<Original Article> Physical and Pharmacological Regulation of Atrial Natriuretic Peptide Release from the Isolated, Blood-Perfused Right Atrium of the Dog

Physical and pharmacological interventions in atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) release were investigated using the canine isolated, blood-perfused right atrium preparation. Plasma ANP concentration was measured by radioimmunoassay. ANP secretion rate was calculated from plasma ANP concentration in venous blood leaving the right atrium preparation and blood flow through the right coronary artery. When perfusion pressure was increased stdpwise from 50 to 200 mmHg, ANP secretion rate was increased. ANP secretion rate was correlated to perfusion pressure and blood flow. ANP secretion rate was increased by atrial muscle distension by a 15-g weight loading and also by atrial tachycardia paced at a rate of 200 beats/min. Acetylcholine (3 μg) injected into the right coronary artery increased ANP secretion rate, which was blocked by 10 μg of atropine. Increased ANP secretion rate by 0.3 μg of noradrenaline was affected by neither 100 μg of atenolol nor 10 μg of prazosin. The increase by 3 μg of phenylephrine was blocked by prazosin, but unaffected by atenolol. Isoprenaline (0.03 μg) increased the ANP secretion rate, which was blocked by atenolol, but not by prazosin. Increases in sinoatrial rate by noradrenaline and isoprenaline were abolished by atenolol, but not by prazosin. Phenylephrine did not increase the sinoatrial rate. These results suggest that 1) the perfusion pressure of the right atrium is closely related to ANP secretion as well as atrial muscle distension and 2) ANP secretion is stimulated via alpha- and beta-adrenoceptors as well as muscarinic receptors.journal articl

Measurement of the e+e-→D(*)+D(*)- cross sections

journal articl

成長の構成則を用いた形状最適化手法の提案 (静的弾性体の場合)

A simple method for shape optimization of a static elastic body in a sense of uniform strength is newly proposed. The idea from which the method originated came from the growth behavior of living things, such as trees or bones, responding to a stress accompanying a load. On the use of the method, the optimum shape is formed by iterating a usual elastic analysis and incremental growth analysis by using a constitutive equation of growth with the result of the elastic analysis, without a particular technique for mathematical optimization programming or a steep extension of memory for calculation of the sensitivity. The growth law is given as a relation between incremental growth strain and a deviation of objective stress indicating the strength from basic stress. Two examples of a cantilever beam loaded at its tip and a column loaded at its tip under the influence of gravity are analyzed to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.journal articl

Computerized identification method for current dental intraoral radiographs

application/pdfDental intraoral radiographs are saved random-ly in a PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System). Therefore, dental radiologists have to arrange manually the dental intraoral radiographs on the PACS in the interpreta-tion of the dental intraoral radiographs. This task is bother for dental radiologists. The purpose of this study was to de-velop a computerized method for identifying a current image as the corresponding previous image which was taken at ap-proximately the same position in order to arrange automati-cally current intraoral radiographs on the PACS based on the previous images which were arranged in the last interpreta-tion. Our database consisted of 56 current and 56 previous dental intraoral radiographs. In our proposed method, the edges of teeth crowns were first enhanced by applying a Sobel filter in the vertical direction to images. The edges of teeth crowns were then segmented by applying a gray-level thre-sholding technique to the enhanced image. Approximate straight line for tops of the teeth was drawn based on a least squares method with the segmented edges. We calculated the angle between the approximate straight line and the horizontal line and rotated the original dental radiograph by an affine transformation to make the growing direction of teeth vertical. The average pixel values in the vertical direction on each x-coordinate became low between adjacent teeth because teeth regions had higher pixel values than other tissues. Therefore, individual tooth regions were divided by the vertical lines through the x-coordinates with local minimum values on the average pixel values. For all combination of current and pre-vious images for a patient, the correlation coefficients between two images were calculated based on the pixel values after aligning images such that the number of the taken teeth be-comes the same on the comparing regions. The combination of current and previous images with the highest correlation coefficient was identified as the corresponding images taken at approximately the same position. With the proposed method, identification accuracy was 80.4% (45/56). The proposed method was shown to have high identification accuracy, would be useful in the terms of the efficiency of diagnosis in the PACS.departmental bulletin pape

2D-DIGE image of fluorescently labeled proteins from striatum () and hippocampus () of PD11 mice

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Proteomic Evaluation of Neonatal Exposure to 2,2′,4,4′,5-Pentabromodiphenyl Ether"</p><p>Environmental Health Perspectives 2005;114(2):254-259.</p><p>Published online 6 Oct 2005</p><p>PMCID:PMC1367840.</p><p>This is an Open Access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose, provided this notice is preserved along with the article's original DOI.</p> Proteins were extracted from the striatum () and hippocampus () of mice 24 hr after they received a single oral dose of PBDE-99 (treated) or vehicle (control) on PD10. Proteins were labeled with Cy3 (control), Cy5 (treated), and Cy2 (mixture of control and treated as internal reference; see “Material and Methods”) and separated on pH 4–7 IPG strips in the first dimension. This procedure was followed by separation on 12.5% SDS–polyacrylamide gels in the second dimension, and the gels were scanned with a Typhoon 9400 fluorescent scanner. The arrows point to the 9 () and 10 () spots found to be regulated and identified spots, respectively. The numbers correspond to the numbers in

<i>In Vitro</i> Neurotoxicity of PBDE-99: Immediate and Concentration-Dependent Effects on Protein Expression in Cerebral Cortex Cells

