PURPOSE To develop a dry eye model of mouse induced by topical administration of benzalkonium chloride (BAC) and investigate the possible mechanisms. METHODS BAC at concentration of 0.2% was applied to the mouse ocular surface for 7 days. Phenol red thread tear test, tear break-up time (BUT) test, corneal inflammatory index scoring, fluorescein and rose bengal test were performed to evaluate ...

The aim of this paper is to describe a systematic way of constructing effective divisors on Mg having exceptionally small slope. In particular, these divisors provide a string of counterexamples to the Harris-Morrison Slope Conjecture (cf. [HMo]). In a previous paper [FP], we showed that the divisor K10 on M10 consisting of sections of K3 surfaces contradicts the Slope Conjecture on M10. Since ...

OBJECTIVES To assess changes in the prevalence rates of probable common mental disorders (CMDs) and in rates of disability support pensions (DSPs) for people with psychiatric disorders in Australia between 2001 and 2014. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS Secondary analysis of data from five successive Australian national health surveys of representative samples of the working age population (1...

BACKGROUND In Japan, more than 60% of employees are reported to suffer from anxiety and stress. Consequently, Japanese society has begun to address such important issues as psychogenic disability and job-related suicide. Furthermore, given the aging of society and the surge in the number of elderly people requiring care, it is necessary to adequately and proactively support employees who care f...

Organizational justice has recently attracted attention as a predictor of employee mental and physical health. However, the lack of a Japanese translation of the original English-language organizational justice scale (OJS) has precluded its application in Japan. The present study aimed to develop Japanese version of the measure of organizational justice. We translated the original questionnaire...

The human microbiome has a fundamental role in skin homeostasis, barrier function and host immune networks. Acute chronic conditions are often associated with imbalances host-microbiome-immune interactions. Despite recent advances research, there limited models for studying these interactions healthy diseased skin, therefore we have developed model to investigate how different profiles alter ep...

The current treatments for severe skin injury all involve skin grafting. However, there is a worldwide shortage of donor skin tissue. In this study, we examined the advantages of using human amniotic fluid stem (hAFS) cells in skin wound healing. In vitro, hAFS cells differentiate into keratinocytes (termed hAFS-K). Like keratinocytes, hAFS-K cells express the markers K5, K14, K10 and involucri...

We have investigated the expression of P2X5, P2X7, P2Y1, and P2Y2 receptor subtypes in 8- to 11-wk-old human fetal epidermis in relation to markers of proliferation (proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) and Ki-67), keratinocyte differentiation (cytokeratin K10 and involucrin), and markers of apoptosis (TdT-mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) and anti-caspase-3). Immunohistochemistry sh...

A putative transcription factor, the Drosophila K10 gene product, contains eight repeats of the octapeptide sequence SPNQQQHP or close variants. The solution structure of the K10 repeat was studied by NMR using a peptide composed of two SPNQQQHP units (referred to here as HP2). To overcome problems caused by degeneracy of backbone amide signals of Gln residues, a series of synthetic peptides co...

PURPOSE Detection of the virulence gene is a key component in determining the pathogenicity of any isolates, because these genes act multi-functionally and multi-factorially. A gyrase specific gene primer, in combination with the PCR technology, allows the precise detection of the DNA gyrase subunit B2 gene (gyr-B-2) from different virulent microorganisms. In the present study, forward and reve...