272 research outputs found
3D 6DOF Manipulation of Micro-object Using Laser Trapped Microtool
Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Orlando, Florida, May 200
Effect of shin'iseihaito on lung colonization of pneumococcus in murine model
Background: Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus) causes various serious diseases including sinusitis, pneumonia, and meningitis. One serious problem observed recently with pneumococcal therapy is attenuation of the antibiotic effect because of the emergence of antibiotic-resistant pneumococcus. Shin’iseihaito, a traditional Japanese medicine based on ancient Chinese medicine, has been used for treatment of otolaryngeal diseases in Japan. The objective of this study was to examine the anti-infectious effects of shin’iseihaito and its related mechanism.Materials and Methods: We evaluated the beneficial effect of shin’iseihaito extract (SSHT) against pneumococcus-infected murine model. The colonization of bacteria, blood and bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) killing activity, the levels of inflammatory cytokine and IgA were investigated.Results: The pneumococcus from blood was not found in both SSHT-treated mice and untreated mice. However, the pneumococcal colonization of lung was significantly (p<0.05) lower after SSHT administration compared with untreated mice. Blood bactericidal assay showed that no significant difference (p=0.07) was observed in the anti-bacterial effect between SSHT-treated mice and untreated mice. However, BAL bactericidal assay showed that the survival rate of pneumococcus using the BAL from SSHT-treated mice was significantly (p<0.05) lower than that using the BAL from untreated mice. We also found increased levels of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, interleukin (IL)-1β, and IgA in pneumococcus-infected mice treated with SSHT.Conclusions: SSHT decreased the colonization rate after pneumococcal infection and up-regulated BAL bactericidal activity through modulation of inflammatory cytokines and IgA. Our data also suggest SSHT may be useful for the treatment of pneumococcal infection.Keywords: shin'iseihito, Streptococcus pneumoniae, murine model, inflammatory cytokine, Ig
Non-Abelian Vortices on Cylinder -- Duality between vortices and walls
We investigate vortices on a cylinder in supersymmetric non-Abelian gauge
theory with hypermultiplets in the fundamental representation. We identify
moduli space of periodic vortices and find that a pair of wall-like objects
appears as the vortex moduli is varied. Usual domain walls also can be obtained
from the single vortex on the cylinder by introducing a twisted boundary
condition. We can understand these phenomena as a T-duality among D-brane
configurations in type II superstring theories. Using this T-duality picture,
we find a one-to-one correspondence between the moduli space of non-Abelian
vortices and that of kinky D-brane configurations for domain walls.Comment: 33 pages, 17 figures, v2: references added, typos corrected, the
final version published in PR
Dynamics of Strings between Walls
Configurations of vortex-strings stretched between or ending on domain walls
were previously found to be 1/4 Bogomol'nyi-Prasad-Sommerfield(BPS) states in
N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories in 3+1 dimensions. Among zero modes of string
positions, the center of mass of strings in each region between two adjacent
domain walls is shown to be non-normalizable whereas the rests are
normalizable. We study dynamics of vortex-strings stretched between separated
domain walls by using two methods, the moduli space (geodesic) approximation of
full 1/4 BPS states and the charged particle approximation for string endpoints
in the wall effective action. In the first method we explicitly obtain the
effective Lagrangian, in terms of hypergeometric functions, and find the 90
degree scattering for head-on collision. In the second method the domain wall
effective action is assumed to be U(1)^N gauge theory, and we find a good
agreement between two methods for well separated strings.Comment: 48 pages, 9 figure
Dynamics of Non-Abelian Vortices
The scattering is studied using moduli space metric for well-separated
vortices of non-Abelian vortices in (2+1)-dimensional U(N) gauge theories with
N Higgs fields in the fundamental representation. Unlike vortices in the
Abelian-Higgs model, dynamics of non-Abelian vortices has a lot of new
features; The kinetic energy in real space can be transfered to that of
internal orientational moduli and vice versa, the energy and charge transfer
between two vortices, the scattering angle of collisions with a fixed impact
parameter depends on the internal orientations, and some resonances appear due
to synchronization of the orientations. Scattering of dyonic non-Abelian
vortices in a mass deformed theory is also studied. We find a bound state of
two vortices moving along coils around a circle, like a loop of a phone code.Comment: 45 pages, 13 figure
EFFECT OF SHIN'ISEIHAITO ON LUNG COLONIZATION OF PNEUMOCOCCUS IN MURINE MODEL
Background: Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus) causes various serious diseases including sinusitis, pneumonia, and meningitis. One
serious problem observed recently with pneumococcal therapy is attenuation of the antibiotic effect because of the emergence of antibiotic-resistant
pneumococcus. Shin’iseihaito, a traditional Japanese medicine based on ancient Chinese medicine, has been used for treatment of otolaryngeal
diseases in Japan. The objective of this study was to examine the anti-infectious effects of shin’iseihaito and its related mechanism.
