Twenty patients with schizophrenia and ten normal control subjects underwent magnetic resonance imaging of the brain. The volumes of several brain structures were measured using a computer image analysing system. The schizophrenic patients had significantly smaller left parahippocampal volume and larger left temporal horn volume than the control subjects. A larger body of the right lateral ventricle could be estimated in the schizophrenics, but this difference was not significant. In the patient group a non-significant negative correlation was established between the presence of positive symptoms and the left temporal horn volume. There was no significant correlation between the temporal horn and temporal lobe or medial temporal structures. Our results indicate that the left medial temporal structure or left temporal lobe may be involved in schizophrenia and that temporal horn enlargement does not simply represent volume loss of the surrounding tissue.

Some plants are able to tolerate salinity using salt glands on the leaf surface, which secrete excess salts transported into the leaves. Rhodes grass (Chloris gayana Kunth) reportedly possesses such salt glands, but the features of secretion remain unclear. In the present study, we compared the ability of Rhodes grass salt glands to secrete sodium and potassium with the aim of clarifying the preference of cations for secretion. In both whole plant experiments and detached leaf experiments, NaCl treatment increased Na + secretion and KCl treatment increased K + secretion. When the ratios of the amount of secreted ions to their concentration in the leaves were compared between Na + and K + , the ratio was greater with Na + than K + .

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Using the upflow biological filter reactor, sulfur denitrification using thiosulfate of hydroponic culture wastewater was examined. Start-up periods of the reactor were one to two weeks. About 90% of nitrogen removal ratio were achieved over 80 days, at 6.3 kg/m3·days of nitrogen loading. Shock loading among 0.56-2.8 kgN/m3· day did not affect the reactor performance. However, when temperature went below 15°C, the effluent characteristics became poor. Suitable S/N and IC/N ratios were calculated as 3.3 and 0.15, respectively. The activities of sulfur denitrification, heterotrophic denitrification and sulfur reduction were examined by the bath experiments under several conditions using biomass grown in the reactor. In the anoxic conditions, denitrification using thiosulfate was occurred stoichiometrically in the presence of thiosulfate. The denitrification activity was highest (17 mgN/gBiomass·hr). When the electron donor was not added to the substrate, denitrification occurred using sulfur granules accumulated in the biomass. Seventy mg of sulfur granule were accumulated in one g of biomass. The denitrification activity using sulfur granules was 2.9-5.0 mgN/gBiomass·hr. Heterotrophic denitrification occurred in the presence of organic matter. The activities were 1.4-5.4 mgN/gBiomass·hr. In the anaerobic conditions, the accumulated sulfur was reduced to sulfide at a rate of 1.4 mgS/gBiomass·hr. These results suggested that sulfur denitrification, heterotrophic denitrification and sulfur reduction bacteria coexisted in the biofilm and sulfur cycle was established in the reactor. Accumulated sulfur plays an important role in the sulfur denitrification.

A two-dimensional bay and river coupled numerical model in Cartesian coordinates was developed to find the impact of the river on the simulated water levels associated with a storm along the coast of Bangladesh. The shallow water models developed for both the bay and river were discretized by the finite difference method with forward in time and central in space. The boundaries for the coast and islands were approximated through proper stair steps representation and solved by a conditionally stable semi-implicit manner on a staggered Arakawa C-grid. A one-way nested scheme technique was used in the bay model to include coastal complexities as well as to save computational costs. A stable tidal condition was made by forcing the sea levels with the most energetic tidal constituent, M2, along with the southern open boundary of the bay model omitting wind stress. The developed model was then applied to foresee the sea-surface elevation associated with the catastrophic cyclone of 1991 and cyclone MORA. A comparative study of the water levels associated with a storm was made through model simulations with and without the inclusion of the river system. We found that the surge height in the bay-river junction area decreased by 20% and the surge height reduced by about 3–8% outside the junction area from this study. The obtained results were found to have a satisfactory similarity with some of the observed data.

We conducted two feeding experiments to evaluate the effects of supplementation with either cellooligosaccharide or kraft pulp on growth performance in grazing beef calves (Japanese Black) from 4 weeks pre‐weaning to 12 to 16 weeks post‐weaning. In Experiment 1 (20‐week duration), nine calves (2.9‐month‐old females) were assigned to either a control group (CON) or an experimental group (CEL) fed cellooligosaccharide at a rate of 10 g/day mixed with concentrate. Average daily weight gain tended to be greater in CEL than in CON, especially after 1 month of weaning. In Experiment 2 (16‐week duration), 10 calves (2.0‐month‐old females) were assigned to either a control group or an experimental group (KRA) fed kraft pulp at a rate of 10% replacement of total digestible nutrients with concentrate. The proportion of fibrolytic bacteria increased and that of methanogenic Archaea decreased in the rumen microbial community composition of KRA calves in Experiment 2, whereas the decrease in Fibrobacter and Archaea was observed in CEL calves at first 4 weeks in Experiment 1. We conclude that beta‐glucan prebiotic supplementation to grazing calves at pre‐weaning would affect rumen microbial composition and modified rumen fermentation characteristics, leading to a better rumen environment via different means.