Although sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) has been reported to play an important role in cancer pathophysiology, little is known about S1P and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). To clarify the relationship between S1P and HCC, 77 patients with HCC who underwent surgical treatment were consecutively enrolled in this study. In addition, S1P and its metabolites were quantitated by LC-MS/MS. The mRNA lev...

Convex polyhedra, commonly employed for the analysis and verification of both hardware and software, may be defined either by a finite set of linear inequality constraints or by finite sets of generating points and rays of the polyhedron. Although most implementations of the polyhedral operations assume that the polyhedra are topologically closed (i.e., all the constraints defining them are non...

We examined the influence of two K(ATP) channel openers, diazoxide and an analog (NNC 55-0118), on experimental beta-cell damage induced by streptozotocin (STZ; 0.5 mmol/l). Rat pancreatic islets were exposed to diazoxide or NNC 55-0118 for 30 min and were further incubated for 30 min after the addition of STZ. The islets were then washed and cultured for 24 h. Islets exposed to STZ alone showe...

Nondeterministic analogues of the well-known classes NC and SC, d d NNC and NSC, respectively, are investigated. Adding nondeterminism to SC leaves it in the domain of parallel computation since NSC E POLYLOGSPACE. That is, NSC is a subset of the class of languages computable by fast parallel computers. Adding noodeterminism to NC appears to make it much more powerful since NNC = NP. It is clea...

[1] We constrain the anisotropy associated with a very low velocity province (VLVP) at the base of the Earth’s mantle using the SKS and SKKS waves sampling the region. Our selected high-quality data sets consist of 415 SKS and 111 SKKS waveforms for 127 deep earthquakes recorded at distances between 90 and 150 by the seismic stations in three temporary broadband PASSCAL seismic arrays: the Kaap...

[1] The Pacific Northwest (PNW) has experienced voluminous intraplate volcanism over the past 17 Ma, beginning with the Steens/Columbia River flood basalts and continuing with the stillongoing volcanism in the High Lava Plains (HLP) and eastern Snake River Plain (SRP). Here we present two complementary datasets (SKS splitting and Rayleigh wave phase velocity anisotropy) that place constraints o...

As a task-based approach for medical image quality assessment, model observers (MOs) have been proposed as surrogates for human observers. While most MOs treat only signal-known-exactly tasks, there are few studies on signal-known-statistically (SKS) MOs, which are clinically more relevant. In this paper, we present a new SKS MO named channelized joint detection and estimation observer (CJO), c...

[1] In this study, we utilize data from broadband seismic stations of the Japanese F-net network to investigate anisotropic structure in the lowermost mantle beneath the northwestern Pacific. The comparison of shear wave splitting from phases that have similar paths in the upper mantle but different paths in the lowermost mantle, such as PcS/ScS or SKS/SKKS, can yield constraints on anisotropy ...

    Background: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurological disorder and many PD patients experience some type of voice and speech disorders during the course of illness. In this study, the aim was to investigate the effect of Lee Silverman voice treatment (LSVT) on improving voice difficulties in patients with mild PD using voice handicap index (VHI).    Methods: This interventiona...

S U M M A R Y Upper-mantle seismic anisotropy has been observed using a variety of methods, including S and SKS splitting, P and Pn traveltimes, P polarization anomalies and P to S conversions, and surface waves. Care must be taken when comparing the results from different methods because of bias introduced by depth sensitivity, frequency dependence, and simplifying assumptions concerning the f...