Defining Dry Eye from a Clinical Perspective

Over the past decades, the number of patients with dry eye disease (DED) has increased dramatically. The incidence of DED is higher in Asia than in Europe and North America, suggesting the involvement of cultural or racial factors in DED etiology. Although many definitions of DED have been used, discrepancies exist between the various definitions of dry eye disease (DED) used across the globe. This article presents a clinical consensus on the definition of DED, as formulated in four meetings with global DED experts. The proposed new definition is as follows: “Dry eye is a multifactorial disease characterized by a persistently unstable and/or deficient tear film (TF) causing discomfort and/or visual impairment, accompanied by variable degrees of ocular surface epitheliopathy, inflammation and neurosensory abnormalities.” The key criteria for the diagnosis of DED are unstable TF, inflammation, ocular discomfort and visual impairment. This definition also recommends the assessment of ocular surface epitheliopathy and neurosensory abnormalities in each patient with suspected DED. It is easily applicable in clinical practice and should help practitioners diagnose DED consistently. This consensus definition of DED should also help to guide research and clinical trials that, to date, have been hampered by the lack of an established surrogate endpoint.     

Anomalies of the tracheobronchial tree in patients with esophageal atresia

Bone marrow examination revealed a lipid-laden histiocytosis in seven patients undergoing long-term total parenteral nutrition necessitated by extensive short-bowel surgical resection. Clinical abnormalities occurred during this treatment which required bone marrow examination. These included hepatosplenomegaly and peripheral blood cytopenia; the median time to the detection of these abnormalities was 64 months. The most striking change within the bone marrow was the presence of many pigment-laden histiocytes which had the typical morphology of sea-blue histiocytes seen in the so-called idiopathic sea-blue histiocyte syndrome. The occurrence of sea-blue histiocytosis in the bone marrow in association with long-term parenteral nutrition for short-bowel syndrome has not, to our knowledge, been reported previously and should now be considered in the differential diagnosis of bone marrow sea-blue histiocytosis.     

Effects of Neodymium Concentration on Optical Characteristics of Polycrystalline Nd:YAG Laser Materials

A neodymium-doped yttrium-aluminum garnet (Y₃A1₅O₁₂, YAG) (Nd:YAG) ceramic that contained 0.3–4.8 at.% neodymium additives and exhibited nearly the same optical properties as those of a single crystal was fabricated by a solid-state reaction method using high-purity powders. Although the integrated absorption intensity of the ²H_9/2+⁴F_5/2 bands simply increased as the neodymium concentration in the YAG ceramics decreased, the fluorescence intensity of the 2.4 at.% Nd:YAG ceramic was the strongest among Nd:YAG ceramics with various neodymium concentrations and a 0.9 at.% Nd:YAG single crystal. An oscillation experiment was performed on a continuous-wave (cw) laser with a diode-laser exciting system using those ceramics and the single crystal. The oscillation threshold and slope efficiency in that analysis were 309 mW and 28%, respectively, for the 1.1 at.% Nd:YAG ceramics and 356 mW and 40%, respectively, for the 2.4 at.% Nd:YAG ceramics. The lasing characteristics of the ceramics in the present work were superior to those of a 0.9 at.% Nd:YAG single crystal that was fabricated by the Czochralski (Cz) method.     

Mechanical properties of SiNxCx ceramic films prepared by plasma CVD

The mechanical properties of Si₃N₄-SiC, SiN_x and SiC_y films prepared at a low temperature of 400 °C by plasma chemical vapour deposition are reported. Microhardness, internal stress of the film and adhesive strength between the film and glass or stainless steel substrate were evaluated as principal mechanical properties. Microhardness was measured to be about 10 to 20 G Pa dependent on the film composition in each system. Internal stress of the films on borosilicate glass substrates extensively varied from tensile to compressive with the film composition change from Si₃N₄ to SiC. Adhesive strength, as ascertained by the scratch test, was about 580 to 800 MPa for crown glass substrates, and about 210 to 310 M Pa for 316 stainless steel substrates. It is pointed out that tensile stress in these films brought about more abrupt decreases of the adhesive strength than did compressive stress.     

