[1] This paper documents a global Bayesian variational inversion of CO 2 surface fluxes during the period . Weekly fluxes are estimated on a 3.75°× 2.5°(longitudelatitude) grid throughout the 21 years. The assimilated observations include 128 station records from three large data sets of surface CO 2 mixing ratio measurements. A Monte Carlo approach rigorously quantifies the theoretical uncertainty of the inverted fluxes at various space and time scales, which is particularly important for proper interpretation of the inverted fluxes. Fluxes are evaluated indirectly against two independent CO 2 vertical profile data sets constructed from aircraft measurements in the boundary layer and in the free troposphere. The skill of the inversion is evaluated by the improvement brought over a simple benchmark flux estimation based on the observed atmospheric growth rate. Our error analysis indicates that the carbon budget from the inversion should be more accurate than the a priori carbon budget by 20% to 60% for terrestrial fluxes aggregated at the scale of subcontinental regions in the Northern Hemisphere and over a year, but the inversion cannot clearly distinguish between the regional carbon budgets within a continent. On the basis of the independent observations, the inversion is seen to improve the fluxes compared to the benchmark: the atmospheric simulation of CO 2 with the Bayesian inversion method is better by about 1 ppm than the benchmark in the free troposphere, despite possible systematic transport errors. The inversion achieves this improvement by changing the regional fluxes over land at the seasonal and at the interannual time scales. Citation: Chevallier, F., et al. (2010), CO 2 surface fluxes at grid point scale estimated from a global 21 year reanalysis of atmospheric measurements,

The aim of this study was to investigate the differences between the clinicopathological findings in two histologic types of carcinoma of the papilla of Vater. We histologically classified carcinoma of the papilla into two types: 1) an intestinal type that resembles tubular adenocarcinoma of the stomach or colon, and 2) a pancreaticobiliary type that is characterized by papillary projections with scant fibrous cores. We examined 53 cases of resected carcinoma of the papilla. The intestinal‐type carcinomas were similar to the intestinal mucosa in that they had lysozyme‐containing, Paneth or argyrophil cells, as demonstrated by the immunohistochemically positive stainings for the anti‐lysozyme antibody. Although both the sizes of the two types of carcinomas and the age distributions of cases with the two types of carcinoma were almost the same, the prognosis of the cases with the intestinal type was much better than that of the cases with the pancreaticobiliary type. Histological lymph node metastasis was found significantly more often in the pancreaticobiliary type. This result was supported by the fact that small carcinomas of the intestinal type showed little or no invasion into the surrounding interstitium, as opposed to the pancreaticobiliary type, which had a strong infiltrative tendency. The pathogenesis of carcinoma of the papilla of Vater should be further evaluated, taking into consideration the existence of these two histologic types.

Osteopontin is a phosphorylated, sialic acid-rich, noncollagenous bone matrix protein containing the Arg-Gly-Asp-Ser amino acid sequence responsible for cell adhesion. The protein strongly binds to hydroxyapatite and play an important role in calcification. Expression of osteopontin mRNA was analyzed in human aortic atherosclerotic lesion by Northern blot hybridization, as well as by in situ hybridization. The expression of osteopontin mRNA was detected in 24 out of 25 samples of aorta obtained from 17 autopsy cases, but not in one normal aortic sample. The magnitude of expression was proportional to the stage of atherosclerosis. In situ hybridization revealed that the cells expressing osteopontin mRNA were detected in the wall surrounding atheroma and closely associated with calcification. They were morphologically identified as foam cells and immunohistologically positive with HHF35, appearing to be derived from smooth muscle cells. These findings have suggested that smooth muscle cell-derived foam cells express osteopontin mRNA and play an important role in calcification of the atherosclerotic lesions. (J. Clin. Invest. 1993. 92:2814-2820

Background. The clinicopathologic features of gastric carcinoma in elderly people have been reported previously. The present study examined the patterns and distribution of gastric carcinomas in the elderly, especially in patients aged 85 and older. Methods. A retrospective study of 994 consecutive Japanese patients aged 65 years or older was performed. In this group, a total of 1147 lesions were analyzed. Pathological findings in the very old group (older than 85 years; n ‫؍‬ 126) were compared with those in younger groups (65-74 years [young-old group]; n ‫؍‬ 356) and (75-84 years [middle-old group]; n ‫؍‬ 512). Results. While the male-to-female ratio significantly decreased with advancing age, the relative odds of gastric cancer in men were higher than those in women in all age groups. In the very old group, cancer of the lower third of the stomach tended to increase with advancing age, and accounted for 43.7% of cases. In the population overall, differentiated-type adenocarcinoma accounted for 89.6% in the early cancers and 50.3% in the advanced cancers. The proportion of cases involving differentiated-type carcinoma significantly increased with advancing age in early cancer and female advanced cancer cases, whereas no significant change was found in male advanced-cancer patients. In the very old group, lymph node metastasis was found in 5.4% of early cancers and 72.7% in advanced cancers. Multiple cancers significantly increased with advancing age (P < 0.05; 10.7% in the younger-old group, 12.7% in the middle-old group, and 19.0% in the very old group). Conclusion. These results indicate that, in the very old group, gastric cancers showed a distal shift with predominantly differentiated-type carcinoma in the early stages and increased undifferentiated-type carcinomas in advanced stages. These results suggest increased histologic diversity with tumor growth. These findings have important implications for the screening and diagnosis of gastric cancer in the elderly. Offprint requests to: T. Arai

Progressive telomere shortening with aging was studied in the normal liver tissue of 94 human subjects aged between 0 and 101 years old to determine the rate of telomere loss in 1 year. Telomere length demonstrated accelerated shortening with reduction of 55 base pairs (bp) per year. The mean telomere length in five neonates was 12.9 +/- 2.6 kilobase pairs (kbp), and that in one centenarian was 8.3 kbp. Mean telomere lengths by age group were 13.2 +/- 2.0 kbp (< or = 8 years; 10 subjects), 7.8 +/- 1.9 kbp (40-79 years; 29 subjects), and 7.5 +/- 2.0 kbp (> or = 80 years; 53 subjects), with reduction thus appearing to show slowing on the attainment of middle age. The difference of mean telomere lengths for two groups with or without advanced malignancies of other than liver origin was not significant in the older two groups. Despite the slow turnover of liver tissue, the overall reduction rate of telomere length decrease in 1 year was almost the same as that of digestive tract mucosa, with its very rapid renewal.