Objectives-Cigarette smoking may influence rheumatoid arthritis (RA) disease incidence and may have direct biological eVects on the lungs and systemically. This study sought to determine if cigarette smoking is associated with RA disease severity. Methods-Clinical evaluations of patients seen in the University of Iowa rheumatology and orthopaedic ambulatory clinics were conducted. A letter of interest was mailed to 1701 patients who were first assigned an ICD-9-CM diagnostic code for RA in one of these clinics. A total of 857 patients expressed interest and were oVered a clinical examination and 395 were evaluated over an 18 month period. Of these, 336 satisfied examiner criteria for prevalent RA and were included in the analysis. The disease characteristics and arthritis care utilisation of these patients seemed representative of prevalent cases in the general community. RA disease severity was assessed by radiographic bone erosions (graded as either present/ absent and using the Larsen system), rheumatoid factor seropositivity, and presence of subcutaneous rheumatoid nodules. Results-Pack years of cigarette smoking was significantly associated with rheumatoid factor seropositivity (p = 0.0001), radiographic erosions (p = 0.024), and nodules (p = 0.051). After adjustment for potential confounders, smokers with ≥25 pack years were 3.1 times more likely to be rheumatoid factor positive (95% CI 1.7, 5.6) and 2.4 times more likely to show radiographic erosions (95% CI 1.2, 4.5) than never smokers. Less severe radiographic disease seemed to be more strongly associated with cigarette smoking than more severe disease. Conclusion-Cigarette smoking may adversely influence the severity of RA in a potentially dose dependent fashion.

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) plants with substantially increased Rubisco content were obtained by Agrobacteriummediated transformation with the rice rbcS sense gene under the control of the rice rbcS promoter. The primary transformants were screened for the ratio of Rubisco to leaf-N content, and the transformants with 4120% wild-type levels of Rubisco were selected. In the progeny of the selected lines of the transformants, the mRNA levels of one member of the rbcS gene family were increased from 3.9-to 6.2-fold, whereas those of other members of the rbcS gene family were unchanged. The total levels of rbcS mRNA were increased from 2.1-to 2.8-fold. The levels of rbcL mRNA were increased from 1.2-to 1.9-fold. Rubisco protein content was significantly increased by 30% on a leaf area basis. The ratio of Rubisco-N to leaf-N was also increased by 10-20%, irrespective of N treatment. The specific activity of Rubisco per unit of enzyme protein was not different. However, light-saturated photosynthesis was not enhanced even when the rate was measured at low [CO 2 ] where Rubisco becomes limiting for photosynthesis. Some lines showed lower photosynthesis at high [CO 2 ] (460 Pa). We conclude that introduction of additional sense rbcS leads to overexpression of rbcS and that this overexpression slightly up-regulates the gene expression of rbcL at the transcript level and enhances the amount of Rubisco holoenzyme. However, overproduction of Rubisco protein does not improve photosynthesis.

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Synthesis and polymerization of l,l-bis(phenoxycarbonyl)-2-vinylcyclopropane (2) were carried out. The new monomer 2 afforded a 1,5-addition polymer in good conversion by radical initiation. The polymers exhibit Tg as 76-84 °C and T¿ as 361-377 °C. 2 showed a positive volume change (+6.77%) on polymerization. This could be explained by the facts that the molecular weight of 2 is relatively large and 2 is crystalline at ambient temperature, which means the monomer is already compressed. The compositions of the 1,5-adduct, molecular weights, and volume expansion ratios decreased with increasing reaction temperature or by using solvent in the polymerization. An unknown unit from a side reaction in the polymer might consist of a cyclobutane skeleton.

Nonenzymatic kinetic resolution of racemic secondary alcohols is an efficient synthetic method to obtain optically active compounds in organic chemistry. Catalytic asymmetric acylation of racemic secondary alcohols has been successfully performed with achiral benzoyl chloride in the presence of only 0.3 mol% of chiral diamine (3) derived from (S)-proline, combined with 0.5 equivalent of triethylamine. This asymmetric acylation of various racemic cyclic secondary alcohols, 5, 6, or 8 membered cycloalkanols (1a–1c), hydroxyesters (1d and 1e), and bromohydrins (1f and 1g) gave the corresponding optically active benzoates (84–97% ee) and unreacted alcohols (79–95% ee). Racemic acyclic secondary alcohols (1h–1j) were also acylated in moderate enantioselectivity.

We report results of molecular line observations carried out toward a massive dense core in the Cyg OB 7 molecular cloud. The core has an extraordinarily large mass (∼ 1.1 × 10 4 M ⊙ ) and size (∼ 2 × 5 pc 2 ), but there is no massive young star forming therein. We observed this core in various molecular lines such as C 18 O(J = 1 − 0) using the 45m telescope at Nobeyama Radio Observatory. We find that the core has an elongated morphology consisting of several filaments and core-like structures. The filaments are massive (10 2 − 10 3 M ⊙ ), and they are apparently colliding against each other. Some candidates of YSOs are distributed around their intersection, suggesting that the collisions of the filaments may have influenced on their formation. To understand the formation and evolution of such colliding filaments, we performed numerical simulations using the adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) technique adopting the observed core parameters (e.g., the mass and size) as the initial conditions. Results indicate that the filaments are formed as seen in other earlier simulations for small cores in literature, but we could not reproduce the collisions of the filaments simply by assuming the large initial mass and size. We find that the collisions of the filaments occur only when there is a large velocity gradient in the initial core in a sense to compress it. We suggest that the observed core was actually compressed by an external effect, e.g., shocks of nearby supernova remnants including HB21 which has been suggested to be interacting with the Cyg OB 7 molecular cloud.