Polymeric Sol-Gel Transition with the Diverging Correlation Length Verified by Small-Angle X-ray Scattering.

Sol-gel transitions of polymers are pivotal phenomena in material science, yet the critical phenomenon of structure during gelation has remained unclear. Here, we investigated the sol-gel transition of a fluorous polymer, poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene), in a blend of two ionic liquids. This system features a quite high amount of cross-linker and binding sites with ion-dipole interactions between the cation and C-F dipoles, thereby facilitating easy exchange of the cross-links. Changing the mixing ratio of the two ionic liquids enabled tuning the ion-dipole interactions and inducing sol-gel transition. Notably, the correlation length and molar mass, obtained by small-angle X-ray scattering, diverged at the gelation point. Moreover, the derived critical exponents (ν = 0.85 ± 0.05) aligns remarkably well with the prediction from percolation theory (ν = 0.88). To our knowledge, this is the first report on the evident divergence during polymeric gelation by small-angle scattering and the verification of the critical exponents of the percolation theory.

Identification of Bacterial Drug-Resistant Cells by the Convolutional Neural Network in Transmission Electron Microscope Images.

The emergence of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics is common in areas where antibiotics are used widely. The current standard procedure for detecting bacterial drug resistance is based on bacterial growth under antibiotic treatments. Here we describe the morphological changes in enoxacin-resistant Escherichia coli cells and the computational method used to identify these resistant cells in transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images without using antibiotics. Our approach was to create patches from TEM images of enoxacin-sensitive and enoxacin-resistant E. coli strains, use a convolutional neural network for patch classification, and identify the strains on the basis of the classification results. The proposed method was highly accurate in classifying cells, achieving an accuracy rate of 0.94. Using a gradient-weighted class activation mapping to visualize the region of interest, enoxacin-resistant and enoxacin-sensitive cells were characterized by comparing differences in the envelope. Moreover, Pearson's correlation coefficients suggested that four genes, including lpp, the gene encoding the major outer membrane lipoprotein, were strongly associated with the image features of enoxacin-resistant cells.

Early Detection of Low Cognitive Scores from Dual-task Performance Data Using a Spatio-temporal Graph Convolutional Neural Network.

Detecting low cognitive scores at an early stage is important for delaying the progress of dementia. Investigations of early-stage detection have employed automatic assessment using dual-task (i.e., performing two different tasks simultaneously). However, current approaches to dual-task-based detection are based on either simple features or limited motion information, which degrades the detection accuracy. To address this problem, we proposed a framework that uses graph convolutional networks to extract spatio-temporal features from dual-task performance data. Moreover, to make the proposed method robust against data imbalance, we devised a loss function that directly optimizes the summation of the sensitivity and specificity of the detection of low cognitive scores (i.e., score≤ 23 or score≤ 27). Our evaluation is based on 171 subjects from 6 different senior citizens' facilities. Our experimental results demonstrated that the proposed algorithm considerably outperforms the previous standard with respect to both the sensitivity and specificity of the detection of low cognitive scores.

Benign metastasizing leiomyoma in femur and thigh with a history of uterine leiomyoma: A case report and literature review.

Benign metastasizing leiomyoma (BML) is a rare disease that is characterized by well-differentiated smooth muscle tumors occurring extrauterine site in women with a history of uterine leiomyoma. The lung is the most common metastatic site for BML. A 48-year-old woman, who had histories of laparoscopic myomectomy and transabdominal total hysterectomy, visited an orthopedics complaining of a mass in her left thigh and difficulty in walking. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and fluorine 18 fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography revealed multiple mass lesions in her both thighs and left femur as well as both lungs. She was referred to our hospital for further examination. We diagnosed her tumors as BML according to histopathological analysis of tumor specimen. The left thigh tumor was resected and the treatment with gonadotropin releasing hormone agonist regressed the size of the residual tumors by approximately 30%. BML should be considered when multiple soft tissue tumors are found in women with a history of leiomyomas.

[Different sensitivity to chemotherapy between adenocarcinoma and adenosquamous carcinoma in a case of synchronous multicentric gastric cancer].

A 60-year-old man presented with upper gastrointestinal bleeding. We diagnosed double gastric cancer (adenocarcinoma and adenosquamous carcinoma) based on an endoscopic examination. Due to uncontrollable bleeding, total gastrectomy was performed after 4 courses of chemotherapy with S-1+cisplatin. Histological investigation revealed that no obvious anti-cancer effect was observed in adenosquamous carcinoma (Grade 1), while tumor cells were eliminated in the area of adenocarcinoma (Grade 3). This case clearly demonstrated that sensitivity to chemotherapy was different between adenocarcinoma and adenosquamous carcinoma of the stomach.

[Acute pancreatitis associated with the administration of ceftriaxone in an adult patient].

We report a case of a 35-year-old patient with acute pancreatitis after administration of ceftriaxone. She was given ceftriaxone (2g/day) for 9 days because of diverticulitis of the colon. She was admitted to our hospital again because of epigastralgia 12 days after the first administration of ceftriaxone. Laboratory examination showed markedly elevated serum amylase, and CT scan demonstrated findings consistent with acute pancreatitis, in addition to sludge in the common bile duct and gall bladder, which was not identified before the administration of ceftriaxone. We should be aware of the fact that administration of ceftriaxone sometimes results in the formation of biliary sludge and can cause severe adverse events such as cholecystitis and pancreatitis, not only in children, but also in adult patients.

Total synthesis of both enantiomers of dictyochromenol and their (Z)-isomers.

Total syntheses of both enantiomers of dictyochromenol (1) and its (Z)-stereoisomer (2) were achieved with high enantiomeric purity. The results of this study reveal the relationship between the optical rotation of the resolved 1 enantiomers.