Effect of Toki-Shakuyaku-San on Regional Cerebral Blood Flow in Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer's Disease

The aim of this study was to examine the effect of toki-shakuyaku-san (TSS) on mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) using single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). All subjects were administered TSS (7.5 g/day) for eight weeks. SPECT and evaluations using the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), Neuropsychiatric Inventory, and Physical Self-Maintenance Scale were performed before and after treatment with TSS. Three patients with MCI and five patients with AD completed the study. No adverse events occurred during the study period. After treatment with TSS, regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in the posterior cingulate was significantly higher than that before treatment. No brain region showed a significant decrease in rCBF. TSS treatment also tended to improve the score for orientation to place on the MMSE. These results suggest that TSS could be useful for treatment of MCI and AD

Radially local approximation of the drift kinetic equation

A novel radially local approximation of the drift kinetic equation is presented. The new drift kinetic equation that includes both E×B and tangential magnetic drift terms is written in the conservative form and it has favorable properties for numerical simulation that any additional terms for particle and energy sources are unnecessary for obtaining stationary solutions under the radially local approximation. These solutions satisfy the intrinsic ambipolarity condition for neoclassical particle fluxes in the presence of quasisymmetry of the magnetic field strength. Also, another radially local drift kinetic equation is presented, from which the positive definiteness of entropy production due to neoclassical transport and Onsager symmetry of neoclassical transport coefficients are derived while it sacrifices the ambipolarity condition for neoclassical particle fluxes in axisymmetric and quasi-symmetric systems

On the Characteristic Difference of Neoclassical Bootstrap Current and Its Effects on MHD Equilibria between CHS Heliotron/Torsatron and CHS-qa Quasi-Axisymmetric Stellarator

The characteristic difference of neoclassical bootstrap current and its effects on MHD equilibria are described for the CHS heliotron/torsatron and the CHS-qa quasi-axisymmetric stellarator. The direction of bootstrap current strongly depends on collisionality in CHS, whereas it does not in CHS-qa because of quasi-axisymmetry. In the CHS configuration, it appears that enhanced bumpy (Bs1) and sideband components of helical ripple (By1) play an important role in reducing the magnetic geometrical factor, which is a key factor in evaluating the value of bootstrap cuffent, and determining its polarity. The bootstrap current in CHS-qa is theoretically predicted to be larger than that in CHS and produces significant effects on the resulting rotational transform and magnetic shear. In the finite B plasmas, the magnetic well becomes deeper in both CHS and CHS-qa and its region is expanded in CHS. The existence of co-flowing bootstrap current makes the magnetic well shallow in comparison with that in currentless equilibrium

Orbit Topology and Confinement of Energetic Ions in the CHS-qa Quasi-Axisymmetric Stellarator

The orbit topology and confinement of neutral beam-injected energetic ions are investigated for the current target configuration of the CHS-qa quasi-axisymmetric stellarator. It was shown that tangentially co-injected neutral beam (NB) heating is efficient even at a low magnetic field strength Bt of 0.5 T, whereas the heating efficiency of the counter-injected NB becomes significantly lower as Bt decreases because of the increase of first orbit loss. The energy loss rate increases as the beam injection angle becomes perpendicular, suggesting that the residual non-axisymmetric ripple in the peripheral domain plays a role in enhancing the transport of trapped ions. An interesting observation involves the appearance of the island structure in both the gyro motion following orbit and the guiding center collisionless orbit of counter-moving transit beam ions. It appears under a particular, narrow range of parameters, i.e., energy, pitch angle v///v, normalized minor radius r/a at the launching point and Bt

Effects of Current Profile on Global Ideal MHD Stability in a Compact Quasi-Axisymmetric Stellarator

The global ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) stability for a proposed compact quasi-axisymmetric stellarator CHS-qa has been investigated taking the effect of bootstrap current into account. Assuming experimentally achievable density and temperature profiles, the stability properties of global low-n modes have been studied by using threedimensionalnumerical codes based on fixed boundary MHD equilibria including self-consistent bootstrap current for the CHS-qa reference configuration. Consequently it has been shown that values of edge rotational transform play a crucial role in triggering external kink instability. Concerning a lot of other possibilities in experimental practice to change the total parallel current, we have also studied equilibria with increased or decreased parallel current, but fixed profile. The onset of external kink modes depends on rotational transform or current profile, and we found a stable equilibrium in spite of the edge rotational transform above 0.5. The results imply the possibility of stabilizing external kink modes through current and/or pressure profile control in high beta equilibria

Fast-Ion-Diagnostics for CHS Experiment

Fast-ion-diagnostics have played an important role in investigating issues related to fast ion orbits and fast-ion-driven MHD instabilities in CHS experiments. The fast-ion diagnostics employed in CHS are reviewed and experimentally obtained knowledge is summarized

Propulsive Performance and Heating Environment of Rotating Detonation Engine with Various Nozzles

Geometric throats are commonly applied to rocket combustors to increase pressure and specific impulse. This paper presents the results from thrust measurements of an ethylene/gas-oxygen rotating detonation engine with various throat geometries in a vacuum chamber to simulate varied backpressure conditions in a range of 1.1–104 kPa. For the throatless case, the detonation channel area was regarded to be equivalent the throat area, and three throat-contraction ratios were tested: 1, 2.5, and 8. Results revealed that combustor pressure was approximately proportional to equivalent throat mass flux for all test cases. Specific impulse was measured for a wide range of pressure ratios, defined as the ratio of the combustor pressure to the backpressure in the vacuum chamber. The rotating detonation engine could achieve almost the same level of optimum specific impulse for each backpressure, whether or not flow was squeezed by a geometric throat. In addition, heat-flux measurements using heat-resistant material are summarized. Temporally and spatially averaged heat flux in the engine were roughly proportional to channel mass flux. Heat-resistant material wall compatibility with two injector shapes of doublet and triplet injection is also discussed

Dealkylation of alkyl polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon over silica monolayer solid acid catalyst

Dealkylation of alkylnaphthalene, as a model of alkyl polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon compounds in heavy oils, proceeded selectively on a silica monolayer solid acid catalyst. The activity was generated by the deposition of silica on alumina with generation of Brønsted acidity. The activity and Brønsted acid amount showed the maximum where the monolayer covered the surface, indicating that the Brønsted acid site generated on the silica monolayer was the active species. The activity and selectivity on the silica monolayer were high compared to other aluminosilicate catalysts, and high activity was observed even after calcination at 973–1173K