No abstract

Breast enhancement with artificial implants is one of the most frequently performed cosmetic surgeries but is associated with various complications, such as capsular contracture, that lead to implant removal or replacement at a relatively high rate. For replacement, we used transplantation of progenitor-supplemented adipose tissue (cell-assisted lipotransfer; CAL) in 15 patients. The stromal vascular fraction containing adipose tissue progenitor cells obtained from liposuction aspirates was used to enrich for progenitor cells in the graft. Overall, clinical results were very satisfactory, and no major abnormalities were seen on magnetic resonance imaging or mammogram after 12 months. Postoperative atrophy of injected fat was minimal and did not change substantially after 2 months. Surviving fat volume at 12 months was 155 +/- 50 mL (Right; mean +/- SD) and 143 +/- 80 mL (Left) following lipoinjection from an initial mean of 264 mL. These preliminary results suggest that CAL is a suitable methodology for the replacement of breast implants.

[1] Recent studies have demonstrated the importance of water movement through the bedrock in the rainfall-runoff process on steep hillslopes. However, quantitative information on this process is still limited. The objective of this study was to address the following questions: (1) How large is the area where bedrock groundwater seeps into the soil layer, and (2) what is the rate of water flow out of the bedrock? To address these questions, detailed hydrological, hydrochemical, and thermal measurements were conducted at a forested steep unchanneled granitic concave slope in the Tanakami Mountains, central Japan. The relationship between the amplitude of annual soil temperature variation and the measurement depth showed that in a normal low-flow period, the seepage area ranged between 14 and 21 m 2 and the ratio of this area to that of the whole catchment was about 2.0%. In a drought period the seepage area ranged between 3.5 and 5.5 m 2 , and the ratio to the whole catchment was around 0.5%. The variation in the area of seepage was controlled both by the short-term precipitation pattern during the preceding several weeks and by the long-term pattern over several preceding months. A two-component geochemical hydrograph separation indicated that the ratio of bedrock groundwater to streamflow was about 0.82 for the normal low-flow periods and 0.90 for the drought period. The rate of flow out of the bedrock into the soil layer ranged from 0.5 to 3.3 m 3 d À1 . That is, although the seepage area was small (0.5-2.0% of the catchment), the contribution of bedrock groundwater was considerable (50-95% of streamflow).INDEX TERMS: 1860 Hydrology: Runoff and streamflow; 1866 Hydrology: Soil moisture; 1829 Hydrology: Groundwater hydrology; KEYWORDS: runoff, hillslope hydrology, thermal response, bedrock groundwater Citation: Uchida, T., Y. Asano, N. Ohte, and T. Mizuyama, Seepage area and rate of bedrock groundwater discharge at a granitic unchanneled hillslope, Water Resour.

[1] The spatial patterns of stream solute concentrations in a catchment reflect its hydrology and biogeochemistry. The spatial relationship between drainage areas and solute concentrations may be asymptotic or convergent (large variation in small streams that becomes dampened as they merge into larger streams), probably depending on landscape features and/or solute type. Thus, we investigated the concentration spatial patterns of dissolved silica and major ions (Na, and Cl À ) in steep, humid headwaters of a 4.27 km 2 catchment on Tanakami Mountain, central Japan. Because the catchment had a nearly homogenous landscape of incised valley and granitic bedrock covered in forest, we could eliminate any potential effects of variable landscape features. We found convergent relationships between drainage area and solute concentrations for all solutes. The concentrations of all solutes were similar among sampling locations with an area of more than 0.1-1.5 km 2 independent of variable biogeochemical property of measured solutes. When considering only the longitudinal profile, solute concentrations showed a mostly asymptotic pattern. Taken together, these results indicate that longitudinal profiles with asymptotic patterns form convergent solute spatial patterns and suggest that variation in zero-order hollow discharges and the mixing of water from a variety of hillslopes control downstream chemistry.

Until recently, there have been few attempts to link hillslope, headwater and meso-scale hydrology. However, the paper by Shaman et al. (2004, Hydrological Processes 18: 3195-3206) has proposed concepts that link headwater and meso-scale basins. Although their paper provides an excellent example of how we should make connections between small-and large-scale hydrology, the analysis still lacked sufficient consideration of the spatial variability of hydrological behaviour at the hillslope/headwater scale. Here, we extend the discussion of Shaman et al. to smaller sized catchments. We use detailed datasets of hydrometric and hydrochemical measurements collected at the hillslope and small catchment scale at the Fudoji and Ibi catchments in Japan. We show that: (1) large spatial variation in the hydrological responses is present at the hillslope scale and that these responses are strongly controlled by the contribution of water flow from the bedrock into the soil at baseflow; (2) the spatial variability of hydrological responses in headwaters is damped compared with that of the hillslope, and this damping is determined by the integration of the hillslope responses which largely occurs in the stream.