Preliminary study of discrimination of human vocal commands in walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens)

Walruses seem to use various acoustic signals in social context. So, the auditory faculty is seems to be important for walruses. Can walruses understand another animals' vocal information using auditory sense? This study tested whether a male walrus could discriminate human vocal words and perform different actions corresponding to each one under various conditions. The subject, a male walrus (Odobenus rosmarus) named Pou, was set on the ground, and the experimenter spoke one of the ten words to the subject under the following conditions; (1) The experimenter stood close to the subject and spoke each vocal stimulus wearing a black cloak and goggles so that the experimenter's eye and body movements would not influence the subject's behavior, (2) A wooden board was placed between the experimenter and the subject so that the subject could not see the experimenter, (3) A wooden board was placed between the experimenter and the subject so that the subject could not to see the experimenter, and the experimenter uttered each vocal stimulus through an audio speaker. Under each condition, when the subject performed the correct action corresponding to the vocal stimulus, he was rewarded with a piece of fish. As a result, the subject responded correctly to almost all the human vocal stimuli in every condition, including when the speaker was not visible. This means that he was indeed responding to the vocal words and not the experimenter's cues. This study demonstrated that walruses can hear and identify human vocal words using their auditory sense and can form correspondence between vocal words and their meanings

Case Study of Profoundly Mentally and Physically Retarded Child: Maintaining Posture and External World

A longitudinal case study of a profoundly mentally and physically retarded child was made. I had been in charge of the education of this girl for three years, during the period when she was 8 to 11 years old. I assigned tasks which would encourage her development and invented teaching materials that gave shapes to those tasks. It was found; (a) she raised herself when she received stimulus from external world, (b) using her body (hip, elbow, and foot), she was maintaining her posture, when she was sitting on a chair. The relationship between maintaining posture and external world was discussed

Radiation dose and image quality of CT fluoroscopy with partial exposure mode

PURPOSEThe present study aimed to evaluate the scan technique of computed tomography (CT)-guided puncture procedures using partial exposure mode (PEM) on the radiation dose of the operator’s hand and image quality.METHODSRadiation dose was evaluated using three types of scanning methods: one-shot scan (OS), OS with a bismuth shield added (OSBismuth), and a half-scan (i.e., PEM) capable of an adjustable exposure angle. Dose evaluation was performed using a torso phantom, while a circular phantom simulating the liver parenchyma and lesions was used for image quality evaluation. For each scanning method, four measurements were made to determine the radiation dose to the operator's hand and the dose distribution on the surface of the patient's torso; the output-dose profile was determined from five measurements. Image quality was evaluated in terms of contrast and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR). Analysis of variance (ANOVA) or Friedman test were used for comparison between groups as appropriate. The post hoc tests were Tukey’s honestly difference (HSD) test for parametric data or Wilcoxon signed rank test with Bonferroni correction for nonparametric data.RESULTSThe PEM yielded a radiation dose to the operator’s hand that was 84% (0.35 vs. 2.33 mGy) lower than that of the OS. The dose to the patient’s torso was reduced by 35% and 68% for the OSBismuth and PEM, respectively, relative to that of the OS. Compared with the CNR of the other two scanning methods (OS, 2.9±0.1; OSBismuth, 2.9±0.1), the PEM increased the standard deviation and decreased the CNR (2.1±0.04, Tukey’s HSD, P < 0.001 for all). Images acquired with PEM showed visibility equivalent to that of other scanning methods when window conditions were adjusted.CONCLUSIONThis study demonstrated that CT-guided puncture procedure using PEM effectively reduces the operator's exposure to radiation while minimizing image quality deterioration

Guideline for Hereditary Angioedema (HAE) 2010 by the Japanese Association for Complement Research - Secondary Publication

ABSTRACTThis guideline was provided by the Japanese Association for Complement Research targeting clinicians for making an accurate diagnosis of hereditary angioedema (HAE), and for prompt treatment of the HAE patient in Japan. This is a 2010 year version and will be updated according to any pertinent medical advancements

Erratum: Evaluation of the yield of abiotic-stress-tolerant <i>AtDREB1A</i> transgenic potato under saline conditions in advance of field trials

Original Article : Breeding Science 66: 703–710 (2016)https://doi.org/10.1270/jsbbs.1605

ナンキョク ショウワ キチ ノ ピロティ ケイシキ タテモノ シュウヘン ノ フキダマリ セイジョウ ニ カンスル フウドウ モケイ ジッケン

模型雪に活性白土を使用した風洞模型実験(縮尺100分の1)で, 南極昭和基地で調査された高床式建物後方の吹きだまり形状の再現の可能性を検討した。その結果, 風洞内風速5.0m/s, 風洞の運転時間2.5時間で現地の吹きだまり形状を再現することができた。今後, 同様の実験方法で, 建物周辺の吹きだまりを少なくするための建物形状の検討が可能であることを示した。To study snowdrift formation behind elevated buildings, wind-tunnel experiments were carried out, using activated clay particles to simulate snow, on a 1/100 scale model of the observation hut at Syowa Station. The similitude of snowdrift for the model and the actual prototype was obtained precisely when the tunnel wind-speed and the wind duration were 5.0m/s and 2.5 hours, respectively. This modeling technique using activated clay particles is proved to be useful for further studies on the most appropriate shape and dimensions of elevated buildings to prevent snowdrift

OpenCL-Based FPGA Accelerator for 3D FDTD with Periodic and Absorbing Boundary Conditions

Finite difference time domain (FDTD) method is a very poplar way of numerically solving partial differential equations. FDTD has a low operational intensity so that the performances in CPUs and GPUs are often restricted by the memory bandwidth. Recently, deeply pipelined FPGA accelerators have shown a lot of success by exploiting streaming data flows in FDTD computation. In spite of this success, many FPGA accelerators are not suitable for real-world applications that contain complex boundary conditions. Boundary conditions break the regularity of the data flow, so that the performances are significantly reduced. This paper proposes an FPGA accelerator that computes commonly used absorbing and periodic boundary conditions in many 3D FDTD applications. Accelerator is designed using a “C-like” programming language called OpenCL (open computing language). As a result, the proposed accelerator can be customized easily by changing the software code. According to the experimental results, we achieved over 3.3 times and 1.5 times higher processing speed compared to the CPUs and GPUs, respectively. Moreover, the proposed accelerator is more than 14 times faster compared to the recently proposed FPGA accelerators that are capable of handling complex boundary conditions