Identifying the transverse and longitudinal modes of the K∗K^* and K1K_{1} mesons through their angular dependent decay modes

Observing the mass shifts of chiral partners will provide invaluable insight into the role of chiral symmetry breaking in the generation of hadron masses. Because both the $K^*$ and $K_1$ mesons have vacuum widths smaller than 100 MeV, they are ideal candidates for realizing mass shift measurements. On the other hand, the different momentum dependence of the longitudinal and transverse modes smear the peak positions. In this work, we analyze the angular dependence of the two-body decays of both the $K^*$ and $K_1$. It is found that the longitudinal and transverse modes of the $K^*$ can be isolated by observing the pseudoscalar decay in either the forward or perpendicular directions, respectively. For the $K_1$ decaying into a vector meson and a pseudoscalar meson, one can accomplish the same goal by further observing the polarization of the vector meson through its angular dependence on the two pseudoscalar meson decay.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

Development and evaluation of the programs supporting for social studies class improvement: Structure of the online and handbook programs applyed to pre/in-servise teachers

The purposes of this paper are to develop the online and handbook programs for the social studies teachers’ rational development and their class improvement, and to evaluate their effects for the teacher training and professional development. The structure of these two programs was designed based on modified Korthagen’s theory. The present results suggested that the usefulness for the social studies teachers was perceived by (1)pre-service and (2) in-service teachers, in addition, the possibility for application was also recognized by the teacher educator as (1) university professor who teach the methods courses, (2) mentor teacher who supervise the student teacher, and (3) senior supervisor who is in charge of designing the professional development curriculum, but they illustrated their different petterns of the significances, limits and utilizations according to their awareness of their problem involved as well as their responsibility. The authors implicated the necessity of the further linkage of online and handbook programs to strengthen their usability for any cases in order to support the teacher training and professional development

高齢で発症した重症筋無力症は重症化しやすい

Objective: The continuous increase in the number of patients presenting with late-onset myasthenia gravis (LOMG) underscores the need for a better understanding of the clinical course and the establishment of an optimal therapeutic strategy. We aimed to clarify factors associated with clinical outcomes in LOMG. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the clinical profiles of 40 patients with early-onset MG (EOMG) (onset age: 49 years or younger), 30 patients with non-elderly LOMG (onset age: 50–64 years), and 28 patients with elderly LOMG(onset age: 65 years or older) and compared the subgroups according to onset age and thymus status. The evaluated parameters were MGFA classification before treatment, MG-ADL score, complicating diseases, antibody titer, treatment, and MGFA post-intervention status. Results: Elderly LOMG patients showed transition to generalized symptoms at a higher frequency and underwent thymectomyless frequently than EOMG and non-elderly LOMG patients (p < 0.001). The frequencies of crisis and plasmapheresis were significantly lower in thymectomized LOMG patients without thymoma than in thymectomized LOMG patients with thymoma or non-thymectomized LOMG patients (p < 0.01, P < 0.05, respectively). However, the outcome was not significantly different. All of the thymectomized LOMG patients without thymoma presenting with hyperplasia or thymic cyst had a favorable clinical course. Conclusions: Our study showed that elderly LOMG patients are more prone to severity, suggesting that they require aggressive immunomodulatory therapy

Japanese multicenter database of healthy controls for [¹²³I]FP-CIT SPECT

Purpose: The aim of this multicenter trial was to generate a [¹²³I]FP-CIT SPECT database of healthy controls from the common SPECT systems available in Japan. Methods: This study included 510 sets of SPECT data from 256 healthy controls (116 men and 140 women; age range, 30–83 years) acquired from eight different centers. Images were reconstructed without attenuation or scatter correction (NOACNOSC), with only attenuation correction using the Chang method (ChangACNOSC) or X-ray CT (CTACNOSC), and with both scatter and attenuation correction using the Chang method (ChangACSC) or X-ray CT (CTACSC). These SPECT images were analyzed using the Southampton method. The outcome measure was the specific binding ratio (SBR) in the striatum. These striatal SBRs were calibrated from prior experiments using a striatal phantom. Results: The original SBRs gradually decreased in the order of ChangACSC, CTACSC, ChangACNOSC, CTACNOSC, and NOACNOSC. The SBRs for NOACNOSC were 46% lower than those for ChangACSC. In contrast, the calibrated SBRs were almost equal under no scatter correction (NOSC) conditions. A significant effect of age was found, with an SBR decline rate of 6.3% per decade. In the 30–39 age group, SBRs were 12.2% higher in women than in men, but this increase declined with age and was absent in the 70–79 age group. Conclusions: This study provided a large-scale quantitative database of [¹²³I]FP-CIT SPECT scans from different scanners in healthy controls across a wide age range and with balanced sex representation. The phantom calibration effectively harmonizes SPECT data from different SPECT systems under NOSC conditions. The data collected in this study may serve as a reference database

Gravitational Wave Physics and Astronomy in the nascent era

The detections of gravitational waves (GW) by the LIGO/Virgo collaborations provide various possibilities for both physics and astronomy. We are quite sure that GW observations will develop a lot, both in precision and in number, thanks to the continuous work on the improvement of detectors, including the expected new detector, KAGRA, and the planned detector, LIGO-India. On this occasion, we review the fundamental outcomes and prospects of gravitational wave physics and astronomy. We survey the development, focusing on representative sources of gravitational waves: binary black holes, binary neutron stars, and supernovae. We also summarize the role of gravitational wave observations as a probe of new physics