Shin-ichi Shiina

AN ANALYSIS OF THE HISTOCHEMICAL PROCEDURE FOR SODIUM ION DETECTION

Some aspects of the histochemical technique for the detection of sodium ions with potassium antimonate have been analyzed. When potassium antimonate is used for the detection of sodium ions the pH should not decrease below 7.2 during fixation. Potassium antimonate was also precipitated by ethanol used for dehydration, resulting in dilution of the water used as solvent. This should not be confused with the histochemical product. Precipitate may be formed with calcium ions and magnesium ions. Potassium phosphate buffer used to control the pH seems to inhibit the precipitation reaction of potassium antimonate with sodium ions; the nonbuffered fixative produces a good result at the electron microscopic level.

Use Of Optical Cards In Medical Care

This paper reports excellent results with respect to application of optical cards in medical care, based on improvements in the technology for encoding optical cards and devices used to increase read-write speed, and also reports the issuance of the first Japanese standards for the data format of optical cards.

Laboratory Test Scheduling Based On Constraint Propagation

One of the essential problems in medical decision making is the partiality of information. If knowledge is represented as rules, the number of rules needed for all the possible situations is the exponential function of the complexity of the knowledge. We propose a new model of medical knowledge representation based on constraints. The structure of a disease is represented as a set of elemental data and the constraints between them. Links between patient data and parts of the disease structure are established. While links are made, indeterminate variables in the disease structure are instantiated or constrained, and the most suitable laboratory schedule for available patient information is dynamically generated by constraint propagation.