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are commonly used flame retardants in various consumer products. Pre- and postnatal exposure to congeners of PBDEs disrupts normal brain development in rodents. Two-dimensional difference gel electrophoresis (2D-DIGE) was used to analyze concentration-dependent differences in protein expression in cultured cortical cells isolated from rat fetuses (GD 21) after 24 h exposure to PBDE-99 (3, 10, or 30 μM). Changes on a post-translational level were studied using a 1 h exposure to 30 μM PBDE-99. The effects of 24 h exposure to 3 and 30 μM PBDE-99 on mRNA levels were measured using oligonucleotide microarrays. A total of 62, 46, and 443 proteins were differentially expressed compared to controls after 24 h of exposure to 3, 10, and 30 μM PDBE-99, respectively. Of these, 48, 43, and 238 proteins were successfully identified, respectively. We propose that the biological effects of low-concentration PBDE-99 exposure are fundamentally different than effects of high-concentration exposure. Low-dose PBDE-99 exposure induced marked effects on cytoskeletal proteins, which was not correlated to cytotoxicity or major morphological effects, suggesting that other more regulatory aspects of cytoskeletal functions may be affected. Interestingly, 0.3 and 3 μM, but not 10 or 30 μM increased the expression of phosphorylated (active) Gap43, perhaps reflecting effects on neurite extension processes

Measurement of relative expression versus average log intensity (MA) plot showing the result of the statistical analysis of the striatum proteins

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Proteomic Evaluation of Neonatal Exposure to 2,2′,4,4′,5-Pentabromodiphenyl Ether"</p><p>Environmental Health Perspectives 2005;114(2):254-259.</p><p>Published online 6 Oct 2005</p><p>PMCID:PMC1367840.</p><p>This is an Open Access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose, provided this notice is preserved along with the article's original DOI.</p> The log values of spot intensity on the -axis are plotted against log values of fold change on the -axis. The intensity was calculated as the log of the raw intensity of the average of Cy3 and Cy5 across all four gels. The spots correspond to the striatum proteins identified on all four DIGE gels. The spots marked in blue represent the differently regulated proteins, whereas the squared blue spots represent the nine proteins picked and identified from the striatum gel 4

Box plots of the spot ratios from the four gels from the () striatum and the () hippocampus

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Proteomic Evaluation of Neonatal Exposure to 2,2′,4,4′,5-Pentabromodiphenyl Ether"</p><p>Environmental Health Perspectives 2005;114(2):254-259.</p><p>Published online 6 Oct 2005</p><p>PMCID:PMC1367840.</p><p>This is an Open Access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose, provided this notice is preserved along with the article's original DOI.</p> The box limits are the first and third quartile, closely representing 50% of the data. The whiskers extend to the most extreme data point, which is no more than 1.5 times the length of the box away from the box. The overall average and SD of the log 95% ratios averages 0.141 ± 0.016 for the striatum and 0.165 ± 0.022 for the hippocampus, corresponding to log 95% prediction limits of 0.199 and 0.242, respectively. S1–S4, gels 1–4 (see ) for striatum; H1–H4, gels 1–4 for hippocampus

<i>In Vitro</i> Neurotoxicity of PBDE-99: Immediate and Concentration-Dependent Effects on Protein Expression in Cerebral Cortex Cells

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are commonly used flame retardants in various consumer products. Pre- and postnatal exposure to congeners of PBDEs disrupts normal brain development in rodents. Two-dimensional difference gel electrophoresis (2D-DIGE) was used to analyze concentration-dependent differences in protein expression in cultured cortical cells isolated from rat fetuses (GD 21) after 24 h exposure to PBDE-99 (3, 10, or 30 μM). Changes on a post-translational level were studied using a 1 h exposure to 30 μM PBDE-99. The effects of 24 h exposure to 3 and 30 μM PBDE-99 on mRNA levels were measured using oligonucleotide microarrays. A total of 62, 46, and 443 proteins were differentially expressed compared to controls after 24 h of exposure to 3, 10, and 30 μM PDBE-99, respectively. Of these, 48, 43, and 238 proteins were successfully identified, respectively. We propose that the biological effects of low-concentration PBDE-99 exposure are fundamentally different than effects of high-concentration exposure. Low-dose PBDE-99 exposure induced marked effects on cytoskeletal proteins, which was not correlated to cytotoxicity or major morphological effects, suggesting that other more regulatory aspects of cytoskeletal functions may be affected. Interestingly, 0.3 and 3 μM, but not 10 or 30 μM increased the expression of phosphorylated (active) Gap43, perhaps reflecting effects on neurite extension processes

<i>In Vitro</i> Neurotoxicity of PBDE-99: Immediate and Concentration-Dependent Effects on Protein Expression in Cerebral Cortex Cells

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are commonly used flame retardants in various consumer products. Pre- and postnatal exposure to congeners of PBDEs disrupts normal brain development in rodents. Two-dimensional difference gel electrophoresis (2D-DIGE) was used to analyze concentration-dependent differences in protein expression in cultured cortical cells isolated from rat fetuses (GD 21) after 24 h exposure to PBDE-99 (3, 10, or 30 μM). Changes on a post-translational level were studied using a 1 h exposure to 30 μM PBDE-99. The effects of 24 h exposure to 3 and 30 μM PBDE-99 on mRNA levels were measured using oligonucleotide microarrays. A total of 62, 46, and 443 proteins were differentially expressed compared to controls after 24 h of exposure to 3, 10, and 30 μM PDBE-99, respectively. Of these, 48, 43, and 238 proteins were successfully identified, respectively. We propose that the biological effects of low-concentration PBDE-99 exposure are fundamentally different than effects of high-concentration exposure. Low-dose PBDE-99 exposure induced marked effects on cytoskeletal proteins, which was not correlated to cytotoxicity or major morphological effects, suggesting that other more regulatory aspects of cytoskeletal functions may be affected. Interestingly, 0.3 and 3 μM, but not 10 or 30 μM increased the expression of phosphorylated (active) Gap43, perhaps reflecting effects on neurite extension processes