Materials and Methods: We evaluated the beneficial effect of shin’iseihaito extract (SSHT) against pneumococcus-infected murine model. The
colonization of bacteria, blood and bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) killing activity, the levels of inflammatory cytokine and IgA were investigated.
Results: The pneumococcus from blood was not found in both SSHT-treated mice and untreated mice. However, the pneumococcal colonization of
lung was significantly (
On the Origin of Near-Infrared Extragalactic Background Light Anisotropy
Extragalactic background light (EBL) anisotropy traces variations in the
total production of photons over cosmic history, and may contain faint,
extended components missed in galaxy point source surveys. Infrared EBL
fluctuations have been attributed to primordial galaxies and black holes at the
epoch of reionization (EOR), or alternately, intra-halo light (IHL) from stars
tidally stripped from their parent galaxies at low redshift. We report new EBL
anisotropy measurements from a specialized sounding rocket experiment at 1.1
and 1.6 micrometers. The observed fluctuations exceed the amplitude from known
galaxy populations, are inconsistent with EOR galaxies and black holes, and are
largely explained by IHL emission. The measured fluctuations are associated
with an EBL intensity that is comparable to the background from known galaxies
measured through number counts, and therefore a substantial contribution to the
energy contained in photons in the cosmos.Comment: 65 pages, 29 figures, Published in Science Nov 7 2014 (includes
supplementary material
Insulin receptor substrate-1 (IRS-1) forms a ribonucleoprotein complex associated with polysomes
AbstractInsulin receptor substrates (IRSs) are known to play important roles in mediating intracellular insulin-like growth factors (IGFs)/insulin signaling. In this study, we identified components of messenger ribonucleoprotein (mRNP) as IRS-1-associated proteins. IRS-1 complex formation analysis revealed that IRS-1 is incorporated into the complexes of molecular mass more than 1000kDa, which were disrupted by treatment with RNase. Furthermore, oligo(dT) beads precipitated IRS-1 from cell lysates, showing that the IRS-1 complexes contained messenger RNA. Taken together with the data that IRS-1 was fractionated into the polysome-containing high-density fractions, we concluded that IRS-1 forms the novel complexes with mRNPs
Direct observation of reversible oxygen anion redox reaction in Li-rich manganese oxide, Li2MnO3, studied by soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy
Li-rich layered oxides have attracted attention as promising positive electrode materials for next-generation lithium-ion secondary batteries because of their high energy storage capacity. The participation of the oxygen anion has been hypothesized to contribute to these oxides' high capacity. In the present study, we used O K-edge and Mn L-edge X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) to study the reversible redox reactions that occur in single-phase Li-rich layered manganese oxide, Li2MnO3. We semiquantitatively analyzed the oxygen and manganese reactions by dividing the charge/discharge voltage region into two parts. The O K-edge XAS indicated that the electrons at the oxygen site reversibly contributed to the charge compensation throughout the charge/discharge processes at operating voltages between 2.0 and 4.8 V vs. Li+/Li0. The Mn L-edge XAS spectra indicated that the Mn redox reaction occurred only in the lower-voltage region. Thus, at higher potentials, the electrons, mainly at the oxygen site, contributed to the charge compensation. Peaks whose energies were similar to peroxide appeared in and then disappeared from the O K-edge spectra obtained during the reversible redox cycles. These results indicate that the reorganization of the oxygen network in the crystal structure affects the redox components. By using two kinds of detection modes with different probing depths in XAS measurements, it was found that these redox reactions are bulk phenomena in the electrode
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