Japan is one of the countries where the percentage of smokers is still notoriously high. The percentage of people smoking among those aged 20 years or over in 1995 was reported by the National Survey on Nutrition to be 52.7% in males and 10.6% in females (Health and Welfare Statistics Association, 1997). It has been estimated that considerable numbers of cigarettes are now being consumed by ado...

Epithelial cells lining the inner surface of the intestinal epithelium are in direct contact with a lumenal environment that varies dramatically with diet. It has long been suggested that the intestinal epithelium can sense the nutrient composition of lumenal contents. It is only recently that the nature of intestinal nutrient-sensing molecules and underlying mechanisms have been elucidated. Th...

In this Paper, we propose an automatic speech disorders recognition technique based on both speech and visual components analysis. First, we performed the pre-processing steps required for speech recognition then we chose the Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC's) as features representing the speech signal.On the other hand, we studied the visual components based on lipsmovements analysis...

Although many components of the genetic pathways that provide positional information during embryogenesis have been identified, it remains unclear how these signals are integrated to specify discrete tissue territories. Here, we investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying the formation of one of the hindbrain segments, rhombomere (r) 3, specified by the expression of the gene krox20. Dissec...

Mononuclear leukocytes are able to destroy tumor cells under a variety of circumstances. In few such instances is the biochemical basis of cytotoxicity understood. Recently, we demonstra ted that activated macrophages, s t imulated by phorbol myristate acetate (PMA), 1 secreted substantial amounts o f hydrogen peroxide (1). The release o f this oxidant from macrophages correlated with the extra...

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) are routinely cultured on fibroblast feeder layers or in fibroblast-conditioned medium (CM). Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) have previously been shown to induce hESC differentiation, in apparent contrast to mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells, in which BMP4 synergizes with leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) to maintain self-renewal. Here we demonstrate that hESC...

Subduction zones are the primary regions on Earth today where crust recycling takes place, and through geological time they have been the sites of continent formation. Many of the key elements (e.g., Th, rare earth elements, Ba, and Be) that are important in understanding crustal growth are sequestered in the sedimentary column and in the uppermost oxidized portions of the volcanic section of o...