestone. We developed an original simulation method to accurately estimate the energy production of the bifacial module. A simulation accuracy of about 3.7% was confirmed through practical test results at our field test site in Niigata Prefecture, Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]