The First Human Case of Rickettsia tamurae Infection in Japan

A case of Rickettsia tamurae infection in Japan is reported. A 76-year-old Japanese male had a tick bite which developed to local skin inflammation on his left leg. Anti-rickettsia antibodies were detected in his serum, and R. tamurae DNA was identified in his blood, the lesional skin, and the tick

T細胞におけるEgr2/Egr3依存性TGF-β3産生機構を介した液性免疫制御に関する検討

学位の種別: 課程博士審査委員会委員 : （主査）東京大学教授 田中 廣壽, 東京大学教授 佐藤 伸一, 東京大学教授 小室 一成, 東京大学講師 下澤 達雄, 東京大学特任教授 垣見 和宏University of Tokyo(東京大学

Stress and radiation hematopoietic toxicity

Both radiation and stresses cause detrimental effects on humans. Besides possible health effects resulting directly from radiation exposure, the nuclear plant accident is a cause of social psychological stresses. A recent study showed that chronic restraint-induced stresses (CRIS) attenuated Trp53 functions and increased carcinogenesis susceptibility of Trp53 -heterozygous mice to total-body X-irradiation (TBXI), having a big impact on the academic world and a sensational effect on the public, especially the residents living in radioactively contaminated areas. It is important to investigate the possible modification effects from CRIS on radiation-induced health consequences in Trp53 wild-type (Trp53 wt) animals. Prior to a carcinogenesis study, effects of TBXI on the hematopoietic system under CRIS were investigated in terms of hematological abnormality in the peripheral blood and residual damage in the bone marrow erythrocytes using a mouse restraint model. Five-week-old male Trp53 wt C57BL/6J mice were restrained 6 h per day for 28 consecutive days, and TBXI (4 Gy) was given on the 8th day. Results showed that CRIS alone induced a marked decrease in the red blood cell (RBC) and the white blood cell (WBC) count, while TBXI caused significantly lower counts of RBCs, WBCs and blood platelets, and a lower concentration of hemoglobin regardless of CRIS. CRIS alone did not show any significant effect on erythrocyte proliferation and on induction of micronucleated erythrocytes, whereas TBXI markedly inhibited erythrocyte proliferation and induced a significant increase in the incidences of micronucleated erythrocytes, regardless of CRIS. These findings suggest that CRIS does not have a significant impact on radiation-induced detrimental effects on the hematopoietic system in Trp53 wt mice

Developing ChaKi.NET lite

九州大学総和技研Kyushu UniversitySowa Research現代において，コーパスは言語研究に欠かせない資源となっている。言語学の分野では検索・閲覧・集計インターフェイスを備えたコーパスの利用が多いが，情報学等の分野で作成されたコーパスには必ずしもインターフェイスが提供されるわけではない。類型論研究での活用が期待されるUniversal Dependencies（UD）ツリーバンクもそのようなコーパスの1つである。そこで本研究では，既存の高機能コーパスツールであるChaKi.NETを情報抽出用に特化し，新規ユーザにも利用しやすい軽量版であるChaKi.NET liteを開発した。ChaKi.NETは高機能であるがゆえに利用者にとっての学習コストが高かったが，ChaKi.NET liteではUDに合わせたインターフェイスを提供し，アノテーション機能を省くことで目的の機能を利用しやすくした。本稿ではChaKi.NET lite開発の背景と機能について紹介する。Corpora are indispensable resources for contemporary linguistic research. While corpora used for linguistics research usually have an interface, those developed for informatics research tend to lack one. Universal Dependencies (UD) Treebank, which has proved useful for linguistic typology studies, also lacks an interface. In this study, we developed a lightweight corpus tool named ChaKi.NET lite for new users, specialized from the existing sophisticated ChaKi.NET for information extraction. While one takes a long time to learn to use ChaKi.NET, ChaKi.NET lite reduces the required learning time by omitting the annotation function and providing an interface tailored to UD. This paper introduces the background of the development of ChaKi.NET lite and the new functions that this corpus tool provides.application/pdfdepartmental bulletin pape

