Grey collie dogs have cyclic fluctuations in their blood cell counts caused by a regulatory defect of hematopoietic stem cells. To examine the role of stem cell factor (SCF) or its receptor in this disorder, we investigated the stimulatory effects of recombinant canine SCF (rc-SCF) on in vitro marrow cultures, cloned and sequenced the grey collie SCF gene, and treated three grey collies with rc...

OBJECTIVE To examine the association between the interval from the last transurethral resection (TUR) to radical cystectomy (RC) and bladder cancer-specific outcome, as the decision to proceed to RC for an individual patient is complex, and recent reports suggest an interval from diagnosis to RC of >3 months is associated with adverse outcomes. PATIENTS AND METHODS The records of 592 patients...

PURPOSE We compared the efficacy of radical cystectomy (RC) and non-RC treatment [transurethral resection of bladder tumor (TURB) only, partial cystectomy, or TURB followed by radiotherapy] in octogenarians with muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC). MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 177 patients aged 80 years or more underwent TURB at our institute, and 41 patients had MIBC according to the h...

Hypoxia increases the ventilatory response to exercise, which leads to hyperventilation-induced hypocapnia and subsequent reduction in cerebral blood flow (CBF). We studied the effects of adding CO2 to a hypoxic inspired gas on CBF during heavy exercise in an altitude naïve population. We hypothesized that augmented inspired CO2 and hypoxia would exert synergistic effects on increasing CBF duri...

PURPOSE We aimed to ascertain the effects of performing extended pelvic lymph node dissection (PLND) on the duration of surgery, morbidity, and the number of lymph nodes removed when the dissection was performed before or after radical cystectomy (RC). MATERIALS AND METHODS We used the database of our previous prospective multicenter study. A total of 118 patients underwent RC and extended PL...

BACKGROUND In the background of the well-known importance of positron-emission tomographic studies (PET) in the prediction of pancreatic oncologic problems, we designed and performed this investigation to study the link between borderline pancreatic head cancer and glucose uptake by using PET. MATERIAL AND METHODS We retrospectively investigated patients during the period of almost 4 years (May...

High-level quantum-chemical calculations are reported at the MP2 and CCSD(T) levels of theory for the equilibrium structure and the harmonic and anharmonic force fields of diacetylene, H−C ≡ C−C ≡ C−H. The calculations were performed employing Dunning’s hierarchy of correlation-consistent basis sets cc-pVXZ, ccpCVXZ, and cc-pwCVXZ, as well as the ANO2 basis set of Almlöf and Taylor. An empirica...

This paper presents an efficient generation alternation model for real-coded genetic algorithm called rc-CGA. The most important characteristic of the proposed rcCGA model is the implicit self-adaptive feature in its crossover and mutation mechanism. By applying two crossover operators (BLX-α and UNDX crossover) in conjunction with Non-Uniform mutation to rc-CGA, respectively, we define two new...

This paper gives new methods for calculating the time-domain response for a nite-length distributed RC line. We begin with the solution for di usion in a semi-in nite distributed RC line [4, 12] and apply the method of images (re ections) to obtain the voltage response for a nite-length RC line. Second, we describe a general approach for calculating the time-domain response for nite RC lines wi...

Rhizoma Coptidis (RC), commonly known as huanglian, is a herb frequently used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) prescriptions. Known to have "clearing damp-heat, quenching fire and counteracting poison" properties, it was widely used in the Chinese community in Singapore. Berberine, an alkaloid isolated from RC, is known to have a wide array of therapeutic effects including antimicrobial, a...