No abstract

Interferon therapy for patients with HBV-related cirrhosis significantly decreased the HCC rate, especially in patients with a larger amount of serum HBV DNA. If interferon is administered properly for a selected group of patients, an effective strategy of cancer prevention can be achieved, even in patients with cirrhosis.

There is no theoretical or empirical evidence to suggest how the central nervous system (CNS) controls a variety of muscles associated with gait transition between walking and running. Here, we examined the motor control during a gait transition based on muscle synergies, which modularly organize functionally similar muscles. To this end, the subjects walked or ran on a treadmill and performed a gait transition spontaneously as the treadmill speed increased or decreased (a changing speed condition) or voluntarily following an experimenter’s instruction at constant treadmill speed (a constant speed condition). Surface electromyograms (EMGs) were recorded from 11 lower limb muscles bilaterally. We then extracted the muscle weightings of synergies and their activation coefficients from the EMG data using non-negative matrix factorization. As a result, the gait transition was controlled by approximately 9 muscle synergies, which were common during a walking and running, and their activation profiles were changed before and after a gait transition. Near a gait transition, the peak activation phases of the synergies, which were composed of plantar flexor muscles, were shifted to an earlier phase at the walk-to-run transition, and vice versa. The shifts were gradual in the changing speed condition, but an abrupt change was observed in the constant speed condition. These results suggest that the CNS low-dimensionally regulate the activation profiles of the specific synergies based on afferent information (spontaneous gait transition) or by changing only the descending neural input to the muscle synergies (voluntary gait transition) to achieve a gait transition.

A series of polystyrenes with weight‐average molecular weight M̄w up to 1.3 × 107 was prepared by anionic polymerization in tetrahydrofuran (THF). Each sample was characterized by gel‐permeation chromatography, light scattering, and viscometry. It was found that each sample had an almost symmetrical and very narrow molecular weight distribution (M̄w/M̄n < 1.07). The mean‐square unperturbed radius of gyration 〈S2〉0 was determined in trans‐decalin at 20.4°C as 〈S2〉0 = 7.86 × 10−18M̄w (cm2). The particle scattering factor was well represented by the Debye equation irrespective of solvent in the range of M̄w < 4 × 106, and only a small deviation was observed in benzene at higher molecular weights. The penetration function Ψ ≡ A2M2/4π3/2NA〈S〉23/2 was found to approach a relatively low asymptotic value of 0.21–0.23 at molecular weights above 2 × 106 in benzene at 30°C, where A2 is the second virial coefficient and NA is Avogrado's number. It was also found that the theta temperature in trans‐decalin was affected by the nature of polymer samples. A difference of about 3°C in the theta temperature was observed between two series of anionic polystyrenes, one prepared in THF and the other in benzene, but there was practically no difference in unperturbed chain dimension.

Strain‐dependent relaxation moduli G(t,s) were measured for polystyrene solutions in diethyl phthalate with a relaxometer of the cone‐and‐plate type. Ranges of molecular weight M and concentration c were from 1.23 × 106 to 7.62 × 106 and 0.112 to 0.329 g/cm3. Measurements were performed at various magnitudes of shear s ranging from 0.055 to 27.2. The relaxation modulus G(t,s) always decreased with increasing s and the relative amount of decrease (i.e.,–log[G(t,s)/G(t,0)]) increased as t increased. However, the detailed strain dependences of G(t,s) could be classified into two types according to the M and c of the solution. When cM < 106, the plot of log G(t,s) versus log t varied from a convex curve to an S‐shaped curve with increasing s. For solutions of cM > 106, the curves were still convex and S‐shaped at very small and large s, respectively, but in a certain range of s (approximately 3 < s < 7) log G(t,s) decreased rapidly at short times and then very slowly; a peculiar inflection and a plateau appeared on the plot of log G(t,s) versus log t. The strain‐dependent relaxation spectrum exhibited a trough at times corresponding to the plateau of log G(t,s). The longest relaxation time τ1(s) and the corresponding relaxation strength G1(s) were evaluated through the “Procedure X” of Tobolsky and Murakami. The relaxation time τ1(s) was independent of s for all the solutions studied while G1(s) decreased with s. The reduced relaxation strength G1(s)/G1(0) was a simple function of s (The plot of log G1(s)/G1(0) against log s was a convex curve) and was approximately independent of M and c in the range of cM <106. This behavior of G1(s)/G1(0) was in agreement with that observed for a polyisobutylene solution and seems to have wide applicability to many polymeric systems. On the other hand, log G1(s)/G1(0) as a function of log s decreased in two steps and decreased more rapidly when M or c was higher. It was suggested that in the range of cM < 106, a kind of geometrical factor might be responsible for a large part of the nonlinear behavior, while in the range of cM > 106, some “intrinsic” nonlinearity of the entanglement network system might be important.