Twelve high schools in Japan (of which six are in Fukushima Prefecture), four in France, eight in Poland and two in Belarus cooperated in the measurement and comparison of individual external doses in 2014. In total 216 high-school students and teachers participated in the study. Each participant wore an electronic personal dosimeter 'D-shuttle' for two weeks, and kept a journal of his/her whereabouts and activities. The distributions of annual external doses estimated for each region overlap with each other, demonstrating that the personal external individual doses in locations where residence is currently allowed in Fukushima Prefecture and in Belarus are well within the range of estimated annual doses due to the terrestrial background radiation level of other regions/countries.

An autopsy case of a hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with unusual metastasis to the mucosa of the small intestine is reported. The patient was a 73 year old female. At autopsy, the liver weighed 970 g, and an ovoid and necrotic 6 x 5 cm sized tumor was found in the right posterior lobe with many daughter tumors within the cirrhotic liver. The tumor embolus in the portal vein was not found. Extrahepatically the tumor metastasized to the lungs, sacral bone and hepatohillar and para-aortic lymph nodes. Additionally, many sessile and pedunculated polyps up to 2cm in diameter were found sporadically in the small intestine. These seemed to be primary adenomatous polyps but histologically they were HCC metastasis. To the best of the authors' knowledge, many polypoid involvements of the small intestine by a hepatocellular carcinoma have not been reported until now.

Japanese toad (Bufo japonicus) tracks the route to and from the breeding sites using the olfactory cues from the migration route and not from the destination (). We recorded a slow extracellular potential change (electro-olfactogram or EOG) evoked on the olfactory epithelium by applying an olfactory stimulus with an air stream. In September toads, only a simple typical EOG that is common in various vertebrate species was observed. Oscillatory potential changes (OSC) superimposed on the typical EOG were observed in the breeding season when studied throughout a year. There were no sexual differences in the occurrence and the amplitude of the OSC. Oscillatory potentials were observed also from the olfactory nerve of the brain. The OSC in the olfactory epithelium remained even after denervation. In addition, it was suggested that there are multiple sites of OSC initiation in the olfactory epithelium. These results suggest an intimate relationship between OSC appearance and the breeding migration in the toad.

Tightly coiled spiral micro-organisms (Gastrospirillum hominis), distinct from Helicobacter pylori, were found in the gastric mucosa of a 66-year-old man with a 4-month history of intermittent epigastric pain. The organisms were distributed in the antral mucosa, which showed erosive gastritis; histologically, the affected mucosa presented moderate to severe chronic gastritis with focal neutrophil infiltration. After a 2-week administration of cimetidine, his symptoms resolved and the active inflammation was reduced, both endoscopically and histologically, but the organisms still remained. Biopsy specimens taken 4 weeks after treatment with minocycline and cimetidine showed normal gastric mucosa without the spiral organisms. The above clinical course suggests the possible role of Gastrospirillum hominis in the pathogenesis of gastritis.

No abstract