Toward an Automatic Road Accessibility Information Collecting and Sharing Based on Human Behavior Sensing Technologies of Wheelchair Users

AbstractThis research proposes a methodology for digitizing street level accessibility with human sensing of wheelchair users. The dig- itization of street level accessibility is essential to develop accessibility maps or to personalize a route considering accessibility. However, current digitization methodologies are not sufficient because it requires a lot of manpower and therefore money and time cost. The proposed method makes it possible to digitize the accessibility semi-automatically. In this research, a three-axis accelerometer embedded on iPod touch sensed actions of nine wheelchair users across the range of disabilities and aged groups, in Tokyo, approximately 9hours. This paper reports out attempts to estimate both environmental factors: the status of street and subjective factors: driver's fatigue from human sensing data using machine learning

Common Peak Approach Using Mass Spectrometry Data Sets for Predicting the Effects of Anticancer Drugs on Breast Cancer

We propose a method for biomarker discovery from mass spectrometry data, improving the common peak approach developed by Fushiki et al. (BMC Bioinformatics, 7:358, 2006). The common peak method is a simple way to select the sensible peaks that are shared with many subjects among all detected peaks by combining a standard spectrum alignment and kernel density estimates. The key idea of our proposed method is to apply the common peak approach to each class label separately. Hence, the proposed method gains more informative peaks for predicting class labels, while minor peaks associated with specific subjects are deleted correctly. We used a SELDI-TOF MS data set from laser microdissected cancer tissues for predicting the treatment effects of neoadjuvant therapy using an anticancer drug on breast cancer patients. The AdaBoost algorithm is adopted for pattern recognition, based on the set of candidate peaks selected by the proposed method. The analysis gives good performance in the sense of test errors for classifying the class labels for a given feature vector of selected peak values

Predictive value of night-time heart rate for cardiovascular events in hypertension. The ABP-International study

Background - Data from prospective cohort studies regarding the association between ambulatory heart rate (HR) and cardiovascular events (CVE) are conflicting. Methods - To investigate whether ambulatory HR predicts CVE in hypertension, we performed 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure and HR monitoring in 7600 hypertensive patients aged 52 ± 16 years from Italy, U.S.A., Japan, and Australia, included in the ‘ABP-International’ registry. All were untreated at baseline examination. Standardized hazard ratios for ambulatory HRs were computed, stratifying for cohort, and adjusting for age, gender, blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, serum total cholesterol and serum creatinine. Results - During a median follow-up of 5.0 years there were 639 fatal and nonfatal CVE. In a multivariable Cox model, night-time HR predicted fatal combined with nonfatal CVE more closely than 24 h HR (p = 0.007 and = 0.03, respectively). Daytime HR and the night:day HR ratio were not associated with CVE (p = 0.07 and = 0.18, respectively). The hazard ratio of the fatal combined with nonfatal CVE for a 10-beats/min increment of the night-time HR was 1.13 (95% CI, 1.04–1.22). This relationship remained significant when subjects taking beta-blockers during the follow-up (hazard ratio, 1.15; 95% CI, 1.05–1.25) or subjects who had an event within 5 years after enrollment (hazard ratio, 1.23; 95% CI, 1.05–1.45) were excluded from analysis. Conclusions - At variance with previous data obtained from general populations, ambulatory HR added to the risk stratification for fatal combined with nonfatal CVE in the hypertensive patients from the ABP-International study. Night-time HR was a better predictor of CVE than daytime HR

Involvement of caspase-4 in endoplasmic reticulum stress-induced apoptosis and Aβ-induced cell death

Recent studies have suggested that neuronal death in Alzheimer's disease or ischemia could arise from dysfunction of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Although caspase-12 has been implicated in ER stress-induced apoptosis and amyloid-β (Aβ)–induced apoptosis in rodents, it is controversial whether similar mechanisms operate in humans. We found that human caspase-4, a member of caspase-1 subfamily that includes caspase-12, is localized to the ER membrane, and is cleaved when cells are treated with ER stress-inducing reagents, but not with other apoptotic reagents. Cleavage of caspase-4 is not affected by overexpression of Bcl-2, which prevents signal transduction on the mitochondria, suggesting that caspase-4 is primarily activated in ER stress-induced apoptosis. Furthermore, a reduction of caspase-4 expression by small interfering RNA decreases ER stress-induced apoptosis in some cell lines, but not other ER stress-independent apoptosis. Caspase-4 is also cleaved by administration of Aβ, and Aβ-induced apoptosis is reduced by small interfering RNAs to caspase-4. Thus, caspase-4 can function as an ER stress-specific caspase in humans, and may be involved in pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease

Role of Lipocalin-Type Prostaglandin D Synthase on Coronary Atherosclerosis and Vascular Function

