Design and Evaluation of the Corpus of Everyday Japanese Conversation

application/pdfNational Institute for Japanese Language and LinguisticsNational Institute for Japanese Language and LinguisticsGraduate School of Humanities, Chiba UniversityNational Institute for Japanese Language and LinguisticsNational Institute for Japanese Language and LinguisticsNational Institute for Japanese Language and LinguisticsNational Institute for Japanese Language and LinguisticsNational Institute for Japanese Language and LinguisticsNational Institute for Japanese Language and LinguisticsNational Institute for Japanese Language and LinguisticsNational Institute for Japanese Language and LinguisticsWe have constructed the Corpus of Everyday Japanese Conversation (CEJC) and published it in March 2022. The CEJC is designed to contain various kinds of everyday conversations in a balanced manner to capture their diversity. The CEJC features not only audio but also video data to facilitate precise understanding of the mechanism of real-life social behavior. The publication of a large-scale corpus of everyday conversations that includes video data is a new approach. The CEJC contains 200 hours of speech, 577 conversations, about 2.4 million words, and a total of 1675 conversants. In this paper, we present an overview of the corpus, including the recording method and devices, structure of the corpus, formats of video and audio files, transcription, and annotations. We then report some results of the evaluation of the CEJC in terms of conversant and conversation attributes. We show that the CEJC includes a good balance of adult conversants in terms of gender and age, as well as a variety of conversations in terms of conversation forms, places, activities, and numbers of conversants.conference pape

Altered structural hippocampal intra-networks in a general elderly Japanese population with mild cognitive impairment

Abstract Although altered networks inside the hippocampus (hippocampal intra-networks) have been observed in dementia, the evaluation of hippocampal intra-networks using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is challenging. We employed conventional structural imaging and incident component analysis (ICA) to investigate the structural covariance of the hippocampal intra-networks. We aimed to assess altered hippocampal intra-networks in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). A cross-sectional study of 2122 participants with 3T MRI (median age 69 years, 60.9% female) were divided into 218 patients with MCI and 1904 cognitively normal older adults (CNOA). By employing 3D T1-weighted imaging, voxels within the hippocampus were entered into the ICA analysis to extract the structural covariance intra-networks within the hippocampus. The ICA extracted 16 intra-networks from the hippocampal structural images, which were divided into two bilateral networks and 14 ipsilateral networks. Of the 16 intra-networks, two (one bilateral network and one ipsilateral networks) were significant predictors of MCI from the CNOA after adjusting for age, sex, education, disease history, and hippocampal volume/total intracranial volume ratio. In conclusion, we found that the relationship between hippocampal intra-networks and MCI was independent from the hippocampal volume. Our results suggest that altered hippocampal intra-networks may reflect a different pathology in MCI from that of brain atrophy

Mechanisms underlying glycosylation-mediated loss of ecotropic receptor function in murine MDTF cells and implications for receptor evolution.

A Mus dunni tail fibroblast (MDTF) cell line is highly resistant to infection by ecotropic Moloney murine leukemia virus (Mo-MLV). The cationic amino acid transporter type 1 (CAT1) paralogues of murine NIH 3T3 and MDTF cells (mCAT1 and dCAT1, respectively) contain two conserved N-linked glycosylation sites in the third extracellular loop (ECL3, the putative Mo-MLV binding site). Glycosylation of dCAT1 inhibits Mo-MLV infection, but that of mCAT1 does not. Compared with mCAT1, dCAT1 possesses an Ile-to-Val substitution at position 214 and a Gly insertion at position 236 in the ECL3. To determine the residues responsible for the loss of dCAT1 receptor function, mutants of mCAT1 were constructed. The mCAT1/insG receptor (with a Gly residue inserted at mCAT1 position 236) had greatly reduced Mo-MLV receptor function compared with mCAT1. Treatment of mCAT1/insG-expressing cells with tunicamycin, an N-linked glycosylation inhibitor, increased the transduction titre. In addition, the reduced susceptibility to Mo-MLV observed with mCAT1/insG-expressing cells correlated with impaired binding of Mo-MLV. These results show that a single amino acid insertion confers mCAT1 receptor properties on dCAT1 and provide an important insight into the co-evolution of virus-host interactions

Empagliflozin in Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease

Background The effects of empagliflozin in patients with chronic kidney disease who are at risk for disease progression are not well understood. The EMPA-KIDNEY trial was designed to assess the effects of treatment with empagliflozin in a broad range of such patients. Methods We enrolled patients with chronic kidney disease who had an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) of at least 20 but less than 45 ml per minute per 1.73 m(2) of body-surface area, or who had an eGFR of at least 45 but less than 90 ml per minute per 1.73 m(2) with a urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio (with albumin measured in milligrams and creatinine measured in grams) of at least 200. Patients were randomly assigned to receive empagliflozin (10 mg once daily) or matching placebo. The primary outcome was a composite of progression of kidney disease (defined as end-stage kidney disease, a sustained decrease in eGFR to < 10 ml per minute per 1.73 m(2), a sustained decrease in eGFR of & GE;40% from baseline, or death from renal causes) or death from cardiovascular causes. Results A total of 6609 patients underwent randomization. During a median of 2.0 years of follow-up, progression of kidney disease or death from cardiovascular causes occurred in 432 of 3304 patients (13.1%) in the empagliflozin group and in 558 of 3305 patients (16.9%) in the placebo group (hazard ratio, 0.72; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.64 to 0.82; P < 0.001). Results were consistent among patients with or without diabetes and across subgroups defined according to eGFR ranges. The rate of hospitalization from any cause was lower in the empagliflozin group than in the placebo group (hazard ratio, 0.86; 95% CI, 0.78 to 0.95; P=0.003), but there were no significant between-group differences with respect to the composite outcome of hospitalization for heart failure or death from cardiovascular causes (which occurred in 4.0% in the empagliflozin group and 4.6% in the placebo group) or death from any cause (in 4.5% and 5.1%, respectively). The rates of serious adverse events were similar in the two groups. Conclusions Among a wide range of patients with chronic kidney disease who were at risk for disease progression, empagliflozin therapy led to a lower risk of progression of kidney disease or death from cardiovascular causes than placebo