On the Ground Effect of Static Circular Peripheral Jet

As a part of general investigations into Ground Effect Machine (GEM), a study has been made related to the jet flow and the base pressure of a circular peripheral jet in proximity to the ground. Approximate theories have been derived by using simple assumptions to obtain the relations between the jet flow or the base pressure and the hover height above the ground. The theoretical results are compared with the experiment of a circular peripheral jet model GEM. The agreement between those results are not so excellent, but it is supposed that the reason depends mainly on the viscous effects which are neglected in this analysis

NK-1 receptor antagonism decreases PONV

Purpose : Post-operative nausea and vomiting (PONV) remains the most frequently reported patient complaint after anesthesia. Aprepitant is the first neurokinin-1(NK1) receptor antagonism available for use as an antiemetic. We investigated whether aprepitant can effectively decrease PONV in patients undergoing laparoscopic gynecological surgery. Methods : Sixty four patients receiving general anesthesia for laparoscopic gynecological surgery were randomly assigned to either receive a preoperative dose of 80mg aprepitant or no drug. Efficacy was assessed in 2 and 24 hours after surgery. Primary and secondary endpoints were analyzed for the time intervals 0-2 hours (acute phase) and 2-24 hours (delayed phase). Vomiting, nausea, use of rescue anti-emetic, and visual analog scale (VAS) were assessed. Nausea was assessed on a 4-point scale, from 0 to 3. Results : Sixty patients participated in the study. At acute phase, PONV was present in both control and NK1 group and were 63% and 43% respectively. The severity of nausea was much less in the NK1 group. PONV prevalence at delayed phase was present in control but absent in NK1 group 27% vs. 0%, respectively. The amount of pain medication used by patients in the NK1 group was significantly less for diclofenac and pentazocine suggesting increase pain tolerance. Conclusions : Neurokinin-1 receptor antagonism effectively lowered PONV increased pain tolerance, and expedited recovery in patients undergoing laparoscopic gynecological surgery

Current status of space gravitational wave antenna DECIGO and B-DECIGO

Deci-hertz Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (DECIGO) is the future Japanese space mission with a frequency band of 0.1 Hz to 10 Hz. DECIGO aims at the detection of primordial gravitational waves, which could be produced during the inflationary period right after the birth of the universe. There are many other scientific objectives of DECIGO, including the direct measurement of the acceleration of the expansion of the universe, and reliable and accurate predictions of the timing and locations of neutron star/black hole binary coalescences. DECIGO consists of four clusters of observatories placed in the heliocentric orbit. Each cluster consists of three spacecraft, which form three Fabry-Perot Michelson interferometers with an arm length of 1,000 km. Three clusters of DECIGO will be placed far from each other, and the fourth cluster will be placed in the same position as one of the three clusters to obtain the correlation signals for the detection of the primordial gravitational waves. We plan to launch B-DECIGO, which is a scientific pathfinder of DECIGO, before DECIGO in the 2030s to demonstrate the technologies required for DECIGO, as well as to obtain fruitful scientific results to further expand the multi-messenger astronomy.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Current status of space gravitational wave antenna DECIGO and B-DECIGO

The Deci-hertz Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (DECIGO) is a future Japanese space mission with a frequency band of 0.1 Hz to 10 Hz. DECIGO aims at the detection of primordial gravitational waves, which could have been produced during the inflationary period right after the birth of the Universe. There are many other scientific objectives of DECIGO, including the direct measurement of the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe, and reliable and accurate predictions of the timing and locations of neutron star/black hole binary coalescences. DECIGO consists of four clusters of observatories placed in heliocentric orbit. Each cluster consists of three spacecraft, which form three Fabry–Pérot Michelson interferometers with an arm length of 1000 km. Three DECIGO clusters will be placed far from each other, and the fourth will be placed in the same position as one of the other three to obtain correlation signals for the detection of primordial gravitational waves. We plan to launch B-DECIGO, which is a scientific pathfinder for DECIGO, before DECIGO in the 2030s to demonstrate the technologies required for DECIGO, as well as to obtain fruitful scientific results to further expand multi-messenger astronomy