科学研究費補助金研究成果報告書研究種目: 基盤研究(C)研究期間: 2005～2006課題番号: 17590726研究代表者: 松本 鉄也（滋賀医科大学・医学部・講師）研究分担者: 江口 豊（滋賀医科大学・医学部・教授）研究分担者: 堀江 稔（滋賀医科大学・医学部・教授

Effects of ketamine on nicorandil induced ATP-sensitive potassium channel activity in cell line derived from rat aortic smooth muscle

Purpose : Nicorandil opens adenosine triphosphate-sensitive potassium (KATP) channels in the cardiovascular system and is being increasingly used for the treatment of angina pectoris. In the present study, we tested whether intravenous anesthetic agent ketamine affected nicorandil-induced native vascular KATP channel activation. Methods : We used excised inside-out patch clamp configurations to investigate the direct effects of ketamine racemate and S-(+)-ketamine on the activities of KATP channels in cultured rat aortic smooth muscle cells. Furthermore, we also investigated whether intracellular MgADP could modulate ketamine inhibition. Results : Nicorandil significantly activated KATP channel activity, whereas this channel activity was completely blocked by glibenclamide, a specific KATP channel blocker. Ketamine racemate inhibited the nicorandil induced KATP channel activity (IC50=34 1M, n=14), but S-(+)-ketamine was less potent than ketamine racemate in blocking nicorandil induced KATP channel activities (IC50=226 7M, n=10). Application of MgADP to the intracellular side of the channel was able to decrease the inhibitory potency of ketamine racemate on nicorandil induced KATP channel activities. Conclusions : Our results indicate that ketamine inhibits nicorandil induced KATP channel activities in a dose dependent and stereoselective manner. Furthermore, increase of intracellularMgADP attenuates the inhibitory potency of ketamine racemate

Bcl2 Deficiency Activates FoxO through Akt Inactivation and Accelerates Osteoblast Differentiation

Osteoblast apoptosis plays an important role in bone development and maintenance, and is in part responsible for osteoporosis in sex steroid deficiency, glucocorticoid excess, and aging. Although Bcl2 subfamily proteins, including Bcl2 and Bcl-XL, inhibit apoptosis, the physiological significance of Bcl2 in osteoblast differentiation has not been fully elucidated. To investigate this, we examined Bcl2-deficient (Bcl2(-/-)) mice. In Bcl2(-/-) mice, bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU)-positive osteoblasts were reduced in number, while terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end-labeling (TUNEL)-positive osteoblasts were increased. Unexpectedly, osteoblast differentiation was accelerated in Bcl2(-/-) mice as shown by the early appearance of osteocalcin-positive osteoblasts. Osteoblast differentiation was also accelerated in vitro when primary osteoblasts were seeded at a high concentration to minimize the reduction of the cell density by apoptosis during culture. FoxO transcription factors, whose activities are negatively regulated through the phosphorylation by Akt, play important roles in multiple cell events, including proliferation, death, differentiation, longevity, and stress response. Expressions of FasL, Gadd45a, and Bim, which are regulated by FoxOs, were upregulated; the expression and activity of FoxOs were enhanced; and the phosphorylation of Akt and that of FoxO1 and FoxO3a by Akt were reduced in Bcl2(-/-) calvariae. Further, the levels of p53 mRNA and protein were increased, and the expression of p53-target genes, Pten and Igfbp3 whose proteins inhibit Akt activation, was upregulated in Bcl2(-/-) calvariae. However, Pten but not Igfbp3 was upregulated in Bcl2(-/-) primary osteoblasts, and p53 induced Pten but not Igfbp3 in vitro. Silencing of either FoxO1 or FoxO3a inhibited and constitutively-active FoxO3a enhanced osteoblast differentiation. These findings suggest that Bcl2 deficiency induces and activates FoxOs through Akt inactivation, at least in part, by upregulating Pten expression through p53 in osteoblasts, and that the enhanced expression and activities of FoxOs may be one of the causes of accelerated osteoblast differentiation in Bcl2(-/-) mice

Phases of N=1 USp(2N_c) Gauge Theories with Flavors

We studied the phase structures of N=1 supersymmetric USp(2N_c) gauge theory with N_f flavors in the fundamental representation as we deformed the N=2 supersymmetric QCD by adding the superpotential for adjoint chiral scalar field. We determined the most general factorization curves for various breaking patterns, for example, the two different breaking patterns of quartic superpotential. We observed all kinds of smooth transitions for quartic superpotential. Finally we discuss the intriguing role of USp(0) in the phase structure and the possible connection with observations made recently in hep-th/0304271 (Aganagic, Intriligator, Vafa and Warner) and in hep-th/0307063 (Cachazo).Comment: 61pp; Improved the presentation, references are added and to appear in PR