Phase one of the Regional Climate Model Intercomparison Project for Asia reveals the capacities of regional climate models (RCMs) for simulating the Asian monsoon climate and extreme events as well. (Mearns et al. 2001;Giorgi et al. 2001). At present, analysis of the coupled atmosphere-ocean GCM (AOGCM) simulations indicates that average biases at regional scales, when simulating present-day climate, are highly variable from region to region and across models. For example, Giorgi and Francisco (2000) find that temperature biases are typically within the range of ±4°C, but exceed ±5°C in some regions, particularly in the winter. They also find that precipitation biases are mostly between -40% and +80%, but exceed 100% in some regions. Thus, a high priority for climate research is to improve the downscaling of GCM climate change to regional scales so that potential impacts can be adequately assessed (Houghton et al. 1995(Houghton et al. , 2001 Simulating regional climate poses difficulties, such as capturing effects of forcing and circulation at the planetary, regional, and local scales, along with teleconnection effects of regional anomalies. These processes are characterized by a range of temporal variability scales and can be highly nonlinear. The East Asian summer monsoon is characterized by marked variability at seasonal, interannual, and interdecadal time scales (Fu and Zheng 1998). The uncertain timing of monsoon onset and the irregular pace of its seasonal, northward progression strongly influence water availability for agriculture and urban consumption (Tao and Chen 1987;Wu and Zhang 1998). Interannual changes, such as those linked with the ENSO cycle, affect the frequency of droughts, floods, and other weather extremes that occur during the summer monsoon (Fu and Teng 1993;Ju and Slingo 1995;Fasullo and Webster 2002). Finally, on decadal-to-century time scales, the rapidly growing economy and population of East Asia presents anthropogenic influences that may also alter monsoon behavior (Fu and Zheng 1998;Quan et al. 2003). However, coarse-resolution climate models generally fail to give satisfactory simulations of the East Asian monsoon (Lau and Yang 1996; Yu et al. 2000).To date, most studies of regional climate change over East Asia have used output of GCMs without applying any downscaling techniques (Hulme et al. 1992;Zhao and Wang 1994). However, a relatively high degree of uncertainty exists in the regional climate change information of East Asia from GCMs, which results from the scenario's construction, such as future emission variations and the GCMs' modeling of the climate responses to a given scenario. Several researchers have used RCMs for simulating the regional climate of East Asia. Many of these studies have shown that RCMs can simulate the spatial detail of monsoon climate better than GCMs (Liu et al. 1994(Liu et al. ,1996Fu et al. 1998;Lee and Suh 2000). However, multiyear simulations must be used to provide meaningful climate statistics and to identify significant model errors. Therefo...

In pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, dysadherin expression seems to reflect tumor aggressiveness and to be a positive marker of poor prognosis when considered both alone and in combination with downregulation of E-cadherin.

The E-cadherin-mediated cell adhesion system is frequently inactivated by multiple mechanisms and is involved in tumor progression in many types of cancer. Recently we have reported a novel cell membrane glycoprotein, dysadherin, which has an anti-cell-cell adhesion function and downregulates E-cadherin. Expressions of dysadherin and E-cadherin were investigated immunohistochemically in 91 patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue to determine the correlation between the 2 molecules and their associations with the clinicopathologic features of the tumors and with patient survival. Dysadherin was expressed at the cell membranes of many cancer cells. Twenty-five percent of the tumors showed dysadherin immunopositivity in more than 50% of the cancer cells. Sixty-nine percent of the tumors showed reduced E-cadherin immunopositivity. There was an inverse correlation between dysadherin expression and E-cadherin expression (P = 0.0001). Increased dysadherin expression was significantly correlated with an infiltrative type of growth pattern (P = 0.001), high tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage (P = 0.024), and poor patient survival (P = 0.003). After adjusting for growth pattern, TNM stage, and other clinicopathologic features, increased dysadherin expression and reduced E-cadherin expression were both significant predictors of poor survival (P = 0.0006). Increased dysadherin expression is a significant indicator of poor prognosis in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue.

ObjectivesThe objective of this study was to investigate the cumulative return to work (RTW) rate and to clarify the predictors of the time to full-time RTW (full RTW) and resignation among Japanese stroke survivors, within the 365-day period following their initial day of sickness absence due to stroke.SettingThis study was based on tertiary prevention of occupational health in large-scaled Japanese companies of various industries.ParticipantsThe participants in this study were 382 Japanese workers who experienced an episode of sickness leave due to clinically certified stroke diagnosed between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2011. Data were obtained from an occupational health register. Participants were followed up for 365 days after the start day of the first sickness absence. The cumulative RTW rates by Kaplan-Meier estimates and predictors for time to full RTW and resignation by Cox regression were calculated.ResultsA total of 382 employees had their first sickness absence due to stroke during the 12-year follow-up period. The cumulative full RTW rates at 60, 120, 180 and 365 days were 15.1%, 33.6%, 43.5% and 62.4%, respectively. Employees who took sick leave due to cerebral haemorrhage had a longer time to full RTW (HR, 0.50; 95% CI 0.36 to 0.69) than those with cerebral infarction. Older employees (over 50 years of age) demonstrated a shorter time to resignation than younger employees (HR, 3.30; 95% CI 1.17 to 9.33). Manual workers had a longer time to resignation than non-manual workers (HR, 0.24; 95% CI 0.07 to 0.78).ConclusionsCumulative RTW rates depended on the subtype of stroke, and older age was a predictor of resignation.

LAAFV (reflecting functional remodeling) and PA-TDI (reflecting electrical remodeling) are independent predictors of AF recurrence after RFCA for PAF.