ChaKi.NET liteの開発 : Universal Dependenciesコーパスの利用を見据えたChaKi.NETユーザインターフェイスの改良

Kyushu UniversitySowa Research Co., Ltd.会議名: Evidence-based Linguistics Workshop 2022, 開催地: 国立国語研究所, 会期: 2022/09/05-06, 主催: 国立国語研究所、神戸大学人文学研究科ChaKi.NETはコンコーダンサやアノテーションツールを含む多機能なコーパス管理システムである。現行の（ChaKi Legacyでない） ChaKi.NETは2009年（Ver. 1.1, 現在公式サイトで確認できる最古のバージョン）に公開されたものであり、10年以上に渡って機能追加や品質の向上が行われてきた。しかし、可能な処理が増え多機能化が進む一方で、インターフェイスが複雑化しコンコーダンサとしての利用等、簡易な作業にも学習コストが嵩む状態になっている。本研究では、ChaKi.NETの機能のうちコンコーダンサ機能に焦点を絞り、複雑なファイル操作に馴染みのないユーザにも利用しやすいインターフェイスを備えたChaKi.NET liteの開発について述べる。想定するユーザ層としてはCorpus of Contemporary American English（COCA）等のコーパスを使用したことのある言語学者であり、近年自然言語処理分野で開発が盛んである通言語コーパス群Universal Dependencies（UD）コーパスを容易に使用可能にすることを目指している。今回追加した主な機能は、UDコーパス群読み込み操作の簡略化、複数UDコーパスの一括検索機能追加、検索実行および結果表示インターフェイスの改良である

Radioprotection by p53 Regulatory Agents

Radiation damage to normal tissues is one of the most serious concerns in radiation therapy, and the tolerance dose of the normal tissues limits the therapeutic dose to the patients. p53 is well known as a transcription factor closely associated with radiation-induced cell death. We recently demonstrated the protective effects of several p53 regulatory agents against low-LET X- or γ-ray-induced damage. Although it was reported that high-LET heavy ion radiation (>85 keV/μm) could cause p53-independent cell death in some cancer cell lines, whether there is any radioprotective effect of the p53 regulatory agents against the high-LET radiation injury in vivo is still unclear. In the present study, we verified the efficacy of these agents on bone marrow and intestinal damages induced by high-LET heavy-ion irradiation in mice. We used a carbon-beam (14 keV/μm) that was shown to induce a p53-dependent effect and an iron-beam (189 keV/μm) that was shown to induce a p53-independent effect in a previous study. Vanadate significantly improved 60-day survival rate in mice treated with total-body carbon-ion (p < 0.0001) or iron-ion (p < 0.05) irradiation, indicating its effective protection of the hematopoietic system from radiation injury after high-LET irradiation over 85 keV/μm. 5CHQ also significantly increased the survival rate after abdominal carbon-ion (p < 0.02), but not iron-ion irradiation, suggesting the moderate relief of the intestinal damage. These results demonstrated the effectiveness of p53 regulators on acute radiation syndrome induced by high-LET radiation

Impact of shear wave dispersion slope analysis for assessing the severity of myocarditis

This study aimed to elucidate the utility of a novel ultrasound-based technique, shear wave dispersion slope (SWDS) analysis, which estimates tissue viscosity, for evaluating the severity of myocardial inflammation. Experimental autoimmune myocarditis (EAM) at different disease phases [3-week (acute phase): n = 10, 5-week (subacute phase): n = 9, and 7-week (late phase): n = 11] were developed in male Lewis rats. SWDS was measured in the right and the left ventricular free walls (RVFW and LVFW) under a retrograde perfusion condition. Histological myocardial inflammation was evaluated by CD68 staining. The accumulation of CD68-positive cells was severe in the myocardium of the EAM 3-week group. The median (interquartile range) SWDS of RVFW was significantly higher in the EAM 3-week group [9.9 (6.5-11.0) m/s/kHz] than in the control group [5.4 (4.5-6.8) m/s/kHz] (P = 0.034). The median SWDS of LVFW was also significantly higher in the EAM 3-week group [8.1 (6.4-11.0) m/s/kHz] than in the control group [4.4 (4.2-4.8) m/s/kHz] (P = 0.003). SWDS and the percentage of CD68-positive area showed a significant correlation in RVFW (R-2 = 0.64, P < 0.001) and LVFW (R-2 = 0.73, P < 0.001). This study showed that SWDS was elevated in ventricular walls with acute inflammation and also significantly correlated with the degree of myocardial inflammation. These results suggest the potential of SWDS in estimating the histological severity of acute myocarditis