A music retrieval system that accepts hummed tunes as queries is described in this paper. This system uses similaxity retrieval because a hummed tune may contain errors. The retrieval result is a list of song names ranked according to the closeness of the match. Our ultimate goal is that the correct song should be first on the list. This means that eventually our system's similarity retrieval should allow for only one correct answer.The most significant improvement our system has over general query-by-humming systems is that all processing of musical information is done based on beats instead of notes. This type of query processing is robust against queries generated from erroneous input. In addition, acoustic information is transcribed and converted into relative intervals and is used for making feature vectors. This increases the resolution of the retrieval system compared with other general systems, which use only pitch direction information.The database currently holds over 10,000 songs, and the retrieval time is at most one second. This level of performance is mainly achieved through the use of indices for retrieval. In this paper, we also report on the results of music analyses of the songs in the database. Based on these results, new technologies for improving retrieval accuracy, such as partial feature vectors and or'ed retrieval among multiple search keys, axe proposed. The effectiveness of these technologies is evaluated quantitatively, and it is found that the retrieval accuracy increases by more than 20% compared with the previous system [9]. Practical user interfaces for the system axe also described.

Serum amino acid concentrations in cirrhotic patients with and without hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) were investigated. Elevation of serum aromatic amino acids (AAA) and methionine levels observed in cirrhotic patients without malignancy was not apparent in cirrhotic cases with HCC, and thus the ratio of branched chain amino acids (BCAA) to AAA was not so diminished in the latter cases. Development of hepatic encephalopathy in cirrhotic patients with HCC led to only a slight change in the serum aminogram characteristic of hepatic failure. In patients who underwent operations, tissue amino acid compositions of hepatocellular, gastric, and colon cancers were compared with each other and their respective surrounding epithelia. Amino acid contents in the tumor tissue were generally higher than those in the respective nontumorous parts, especially in the case of HCC. The methionine, tyrosine, and phenylalanine contents in HCC were much higher than in cirrhotic or normal liver. Serum aminograms in rats with ethionine‐induced HCC were similar to those in cirrhotic patients with HCC. Amino acid contents in HCC were higher than those in the surrounding cirrhotic liver tissue of rats. Serum and liver tyrosine and isoleucine contents rose significantly in rats 5 to 6 weeks after the initiation of a 0.25% ethionine‐containing diet. After the 20th week of the experiment, by which time well‐differentiated HCC had developed, liver tyrosine and isoleucine contents increased whereas serum isoleucine concentrations decreased. The results suggest that the serum amino acid patterns characteristic of cirrhotic patients with HCC may result from the increased consumption of amino acids by HCC. Determinations of the amino acid levels are also useful for estimating the prognosis and discovering imminent hepatic encephalopathy in cirrhotic patients with HCC.

The textural degradation of oval-filefish meat gel accompanying the increase of peptides and the breakdown of myosin heavy chain was caused by proteinase(s) tightly associated with myofibrils. Leupeptin and n-butanol inhibited the proteolytic activity to some degree. The existence of an endogenous inhibitor for the proteolytic activity in the sarcoplasm was also demonstrated.

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We conclude that, 2 years after total gastrectomy, the pouch reconstruction had alleviated postgastrectomy symptoms to a greater extent than simple Roux-en-Y reconstruction, but the effectiveness could be improved. The long-term effects of pouch reconstruction should be examined more precisely with an adequate and valid scoring system for determining quality of life.