Visualizing the decline of public interest in the Great East Japan Earthquake and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident by analyzing letters to the editor in Japanese newspapers

This study aimed to delineate the decline in public interest toward the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE) and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (FNPP) accident in Japan over a ten-year period. In this longitudinal descriptive study, we searched for publications within a ten-year period in Letters to the Editor that mentioned the GEJE, the FNPP accident, or the January 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (GHAE) that occurred in Japan, using the official databases of the three largest Japanese newspapers. The GEJE- and GHAE-related publications (4,809 and 2,092, respectively) are depicted as scatter plots. The results show a gradual decrease in the publications mentioning GEJE or GHAE. The impact of GEJE and FNPP on Japanese society was enormous, but the public interest waned over time. Communication strategies that maintain a high public interest in previous disasters may be necessary

Association between subjective economic status and refusal of life-prolonging treatment: a cross-sectional study using content analysis with stratified random sampling

Introduction: Older adults tend to refuse life-prolonging treatment for various reasons, and it is important to respect their choice of treatment at the end-of-life stage. The present study examines the associations of subjective economic status and gender with reasons for refusal of life-prolonging treatment in older adults in general population. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, using stratified random sampling, 1,595 older adults living in Koriyama City, Japan, as of 2016, completed self-administered questionnaires on subjective economic status and preference for life-prolonging treatment, with free-description regarding reasons for refusal. We analyzed the associations between the combination of subjective economic status and gender with frequently mentioned terms and their clusters regarding such reasons, using χ2 test, content analysis, text mining and hierarchical cluster analysis. Results: The combinations of subjective economic status and gender were significantly associated with clustered reasons for refusal of life-prolonging treatment (p < 0.01). The reasons frequently mentioned were: 'avoidance of unnecessary medical care' and 'dignity' in well-off females; and 'financial burden on family' in poor males. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that older adults who at first glance appear to be freely refusing life-prolonging treatment, may have their decision making restricted through economic constraints

Association between participation in sports club activities and decision-making preferences in end-of-life treatment among Japanese elderly people:a cross-sectional study

Introduction: Decision-making regarding treatment at the end-of-life stage is an important issue for the elderly and their families. Such decision-making may be influenced by activities that promote communication and physical health. The purpose of this study was to examine the association between participation in sports club activities and decision-making regarding life-prolonging treatment among the general community-dwelling Japanese elderly. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, which used stratified random sampling, 1,603 elderly people aged 65 years or older as of January 2016, living in Fukushima prefecture, Japan were enrolled. Data was collected by a self-completed questionnaire (effective response rate: 53.4%). The association of sports club activity participation with a preference for accepting or declining life-prolonging treatment was analyzed by multinomial logistic regression analysis. Results: Of those participating in sports club activities, the results revealed an odds ratios of 1.812 for participants declining life-prolonging treatment (95% CI=1.325 to 2.477) and 1.948 for those who preferred life-prolonging treatment (95% CI=1.160 to 3.271). Conclusions: The present study suggests that participation in sports club activities is associated with articulating decisions about life-prolonging treatment in end-of-life care. Consideration of patient involvement in daily activities in non-medical settings may enhance decision-making for end-of-life care planning

Mitochondrial LETM1 drives ionic and molecular clock rhythms in circadian pacemaker neurons

The mechanisms that generate robust ionic oscillation in circadian pacemaker neurons are under investigation. Here, we demonstrate critical functions of the mitochondrial cation antiporter leucine zipper- EF-hand-containing transmembrane protein 1 (LETM1), which exchanges K+/H+ in Drosophila and Ca2+/H+ in mammals, in circadian pacemaker neurons. Letm1 knockdown in Drosophila pacemaker neurons reduced circadian cytosolic H+ rhythms and prolonged nuclear PERIOD/TIMELESS expression rhythms and locomotor activity rhythms. In rat pacemaker neurons in the hypothalamic suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), circadian rhythms in cytosolic Ca2+ and Bmal1 transcription were dampened by Letm1 knockdown. Mitochondrial Ca2+ uptake peaks late during the day were also observed in rat SCN neurons following photolytic elevation of cytosolic Ca2+. Since cation transport by LETM1 is coupled to mitochondrial energy synthesis, we propose that LETM1 integrates metabolic, ionic, and molecular clock rhythms in the central clock system in both invertebrates and vertebrates

FBXO11 constitutes a major negative regulator of MHC class II through ubiquitin- dependent proteasomal degradation of CIITA

Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I and II molecules play critical roles in the activation and regulation of adaptive immunity through antigen presentation to CD8+ and CD4+ T cells, respectively. Strict regulation of MHC expression is critical for proper immune responses. CIITA (MHC class II transactivator), an NLR (nucleotide-binding domain, leucine- rich-repeat containing) protein, is a master regulator of MHC class II (MHC- II) gene transcription. Although it has been known that CIITA activity is regulated at the transcriptional and protein levels, the mechanism to determine CIITA protein level has not been elucidated. Here, we show that FBXO11 is a bona fide E3 ligase of CIITA and regulates CIITA protein level through ubiquitination-mediated degradation. A nonbiased proteomic approach for CIITA-binding protein identified FBXO11, a member of the Skp1-Cullin- 1-F- box E3 ligase complex, as a binding part-ner of CIITA but not MHC class I transactivator, NLRC5. The cycloheximide chase assay showed that the half -life of CIITA is mainly regulated by FBXO11 via the ubiq-uitin-proteasome system. The expression of FBXO11 led to the reduced MHC- II at the promoter activity level, transcriptional level, and surface expression level through downregulation of CIITA. Moreover, human and mouse FBXO11-deficient cells display increased levels of MHC- II and related genes. In normal and cancer tissues, FBXO11 expression level is negatively correlated with MHC- II. Interestingly, the expression of FBXO11, along with CIITA, is associated with prognosis of cancer patients. Therefore, FBXO11 is a critical regulator to determine the level of MHC- II, and its expression may serve as a biomarker for cancer

Public opinion in Japanese newspaper readers’ posts under the prolonged COVID-19 infection spread 2019–2021: contents analysis using Latent Dirichlet Allocation

Abstract During the COVID-19 pandemic, information on what people are interested in and what they are disseminating can be an important public health resource. Most studies on public opinion during the pandemic have focused on social networking services in the context of the early phases of the pandemic or on a short-term basis; research on public opinion outside of social networking services that consider long-term changes has not been conducted. To examine this gap in the research, we analyzed readers’ posts on Japanese hardcopy newspaper articles in the public domain. A total of 1910 such posts published during four emergency declaration periods in Japan were included in the study. Latent Dirichlet Allocation was applied in our analysis to extract topics and Kendall rank correlation coefficients between the emergency declaration periods, and each topic was calculated to examine the effect size. We selected 10 topics and categorized them into three themes: (1) “Life” comprising “Family,” “Daily Life in the COVID-19 Disaster,” “Education in the COVID-19 Disaster,” “The Importance of Humanity,” and “Daily Life unrelated to COVID-19”; (2) “Awareness of the emergency” comprising, “Awareness of being a party to an emergency” and “Concerns about the medical environment,”; and (3) “Policy” comprising “Domestic and foreign policies,” “Opposition to hosting the Tokyo Olympics,” and “Criticisms of the Japanese Government.” This research revealed that, as a result of the exposure to COVID-19-related material over a prolonged period, awareness of the emergency decreased (r = −0.189, p < 0.000), while other topics remained. This study showed that it is possible to extract more everyday public opinion topics from the reader’s posts in newspapers and that these are issues that should be addressed from a long-term perspective since they do not change significantly in a stressful life