Electronic structure and the Fermi surface of ThRhIn5_5 in comparison with uranium and transuranium compounds

By using a relativistic linear augmented-plane-wave method, we clarify energy band structure and the Fermi surfaces of recently synthesized thorium compound ThRhIn$_5$. We find several cylindrical Fermi surface sheets, which are similar to those of CeTIn$_5$ (T=Ir and Co), PuTGa$_5$ (T=Co and Rh), and AmCoGa$_5$. We discuss such similarity among the compounds including rare-earth or actinide ions with different $f$ electron numbers.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figure, Proceedings of SCES'05 (July 26-30, 2005, Vienna

Experimental Studies on the Concentrations of Subjectively Equivalent Irritation for Odorants

Discussion of non-olfactory “irritation”, which is caused by the excitement of the trigeminal nerve, has important implications for odor pollution. The main purpose of this study is to work out the mechanisms for the generation of non-olfactory irritation, and the sensory characteristics of the perceived irritation. Concentrations of subjectively equivalent irritation (CE) of 16 odorous compounds were measured by the sensory test. The relations between the CE and the physicochemical properties of the compounds were shown and discussed. It was found that the CE of dissociated compounds is much lower than that of undissociated compounds. And among the dissociated compounds, the acidic ones have a lower CE than the basic compounds. The CE of acrolein, which is an unsaturated compound, was the lowest among all the compounds used in this experiment. The delay time, i.e. time until the sensation of irritation after inhaling, was longer for acrolein gas than for other gases. Therefore, the mechanism for generating sensory irritation by the acrolein gas may be different from that of other gases. From analysis on the basis of relation to some physicochemical properties, it was concluded that the electrophilic reactivity of the acrolein molecule may be related to the generation of sensory irritation. In the case of dissociated compounds, the CE is related to the dissociation constants of the compounds. In other words, the larger the acidic and basic dissociation constants (Ka and Kb) are, the lower the CE becomes. Key Words : Sensory test, Odorous irritant, Concentration for subjectively equivalent irritation, Physicochemical properties, Dissociation constan

Neural Basis for the Ability of Atypical Antipsychotic Drugs to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia

Cognitive impairments are considered to largely affect functional outcome in patients with schizophrenia, other psychotic illnesses, or mood disorders. Specifically, there is much attention to the role of psychotropic compounds acting on serotonin (5-HT) receptors in ameliorating cognitive deficits of schizophrenia. It is noteworthy that atypical antipsychotic drugs (AAPDs), e.g., clozapine, melperone, risperidone, olanzapine, quetiapine, aripiprazole, perospirone, blonanserin, and lurasidone, have variable affinities for these receptors. Among the 5-HT receptor subtypes, the 5-HT(1A) receptor is attracting particular interests as a potential target for enhancing cognition, based on preclinical and clinical evidence. The neural network underlying the ability of 5-HT(1A) agonists to treat cognitive impairments of schizophrenia likely includes dopamine, glutamate, and gamma-aminobutyric acid neurons. A novel strategy for cognitive enhancement in psychosis may be benefited by focusing on energy metabolism in the brain. In this context, lactate plays a major role, and has been shown to protect neurons against oxidative and other stressors. In particular, our data indicate chronic treatment with tandospirone, a partial 5-HT(1A) agonist, recover stress-induced lactate production in the prefrontal cortex of a rat model of schizophrenia. Recent advances of electrophysiological measures, e.g., event-related potentials, and their imaging have provided insights into facilitative effects on cognition of some AAPDs acting directly or indirectly on 5-HT(1A) receptors. These findings are expected to promote the development of novel therapeutics for the improvement of functional outcome in people with schizophrenia

Effects of galactic magnetic field on the UHECR correlation studies with starburst galaxies

We estimate the biases caused by the coherent deflection of cosmic rays due to the Galactic magnetic field (GMF) in maximum-likelihood analysis for searches of ultrahigh-energy cosmic ray (UHECR) sources in the literature. We simulate mock event datasets with a set of assumptions for the starburst galaxy (SBG) source model (arXiv:1801.06160), coherent deflection by a GMF model (arXiv:1204.3662,arXiv:1210.7820), and mixed-mass composition (arXiv:1901.03338); we then conduct a maximum-likelihood analysis without accounting for the GMF in the same manner as previous studies. We find that the anisotropic fraction $f_{\rm ani}$ is estimated systematically lower than the true value. We estimate the true parameters which are compatible with the best-fit parameters reported in (arXiv:1801.06160), and find that except for a narrow region with a large anisotropic fraction and small separation angular scale a wide parameter space is still compatible with the experimental results. We also develop a maximum-likelihood method that takes into account the GMF model and confirm in the MC simulations that we can estimate the true parameters within a 1$\sigma$ contour under the ideal condition that we know the event-by-event mass and the GMF

Recent advances in radiotracers targeting norepinephrine transporter: structural development and radiolabeling improvements

The norepinephrine transporter (NET) is a major target for the evaluation of the cardiac sympathetic nerve system in patients with heart failure and Parkinson's disease. It is also used in the therapeutic applications against certain types of neuroendocrine tumors, as exemplified by the clinically used 123/131I-MIBG as theranostic single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) agent. With the development of more advanced positron emission tomography (PET) technology, more radiotracers targeting NET have been reported, with superior temporal and spatial resolutions, along with the possibility of functional and kinetic analysis. More recently, fluorine-18-labelled NET tracers have drawn increasing attentions from researchers, due to their longer radiological half-life relative to carbon-11 (110 min vs. 20 min), reduced dependence on on-site cyclotrons, and flexibility in the design of novel tracer structures. In the heart, certain NET tracers provide integral diagnostic information on sympathetic innervation and the nerve status. In the central nervous system, such radiotracers can reveal NET distribution and density in pathological conditions. Most radiotracers targeting cardiac NET-function for the cardiac application consistent of derivatives of either norepinephrine or MIBG with its benzylguanidine core structure, e.g. 11C-HED and 18F-LMI1195. In contrast, all NET tracers used in central nervous system applications are derived from clinically used antidepressants. Lastly, possible applications of NET as selective tracers over organic cation transporters (OCTs) in the kidneys and other organs controlled by sympathetic nervous system will also be discussed

Few-molecule reservoir computing experimentally demonstrated with surface enhanced Raman scattering and ion-gating stimulation

Reservoir computing (RC) is a promising solution for achieving low power consumption neuromorphic computing, although the large volume of the physical reservoirs reported to date has been a serious drawback in their practical application. Here, we report the development of a few-molecule RC that employs the molecular vibration dynamics in the para-mercaptobenzoic acid (pMBA) detected by surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) with tungsten oxide nanorod/silver nanoparticles (WOx@Ag-NPs). The Raman signals of the pMBA molecules, adsorbed at the SERS active site of WOx@Ag-NPs, were reversibly perturbated by the application of voltage-induced local pH changes in the vicinity of the molecules, and then used to perform RC of pattern recognition and prediction tasks. In spite of the small number of molecules employed, our system achieved good performance, including 95.1% to 97.7% accuracy in various nonlinear waveform transformations and 94.3% accuracy in solving a second-order nonlinear dynamic equation task. Our work provides a new concept of molecular computing with practical computation capabilities.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figure