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The fatigue life of austenitic stainless steel has recently been shown to undergo remarkable reduction with decrease in strain rate and increase in temperature in water. Either of these parameters as a factor of this reduction has been examined quantitatively and methods for predicting the fatigue life reduction factor Fen in any given set of conditions have been proposed. All these methods are based primarily on fatigue data in simulated PWR water owing to the few data available in simulated BWR water. Recent Japanese fatigue data in simulated BWR water clearly indicated the effects of the environment on fatigue degradation to be milder than under actual PWR conditions. A new method for determining Fen in BWR water was developed in the present study and a revised Fen in PWR water is also proposed based on new data. These new models differ from those previously used primarily with regard to the manner in which strain amplitude is considered to affect Fen in the environment.

It is known that respiratory function deteriorates with age. Endogenous damage to DNA is thought to contribute to the aging process. The mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation system, a bio-engine, consists of five complexes, and 13 subunits of those complexes are biosynthesized from information encoded in mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA is shown to have a much higher mutation rate than nuclear DNA. We examined the diaphragms obtained at autopsy from 34 humans, 23 men and 11 women, ranging in age from 25 to 85 yr, for mitochondrial DNA deletions using the polymerase chain reaction method. Multiple mitochondrial DNA deletions were detected particularly among the elderly; the number of deletions in those over age 70 was significantly higher than in those under age 40. The occurrence of a 3.4-kbp deletion of mitochondrial DNA increased with age, i.e., 0% of those under age 30, 20.0% of those in their forties, 25.0% of those in their fifties, 28.6% of those in their sixties, 72.7% of those in their seventies, and in all of those over age 80. The mutation was based on the directly repeated sequence, 5'-TCACCCC-3', which exists in both the CO3 gene and the ND5 gene. Replication impairment occurred at that directly repeated sequence, which caused the elimination of a genome between the CO3 gene and the ND5 gene, and information for biosynthesis of four subunits in complex I (ND3, ND4L, ND4, and ND5), one in complex IV (CO3), and five transfer RNA genes was missing.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Summary. Glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) and neurturin (NTN) mediate their actions through a unique multicomponent receptor system composed of Ret receptor tyrosine kinase and glycosyl-phosphatidylinositol-linked cell surface proteins (designated GFRa-1 and GFRa-2). In the present study, expression of these signalling components in the process of differentiation of haemopoietic cells was investigated. Ret was expressed at variable levels in normal and malignant cells of the myelomonocyte lineage. Immunohistochemical analysis of human and mouse tissues revealed that Ret expression was increased in intermediate mature myeloid cells such as promyelocytes and myelocytes and decreased in mature granulocytes and monocytes. Consistent with this observation, when THP-1 monocytic and HL-60 promyelocytic leukaemia cells expressing Ret were differentiated toward macrophages or granulocytes by treatment of 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA) or all-trans retinoic acid (RA), Ret expression strikingly decreased during differentiation. Expression of GDNF, NTN, GFRa-1 and GFRa-2 was undetectable in THP-1 and HL-60 cells as well as in bone marrow haemopoietic cells. In contrast, bone marrow stromal cells appeared to express GDNF, GFRa-1 and GFRa-2 but not Ret. These findings suggested that the interaction between stromal cells and Ret-expressing haemopoietic cells in the bone marrow microenvironment may play a role in the differentiation of myelomonocyte-lineage cells through activation of the GDNF/Ret signalling pathway.

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