A Fast MoM Calculation Technique Using Sinusoidal Basis and Testing Functions for a Wire on a Dielectric Substrate and Its Application to Meander Loop and Grid Array Antennas

The input impedance matrix element of the method of moments (MoM) for an arbitrarily shaped wire antenna printed on a dielectric material Zm,n is formulated to be composed of three terms Zψsm,n, Zψm,n, and ΔZm,n involving single-, double-, and triple-integral calculations, respectively. The MoM based on the Zm,n formulated in this paper (new MoM) is applied to two antennas-a meander loop antenna and a grid array antenna-as well as a simple loop used as a reference antenna. The computation time to obtain the current distribution of each antenna by the new MoM technique is compared with the time required for the conventional MoM, which has an impedance matrix element composed of four terms, all involving triple-integral calculations. It is revealed that the new MoM drastically reduces the computation time: for example, by a factor of 937 for the grid array antenna. In addition, the radiation characteristics of these two antennas are discussed. It is found that a reduced-size meander loop (62% smaller than the simple loop reference) has a radiation pattern similar to the simple loop reference. It is also found that the grid array has an axial beam radiation pattern without side lobes in the principal planes

Development of Antimicrobial Peptide–Antibiotic Conjugates to Improve the Outer Membrane Permeability of Antibiotics Against Gram-Negative Bacteria

Antibiotics have been widely used in the medical field as a treatment for infectious diseases, but they are not effective against all Gram-negative bacteria because of their low permeability to the outer membrane. One of the strategies to improve the antibacterial activity of antibiotics is the coadministration of antibiotics and membrane-perturbing antimicrobial peptides for their synergistic effects. However, because of their different pharmacokinetics, their coadministration may not exert expected effects in the clinical stage. Here, we designed various antimicrobial peptide–antibiotic conjugates as a novel approach to improve the antimicrobial activity of antibiotics. Ampicillin was chosen as a model antibiotic with poor outer membrane permeability, and the effects of the chemistry and position of conjugation and the choice of antimicrobial peptides were examined. One of the ampicillin conjugates exhibited significantly improved antimicrobial activity against ampicillin-resistant Gram-negative bacteria without exerting cytotoxicity against human cultured cells, demonstrating that our novel approach is an effective strategy to improve the antimicrobial activity of antibiotics with low outer membrane permeability

Directional asymmetry in vertical smooth-pursuit and cancellation of the vertical vestibulo-ocular reflex in juvenile monkeys

Young primates exhibit asymmetric eye movements during　vertical smooth-pursuit across a textured background such that upward pursuit has low velocity and requires many catch-up saccades. The asymmetric eye movements cannot be explained by the un-suppressed optokinetic reflex resulting from background visual motion across the retina during pursuit, suggesting that the asymmetry reflects most probably, a low gain in upward eye commands (Kasahara et al. in Exp Brain Res 171:306–321, 2006). In this study, we examined (1) whether there are intrinsic differences in the upward and downward pursuit capabilities and (2) how the difficulty in upward pursuit is correlated with the ability of vertical VOR cancellation. Three juvenile macaques that had initially been trained only for horizontal (but not vertical) pursuit were trained for sinusoidal pursuit in the absence of a textured background. In 2 of the 3 macaques, there was a clear asymmetry between upward and downward pursuit gains and in the time course of initial gain increase. In the third macaque, downward pursuit gain was also low. It did not show consistent asymmetry during the initial 2 weeks of training. However, it also exhibited a significant asymmetry after 4 months of training, similar to the other two monkeys. After 6 months of training, these two monkeys (but not the third) still exhibited asymmetry. As target frequency increased in these two monkeys, mean upward eye velocity saturated at ∼15°/s, whereas horizontal and downward eye velocity increased up to ∼40°/s. During cancellation of the VOR induced by upward whole body rotation, downward eye velocity of the residual VOR increased as the stimulus frequency increased. Gain of the residual VOR during upward rotation was significantly higher than that during horizontal and downward rotation. The time course of residual VOR induced by vertical whole body step-rotation during VOR cancellation was predicted by addition of eye velocity during pursuit and VOR x1. These results support our view that the directional asymmetry reflects the difference in the organization of the cerebellar floccular region for upward and downward directions and the preeminent role of pursuit in VOR cancellation