Hot carrier magnetophonon spectroscopy of semiconductors in high magnetic fields up to 40 T

Hot carrier magnetophonon resonances of n-type Si, short channel InP and p-type InSb were investigated in pulsed high magnetic fields up to 40 T. Using a recently developed high resolution technique in pulsed high fields, many new features of the hot carrier-phonon interactions in high magnetic fields were found.     

Studies on chitin 3—effect of coagulants and annealing on the preparation and the properties of chitin membrane

Chitin membrane was prepared by casting a N,N-dimethyl acetamide, N-methyl 2-pyrrolidone and lithium chloride (DMA-NMP-LiCl)solution of chitin and coagulating with several media. The effect of the coagulants on membrane formation was studied. 2-Propanol was found to be more favourable than methanol, ethanol, acetone and mixtures of 2-propanol and water. The membrane obtained in 2-propanol was subjected to annealing. Annealing made the membrane dense and strong. The tensile strength of the membrane annealed at 145°C for 2hr was about twice that of an unannealed membrane. The solute permeability of the annealed membranes was lower than that of the original one. These phenomena could be clearly interpreted in terms of crystallinity.     

An absolute requirement of fructose 1,6-bisphosphate for the Lactobacillus caseiL-lactate dehydrogenase activity induced by a single amino acid substitution

Lactobacillus casei allosteric L-lactate dehydrogenase (L-LDH)absolutely requires fructose 1,6-bisphosphate [Fru(1,6)P2] forits catalytic activity under neutral conditions, but exhibitsmarked catalytic activity in the absence of Fru(1,6)P₂ underacidic conditions through the homotropic activation effect ofsubstrate pyruvate. In this enzyme, a single amino acid replacement,i.e. that of His205 conserved in the Fru(1,6)P₂-binding siteof certain allosteric L-LDHs of lactic acid bacteria with Thr,did not induce a marked loss of the activation effect of Fru(1,6)P₂or divalent metal ions, which are potent activators that improvethe activation function of Fru(1,6)P₂ under neutral conditions.However, this replacement induced a great loss of the Fru(1,6)P₂-independentactivation effect of pyruvate or pyruvate analogs under acidicconditions, consequently indicating an absolute Fru(1,6)P₂ requirementfor the enzyme activity. The replacement also induced a significantreduction in the pH-dependent sensitivity of the enzyme to Fru(1,6)P₂,through a slight decrease and increase of the Fru(1,6)P₂ sensitivityunder acidic and neutral conditions, respectively, indicatingthat His205 is also largely involved in the pH-dependent sensitivityof L.casei L-LDH to Fru(1,6)P₂. The role of His205 in the allostericregulation of the enzyme is discussed on the basis of the knowncrystal structures of L-LDHs.     

A procedure to analyze surface profiles of the protein molecules visualized by quick-freeze deep-etch replica electron microscopy

Quick-freeze deep-etch replica electron microscopy gives high contrast snapshots of individual protein molecules under physiological conditions in vitro or in situ. The images show delicate internal pattern, possibly reflecting the rotary-shadowed surface profile of the molecule. As a step to build the new system for the "Structural analysis of single molecules", we propose a procedure to quantitatively characterize the structural property of individual molecules; e.g. conformational type and precise view-angle of the molecules, if the crystallographic structure of the target molecule is available. This paper presents a framework to determine the observed face of the protein molecule by analyzing the surface profile of individual molecules visualized in freeze-replica specimens. A comprehensive set of rotary-shadowed views of the protein molecule was artificially generated from the available atomic coordinates using light-rendering software. Exploiting new mathematical morphology-based image filter, characteristic features were extracted from each image and stored as template. Similar features were extracted from the true replica image and the most likely projection angle and the conformation of the observed particle were determined by quantitative comparison with a set of archived images. The performance and the robustness of the procedure were examined with myosin head structure in defined configuration for actual application.