A 55-year-old man had a solid tumor in the right part of a horseshoe kidney. He had previously undergone open cholecystectomy and appendectomy with panperitonitis. Retroperitoneoscopic nephrectomy was performed, with rapid recovery and good short-term results. This appears to be the first case of endoscopic surgery on a horseshoe kidney using ultrasonic shears for cancer.

Renal hypouricemia is a disease caused by the dysfunction of renal urate transporters. This disease is known to cause exercise-induced acute kidney injury, but its mechanism has not yet been established. To analyze the mechanism by which hypouricemia causes renal failure, we conducted a semi-ischemic forearm exercise stress test to mimic exercise conditions in five healthy subjects, six patients with renal hypouricemia, and one patient with xanthinuria and analyzed the changes in purine metabolites. The results showed that the subjects with renal hypouricemia had significantly lower blood hypoxanthine levels and increased urinary hypoxanthine excretion after exercise than healthy subjects. Oxidative stress markers did not differ between healthy subjects and hypouricemic subjects before and after exercise, and no effect of uric acid as a radical scavenger was observed. As hypoxanthine is a precursor for adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production via the salvage pathway, loss of hypoxanthine after exercise in patients with renal hypouricemia may cause ATP loss in the renal tubules and consequent tissue damage.

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The amorphous grain boundary phase contents of aluminum nitride (AlN) was estimated by the linear combination fitting method of XAFS, which is new approach. C-axis lattice parameters of the AlN crystals and median diameters of the AlN grains were also measured and correlations with thermal conductivities of the ceramics were analyzed. As a result, the amorphous grain boundary phase contents showed a negative correlation. On the other hand, the c-axis parameters and the median diameters showed positive correlations. Furthermore, a multiple regression analysis showed that the three properties could approximately explain the thermal conductivity and that the amorphous grain boundary phase contents and the median diameters dominated.

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